Helen

I have not seen a single one of these movies. Yet I am familiar enough with the names of them to have figured out all the rebuses today. I guess I just absorb enough pop culture through osmosis? I am over 50, but I see and notice the names of popular movies everywhere online and when I’m scrolling through streaming services looking for something that appeals to my demographic. I’m a little surprised that so many here in the comments think that it’s only possible to be familiar with names of Pixar movies if you’ve actually watched them and/or have young kids.

I found this super easy for a Friday! I finished in just over 11 minutes. I felt like there must be a catch. Definitely felt more like a Wednesday. I usually count on Fridays to keep me busy longer. (Not a serious gripe, just very mild disappointment!)

For me, the sticking point was the intersection of BICORNES and Catherine PARR, neither of which I’m familiar with. Adding to that, I wasn’t sure if the golf gimme was TAP IN or TIP IN. So it was a bit of “try a bunch of letters to see what works” but I got there eventually! Nice puzzle!

Anyone who thinks this (or any recent Saturday puzzle) is tough, try doing one from 2014. I just did one (June 21 to be precise), and I can only imagine the uproar if a puzzle that difficult and obscure appeared today. Back then, Wordplay was relatively new, and there were only 39 comments on an absolute beast of a puzzle. Now, we routinely get upwards of 500 comments, many complaining how “not fun” a Saturday puzzle was due to how hard people found it. I just think it’s interesting how the bar seems to have changed, because today I can easily do almost any Saturday without any help in under a half hour, but that 2014 puzzle was impossible without lookups. (And it’s not because I know the trivia of today better than of 2014 - it’s that the references in the 2014 era puzzles were more likely to be from the 1930s or from some extremely obscure academic topic.)