David Johnson
Timnath, CO
Had a blast!! Favorite puzzle this year.
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!
@Ben Blackwell agreed. That SW corner should be illegal.
@Steven M. Funny, the Nintendo stuff was almost my undoing.
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.
@MP Rogers I think you nailed it. Sam took it easy on us.
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.
@bayonetta I thought it was definitely Saturday worthy. Tough solve until a few of the long clues fall into place. Nice job!
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.
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.
@QSwords `beat it` actually jogged my memory enough to get `man in the mirror'.
@Clare. Moyer was a true pitcher, not just a thrower. I was a fan.
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.
@Steven M. Hmm 17A is almost unsolvable if you don't know it. Fortunately, I'm in software so the Mac OS finally came to me after 10 minutes or so.
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!
oops, nowadays....guess it's pretty obvious why I had issues today. :)
@Steven M. Agree. Nw corner was rough. Usually you know when you're good to go on a Saturday puzzle, but tonight I was just praying for no whammies when filling in that last square.
@Steven M. Same. I'm super annoyed about Sao Paulo vs Sao Paolo. Spent a half hour rechecking, so lost my streak and killed my average at the same time. Awesome.
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.
@Sam Lyons Betty Crocker? Cake mix etc?
@Steve L wow, 24 minutes seems amazing to me for this one.
@Vaer Thank you, I never noted that before. That would've been huge tonight!
This puzzle took me 2x longer than a typical Sunday puzzle takes now a days, and I had to look up 2 words today!
@Greg before this puzzle, I thought they were Nickleback. Silly me.
Broke a long streak thanks to Sao Paulo and Duplo. I'm pretty annoyed to say the least.
@Teri agreed. Took me a bit to catch on but fun to mentally teleport.
Oops, I mean NW corner.
@Barry Ancona just the galois/leasa one, but my wife had to give me the sponge name so I disqualified myself from gold stardom.
@Jim was thinking very similarly as you on that.
@Ash yeah, I laughed aloud at those.
@George stuck on Olson/Korea for a good 5 to 10 minutes.
@Geoff so far the Wednesday puzzle has taken at least 5 minutes longer than every other one. (if the week starts on Monday anyway). I'm sure Saturday's will be 10x harder though.