Gareth

Hmmm… as someone who grew up in Wales I can’t imagine anyone describing Wales as SW Britain…. That would be Cornish or, at a stretch, from Devon….

As someone already pointed out… LAV is not a British term for Loo. Speaking as a Brit.

👏👏👏👏 Oh yes! That was a Saturday! That feeling when you know for a fact that there are heaps of clues you’ll never get and your weekend is ruined, then you slowly chip away and… it ever so slowly comes together. The anticipation of entering the last letter and hoping you’ll hear the tune and not the withering ‘almost there..’ message… Now I’m in a good mood!

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.

Crikey! I asked for a Saturday and really got a Saturday! Tough tough tough but so much more gratifying to solve as a result. For anyone at the NYT reading … this is what a Saturday is supposed to be like.

Now THAT was a Saturday… thank you. I was definitely going nowhere for a good 15 minutes… so satisfying to trawl through it in the end. I had ALLOW for the second part of ‘put up with’ n was stuck trying to think of an opposite for DISALLOW… Anyway… loved it and a nice way to start the weekend.

Interesting puzzle. I didn’t like ‘seized with the teeth’ as ‘bit off’ though….it doesn’t imply or mean that at all; to me that’s more like ‘gripping’ … anyhoo, other than that, quite clever.

Hmmm…. A sorta challenge but not massively so. As a Brit I’d take issue with two answers. Cockahoop is waaay more ecstatic than glad…. It’s dancing in the street and popping champagne cos you just got into university or won a car, whereas ‘glad’ is ‘I’m glad your washing machine is working now’. ‘Chap’ is not a word I’ve ever used to describe a friend unless I was born a hundred years ago, maybe the constructor has been reading too many Somerset Maugham novels! 😊

Awful. Clumsy. Annoying. Waste of my time. Ridiculous.

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.

Uuuuugggghhhh.. Suffix with caffeine-??? Seriously?!?!? What else could the answer be??? So annoying. And does it even qualify as a suffix… caffeine is a word… just ridiculous. 😖😖 I need my caffeine…

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!

Easy peasy…. The Wales clue was straightforward as I’m doing the puzzle in a cafe in Cardiff!

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!

That was a better Friday (even if the TREES clue escaped from a Monday puzzle).

Wow!! East became really difficult!!! I was at that all day!! Great puzzle 👏👏

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.

Ahhhh tough never heard of Susan tucci or Tilsit so had to cheat…. A fail for me 😞 But that’s how a Saturday should be 👏

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…

Oooff that was hard… serve me right for criticising some recently for being too easy ! And I’ve never heard of a Zarf!

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??

Quite the challenge! Never heard of turducken… looks awful. As for ‘desert’, it’s defined by lack of rain not heat. The Antarctic is a desert, and it ain’t hot there!

Enjoyed this…., found it really tough…. Was stuck on boring forever until I had a d’oh! moment with boxing

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! 👏👏

Database/bank… sneaky!! 👏👏

That was difficult! What a Friday should be… it was the bottom right that killed me and I have to admit to a DNF as I had to look a couple up down there 😩 but a proper Friday it was 👏👏

A good chewy Saturday filled in near the Ethiopian/South Sudanese border drinking fine Ethiopian coffee. Having arrived a few weeks ago from Rwanda the Dian Fossey clue helped a lot. Travel broadening the mind eh?

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??

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…

Tough tough but on the whole enjoyable… SNEES never heard of n was wondering if it should be EPEES as I had the two ‘E’s …. It’s weird to have the Mondayesque clue of KINGSIZE in an otherwise quite tough solve. SCHMEAR was annoying. WAYFARER was nice as WANDERER was the obvious answer. Enjoyed this… on the whole 😉

It’s Thursday again. 🙄🙄

Ah I loved this! A real tough, gnarly Saturday I had to struggle through, always thinking I’d never get there, but in the end did. I had NEAT for REAL for so long and KEEPITPC and not PG too…. Felt so good in the end…

A Good Friday challenge… eyelets was clever.