dana
right here
least favorite puzzle ever.
@The Whip i was so happy that this old woman who grew up pre-hip hop knew them both immediately. not too too many at all! the puzzle helps keep us sharp and us au courant. i often enjoy puzzles that get me googling to find out more about an answer.... like i imagine there are puzzlers out there learning more about the artists in the grey areas after doing this. a more broadly aware public is a happier, healthier, more connected public imo.
i've never seen a puzzle where the rebus letters are completely different from the letter(s) of the cross-word/intersection word. it's supposed to reflect some kind of slight of hand? it wasn't magical for me.
spoiler alert! rebus wednesday - fun. i never heard of a shrinkray - so fun to learn a new word. it was the last clue i completed. fun puzzle!
Dear Will Shortz: We are thankful for you and pulling for your recovery.
hint, hint, this puzzle included a lot of great hints! fun!
@JBW what a great metaphor. exactly!!!
aw, deb, i cried reading your column today. so beautiful. thank you. i'll be holding you in my thoughts as you grieve.
spoiler alert!!!! (don't read it if you're not done) -- well, it turns out ittar and attar are the same thing, and ice also can not generally be returned once it's delivered... so, that kind of hung me up. i had to look it up - and of course, an ace is a much more fun answer to the question than ice.
i found this one challenging, and i'm annoyed i wasn't more patient / didn't come back to it later (sometimes a break helps me see it fresh). Instead, i looked up about 4 clues. 4! i usually don't need to do that. or when i do, it's just 1, or maybe 2. when i do that, i make a rule to only look up arcane fact-clues (ie a reference i just might not know) rather than thinking-clues that require clever interpretation of the prompts. (thank you will shortz for saying it's okay to do that.) i learn a lot this way - including being more aware of areas that are blind spots.
it was exactly a perfect wednesday puzzle! fun to do - challenging in spots, but do-able / took some cross-clues to figure some of them out; but nothing impossible! great job Jeanne Breen on your debut with Jeff Chen. You do realize with a name like yours, you need to do a puzzle that plays with rhyme/ slant rhyme. i bet you're already working on it!
Love the graphic at the end! Fun puzzle!
first time i needed to look something up on a tuesday... ever! (been doing this for years). looked up the polish runner. completed the rest, but i still am not familiar with some that i got right. enjoyed the tricky clues and puzzling it out, but obscure for a tuesday.
well, i'm not too coy to say this was fun. i'm not sure if it was easy for a Saturday or if I'm just on the same wavelength as the constructor. Enjoyed the creative clueing.
well deb, at least i'm in good company. the theme was obscure - i usually get the themes but this theme was some Bletchley Park kind of stuff. it was very clever, once you explained it. but i had trouble enjoying the puzzle because i couldn't figure it out, and it was gnawing at me the whole time. i got the answers from the down clues/context, but the answers made no sense to me. thanks for decoding it in your article (which i never read until i'm done with the puzzle).
cute - enjoyed. answer for dry riverbed, i forgot, but then remembered. since i spend a lot of time in rivers, i appreciated the reminder. (the way i remember it, when i do, is that it's one letter off of a verb that might describe something you might do in a creek or a river.) i never heard of the answer for "follow instructions" before so that was new. enjoyed the "someone you wouldn't want to give a hand to." got a nice chuckle out of that one. on that note, giving you two hands/clapping for a great puzzle. well done!
totally fun puzzle! i had trouble with death because i spelled golem golum, and had luv for the down clue for a minute - i now realize gollum is how you spell the tolkien character - although it's all transliterated anyway, where the golem is concerned. but the rest was very do-able and fun! those momentary challenges are exactly what's fun about puzzling. a perfect wednesday! lots of fun cluing. love the kangaroos (have no idea how to put kangaroo emojis here) - feels like a fun separate game one could start - so bonus for today's puzzle - thanks!
ha ha ha, Deb Amlin - I hope he comes back, too! Awesome fun puzzle! amazingly playful first effort!
i really didn't get the fat finger thing (but did get the doubles) until it revealed itself at the end. a bonus gimmick! wee!
@dougschoemer funny i hadn't found that / didn't know that. good to know. vacations - what'r ya gonna do? if your streak is more important than your vacation, i think maybe something's amiss. for me, that's true, anyway. for this reason, my streak never gets past about 300. yet i still manage to really enjoy the puzzle!
oh boo hoo, it was easy for a friday.
i laughed so hard i snorted! thanks!
Fun puzzle. thought it was much easier than yesterday (a Wednesday).
This was pretty hard for a Monday. Was it like, here's a Monday puzzle - April Fool's - it's really a Wednesday! But i'm really here to write about connections - the emoji connections? Yeah, nobody liked this. Otherwise Connections is my favorite game. But i liked the ones that used to have Wyna Liu's name on them better (as the puzzle creator). Is she still making them? i love her brain!
@C-64 you made me laugh out loud - i even snorted. thanks!
cute. easy for a thursday, but fun!
@Charles - bruh totally is interchangeable for my man. common usage, variation on bro.
today's experience was all up, no down... well except fictional prison guarded by dementors... maybe i live under a rock, but a lot of references elude me.
@Brendan me too, exactly. i don't always read the column after i'm done, but today i just had to read it, i was so baffled.
i still don't get 15a. how is that the answer for that clue?
@Ron B the stretchy clues are part of what gave the puzzle its punch! i thoroughly enjoyed it. it's what sets the late-week puzzles aside from the mondays.
well i always thought indigo was bluer. (so there, i learned something today - thank you puzzle!) so to me, one looked like violet and one looked like magenta - so i was thinking one was violet and the other was purple (since magenta doesn't fit) - so i struggled with the indigo corner the most. but i got it eventually. it was a fun puzzle today!
@Hi hi well it's late enough in the day, i'm not spoiling it for others - you have to read it from the bottom to the top - as in it's going from down to up. so it's the word acting, but going upward - so - acting up.
that was unbelievably clever!
@Mark Carlson it's a term for mafioso.
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