David Johnson

Marlstone crossed with author of "Gashlycrumb Tinies"? Seriously???

I haven't seen a Goto statement in code in a long time, thankfully. Some great clueing in this one!

Excellent challenge, snapped together artfully like a good puzzle should.

31D c'est tres tres bon! Bravo!

Call me a snoot, but this isn't my jam, jelly, or even my peanut butter.

Had a blast!! Favorite puzzle this year.

Cool prize at the end! Fun Wednesday puzzle.

Over double my average today. Thanks to plotzed and 'wreck' and ruin. Debugging errors is a time killer.

As Moronie from "Johnny Dangerously" once said, "fargin ice holes". Fun puzzle!

Fun one. Had me scared for a bit when not much was filling in.

Art heist. The only thing stolen was my streak. I got the artists part, but how to get the boxes that replaced the artist names was impossible unless you're a mind reader. I'm on the NYT app on a tablet. I see no puzzle title or see any description for the puzzle. How am I supposed to solve this?

Absolutely destroyed my Saturday average clocking in at 104 minutes, but I got there with looking anything up so am very happy. NW consumed all that time. Had silk tax as the Great Wall financer and aislepacer for undesirable airplane seat mate, even though an aisle pacer wouldn't annoy me at all.

Saw the puzzle creator. Gave it 10 minutes, made a nice dent below. But this is just gonna have to wait til I'm at my best. Too tough right now.

That was a fun one. Catch as Rub vs. Nab, Disturbs - Riles vs. Roils messed me up for a while. Tough in that there weren't too many clues that you could be 100% sure about, but nothing ridiculous in there either.

Set my Thursday record on this one, and didn't realize the duality of the circles until afterwards. I'm a little sad I missed the point at the time.

I'm a very uncool DOPE right now. That word ate up about 10 minutes, I think.

The very first clue I filled in was Katla for Icelandic hot spot. My good friends named their daughter Katla after a volcano there. Was surprised a bit the answer was sauna, I associate that more with Finland.

Not as hard as last Friday, but very tough! I thought about getting up and taking a break about a million times, but hung in there, and somehow, a word would pop up every now and then. Thanks for the challenge. Whew. Feels like an accomplishment to finish, for sure.

Glad I read the article, because i read the theme as 'I'm walk in here' and was totally confused. Enjoyable puzzle, thanks!

Spent almost an hour on this. Checked and double checked and ultimately done in by Leo and Sanrio (hello kitty) clue. Had an n instead of an o. At least, got some great practice in learning how to do a puzzle like this on an android tablet.

24 Across-Bold bit of ink...Face Tat. Loved that one!

Broke a streak on this. Missed galois. Spent 68 minutes on it so killed my average as well. Fun puzzle but too many things I didn't know.

I've seen 2 seasons of "The Bear" and really enjoy it. Guess I better start learning the cast names. They're all going places.

Whew, that was a challenge. Had to take a break twice and go over to Spelling Bee which is also tough today. Alright, still have 30 points to go on Spelling Bee and I think all the 'lazy words' are gone, so back to suffix hell over there.

Dude, it's a Tuesday puzzle. That NE corner was ridiculous for the day.

I was stuck on Poke for the longest time, and it threatened my new policy of no look-ups whatsoever. 2 ideas - Poke as a fish and Poke as short for Pokemon. Had 'Chai Iced Tea' instead of 'Thai Iced Tea', so that was totally messing me up. Whew. Good puzzle, lot of fun clues. Would've been a shame to falter on that one.

Took me 20 minutes longer than a normal Friday. The top part did indeed make my brain freeze. Just happy to survive this one and continue my absolutely no look-ups policy streak to almost 10 weeks.

Spent 75 minutes and failed because of in two acts, not intro acts. Socks to not get the gold star after that.

Couldn't finish this until the morning. The northwest corner was too much. 1D Left as a clue could've been anything. So once that got figured out, it was fine. Agree that oxfam/afortiori cross was nasty. As was Diego Luna/bluey

Fun puzzle except I am pretty salty about not knowing how to fill in the lock letters. Gave up after a while, streak over, thanks to poor software, not a poor puzzle.

whew, that was a workout! It took me 250% longer than it takes my usual Sunday time. Each and every clue was solvable but you had to look at them from several angles. Completed and I thought everything looked good, but 107A/108D....that mistaken letter probably took a good 15 minutes to find.

I was pretty stuck on he word being 'tada'. So I was ready to throw my tablet across the room, checking and rechecking the rest of the answers til I went insane. Swallowed my pride and read enough of the article to get unstuck.. Glad I did as it saved me from going completely insane. Looking forward to a lively comments section.

Fun puzzle except the ridiculous natick with Neil Diamond and Oleta Adams. That was 5 minutes right there. MissM didn't help.

SW quandrant got me big time! Especially the last 6 letters of 20 down, which sent me down a bad path. Probably not a good idea to do these Saturday brain busters at 11pm on a Friday after a few beers (not Milwaukee beers).

I spent about 20 minutes trying to get the 'special squares' right when I should've been checking to make sure all the rest of the clues were correct! Huge sigh of relief when I finally went through the whole thing again and found an error that led to success. Gotta keep the streak!

Stuck on NW corner for a while until 3D came to me out of nowhere. This was a fun and challenging puzzle overall! I had GwenStefani in for the blonde clue for a little bit until other clues forced in out.

Lots of clues I've never seen before - missed 4 letters today and broke a modest streak, one of them was just careless 'buenanoche' not 'buenanocha'..but 'PageSix', and corresponding clues 'Burp cloth', 'knex'.....and then 'diareses' totally stumped me. Good job!

The SW corner really had me stuck for a while. Didn't take too long for most of it, but that corner had me stumped for about 20-25 minutes. Knowing the author would've significantly reduced that time. On Taco Truck adjectives, I was trying for a 5 letter word that meant spice/y. Despite the long average killing duration, it's always satisfying to finish without looking anything up. It was a fun one overall.