Gareth
Bangkok
Hmmm… bit disappointed to be honest… I like a challenge on a Saturday and this just felt like a ‘fill in the boxes’ Wednesday… what am I gonna do for the next half hour? And the screw/nail clue was just crass and vulgar…
That was great!! So challenging but rewarding to finish it. Maggie Simpson…. Aaarrgh! Got me for an age.
Quite an easy Saturday. The Springbok clue was helped by the fact that I’m driving through Etosha in Namibia right now and they’re everywhere! 😍
I think I deserve an award… I managed to complete that while on a 30 hour ferry ride between Borneo and Java with a lousy cover band tunelessly blasting out Indonesian songs beside me…
Not sure what I think of this one. If you’re a regular player you’ll find it easier due to ERR, TKO, which come up often enough. I liked LATTE. I also quite liked QUIDPROQUO despite the negative comments. I read BOOS as being as a plural for a term of endearment hence SWEETIEPIES so, though it frustrated me, I quite liked that too. Too many obscure peoples’ names though… that’s annoying.
That was really good 👏👏 I stayed far too long on LIFEBOAT. As a Brit, I have to say I’ve never heard of a PAN LOAF though…
Loved it! A perfect Saturday…. Difficult, challenging but made it in the end…. A tough and enjoyable 50 odd minutes.
That was a good Saturday. As I often find them, really difficult to start but get a foot in the door and you’re off!
Today’s (1st feb) Saturday was so frustratingly easy… I always look forward to Saturday as a challenge but now it seems to me it’s on a Wednesday/Thursday level and has been dumbing down in recent months…. Toughen it up a bit!
@Andrzej no no I would never look down on anyone!! I hope it didn’t come across that way! That wasn’t my intention… as I said my personal feeling is that when I have to look an answer (which I do) then I’ve failed… sure, might have learned something but, for me, I cheated. I’m certainly not elitist… some of these posted PBs are way faster than I could ever do.
Really enjoyed that! Tough and I had nothing for a while. Lots of American stuff that I didn’t know but so satisfying to finally slog it to completion. I had ‘in horror’ for a while which held me up for a bit… Good puzzle.
@Beth in Greenbelt indeed! Largely based around Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; the title of Graham Greene’s Power and the Glory obliquely referenced this, then Apocalypse Now borrowed some of it too! Such a good poem.
@Nora As a ‘not too bad but not great’ pianist I’ve learned a lot over the years chatting with seriously good musicians how often the ‘instructions’ on a given piece are interpreted very very broadly, and that they should be. Play the right notes in the right order at generally the right tempo and do what you like them! It’s amazing to listen to ten different, say, Chopin nocturnes played by ten different pianists and to observe how utterly different they sound.
What’s the protocol here? I read comments on people completing a puzzle in such and such a time ‘only having to look up’ this and that. For me if I’m so stuck that I have to resort to looking up an answer, which occasionally happens with a Saturday, I deem myself to have not completed it. I’d feel a fraud claiming success having resorted to what I think is cheating (well, what IS cheating), but maybe that’s just me…
Enjoyed that…. Breezed through the top right section thanks to SWIT but struggled on the bottom right and top left…. Got there in the end… an hour… felt like a Saturday crossword!
Serious question to the NYT: Does ETSY pay you to have their store mentioned every other week in the crossword? So tiresome, clumsy and obvious. I’d never heard of ETSY until I started doing these which I guess is the point.
Why does a feast have to be meaty? Have I missed something??
Crikey! That’ll teach me to moan at how easy Saturdays have been lately… but agree with other posters… too much obscurity here… Blow dry bar??? Hey anybody?? Not clever, just clumsy and often nonsensical…
Tough tough tough!! Some of those I never would have got. Hate having to cheat!! 😩😩
Great puzzle!! Really tricky especially the top left corner for me…. Took me a good while but felt so satisfying to nail it! 👏👏
@Speede it’s the game ‘truth or dare’
Ouch! Tough but got there in the end and it felt soooo good! You enter your last letter and wait for what feels like an eternity willing the jingle to play! I get that it’s a NYT puzzle but I think many puzzlers are international so fewer local sporting clues would be nice, just in general… pretty please??
@Andrzej I almost crashed my car looking at that Wonderbra ad…. 🙄
Hmmm… dunno… largely too obvious…. A 3 letter fighter is always going to be ALI and a Hollywood icon Davis is most likely to be BETTE. Maybe I’m just too used to the style of the clues… I did get stuck on WALDO for RANDO (which I think sorta fits the clues) and was stuck on SALES for SPIEL for a bit…
My fastest Saturday ever!! Yay me! PEDIATRICIANS was my ‘in’ (mentally having to remove the A, being a Brit), and it all seemed to roll on nicely from there ☺️ I thought the lah-di-dah was a ‘bit Wednesday’ though…
@Vaer agree with the cavern confusion. As a dentist, I thought the ‘tut’ was a judgemental click on poor oral hygiene… I need to get out more. Otherwise quite straightforward.
Not sure what I think… some easy, some impossible if you’re not local… think I would’ve finished in 20 minutes if I were American. Karate lessons was great as was Here be dragons.
@Lars oh man! Didn’t get that sighting! 👏
I think nerd cred for solving a Saturday used to be a thing, not so much now… it’s been so dumbed down… compare this to the Saturdays of 5-10 years ago…
ENTRANCE and TREES on a Saturday puzzle??? Such weak clues… thought it was Monday…
Thought it was gonna be easy but turned out tough, enjoyably so though. Thank God Count Chocula didn’t make it to UK 🤢 …healthy way to start the day kids! As for ANTE, it features so often in the NYT crossword, do the compilers have a collective gambling problem??!
A card is not necessarily an indicator of a penalty in ‘football’ (that’s the game’s name btw).
ENO makes an almost unhealthy amount of appearances in the NYT crossword… it’s annoying. Does he know about this!?!
On the whole enjoyed this… a few toughies… Tinder bio was a good one and the Roman numerals was fun, eliminating across clues that didn’t contain M, C, D, V or I... But lawyer’s assignment-CASE??? That was very Monday/Tuesday!
@Valerie Ditto that! I don’t even know what an alley oop is… I guess it’s an American thing….
Like a lot of contributors it seems, pretty easy today… done before I’d finished my lunchtime beer…
Today’s crossword brought to you by our main sponsor, Etsy! (Again….)
@Graphic fair enough! But you guys clearly don’t understand the rules of the game! 😉
@Bml agree with the czar issue… always a pain!
@Francis I think it maybe because ‘Welsh’ seems a little exotic to NYT readers! It’s a little patronising to all Welsh people (those from Wales!)
Hmmm…. Is it Wednesday?? I was looking forward to a nice challenging Saturday with my sashimi and Asahi but apart from MOTH having me stuck on MOON for a bit, it was all a bit disappointing…
Elbrus is in Antarctica… what did I miss?
@Francis yes I’d agree with you there. Having said that, I’m not American so, regardless of the period, some answers on say American literature, sport, acronyms, whatever, I’m always going to be clueless on…
Today’s puzzle (as is often the case) brought to you courtesy of our regular sponsors, Etsy… 🙄🙄
‘Boxing Day mo.’ on a Friday??? Really?? I think you meant to put this crossword on a Wednesday…
A Wednesday masquerading as a Friday….
@Getting Better can you shoehorn in a YYZ there somewhere? 😂
@Eddie it’s really annoying, so obviously a sponsored product placement….