Violet

I'm fairly new to tackling the Sunday Crosswords, but I think this one might be my new second favorite (second only to last week's Star Trek themed puzzle that I loved so much I printed it out to make my 20 year old daughter solve as well). It's one of the first times I immediately got the revealer and understood what it meant without having figured out any of the themed clues yet. The puzzle, over all, was still challenging for me as a newer solver, but knowing right away I was dealing with an "eye" rebus was so helpful! I haven't read the comments yet so I'm going to assume everyone else found it too easy, but I enjoyed it, at least.

I'm really not liking the new behavior of the column opening within the games app instead of switching over to the NYT app. For one, it's blinding, because I keep everything on dark mode but when the column opens in the games app it's bright white. It's also frustrating because sometimes when I'm struggling I like to flip over to the column for a quick hint, or even a quick read through the day's comments, before flipping back to the games app to continue working the puzzle. This new behavior makes that more difficult because I have to back out of the comments and/or column (losing my spot) to get back to the puzzle. I'm sure others may disagree, but at the very least, can you at least give us the choice to open the column in the regular app or even just a browser window?

I loved this one so much! I figured out the roundabouts relatively quickly. NE corner took me way too long because one of my first entries was fanfic and it took me way to long to give up on it. ALTLIT was actually one of my lookups, embarrassingly enough. Thanks for the super fun Sunday! (Also, my small town has six roundabouts in a row in the 1.5 miles between me and the interstate. I absolutely love them and how well traffic flows after they were added a while back, but oh, the wailing and gnashing of the teeth from the locals who'd never seen one before...)

Fun Monday! I came in seven minutes below average even though I got stuck way too long because I didn't question my 67A tele answer since several of its crosses were eluding me. Two did become an "ooohh"*facepalm* moment once I decided that corner had to be the issue and began to wrack my beleaguered brain, finally "Aha-ing" with MEGA. Kind of embarrassing, but that's me on a good day.

Ooh, this was a fun one for a relatively new solver like me. I felt as though I was on this constructor's wavelength right up to the finish....when I got the dreaded nearly there pop-up. Turns out, I should have left the M in MAXIMUs that I had originally before switching it to an s to make the crossing work. I learned something new today, at least. (I didn't get the actual theme until reading the blog afterward though.) I finished fifteen minutes faster than my average at thirty-five minutes (worked on it last night untill I fell asleep and finished this morning). I'm likely much slower than more experienced solvers, but I'm happy with it.

Fantastic puzzle for this (relative) newbie. I figured out the rebus before I got to the revealer oddly enough. I really enjoyed this one as being both approachable for newcomers but also a legit Thursday-level puzzle.