Ben

Sadly, I think the constructor's fear bore true for me. I understand the sense in which HOPE is being clued, but I think it's a rather weak clue, and I really do think the ts romanization of царь is to be preferred. I liked the "White Russians" clue, until I realized that it was using the obsolete romanization.

This one really didn't do it for me; the filler felt more like gunk than glue

Well, not a puzzle I'm fond of in the slightest; found the number of names/screwball phrasings to be rather excessive. If I wanted inane trivia, I'd go to a pub; they serve beer there too.

Not my cup of tea. The constructor notes the lower-right as an area they're not fond of, but for me the upper-left was honestly just annoying; in the lower-right I felt that even the rather blah answers were fairly standard crosswordese with fairly standard crosswordese clues.

Insanely frustrating that a rebus puzzle that calls for numerical answers does not accept numerals in the grid

Eh, I found this one more annoying than cute. But I never really like Sundays that much. The size means that the fill can get dull. On the other hand, I've never really been satisfied with the attempts at "spicing up" the fill, as seen here with the collection of doubled/paired clues. That just feels like a confession that the job was too boring to do normally, which I don't think is a good thing to admit even if I agree.

This one didn't do it for me; I found it quite annoying and, after some of the explanations, I'd call it too-clever-by-half, but only if I agreed that it was clever.

Well, the kindest thing I can say for this weekend's puzzles is that they're all of a kind, and the weekend's almost over. If the Sunday is anything like the Friday or the Saturday, I'll be glad when the work-week starts.

Really not to my taste