Erin & Erin

Tricky for a Monday, not just because of an unfamiliarity with baseball, there were some chewier than usual clues in there. I'm always curious about just how much baseball turns up in the crossword (especially former players) which seems to be regarded as relatively straightforward common knowledge when I feel that of the mainline sports it's the one I know the least about. Is it a function of age (we're relatively young,) geography (no MLB team in this my hometown, and I'm always hopeful there will be more hockey in the puzzle!,) the historical but waning reputation of baseball as America's game or something else? Regardless, I was pleased to find dugout referenced in the CANOE context, as historical boats are much more my area.

Great theme laid extremely low by gnarly crosswordese... Non-English language clues: ICH, ACHT, ILE, EIN, ENTENTE, TASS, PARI-mutuel, BANQUE Names that defied noodling out: KEN KESEY, ELIA, AMON RA, YPRES, SENTA, O'MEARA, OSTER Combinations of words I've never seen used that way before: CUT IN + ON, HD TV + SET, BEAN for head, Snow job for CONS (woah-- thought something had seriously slipped by the editors there) Silly shortenings: INS, OSE, ETTE, PHYS, CIRC, URBS, RET, HOR (slow down there, EDS!!) Throw in some I just didn't know (TCU, NEOBOP, AEC) and this is definitely the longest we've ever worked the crossword, only brought to an end with increasingly exasperated lookups. The theme was very cool and I really liked a few (BIG TOE / LOW DIGIT; ACUTE / NOT QUITE RIGHT) but we had fully filled in CHILD SUPPORT before we could come up with KNEE, such was the treachery of KEN KESEY. I don't think this puzzle really wanted to exist, given the incredible reach of the non-theme fills. I will push back on the "obscurity" of RIESEN chocolates I'm seeing people claim, though. I've always found them in an American grocery when I've looked for them, and my mom packed them in my lunch as a kid. They glue your teeth together, and they are excellent. A handful of them would have made this experience a lot more fun!

Would CHICK COREA be obscure even on a Saturday, or is the band just from berore our time? Nither of us were even a little familiar with the musical act though admittedly we're not tuned into jazz. I enjoyed a chewier Monday than usual but that and REPAST / LOEWE (also an unfamiliar proper noun) threw us for a loop.

"Sputnik-oh-nee?" I asked, befuddled "Sputnik One," my long-suffering mate clarified from her position doubled over in pain with an unspecified GI ailment. I'm thankful she retained the faculties to manage my foolishness. Such a gorgeous grid and a super fun solve. Really enjoyed this puzzle! My only nit to pick is that I think there are a million ways to clue DOVE and stripping the turtle- from the song's doves is an odd way to do it. I guess it's a swans-a-swimming misdirect, but we ducked that by having already filled in SIDE GLANCE when we came upon it. The glut of four-letter biblical boys had us grumbling too, but we're working on mnemonics to try and remember everyone's parentage for future puzzles.

Wow, that was really tough for us. It's not often a Tuesday has fills we haven't heard of-- KAREN (O), DIVAN, SANAA were all new. We couldn't make heads or tails of PADS until reading the Wordplay (somewhat ironic considering what's in our bathroom cabinet) and I think that's the first time I've seen ERG clued as the unit and not the rowing machine (TIL the etymology!) But what really delayed us was me confidently and sleepily filling in LAKOTA before promptly passing out last night and letting it cruise unchallenged this morning. I like the theme though it didn't really help filling in anything, more of a post-hoc "That's cute." More confusing than satisfying I think but if this is the caliber of the puzzles this week, I'm looking forward to whatever evil trick the Thursday might have to offer.

Not a lot of time for the crossword this morning as we are spending the day getting ready to move in together tomorrow (!) so we were thrilled that this came together quickly for us and with some great wordplay!

My girlfriend and I were thrilled to know EROICA from having seen it performed at the symphony a few months ago, but I guess doing the crossword for several decades and being clued in to its familiar rhythms is another way to go about it! Loved this puzzle and it came together pretty painlessly. HELLO NEW MAN made me cackle.

Absolutely lovely puzzle with a theme that made us squeal with delight each time we pieced a fill together. It came relatively easily and I enjoyed the jokey fills not part of the theme (INN, ID TAG). Did anyone else smile at the proximal USS ENTERPRISE? CLEMSON/CLEMONS cross was wildly satisfying too. Our only hangup was the OGEE/STOGIE intersection which we had to brute force with consonants until the music came. Not familiar with either but I hope they rhyme! Maybe the last puzzle we get to work on together for a while as my other half prepares for her PhD qualifying exams. NO PAIN NO GAIN seems to be the unfortunate philosophy of the academic system and our leisure time may be spent on softer pursuits than tricksy puzzling.

Really enjoyed this straightforward Sunday and was charmed by the theme, HELEN OF TROY being a HOTtie made me giggle.

Fool's high point: HINDI SHINDIG being the first theme fill to fall to us, and remarking to my partner "That's so fun to say, I hope there's more like this in the puzzle" (would not realize the theme for another half hour but oh how delighted was I when I encountered the other theme fills as standalone phenomena) Fool's low point: Exclaiming "RIDDLE SEATS? What the #%$@ is a RIDDLE SEAT?" and my partner kindly suggesting I consider MIDDLE SEATS instead. Absolutely lovely puzzle, really fun and satisfying. Mildly interesting is that the last squares we filled, in the very middle of the puzzle, are my partner's initials :) Great start to our Sunday.

