Randolph

That was FUN. When I started working these after a many years gap I feared the weird Thursdays. No more. I look forward to them, knowing they will be fun, sometimes humbling, but always fun. This one was pure joy. A sincere thank you to Dominic Grillo for a fine puzzle.

Well, yesterday (I think it was just yesterday) I commented on the Potato Head puzzle that I'd never encountered ARHAT, and didn't anticipate ever encountering ARHAT again. Wrong. Again. But in successive puzzles? I started out looking at multiple clues finding nothing to play until I wandered around (in a circuitous path) to 5D and ENIGMAS popped into my brain. So I laughed and played it, knowing it was destined to be erased. Then AMINO and GON crossed and the puzzle started solving itself. I really like when that happens. It was a fun Friday. Thank you Jake.

Well, I'm not sure that I had a rollicking good time, but I got through. It is an impressive puzzle. I got the rebuses, mostly from the fairly easy double letter down crosses, E.g. NYANKEE for 72D. But 74A ending in ...THEYY made no sense to my brain. II think I expected the rebus to be identical in the crosses. Although I think I've maybe encountered and not understood similar rebus crossings in earlier puzzles. I will get smart someday (wishful thinking). The rebus comment is not a complaint, The rebuses were very clever, much more interesting than YY across and down in what I cited above. Now I understand rebusdom a little better. I did find some of the trivia (my take, not necessarily anyone else's) obscure. But I'm no purist and after I've filled what I can I'm happy to use DuckDuckGo for inspiration. Generally a lookup makes an entire area clearer. And looking at a map of Iraq and following the Tigris looking for a city that satisfied my crossings was pure joy - I really love maps. And for lookups I draw the line at those spoilsport NYTimes crosswordd clue results. Final thought: I will probably enter ALI for Olympian ALY many more times, did it before, did it today, will certainly do it next time.

I started this Saturday evening, knowing that I knew nothing about Pixar. I work crosswords on a computer browser, closed it out and headed to slumberland. But I reopened on my phone and realized 85A had to be SOULFOOD which forced a rebus. And OSCARSTATUE for 11D was suddenly clear. Slept on it. I had to find a list of Pixar movies, I've only been aware of one or two used in this puzzle and had no knowledge that they were Pixar products. I thought for a long time that 57D had to be DUPLEX, the UP rebus was my last entry. Thanks for an interesting and for me very difficult romp. I'm gonna use REBUS as my Wordle start today.

I liked SUVS in 1D immediately, and the V worked with Vivien Leigh, except it didn't fit. Same problem with Heiseman Trophies. That's where I started to catch on to alternate IE & EI rebuses, but the down crosses were wrong, IE where it should be EI, etc. I just went with the spelling of the across answers and ignored the down answer inconsistencies. When I got the completion correct, much to my surprise, I finally understood that the down vs. across flip was intentional. Strain my brain. All in all I had fun with it. I'm new here, and catching on to rebus rules (are there any?) is gonna take awhile.

That was fun.

TL;DR, This was fun, hard but fun. This was a challenge. I started last night in the NW, nothing entered. Moved to the NE, nothing entered. Moved to the center and entered QUE crossed with HUG, thank the crosswords Gods for three letter entries. At that point the puzzle had me captive. I actually finished most of the puzzle BELOW the top 4 rows by midnight, with only a couple of letter changes needed today. But those top 4 rows, nothing worked for me last night. Tried PSHAW in 15D, I thought it was good, wrong. Threw that out and put DINAR in 15A, nope. Was pretty sure of MEN and ISTHAT... in 5&6D, had to look up LOUIS for 7D and suddenly the NW was done. But the top 3 rows in the NE? So close with not a clue. Poked around the internet and found TUTTI and SANAA which gave me STRAW and a good laugh (I agree that the clue for STRAW seemed, um, a bit questionable). SOBS finished. Still have no idea what a BATARANG might be.

This was fun. I finished it without getting the theme. Not at all. I kept expecting Latin words, And I don't know Latin. Roman numerals did not occur to me. But crosses were easy enough that I just made sure the downs were not insane, even though my "In old Rome" answers were quite the contrary. The happy screen when I played the T to cross KATY and RIOT actually startled me! Until reading Deb's column I had not an inkling of understanding why I was done. Quite a clever construction.

I filled pretty quickly for me (slow by any rational measure). But, had a bad letter. I just tend to look at my entries for typos first, and everything looked good except 50D - ATIT had to be wrong... until I read the clue. Went back reading clues, fixed 4D and was done.

I had little success with the north half of the puzzle. So I moved on to the south. That suited my brain much better. Worked some crosses and got the revealer, quickly found the PUNCH, and the HOLE (PIGSTY) and figured THREE would get me one of the remaining solutions, but where was the clue for the fourth? There is no fourth word in THREEHOLEPUNCH, at least not to my eyes. It took crosses to turn the lights on for me: three meanings of hole. I like that kind of joke! My sweetheart speaks Spanish, I don't. I've heard TE AMO, but the YO is foreign to me. So I saved the Y in Amy until every other square was filled. Done! Fun! Thanks Christina!

