Ryan

I wanted to be a podiatrist, but my career got off on the wrong foot.

Good Monday, only issue I had was the triple proper noun overlap, but it was workable.

Truly enjoyed today. Consistently tough, but fair. I'll never forget what ARHAT means after this week. And for once, plugging in "ADO" wasn't the right solution (it was "DIN"!)

The southeast sector really threw me off, but generally had a great time with the rest. ABASE, ASCETIC, BOSSBATTLE? Don’t see those every day!

Intersecting proper nouns, my crossword Achilles’ Heel…

I HAVE A LOT TO DO. GIDDY UP. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

That...might have been the single hardest NYT crossword I've done in the 7 or so years I've been doing them. I don't know how I clued into AAVERAGE, but when the other clues around it started falling into place, I was positive the rest of this puzzle was going to knock me down a few... CRAPPER was amazing. I jokingly tried POOPER first but figured that was a *little* too crude for NYT. My infinite joy when it ended up being CRAPPER... Bottom left was absolutely brutal, and most of the proper nouns in this one were just beyond me, making bottom right a slog. Great clues, though!

A lot of specific knowledge went into this one... but I guess that's Thursday for you. If it were easy, I wouldn't want to do it.

Fun, brisk solve. Loved the theme! I can’t believe I already forgot what a SPRIT was!

Played to my strength of having a healthy vocabulary while largely avoiding plays, operas, books, celebrities… Probably my all-time fastest Saturday!

Perfect Tuesday! Quick but thoughtful. OBGYN got a chuckle out of me.

Would have been an all-time PB, but EIDER/RARA tripped me up!

Wow. ABYSM, LIMN, Darn (MEND). I very rarely don't know a non-proper word. But 3 today! Paraphrasing a famous quote, "When you stop learning, you start dying."

Interesting for me because I cracked the middle first and spread to the corners, which I never do. The top left took me as long as the rest of the puzzle combined. I just couldn’t get through the misdirection or alternate meanings there! Good Saturday.

Learned a new meaning of PASTE... and really ran aground for a while with HOLLOW instead of RAN LOW. Messed with quite a large area there until I arrived at the only possible answer for 46A: LOTR. Great wordplay. I groaned a lot, but that's a Saturday for ya.

Somehow nailed the theme early with BEEFEATER and turned a brutal solve into a fairly smooth one by Thursday standards! Never heard of JAKE until today, though…

Despite not getting the theme until reading the article, I had a blast solving this one. Fairly mellow compared to recent Sundays, but that section around CLOROX fizzled me for the last 10-15 minutes. Never read the Lorax, don't know any T Swift, unfamiliar with that use of DOTE and "Git" (for which I tried PROD and was sidelined wondering if it was a rare programmer clue)... Wish I had put more thought into the theme instead of just inserting THE in the middle. Would have got it a lot quicker!

Loved it. I found it very challenging, but nearly had a PB!

ENAMEL got a chuckle from me. Great, light Friday puzzle!

Loved it! Unusually brisk Sat for me…which is great because I had a narrow window to solve today! I knew KABUKI off the cuff and was able to get footing in every quadrant to start picking off the long clues in the middle. No crazy wordplay today, just big clues with many possibilities!

Good one. South east was a slog for me. Maybe I shouldn't solve over lunch as the *cough* postprandial somnolence sets progressively sets in...

I didn’t feel like this was an exceptionally hard puzzle once I solved the clues, but I just could *not* latch on and keep a rhythm. Every time I struggled and eventually solved, I felt more like “Oh, yeah that’s valid” vs having an AHAMOMENT. That said, I did enjoy MULCH, STAYCATION, and ETHANOL.

Needed some help with the theme, but it was a fun solve after the “Ah hah!” moment.

I enjoyed it but was forced to solve in quick bursts throughout the day. The *worst* way to work on a Sunday crossword! Interestingly, I’m usually terrible at proper noun-heavy puzzles, but that’s a place where I came out ahead today.

Not my best showing, needed some help with this one today. 8 scrambled theme answers did me in. At least it wasn’t a rebus day…

Monday on a Wednesday--no complaints here!

A nice solve to close out a long day! Thanks, Nate!