Jon Mark

Now that it has been shown possible to construct this puzzle, please don’t do it again

This is a proper Friday puzzle. Long periods of staring at the grid followed by a breakthrough (usually a long answer) and a flurry of adjacent words - then back to staring again, etc.

Briliiant

Extremely difficult puzzle. I can normally get Saturday. Not even close this time, in my opinion to the point of unfairness.

This was a constructor’s tour de force. I can only begin to imagine how much time this must have taken to put together. The only downside was that it became relatively easy to solve, but that was probably an inevitable byproduct of the theme itself. One of the most creative Sunday puzzles I have ever completed.

Yes it’s technically an Antelope, but it’s really the iconic Springbok made famous in the movie Invictus, the symbol of South Africa in general and rugby in particular (2 time defending World Cup champions, and 4 time overall winner - the most of any nation)

Tour de force

I believe these types of puzzles are called crossWORDS. Crossings of numbers seem to belong to a different genre.

Greatest mini puzzle ever

This takes Monday to a new level of intricacy. It will be hard to match. Impressive.

I liked it. I found it easy, even for a Tuesday, but it was well put together with an excellent theme. One can pick some nits with the accuracy of some clues but the overall package was very well worked.

I had to cheat in every quadrant. I actually knew the general knowledge clues, but I found many of the clues to be more than one degree away from a direct connection. E.g. the Dodger clue did not have any indication that it was a misdirection. Likewise for Cinderella. It felt a bit like the “connections” puzzle where you are called upon to look at words through different lenses to make sense of them.

If this elevated Tuesday puzzle is a Trend, I shudder to think what Saturday will bring

Brilliant thought process, but one did not need to understand what was going on (I didn’t) to finish the puzzle. I guess when you are constructing something like this, certain sacrifices must be made, resulting in a level of clues that felt more like Monday or Tuesday. Consequently I finished the puzzle in 30% of my average time.

Can I assume that the puzzles got its name from the paucity of black squares? Or is something very subtle going on that I can’t see. I was waiting for a smart Mothers Day theme. I solved the puzzle with the help of googling the books mentioned. Can’t say I got joy out of this one.

Friday puzzle….. are we sure about that?

The author of the puzzle was hell bent to create a crossword replete with this gimmick (as he called it), going on to say that there was a limited menu of answers that met his criteria. Essentially that forced a clever idea into becoming a simple puzzle, easily solved.

I solved in a sequence that suggested that every letter of the alphabet was going to be used. Kept hoping but in the end we fell two letters short.

I found it very simple after immediately getting the added letter requirements. Probably fastest Thursday ever, however it took reading the column to actually understand the meaning of the giveaway clue. I was at a loss about the connection, and it still feels a bit iffy to me, albeit clever

Nice theme - but it did become easier after you got the first one. Separately, the NBA draft is clearly not a Sporting event and so it is clued as a Sports event. But it is tho? A sports adjacent event?

It was very easy to solve - maybe because of the need to make the theme work. However I didn’t get the theme until I read the commentary. Why? I overthought the clue in Borough. In London, the location of the clue, the word would be pronounced as “burra” and so I could not put it together after that. Otherwise - brilliant.

Brilliant. I solved it quickly knowing I had to insert the country currency. I knew something was missing and that I needed to change the currency to something else for everything to make sense, but I did not realize that i had to use an alternative to “everything”.

At first I saw only a single scissors on my screen, did not recognize it and I thought the screen had been somehow scratched. IMO a genius construction which must have taken a while to plot out. Unfortunately or fortunately, that usually works to simplify the puzzle - certainly true in this case.

Wouldn’t you want to have the 3 zodiac signs actually featured somewhere in the puzzle?

Too easy for a Saturday.

By using two Super Bowl years in the clue, the decision to go with BUCS is forced on you. But there is a wrinkle, since most fans think of the victory year as the one during which the regular season was played - i.e. the prior year. After all, that is what is displayed on the Gillette Stadium Ring of Honor - commemorating championships in 2001, 03 and 04 among others while being careful to list the Roman numerals of each Super Bowl in question. So there is a very good chance that a New Englander, or for that matter any fan that has recall of the list of NFL winners would automatically say that the PATS (also 4 letters) won in 2093.

Straightforward puzzle today, but I thought that there might be something deeper going on. Specifically the theme is Double Misnomers, but in addition I counted at least 13 words with consecutive double letters in them, e.g, ABOO, AAS. For me that’s enough to be highly unusual, so I thought that the theme might expand and incorporate all of those instances as well.

Brilliant if one regards a B and an N as words. However it turns into a quick solve.

Not quite the difficulty of a standard Saturday puzzle. Given the sequence in which I solved it (I got and X, K and Z early on), I was hoping for all 26 letters. Sadly only 24 made it.

I believe both words of 7-down originated in England, and while used in all parts of Britain, are also used in other parts of the Commonwealth. Thus I think of them as English, not British.

We had a simple but richly rewarding and clever Monday puzzle this week. In contrast I don’t think that this puzzle cuts it for a Wednesday. I like to think of Sunday as a large Wed/Thur hybrid, so Thursday had better be really something.

I do not think that “this that and the other” means what the constructors think, unless the US definition is different to the classic British definition of it being: “several different thing” - which clearly does not contemplate a little bit of everything.