Fun puzzle again. I had GASHEAT for 1D as my first entry. It eventually led to HATERADE for 25A. I let that stay but flat out knew it was wrong. I like to JUDICIOUSLY be certain, even when working a puzzle. Completed the fill but I had an error. So I went to work on the NW corner, cause I knew that's where the problem had to be. Nopity, nope, I could only make it worse so I put HATERADE back in. Eventually inspecting the rest of the puzzle turned up my typo for OOO in 99D. And to my surprise haterade is listed in OED since 2017. Enjoyed the puzzle, the grapes were sweet, not sour. The grey words not so much, no help in solving. DIC?

Gotta say, the five section grid is beautiful. With six eleven letter answers crossing in the center! Just astounding. FISTS. I filled that word in, then erased it, multiple times. For me the letters fit, but the meaning was (and still is) unknown. That SE corner was the last for me to finish. Maybe as I read comments I'll understand.

The clue for 36D could have been "Unique town name found only in Randolph County, Indiana". But I might be a rare solver of this puzzle to make that connection. Farmland was "The Home of Ansel Toney, The Kite Man". That might have made an intriguing 36D clue. It's pure accident that the county name matches mine, I'm a recent part time resident. And pawpaws grow here, but not papayas.

I'm getting acclimated to crosswords after a many year absence from paper solving. This one came alive for me with CALABRIA in 11D. Twenty some years ago (last century in fact) I picked up the NYTimes and a breakfast Portuguese roll, sometimes some provolone, at the Calabria Deli, long gone. I knew Calabria was a region in Italy, and CAL as the first letters were enough certainty for me. A very tough puzzle for me, but a nice challenge. And yes, I lookup stuff, preferably to confirm, or dash, my hunches.

I locked onto THE SOUTH EAST when, much to my surprise I found that there is a LADY LIBERTY on a Georgia river, and Cumberland Falls in Tennessee is also sometimes called Niagara, along with EPCOT and EVER GLADES in the US southeast. By then I lost the thread of confirming the other four having same named attractions in the SE (although the South can be kitschy enough to have them). Amazing puzzle.

Nope, never understood the theme until I finished and read the column. Thanks Deb. I stumbled around with very little traction until I tried the SE corner, made nice progress and climbed the ladder up to through the NW. Got the theme answers mostly with crosses, these never made sense to me from the clues but they fit. I figured the reason would be revealed eventually. Finished in the NE corner. MCCARTNEY didn't scan as a plausible word in my brain until I realized it was a name. Still didn't get the theme, but I got the happy complete screen. I had a computer glitch which led to a below average time for me, connection dropped when I was 2/3 done, NYTimes sever had about 12 squares filled in and I repeated some hard work in about 3 easy minutes.

This comment is related to the 10 animal names that should be known article that appeared earlier. It's repost from 2018 and comments are closed so I'm posting here. The entry for GNU is fine as an animal reference. But GNU is also a recursive TLA expanding to GNU is Not UNIX.

Diabolical. I started Wednesday night, gave up, totally defeated. After I finished the Friday puzzle Thursday evening I read the comments on that puzzle, somehow those comments nudged me to reopen this puzzle. A blessing for sure. Well, I sort of caught the rebus twist, and filled in the puzzle. But, the not quite right screen came up. I knew my problems were in the SW corner, but I never would have figured out DOTTED I. Went to the revealer and had 4 wring letter. Diabolical. Brilliant. Teddy & Rich, Merci.

Well, this was fun. I really loved METADATA. I have a tech problem. I finished the puzzle, got the congratulations screen, but the archive page shows it as blue and ready to be resuned, But when I "resume" it, I can't do anything to it. and my stats page doesn't include results for this puzzle. Golly, I'm puzzled.

Hmmm. I finished the puzzle an hour ago, it me took about 20 minutes or so. The duration is not important to me but is maybe pertinent to whatever happened to my complete puzzle. I solve crosswords on a Mac in a browser. I like to quickly do the mini on my phone in the app, tonight I opened the app and was encouraged to FINISH the crossword. I called it up, it was partially complete with the timer around 10 minutes. Any ideas? I'm not concerned about streaks or stats, but I do like to see a complete puzzle credited. Does anyone have insight into how this happened?

Well, I just lost this one on OCTIPI, not that I didn't have it correct originally. When I got the one letter wrong screen I was very suspicious of IHIDUNNO (which I still don't understand). While futzing unsuccessfully with that answer I inadvertently left OCTOPI in place, careless I know, done. When I fixed SHOULDTHEDEEDARIVE to ...ARISE and still got the error I surrendered, one bad square revealed. Mia culpa. This one was a challenge for me, well over 2 hours and a loss. Too much time spent inside on a glorious mid west day. I'm ending my subscription, at least until winter returns. I've enjoyed six months of puzzles, and appreciate the (sometimes fractious but generally supportive) community in these comments. Now it appears time to move on.