Noemi

I liked this puzzle. I guess I was on the constructor’s wavelength. I have read Ferrante and seen 2001 and watched the Simpsons. I have kids who play video games and eat TAKIs. ARUNDHATI was a nice gimme, and I know just enough about art to know what BAS relief is. I feel like this almost forms a demographic profile. Often it’s the opposite for me, where the puzzle’s use of certain words or phrases feels strange or not quite right (see: INSULATIONS recently) or downright foreign. Kudos and thank you to the constructor, this was fun. But I’ll say, in regard to people complaining that they haven’t heard of a cultural reference: maybe it’s my generation, but I feel like it behooves me to learn about my forebears’ culture and youth culture alike. It expands your horizons.

That was tough for me. I got STOPPEDONADIME right off the bat with no crosses, but slowed way down after that. Lots of things I didn’t know and I resorted to a few lookups. So I made it through but in a qualified way. All’s fair in love and Saturdays. I usually don’t post because I tend to solve in the evenings, but I still like to read the comments even though they are many hours old at that point. So when I do solve in the morning I like to pop in and say hello. Hello!

My youngest years were spent in a 19th floor apartment overlooking Eastchester Bay in the Bronx. My parents tell me they spent many hours holding me by the window; I was a fussy baby, but the view outside sometimes calmed me, watching the barges traverse the bay. My first word was TUG boat and I still have a fondness for them. They are more charming than such a workaday vessel has any need to be. I enjoyed the puzzle but SCUD and UPI did me in. After 45 min I turned on autocheck and it was just that letter U. TIL that meaning of SCUD - though to be fair, I didn’t know of a cloud movement called SCaD either.

Sometimes it’s a New York, New Yorker, New York Times reader’s puzzle, and I think that’s fair. Liked this puzzle a lot! Broadway, New Jersey, classic JAZZ. I’ve never had a single French lesson but even I know that the American’s answer to “parlez-vous Francais?” Is “En PEU.” Yes, those of us familiar with theater call it FIDDLER. I live close to Citifield (née Shea Stadium) and being genX I know all about ARENA rock. I’m no expert solver but I didn’t have to look up a single thing. What I didn’t know I got from crosses. Boo to the naysayers. I especially liked IRON for [Decrease] —got it right off the bat and had a nice morning chuckle there. I have jury duty today on a criminal case and not looking forward to that, but a little Wednesday puzzle is a good soother of nerves.

Too hard for me, phew! I caved and turned on autocheck. And it’s the first time I can recall not understanding the theme even after finishing the puzzle and having to get it from the column. But once I did, I thought it was brilliant. Bravo to all those who solved it! I’ll get there someday.

Whew! Feeling like I should toss a positive comment in here. That was a little extra tough but fun. I enjoyed the cereal puns, they were cute. I definitely learned a few new things and came in well over my Wednesday time but I made it through with no help. Which is exactly what I want on a Wednesday. My last square was the R in HIRT and that was just a good guess. Overall fair game, if maybe a little more low culture than the usual highbrow ( though we still got our requisite ALP and a healthy dose of skiing trivia). Thumbs up.

This puzzle was not my thing, for some of the reasons others have mentioned. Mainly, gibberish makes me uncomfortable, and the animals didn’t match each other in any way. Those two things made it not feel clever or artful to me. I love Sunday puzzles. I like a tricky trick. But I just didn’t think this one was interesting. Fill and iffy clueing don’t bother me that much anymore but I’ll mention two specific gripes. REB is Yiddish or Aramaic, while the Hebrew would be Rav. Unless the clue was using the word Hebrew to mean Jewish (which would be archaic and a little weird), that was unfair. Second, GLAMAZON rubs me the wrong way. Harumph. I’m going to put this puzzle behind me and enjoy my Sunday.

I absolutely loved the Sunday “Escape Room” puzzle. Monday was tricky and I liked it a lot. Yesterday’s puzzle was A+ work to me. Today’s puzzle is bleh, not for me. I gave up on GNAR and hit autocheck, only to find out that snakes are SCALY, not SCArY. The theme was a groaner. The best part was the mention of Who’s on First, possibly the most brilliant comedy routine ever created. When my kids were little we had a routine whenever we went on a car trip to start things off by playing Groucho Marx “Hello, I Must Be Going,” leading into some other classic comedy bits, and Who’s on First was always in the mix. For a while my younger one was trying to memorize it. Wall to wall fun. At least, thanks to @G, I’m starting my day with a lovely e.e. cummings poem. And I get to wish a happy birthday to kiluaebart and HeathieJ.

“Sheer quantity of awesome” made me smile and just made me well-disposed to the whole puzzle. Loved it. Took me longer than usual and teetotally fun (now that I know the derivation of TEETOTAL it’s fun to use!). Comments: 1. I call getting wordle in 5 a _win_, thank you very much. 2. Credit goes to Adam Sandler’s Chanukah Song for my awareness of Hall of Famer Rod Carew.