Great puzzle! Lots of fun wordplay that made us laugh, and we really appreciated that there was just one celebrity from before our time to guess. We had to set it down and come back to crack the northwest corner, but it was a very satisfying solve when OH ME / MORE clicked into place. Happy Saturday!

For the second night in a row, I hit my stride using the puzzle as a distraction from how the Canes were embarrassing me. Thankfully they pulled out an OT win against the Flyers and we produced a complete puzzle only a few minutes over our average time. This puzzle was rife with people, places and things which haven't been relevant since before we were born but turned out workable in the end after we finally conceded to look up UPPER VOLTA, which had not been shaping up to look like any known phrase. CREEL is a new and delightfully musical word to me, very pleasant to say aloud-- creel, creel, creel. I thought this puzzle was full of lovely compound phrases: YOU ARE HERE, NOTHING BUT, ESTATE SALE, AVID READER, STRESS EATS. Most of my crossword-applicable knowledge bubbles up unidentifiably from the ether, but I distinctly remember the day in Zoology when we covered VELVET WORMS. The class consensus was that they were very cute, but they freaked me out. Less fidelitous was my memory of DIAN FOSSEY's name, but I know we watched Gorillas in the Mist in either middle or high school, I think in a world history class rather than science. Tricky puzzle that mostly felt like a fair fight and was pretty enjoyable once it started to split. Oh, and my better half twigged CHCHCHCHIA in an instant-- cute!!

I WISH is my favorite Stevie Wonder song only after Superstition, which I love to ring in the spooky fall season with. Fun puzzle and pleasantly chewy for a Tuesday. We solved this one in a new but likely to be repeated configuration, with me calling out clues to my better potter half, who is diligently (if slightly frantically) attaching handles to mugs as midnight closes in.

Tough for a Wednesday and I see many of our issues echoed in comments here. TAMRON and GRABLE were new names to me. Everything came together but not terrifically satisfyingly, just slowly as we circled through clues again and again, eventually picking one off here and there. I can't make sense of ECRU as a silk shade -- from years of crossword appearances I know it's tan and has something to do with linen. But silk? Is the clue just that silk can be that color? In which case, any color could be a "silk shade?" Is raw silk ECRU like raw linen? I agree with the columnist that SRO is also a term which crops up in my life only in the crossword-- felt like this puzzle was a little dense with those.

Not really fun or interesting for us. Celebrities of yore (KAYE, OHARA), weird phrasing (HAD A SOLO, APT TO), questionable fill (EES, AH OK), and stuff we just had never heard of (YODEL, EIGER) tripped us up, but the incorrect cluing of EOS really pushed my camera-nerd partner over the edge. (I, astro-nerd, had my fit over meteor shower? yesterday, but we completed the puzzle too late to join the clamoring hoard in the Wordplay comments.) There's some nice stuff in here (I liked STRAIGHT A, GROUP SELFIE, BONE UP ON crossing with ULNA,) but we had to throw in the towel and look up quite a few trivia fills to have a hope of finishing this one. BOrING MATCH / rED OUT finally pushed us to check puzzle, because with so much else feeling tenuous we didn't think to question those slightly odd answers. In contrast to tonight's slog, we passed a very pleasant evening yesterday finishing the Thursday and Friday in a bar like cool young people; looking forward to more of this in the future.

Really enjoyed the twist in the end but many of the entries were totally unfamiliar to us: LEAS, RECTO, MAUSER and SEEST just didn't look like words. MARTINET and ARMAGNAC in the roundabouts felt particularly mean as we were trying to piece the trick of the puzzle together. APOLO Ohno and DRAGNET were before our time. We got got by thinking uTTA flour is what uttapams are made from and had to eventually throw in the towel and check the puzzle on that mixup. Feeling slightly bruised and battered by this weekend so we'll look forward to soothing our egos on the Monday tomorrow.

Unfamiliar with the term, we searched "steeve" and the first result was Minecraft Steve. Then we searched "steeve boat" and got Minecraft Steve in a boat. Not sure whether this is an issue isolated to the phones of those 30 and under but it did seem to suggest the word is slightly obscure. Lots of trivia out of our wheelhouses but I was delighted to recognize ENPASSANT immediately (having experienced a chess PHASE) earlier this year) and my better half nailed a large number of the longer turns of phrase. One quibble-- ESP being clued without a hint to the abbreviation seems inappropriate? Perhaps "To a medium it's EZ!" would be a quick fix...?

Fun! I share the columnist's gripe about phonetic letters, they always irrationally upset me in the puzzle. It feels ungodly to inflate a beautiful, lithe little S to ESS. That's twice the amount of S per S! I'm amused by the different drag accessories listed in the comments; we though wig was a lock.

I hate the feeling of coming up with an entry on crosses and still not understanding when it fills. ELS, LET and BREAK SERVE were total headscratchers for us. Insult to injury when our woes don't get a note in the column! So thanks to the commenters who clarified things. We cleverly avoided the CECE/bEbE mixup by having never heard of either of those artists, but sEeded and marbled RYES (my favorite breads!) had us on the ropes. SPACESHip/SPACESHOT was rather evil business.

Fun! We agonized for a while yesterday and swiftly cleaned up stragglers this morning, except for the ETAS/SESTET intersection. Unfamiliar with sestet as a form, I wondered whether Emma and Emily had precognitive visions of Anne Rice's vampire Lestet (misspelled for copyright reasons, of course.) Otherwise, really enjoyed the wordplay.