Gregg

Yeesh. "Rod shaped", HET, CATDOM, ORR crossing MARLO... I mean, I finished the puzzle but I can't say that I enjoyed it.

REEM crossing ROSAMUND is wild and I will freely use the word Natick to describe that intersection.

A+ for construction but C- for fun. Just not enough wordplay and too much trivia for my taste.

So much obscure trivia. Even when I knew some trivia right off the bat like OLEANNA it didn't help the overall clunky feel of this puzzle for me. Answers like CRAPPER and NOSERAG felt oddly base, and then there was TAT without it's eternal companion "puddy." Happy Saturday to those who enjoyed this one but today's puzzle clearly wasn't my cup of tea. Looking forward to tomorrow.

Wow! Amazing construction. This went a bit quicker than usual for me thanks to the palindromic assistance, but I literally kept saying, "Wow!" A very impressive feat.

Puzzles like this - heavy on trivia, light on wordplay - just aren't for me.

I agree with the comments that this was unexpectedly difficult for a Monday. ARF - why would this be [High-pitched]? I would think yip or yap would be high pitched, but not ARF. The F on the end of ARF and woof has always suggested to me the sound of expelled air, and that suggests to me the larger lungs of a bigger dog with a lower-pitched bark. Clearly my love of dogs is causing me to overthink this LOL But it struck me as odd.

Wow - that was a fun Thursday with 12 answers related to the revealer! An impressive feat of construction. Bravo!

Just want to chime in and say that I, too, hated today's puzzle. I love a Thursday trick and today's trick was... fine. But the surrounding trivia, obscurity, and ridiculous cluing turned this into an exhausting slog. It felt disappointingly appropriate that the promised animation didn't even function.

Very tricky - I repeatedly thought I wasn't going to be able to complete it, but then a foothold would appear... I understand why folks would feel like this was unsolvable, but I was ultimately able to finish it without any hints or googling.

Yeesh. This one was a slog, as many have already said. The poor technical implementation on mobile, the messy Across answers that spell nothing when filled in properly, the crisscrossing naticky names, the ancient clues... and then the trite revealer at the end. Ugh. The whole puzzle felt inelegant to me. I'm sorry to be harsh but I'm glad it's in the past.

I found parts of this puzzle oddly sticky, particularly the northeast. It wasn't until I read the column that I noticed the likely culprit: the awkwardness of shoehorning every clue into a format that started with the letter B. I appreciate the whimsy of it all, but all of those Bs made the ride bumpier for me. It was ultimately solvable, just a bit stickier than I was expecting. I'm amazed that some felt this was as easy as a Monday!

At first it felt a bit cheap that the triple letters only applied in one direction, but then I realized: when playing Scrabble, the Triple Letter square only applies to the first tile that crosses it. If a subsequent word crosses that square, triple letter points don't apply because the first word already covered up that square. Bravo constructors!

Trivia heaviness often spoils Saturday puzzles for me, and today was just one of those Saturdays. I much prefer word-play where answers can be sussed out. But if you don't know trivia answers, especially if they cross multiple other trivia answers or foreign language phrases, there's just no moving forward. And if I need to start looking up answers, then I've lost the fun of solving. At least I've been doing these puzzles long enough to know that some are just not for me. Looking forward to Sunday's puzzle!

My initial guess for 10D [Where many gather to form a line?] was a television "writers RoOm" which I thought was brilliant! Alas, it was wrong. LOL

LACUNA crossing ENIAC felt like a Friday or Saturday to me, but maybe that's just me and my lack of familiarity with these words. I ended up looking up the [Pioneering 1940s computer] since I didn't feel like running through the alphabet on this one.

Not a fun Thursday puzzle for me. The theme was middling and there was no fun twist. And many of the clues were straightforward trivia, not sparkly wordplay. I know they can't all be winners for everyone, every day. But as a Thursday puzzle lover, this one felt really flat and disappointing to me.

Just want to chime in and say that I really enjoyed this puzzle. It's exactly what I look forward to for a Thursday challenge.

I was sure of my answer DERMa, and I had never heard of the upscale shirt maker so ETaN looked passable. Unfortunately that meant that flyspecking was pointless for me tonight. Oh well, no gold star tonight.

This puzzle felt inelegant and just "off" to me, so coming to find out the constructor used AI is no surprise. Yuck. Please, stop doing that. Also, working on this puzzle on a Pixel phone, it seems really weird to call an IPAD an alternative. It just isn't.

Not the best Thursday (usually my favorite puzzle of the week). The "trick" wasn't much fun, particularly the obscure COZY MYSTERY nestled among a slew of proper names and a collection title. I prefer puzzles that leverage wordplay rather than trivia. And I prefer "tricks" that can assist the solve once they are discovered.

