Brannon

This is the kind of puzzle I’ve been waiting weeks for. Loved the rebus clues and answers. Perfect Thursday puzzle. Tricky but not too tricky. Fun and fresh.

This was a fun puzzle. Felt fresh. Some challenges, but everything resolved pretty easily with crosses.

Perfect misdirection. It leads you down the wrong path and you have to evaluate the ambiguity of each step as you retrace them. I got tripped up a number of times, but it never lost it’s allure. Great puzzle.

This was hard and frustrating, but had so much payoff once I started to get a thread and eventually solved. It took me an hour and a half, broken up throughout the day, with a ton of wrong turns. In the end I actually loved this puzzle. Even when I was stuck all of the clues felt close, so I kept coming back. That’s how a hard puzzle is supposed to feel.

This was extremely hard. That can be fun when the clue & answer combine for cleverness and freshness. This was too opaque and outdated to be either for me. It reminds me of digging deep into the archive where the zeitgeist is different enough to make an approachable puzzle at the time feel impossible today. That said, the grid itself is quite an impressive accomplishment. After dabbling in construction recently I do appreciate the spanners, 3x7 stacks, and lack of lazy fill—but I do still wish for alternative clueing.

Wow. Loved this one. First pass through turned up next to nothing and I thought it was going to be extra tough. But then a few key entries started seeding a few more and all of a sudden I was sailing. Nice challenge, perfect clueing, and an absolute blast.

This theme was a bit of a whoosh for me. I filled the grid with SOUTHEAST and just sort of shrugged off the theme entries that didn’t seem to fit. I had no idea what a short hedge meant, so I just tried final letters until the puzzle solved. I can see why people like this puzzle, but it’s not my cup of tea.

Great puzzle. Fun theme. Not too hard but still took a second to break in before it clicked.

Lots of fun, this puzzle. Started off slow but things started to come together with very fun clues.

This is one of those puzzles that makes me wish for a week’s worth of Thursday-style puzzles so that we could vary the difficulty. This was a fun and easy solve, but doesn’t quite scratch the Thursday itch.

This was fun and challenging but totally approachable. After working through it counter clockwise it started to solve itself.

It’s nice when working through the NW corner reveals the theme. Rather easy, but figuring out a rebus is always a winner. I was a little disappointed that the same word was used repeatedly in theme answers without being specifically required to repeat because of the theme. But anyway. Fun puzzle.