Joe

Thought the trick was overly clever, with a very low aggravation-to-payoff ratio.

Felt like a lazy way to do a "clever" trick

Technically, the Sesame Street characters are Muppets, NOT puppets. This clue threw me off because I was thinking of places where characters are controlled by strings from above.

I usually find Thursday puzzles to be somewhat aggravating and clever for clever's sake but this was a fun one. The "tricks" made sense and still made me go over my average solving time.