I got bored about halfway through but persevered. When the gold star didn't appear I would normally go back through the puzzle to find the mistake but it just didn't seem worth it today, and I'm glad that I hit Autocheck instead. 1 Down? Ugh. Maybe I'm just having a bad day but that was not a great clue, with not one but 2 Rs.

The puzzle was... fine. But I miss a Thursday trick. Where's the rebus? Where's the math? Where's the cleverness? This felt like it could be any day of the week.

I really enjoyed this one. Lots of entertaining and clever clues and not a lot of obscure or archaic trivia. The "moonshine" clue was excellent fun, as was the "negative impression" clue. "Evidence of a past, personal connection" also made me giggle. Just the right level of challenge and fun for a Friday puzzle!

As I said to a friend today, "Happy anniversary of the country that used to be America!" Gallows humor for the dark times we're living in. The theme came to me quickly but much of the fill did not, especially on the left side. Once it all fell into place it was very satisfying and a welcome distraction for my news-addled brain.

It's always funny to me when commenters insist that a puzzle was "easy" or especially "too easy." That's really dependent on one's knowledge base and the vibe of the puzzle. For me, yesterday's puzzle had much more flow and today's felt bumpier. It took me the longest time to understand HEADER because I'm almost always solving on a phone so I don't often see the Across and Down HEADERs. And the northeast might have been easy for some, but without poker experience (I despise card games), a memory of The Jungle Book, or a memory of ever having learned ACTIN - I got stuck for a good while. It was ultimately all solvable but not particularly "easy" for my brain today.

Yikes, the northwest was tough for me. Even with the luck of knowing GUERNICA from just the G and the C, I needed to look up the German word fünf so I could get out of a sticking point and it still took me forever. ALGA crossing GREAVES and APRIORI was brutal.

I thought this one was going to be a breeze when LOCAL PAPER came to me immediately and delivered me the entire northwest. But then I ran into WALTHER PPK and the downfall began. Sometimes hard is just hard and not fun, and that's what today's puzzle was for me. I'd have preferred the clue, "Reading for SOME who'd rather not read," when CDs are involved because that's a vanishing medium. But as I often say, at least I can look forward to a new puzzle tomorrow

As a sober guy, I'm glad the only way I use METH nowadays is a an answer in a crossword puzzle! As a dog lover, I first thought "Chew the doors" would have something to do with puppy separation anxiety. And I was certain for a long while that the "Mighty" thing was a pen. Otherwise, the vibe of this puzzle felt like chatting with a good friend. A good friend who teaches me how WOOKIEES is actually spelled.

A very fair loss today because of ABYSs. I should have noticed that the letter S is not symmetrical and breaks the theme of the downward cross, but I couldn't decipher my mistake without Autocheck. I didn't remember MAXIMUs from my calculus classes, but I figured that was simply because the classes were over 35 years ago - because ABYSs seemed obviously correct! LOL Oh well, on to the next one...

This definition of CAREER always brings me back to my initial confusion when I first heard the Sondheim song "I'm Still Here" from Follies. "First you're another Sloe-eyed vamp, Then someone's mother, Then you're camp. Then you CAREER from career To career. I'm almost through my memoirs. And I'm here."

I hope I never see 32 down again.

This was a challenging and fun one! Some of the clever answers that kept me stumped for a while were ONT (I thought Can. but not ONT), VALENCE (I kept thinking VALENts), BEBOP, and even CSI which I originally guessed was TEC. RUN kept me guessing for a while because I'm just never a sporty guy. OMIGOSH also threw me off but I'm glad to learn that is the correct spelling when written as a single word. A very fun, educational puzzle all around. Bravo!

Sigh - I was so proud of myself for remembering that a Manning is named ELy. Sadly, he's actually named ELI. And the seemingly obviously correct word STEADyCAM would never have revealed that to me. I had to resort to Autocheck for that one square. So close.

As someone who doesn't care even a little bit about solving speed, I enjoyed the smoothly elegant fill of this puzzle. I have the timer turned off in settings, but I really wish I could prevent the app from displaying the completion and average times. I do the crossword to pass the time, not to beat the clock.

Not really a complaint, but this puzzle just didn't click for me. Lots of obscure trivia plus misdirections and unusual phrasing made for a puzzle that was too hard to enjoy. Of course, that's just me. I'm sure there were folks who enjoyed this one, and others who found it to be rubbish. I'm in the middle. It just wasn't for me. DDS did make me smile, though I didn't find it until long after I turned on Autocheck.

Wanted to chime in and say that I really enjoyed this one. Just challenging enough overall and the reveal of the 6 words was a cute trick.

It seems strange that multiple early comments complaining about the use of an AI clue have been deleted. It clearly bothered many readers, myself included. Are we not allowed to express our disappointment with a particular clue?