Sam bested me. The crossing of Hegel’s philosopher and the Iberian king was an utter natick for me. I looked up the king, and then the QB, and still couldn’t finish it. So I hit autocheck, and it turned out that uTRAP was my only error. Limped over the finish line. That’s okay, it’s Saturday. Yeesh though. Going to have to walk that one off.

Great puzzle! For a themeless it felt like it almost had a theme, and the theme is government. With the PUBLICPOOL and the NAYS and the VOTESYES and OUTDREW, though that last may be an inside joke. My favorite today, though, was NACRE. A word I could not have pulled up on my own but it was just on the edge of my knowledge and I was delighted to be reminded of it. May we all have an iridescent day!

Sometimes the puzzle seems like it’s just for me, does anyone else feel that way? Starting off with DENALI, then with MTV and the Clash and Barry Manilow and DOJA CAT, little reminders of childhood with Speedy Gonzalez and Peter Pan, and, to top it all off, BARMITZVAH and UTZ and GESUNDHEIT! L’chaim!

Ok no that was brilliant. Through and through. EARTH/HEART is your home! Come on!! Even though it is shilling for an upcoming movie, I give it very high marks. 😍

Loved this one. When I figured out the trick I had most of PEACEMARCH through crossings and I laughed out loud. After that I got the other themers pretty easily and broke out in a grin at each one. Fighting iris! I liked the creative valuing of OREO and now that I’ve read its origin story I like it even more. Very surprised that so many people have not heard of parkour. It’s been popular for at least 20 years. I think it was considered for the Olympics at one point. My kids have been to parkour birthday parties. A parkour party with a school bus cake with OREO wheels, now that would be something!

No complaints from me, though that completely stumped me. Yesterday I knew all the trivia, today I knew zilch. A couple of passes through the grid left me with only 2 or 3 answers filled in. Trying to resist lookups, I decided that reading Letter from a Birmingham Jail was the best kind of cheating so I spent a while doing that. And then looked up everything else I could. And then turned on autocheck. I scrolled through the song titles of 18 Glenn Miller albums on Spotify and didn’t find it. I wouldn’t have gotten WHOP in a million years, don’t think I have ever heard that before. This puzzle well and truly bested me. As, you know, Saturday should.

The solvers who knew the cultural references found it too easy and the solvers who didn’t found it too hard. Count me among the former. Fun and breezy puzzle. Renee Rapp is a powerhouse performer and super fun to think about. Here she is in her first number from Mean Girls from the movie, though she also played the role on Broadway: <a href="https://youtu.be/D6GENmNRuhQ?si=61FNbc26vwEudqTf" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/D6GENmNRuhQ?si=61FNbc26vwEudqTf</a> To Deb’s question: I feel like there are a HOST of cryptic crosswords tricks that I don’t know. You columnists often explain the ? for the newbs, and there is the ! which means to take the clue literally, e.g. in “It’s a blast!” is not something fun but rather a word that means blast. And the thing is that I think there are other, rarer, more esoteric tricks like that. I would enjoy learning about more of those. Thanks for asking!

Hello all. I really enjoyed this puzzle. Terrific long entries, fun and inventive, almost no fill. BRAVO, Abigail! I’ve liked all the puzzles this week especially yesterday’s ants. I’m now on a 13 day streak! 💃 I live in the part of Queens where Peter Parker is from. Our Trader Joe’s is Spiderman-themed. And just for the record, I’m okay with SPIDER SENSE. My husband wants to take me to Star Wars movies (yawn). He wants to take me to LOTR movies (yawn). He wants to take me to MCU movies—wait, a big group of good-looking guys with tight comedy? Okay, I’ll go to those.

Yeah, add my voice to the chorus. I would say I’m getting better at this—my streak is now at 14 days, my longest ever. But then again, just 2 weeks ago there was a Saturday that stumped me. Shrug. AMIRITE is totes legit. I know slang from literally 100 years ago, so high key you can just stop. What I did not love was TWEENIE. TWEENer was my first guess and a better entry, IMO. From [Silicon Valley’s holy grail] I expected thesingularity or absolutely anything that would be specific to Silicon Valley in any way. Any way at all. When I got the entry I said to myself, “Oh, I see how this is going to go.” And it did. Happy Saturday, everyone.

Hi folks, nice to see you. I solved this puzzle and I liked it a lot it but it was oddly quick—it took me just slightly more than half the time of yesterday’s. I didn’t know the LORELEI story and just kept thinking of Steven Universe, which sort of worked anyway. And I had a real dook with DADSTOBE. I kept deleting the B, saying to myself, “dad stobe can’t be a thing.”

