Adrian

Whenever I see a rebus, I race to the comments section to defend their honour. I love rebuses! Especially when they're surprises!

Wow! The platonic ideal of a themeless puzzle. Great, mischievous cluing, and long answers that seem elusive until they suddenly click into place. I love the crossword!

What a challenge! Thought Bond's gun might be my streak-breaker. That's a nasty bunch of consonants to push through when you don't know the trivia! Great puzzle, thanks.

it's an ezersky! hang onto your streaks!!!!! great puzzle. what a challenge. "z tile" was the final penny to drop.

Wow!!! After twenty head-scratching minutes with this beast, I really thought my goose was cooked. But over the next half hour, the pieces finally started falling into place. Thanks for a terrific challenge.

Lots of prickly fill here (AIT? ALAI? RAPINE?), but worth it, I'd say, for the delicious theme. Great puzzle, thanks!

Wow! I feel like a warrior having made it to the end of this one. Beautiful vocab, beautifully cryptic cluing. Love a challenge like this. Great puzzle!

Ate Skibidi Cap I oop I oop. Ate Skibidi Cap I oop I oop. This phrase will haunt me until my dying day, I think. If you make merch that says "Ate Skibidi Cap I oop I oop" on it I'll buy it.

PHEW!!! What a work-out. Those stacks did not come easily, but felt VERY satisfying when they came.

Hoo-ee...that PDQBACH/DOGES/AGIO nook of the puzzle almost did me in. Cool puzzle!

each successive theme answer got a bigger groan than the last. great puzzle, loved it.

Every one of these spanners was a burst of joy. Great puzzle!

Wow! I admit I found the grid construction a little awkward at first glance, but I had faith that the theme would be good enough to justify it. I was right! Very, very cool. I always open a Thursday puzzle hoping to have my brain melted like this.

Showstopper!

Fabulous puzzle. I must draw attention to the "16 minutes" stat for Anthony Hopkins. Although this number is widely circulated, its source is unknown and it seems to be inaccurate. Matthew Stewart--who runs screentimecentral dot com, a complete database of screentimes for Oscar-recognized performances--pegs Hopkins at nearly 25 minutes. Still good enough for second shortest of all time!

wow!!! i loved this. i definitely had to guess the key word and then race over to this column to find out how the "E" and the "T" worked. wish i had stuck it out longer to crack them myself, since a puzzle this clever is rare!

That NE corner was fiendish! Didn't help that I was dead set on POLAR as my papa bear. Fun puzzle, thanks!

all-timer

Wow, one of the toughest in recent memory! I thought the NW corner would be my streak-breaker. And it didn't help my SE efforts that I was sure it was ERIN hiding in "electioneERINg"!

wow! a really delicious combo of trivia (thank goodness for SNORLAX, the first entry today i could feel confident about...) and conversationalisms. really tough, and a real treat!

Wow!!! I love crossword puzzles!!! This rules!!! I am disappointed that when I rotated the letters myself I was marked incorrect, and had to unrotate them to be considered complete. But still! What a great ride.

Wow!!! A really pleasing fill with a jaw-dropping twist. I'm giddy!

I just love puzzles like this! Feels unsolvable until you chip, chip, chip away at that theme. Great!

fabulous! so much fizzy misdirection and meaty fill. "scintillating" is the word!

Oooh, that northern edge was a TOUGH mix of proper nouns, initialisms, loanwords and cryptic cluing. But worth it to struggle through to get a gold star on a great puzzle with a cool theme.