Sarah

Very fun! I think that today's and yesterday's puzzles may have accidentally been switched, but just my opinion. Thank you for bringing a smile to my face while solving!

I didn't really like this one. A lot of the fill felt like a bit of a stretch for me, didn't particularly like clue/answer combinations for JADING, OLD, LETS ROCK, ATSYMBOL (only ever heard it referred to as an at sign), OHSURE, PERM, among others (I assume it's a perm because it is a temprary hairstyle?). I did enjoy learning JINK, AAVE, the fact about SEALS (is that where the term "seely" is from?), CAW, and the twin "Do some cleaning" clues. Maybe I'm just bitter because I had to error check ERIK Satie and find out that it wasn't "FAcEPLANTS" stay green all winter. Another I wish I had marinated on a bit before resorting to lookups. Oh well! Have a good weekend everyone!

Fun little Wednesday puzzle! Clever theme, and one of the few Wednesdays I've completed with no lookups for fill (I did have a spelling error for Indira Ghandi that I had to look up). Also SO excited to see my favorite YA fantasy novel author of all time in a puzzle! If you have daughters/granddaughters in the 10-21 year old age range, please recommend her to them! She is an amazing author, esoecially for young women!

Oof. This felt more like a Tuesday or a Wednesday to me. Real Natick with the ARREARS/STELMO/ORONO corner. My slowest time in awhile. Emus don't eat

What a fun one! But stymied by the fact that I'm 32 and still can't remember that sesame is sesame and not seseme, guess I didn't watch enough Sesame Street! Belated very happy retirement to Deb!

Happy Birthday crossword puzzle to me! I liked this nice breezy puzzle and completed it on close to record time with only one lookup (just the spelling of IDOLATER, which I had never seen before). It was a delightful change from the last two Fridays which I felt were slogs. Thanks for a nice little early birthday present!

Fun puzzle today! A little on the easy side for me personally, and got the theme pretty quickly, but I really loved some of the wordplay! In particular, 12D, made me smile [TURN INTO STARS, PER SE], as did 27D [IT'S ONE FOOT LONG]. I also learned (or re-remembered) some things- the Elba library in Syria, Columbus's birthplace (common answer that I keep forgetting- had Italy in for awhile), and INES Mendoza. And some lovely words that made me smile- BEAUTS and ECLAT are both lovely. 51D made me cringe a bit- I feel like pill popping jas a pretty negative connotation, and ON MEDS usually is a term someone uses if they're on long-term medication, sometimes for mental health, which still has a negative stigma associated. Anyway, a particularly lovely Thursday! Thank you Aidan and Adam!

This was fine. Wasn't a fan of the KAYO/TREY cross. Can anyone explain KAYO to me?

I liked the theme, but you know, sometimes you get along with the constructor and sometimes you don't. Today, I was on a completely different wavelength. Actually disappointed myself in doing lookups before I hit an hour because I couldn't figure out what I had wrong. Got stuck on the HEM/IMAM cross, because I thought that it was SITINOPPOSITION (SETINOPPOSITION is a phrase I've barely heard) and that "Bottom line?" might be HIC, referring to Bottom in Midsummers Night's Dream, who maybe gets drunk? Anyway, all I all, a difficult and unsatisfying solve for me.

Fun puzzlebl for me! Happened to be on the same wavelength and have similar knowledge base to the constructors, and thought the puns were clever! Made it a relatively breezy Friday for me! Have a great weekend everyone!

Almost solves this without lookups, which is rare for me on a Wednesday. Got stuck on the Hawke/Kip crossing and LEONA Lewis. Had MUAHAHA for awhile before I realized the WANNA cross. Then got miserably stuck on the ABYSM/MAXIMUM crossing (though I should have realized sooner given I got the theme). I didn't even realize abysm was a word. I almost resorted to checking and broke my streak, but held out. Is it just me, or have the puzzles this week been tough? I've come in over my average time for all of them. Today I was 25 minutes past my average! Anyone else subscribe to the theory that puzzles get progressively harder as the month goes on?

