Delg

@Dylan Any instance of calling it American Sign Language, or ASL, seems to recognize it as a language. Crossword rules generally require coming up with some synonym for the word "language" in the clue if ASL is going to be the answer - "communication system" is as good a synonym as any, and it benefits from matching the clues around it.

@sotto voce Comments like this are what I need to read after a puzzle that frustrated me to no end. Sometimes I need to be reminded that there are people out there having the exact opposite experience from me, and that's ok; that's the whole point of there being so many people, right? Thanks for sharing your positive thoughts.

@Michael Spelling is part of crosswords. You could argue that pop culture and trivia is as well, but spelling is definitely part of the assignment. One of my high school English teachers told us to remember that Yoko Ono was Edgar Allen Poe's mother and we'd always be prepared for "Ono, Ma To Poe (ia)." I wish our home ec teachers had given us something for mushrooms; that was the one that I misspelled today.

@Cody I'll chip in with some grumbling, since you asked. This puzzle depended way too much on names that just felt like filler (ALBA, LENA, SIMU, TINAS, SLADE, NED, IAN) for my tastes... And any time you see EELED in a puzzle, it's a red flag. I refuse to believe any crossword author would put EELED into a puzzle except out of sheer desperation.

@Marco If we all ate like crosswords, Oreos would be one of the four main food groups and eels would be on the verge of extinction.

@The X-Phile I read somewhere that intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

@Nancy J. I must admit I did fill in the puzzle with just the U's, but I'm not sure what would have been a better option? I think trying to put a rebus with "U / GLOVE" would have been awkwardly small on my phone screen (and godawful small on a hardcopy newspaper). As I get older and increasingly less comfortable with font sizes on my phone, I appreciate being able to solve rebuses with just the one letter. It lets me save my squinting for receipts and prescription medicine bottles and such...

@Adin I never thought I would write this sentence, but honestly, I think this would have worked better as a rebus. Gonna go wash my mouf out with rubbing alcohol now...

@HeathieJ I had WAIST (as in waist watchers) crossing HAA and could not figure out where my mistake was without help... It was HAR all along. I guess that means this puzzle was too HARd for me...

@Bob I felt like Zork was pretty fair - you'll never guess it if you don't know 80's pc games, and it'll be pretty familiar if you do. TSENG, KIROV, and KLEE are probably similarly difficult for folks who don't know Swiss artists, Russian ballet, or pro golf. Any of those would be completely awful for a Monday or Tuesday, probably questionable for a Wednesday... But we're supposed to cuss on Thursdays, right?

@Barry Ancona Even if you have a dictionary that includes CASITA (mine sure doesn't), I'm very impressed if it includes INA, ASA, BRAGG, EMI, IVES, and L'EGGS. It must be at least as thick as a WII. Not that there's any rule about dictionary inclusion as some prerequisite to being in a crossword puzzle or anything, but I understand the frustrations when we occasionally see a square where, say, ELBRUS and KEMOSABE cross (as they did last Sunday).

@NMarie I hadn't ever heard of Emil. That corner clearly needed more work - rarely do we see the columnist just go ahead and give us all the words to fill the whole southwest corner of a grid instead of just one or two of the tricky ones. It seemed like a tacit confirmation that the editors should have spent a little more time over there. Emil Jannings died 2 Jan 1950, per Wikipedia, exactly 75 years ago, and was best known for a film from 1930 starting Marlene Dietrich. I'm guessing that there aren't a lot of people in 2025 who remember him unless they're big Dietrich fans (or big haters of Nazi sympathizers). Also per Wikipedia, there are several hundred other articles that start with Emil (searching for "prefix:'Emil'" gives a list of them), so it seems like they could have picked from maybe better options.

@CCNY Nigella was my only Google -- it seems awkward enough to get a tEXT in public that I concluded her surname must be LAWtON. Obviously it's much more awkward if her last name is LAWSON...

@Jane Wheelaghan The trick is to go heavy peanut butter, light jelly. It helps if you put the dab of jelly right in the middle of the bread, too; you don't want it dripping out the sides of the sandwich and getting all over the place anywhere, but especially in a lunchbox. Kids might complain about crusts on the bread, but for helping keep the jelly contained, they're quite functional. If you're making one for immediate consumption, you might make different choices (I always toast the bread, myownself), but you can definitely make a PBANDJ that will hold up to the demands of a lunchbox satisfactorily.

