Sean

Tired of the NY Times forcing all this woke stuff on us. 49D is expecting me to know pronouns? Kidding obviously, I was glad to see PFLAG on here even if I had GLAAD for the longest time instead. I know some French so I appreciate how often that comes up, but it’s nice to see Spanish for a change. Especially given that there are 34x as many Spanish speakers in the US as there are French speakers.

A fun puzzle. Was a bit tricked by the theme, especially how it works differently for downs and crosses throughout the grid. I will never understand the angry comments every Thursday and Sunday from people who are shocked that the puzzle is puzzling.

A fun puzzle with an unexpected theme for a Wednesday. I’ve never heard of counting noses; a quick google makes it seem like an English idiom – the OED says the first known written use was by Rudyard Kipling! I’m surprised by all the midwesterners up in arms over the LON/LAWN thing and I can’t figure out which of those words they’re pronouncing weirdly. But I guess Hemingway did call his Illinois hometown a place with “broad lawns and narrow minds.”

Set my Friday record with my first sub-10 time. Not sure if this one was generally easy or it just all came together for me this week. Really liked the clue for MANDARIN, you could do a whole trivia round where the answers are all spelled from US postal codes.

I was so proud of myself for coming up with mayflies on my first pass. Took probably too long to admit it was wrong and JUNEBUGS belonged instead. I was also sure at least one of the ball girl clues was going to be about sports, but wrong again. Overall a fairly easy Friday with some clever clues.

A fun theme for the puzzle, I’m always a sucker for a rebus. Also, with regard to the “big box stores,” the wordplay column and comments are saying it fits because the names of stores are put into a big box. But I think the real answer is that all of them have logos that are squares or rectangles (i.e. boxes). No?

Cute little theme for a Tuesday. I put DUEtS for the Hamilton clue. Finished the puzzle with something wrong. tED down didn’t seem obviously wrong and had to go through every clue looking for my mistake. I’ve never seen Hamilton but I assume those DUELS are also DUEtS? Unless the seconds are singing too.

Pretty clever! I didn’t catch the rebus until the end when it just seemed like the only option. I resisted it because I can’t remember seeing one on a Wednesday before. I briefly tried to figure out the theme and FGIJH wasn’t making much sense so I dropped it until the revealer at the end.