Oof. I personally hated this one. Had a hard time with the theme and the bottom right corner seemed impossible without lookups.

So funny! When I put in the answer for 50A, I also thought about Toblerone! This is one of the rare times I instantaneously understood Sam's picture clue!

Eh, I thought the theme was kind of cute but man, someone must have gotten a bingo on their crosswordese bingo card! Got a tiny bit stuck in the lower left until I figured out HETHEY

Such a nice fun puzzle! And no rebuses for anyone to complain about! A few Natiks for me (ERMA/ERIK SATIE; though I should have recognized from earlier this week!; and CASKA/SPACEK) but overall one of my favorite Thursdays in a long time!

I liked this a lot, but not a fan of the natiks Tonga/Namatha/Groks. I feel like a lot of the recent Tuesdays have been natiks!

I have to day, I enjoyed the theme, but there were several answers that were shortened or abbreviated without being clued that way. 62A, mean, median and mode are examples of statistics, not "stats", (shortened without indication). 5D, REORGS, another shortened one. 22D, the use of "Insta" indicates a shortened answer but the answer is full. Others have pointed out 46D. 14A feels like very sloppy cueing and 43A seems ridiculous. Usually I don't comment complaining, I don't mind a few misses here and there. But there were so many in this puzzle; feels like sloppy editing.

Some puzzles are in a solver's proverbial realm of expertise and some are not! This one happened to be within mine, though I didn't catch the theme until the lovely column Sam wrote. It did take me quite a bit longer than my usual Monday time, but I blame distraction taking away my full focus. A perfectly good mix of crunchy for me for a Monday!

Wasn't really a fan of the theme because it seemed incongruous (e.g. two movie characters, a...brand? (never sure exactly what hello kitty is), and a (traditionally) novel character. Also I thought that "sister-in-law" shouldn't have dashes in it (though I guess it was a misdirect), and I was really not a fan of SHO 'nuff, but other than that I really liked the fill and thought it was a nice difficulty for a Wednesday, especially after the Tuesday workout.

I never have heard of the musical in question, which was alright because the downs filled in the blanks nicely. I vibed with the constructor today, but new terms for me in "LOOKIE LOOS" being window shoppers- I've heard associate the term with neighborhood gossips or rubber neckers. Also have never heard "GUCCI" used for anything other than "good" or "okay". Other than those, fun and engaging with a perfect difficulty for a Wednesday I thought.

I liked this one- must've been on the same wavelength as the constructor. My one complaint is a vad Natick square of two proper names of 27D PUTH and 36A OCHS. Had to run the alphabet and was lucky to have had everything else correct.

I thought this was delightful! Just tricky enough with some nice redirects and a very cute theme that made me smile when I got it. The creator definitely had me convinced that "scir" was a short version for "skirmish" that I'd never seen though!

Did anyone else find this a weird mix of modern and old trivia? Maybe it was the britishness of it but I felt like the clueing was somehow too old and too young for me at once. E.g. we have cluing for a tiktok star and doomscrolling in the same puzzle as Buddy EBSEN and TOMDOOLEY. I also really dislike 31A and am not a fan of 52A either. Overall just kind of a meh experience.

Not to be a grinch, but man I did not like this one. Then again, Ezersky and I never do get along. Felt the fill was sloppy, with UTAHN, ENSURES for "sews up", NUN, and what's the deal with the clue for SNL VIP not having an abbreviation in the answer? On another note, thanks for all your columns Deb, you will be missed!!!

An extremely meh final puzzle for an extremely meh year (not in terms of xword puzzles, just in general). Happy new year everyone, may it be better than the last.

I liked the theme, but was not on the same wavelength with the constructors as far as the fill goes. I got particularly stuck in the mid-left, with a lot of the clever clues not coming to me. Maybe if I had been more patient and taken a look tomorrow, I might have gotten it. I also prefer it in these types of puzzles when the answers as typed are actually legitimate phrases/fill rather than nonsense, but those must obviously be far more difficult to construct. Always a fan of seeing two ladies in the byline!