@Jordan It's not fair to say you're wrong here; you wanted to enjoy the puzzle and the author wanted you to enjoy the puzzle and you didn't. But it's also kind of like saying a plate of cookies is bad because you didn't like it when you can see a bunch of other folks in the room who clearly did. I found this puzzle too hard for me to complete without help - I'm here in the comments looking for hints before I open up the answer key. But I worked on it for half an hour, got frustrated, went to bed, and made more progress when I woke up this morning - and every word I figured out this morning felt really good. This is pretty standard for me on Saturdays; Saturdays are like walnut cookies. Not as enjoyable for me as Wednesday chocolate chips, but I know what I'm getting into before I take the first bite, and sometimes they're pretty ok.

@Tom S. I thought YELICH was ok - I rarely watch a game of baseball these days, but even catching Sportscenter or PTI a few days a week was enough to put the word in the back of my head somewhere, and it only took a few crossing letters to let me fill it in confidently. Confident compared to a truly unknown word like AGOUTIS, at least. Confidence on Saturdays is supposed to be rare, right?

@Jim GUIDO was the only clue I got the first time through -- I had to Google nearly all the rest, so I balanced you out. :)

@CaptainQuahog snarkiness aside, it might be well-received if the Times ran two puzzles every day -- one that followed a basic crossword rule of "one letter to a square" and one that considered that to be more of a suggestion. Even the authors might like it if they knew they could write a rebus puzzle without a sizable group of people hating it. I can handle the rebuses after a few months of practice now (and I'm grateful that they only require me generally to put the first letter in). I just want puzzles that don't use HEROIZE. Bleagh.

@Passion for Peaches I agree with the incorrect and bad cluing part; "fiend" and ANIMAL are about as unrelated as any two words I could think of. But why pejorative?

@cameron I counted twelve - but that's including RFK and Lenin. In context, they seem more like geographic referents than personal names in this puzzle. I appreciate the rotational symmetry of this puzzle; the double-scrabble entries tend to mirror each other almost perfectly, and the double-Natick squares where two obscure names cross do as well. Tough puzzle, but Saturdays are supposed to be. And you gotta give credit to the author for crossing nuns' VOWS with wine, and especially SEXTing with FORCE CHOKE.

@Seward Parker I really liked that one, too. Conversely, SOTHERE is one of my least favorite answers of the year. Partly because UNS can stand for Unified Network Services (which, if a network is carrying your data, seems close enough for me) and NOT HERE is no less nonsensical than SO THERE.

@Xword Junkie HAR is also questionable at best. It may be slightly less questionable than HAA, but you're not finding either one of them in the OED (at least, not in the sense the clue was looking for here).

@Nancy J. That one confused the daylights out of me; I came to the comments to complain that OMA is not an interjection that I ever heard of. Thank you for making it make sense :)

@William EMEKA Okafor should have been an easy fill for me; I heard the name on Sportscenter a million times, and Okafor is clearly written on his uniform. But I had no idea how to spell it - Omega? Amaka? Those ESPN anchors never spelled it out for me, the jerks. Saturdays are for learning. I'll be able to write a properly spelled place card for Mr. Okafor now, if he ever comes for a GALA or a FÊTE (or even a GORP).

@Dave I couldn't wrap my head around it and I wondered if it was some New York-onlyb driving school. I've definitely heard high school kids using the term the way you describe it here, so now it makes sense - thank you!

@Meg as another fairly-new crossworder, I feel the same way. The one that really gets me is EEL. I expect to see EEL or EELS at least once a week, but it still makes me roll my eyes every time. (They only rarely resort to EELY, thank goodness.)

@CH I was confused by the column's description of the format in the print edition -- the teacher's notes were in red pen? Aren't the teacher's notes the answers, to be filled in by the reader?

@Ken We've seen Acela enough times over the years that it must be one of those words like Oreo or eel that are very useful fill for the puzzle writers. Based on that, now that the writers have seen OCELO, I'd be surprised if we don't see it again within a year or two.