This was fun and chewy for me. Getting DEFINITE ARTICLE for “the” off the bat with no crossings was a little thrill.

To the constructors: Caitlin Clark was a big story last year, perhaps especially for NYT readers and particularly readers of the Morning newsletter. It’s always fun to read about her and I’m not much of a sports fan. Great puzzle and a PB for me. ALAN Moore was a complete gimme for me - it just goes to show how different people’s spheres can be. The world is wide.

I liked it. Great and fun puzzle. It felt crunchy but went quickly. I thought the theme was really good. And “OT high point” is a brilliant clue.

It makes me happy to see that so many people loved this puzzle. For me, many of the clues were too far a stretch to be fun. Fan mail isn’t SPAM, no matter how much of it you get. WOOD SCREW does not indicate hanging wall art. I just don’t vibe with these meanings of AGOG and NABOB. Bleh. Anyway, onward.

Looks like I’m the only one who knew “sploot” before today. Finding that hard to believe. It looks so odd when squirrels sploot on the sidewalk if you don’t know what they’re doing. The first time I saw it I had to learn about it right away.

And with that, I made 8 gold stars in a row. Not my first time, but it’s not a regular occurrence. I enjoyed it, and appreciate the work that went into constructing it. But I have to disappoint Francis and say this was too quick for me. I was expecting to have this to work on from time all day, but I finished it in 45 minutes. YMMV. That being said, after the magnum opus that was 3 weeks ago (“Escape Room”), I’m afraid it will be hard for a Sunday to live up to heightened expectations.

Crunchy for a Tuesday, as others have noted. A lot of sideways clueing (TREY?). But I liked it fine. However, at the risk of courting controversy, I feel a little funny about the constructor’s notes. I’m sure tomorrow’s will be a worthy puzzle and many commenters will praise it. But now, the constructor might be uncertain of whether she earned those comments or if she only got them because her husband asked for them. I wouldn’t want that, myself. I’m sure tomorrow’s constructor’s merits can stand on their own.

Twisty! It’s unusual for me to make it through such a tough puzzle. I did go to IMDb for the hunger games actress because my teenager, who I would normally ask, is still asleep. Still I’ll take the gold star. Aside from the excellent tricky clueing, this puzzle has an impressive diversity of cultural references. Bravo!

Fun and breezy. The POCKETS were really a nice element, even though I didn’t bother writing out the rebuses (the clue told me they would be U’s, so that’s how I left them. Usually I don’t finish a Thursday at lunchtime - I start them earlier in the day so I can work on them a few times before the day ends. When people say they got a PB, how do you tell? I was way below my average time on this one, but is there a place to see all your Thursday scores or something like that?

Wednesday PB!

Good puzzle. I got KPOP right away and it was all DOWNhill from there. Seriously. I used DOWN in all the rebuses. Just seemed right for all the phrases. That says absolutely nothing about my character.

My sincere condolences, Deb. Welcome back. I did a Thursday without any checking! Not my very first time but still feels like a triumph! 🥳

I, um, did the Saturday puzzle by mistake! That is, early. I usually do my crosswords in the evening, and I picked this one up a little on the later side. I was so pleased to have done a Friday without turning on autocheck, but I was super confused when I went to read Wordplay and landed on the column for the Saturday puzzle. Whoa! Usually Saturday stumps me. As a bonus, now I still have the Friday puzzle to do. I liked this one and was happy to see my old pal Virginia WOOLF make an appearance.

Terrific puzzle and I managed to solve it unaided. Very nice and chewy. I thought it was perfectly balanced with some easy fill to provide much-needed toeholds. Loved the title too—“Passing Glances” so perfectly evoked the game of spotting items from a car speeding down the highway. Though it led me to try to picture seeing a tub of ice cream and a chem lab flask on the side of the road. On a billboard, maybe. I’m taking this too seriously. I haven’t finished in time to comment earlier this week but I did read the comments, and I have a thought on the topic of late-week puzzles getting easier. Someone commented yesterday or the day before that newer puzzles are less clunky and that has to do with better constructing tools, and I really think there might be something to that. When I do older puzzles it seems to me that there are more entries that are quite a stretch from the clue. I find myself saying, “That’s how you want to describe that? Well okay, I guess.” I find that phenomenon much less in current puzzles.

Ooh we’re doing mnemonics? I have a good one. I use a programming language called SAS, and it has a SQL command. This command has a very specific syntax that must go exactly in order. It is: Select From Where Group by Having Order by I remember this as: SAS Freaks Won’t Get Hit On

Cute and fun puzzle if a touch too simple for a Wednesday. Or maybe that’s just me. Clearly there’s a lot of varying mileage today. I appreciated the Halloween theme.

Loved it. Quick but fun. Either this was an easy one or I’m getting better at this.