sue w.

Oh my goodness... I just had to buzz over here to rave about this elegant, challenging, witty, overall gem of a puzzle. Best Wednesday in a very long time. Every clue was awesome... even the little guys.

Sometimes the solving experience suffers because the cluing is compromised a bit to make the theme work. Not today. This theme served the puzzle instead of the other way around. It was a pleasure to work through this challenging, well constructed gem and the theme was a brilliant sparkle of fairy dust on top.

I am more than OK with a Wednesday rebus...in fact I am firmly in the welcome-it-any-day-of-the-week camp. This is especially true when the puzzle is a gem like this one. What a great start to this lovely day!

I am repeatedly awed by the cleverness and creativity of themed puzzles. How do people come up with this stuff? Bravo, Alex!

Good lord. This puzzle was a slog. I needed to read Wordplay after competing the puzzle to grok the underlying gimmick (three unclued words parsed into two segments to fit the clue). No "aha" moment ensued. I dunno...was a bit anticlimactic IMHO. While I am always appreciative of the skill and work that it must take to build a puzzle like this (and I am thankful for the effort), I have to say that I didn't really enjoy it. I thought some of the clues were a tad too forced/tangential and this made the overall experience kind of frustrating. I say this as a person who lives for Thursdays thru Saturdays. Just my 2 cents.

now THIS is a proper Saturday crossword 😊 What a great accomplishment of construction...and a NYT debut at that! I needed just a couple of lookups to jumpstart the solve, as there were quite a few obscure (for me) factoids. Once the eggshell was cracked a bit, this puzzle was delightfully evil yet fair. Thank you Katie...let this not be your last late week puzzle.

This puzzle was a neatly done little gift to the puzzleverse. It was a great challenge that I completed without lookups in just under average time. I thought the cluing was absolutely spot on and clean as a whistle. Many thanks and kudos to the constructor!

I live for delightfully evil Saturday crosswords. My time was waaaaaaay above average but I am not sad about it. Almost got it done without lookup but Apia Samoa/Opal Lee was a natick for me. Happy weekend everyone!

Well now...this was waaaay more fun than the usual Sunday! Hat tip to Miranda for a truly intricate and clever puzzle design, with clues that just sparkled. I don't know why people are borderline enraged at rebuses on Sundays. They're usually very straightforward compared to Thursdays and, for my money, introduce a different type of mental challenge that (hopefully) helps maintain a few extra synapses worth of cognitive agility. This can't be a bad thing right?

YESSSS QUEEEEN 👑 At last the Saturday puzzle I've been hoping for. What a great challenge...so fun and sticky, especially in the NE. A couple of wild guesses cracked it open. Thank you Sam. ,

WOW! *checks calendar* Stickiest Monday in quite some time! I thoroughly enjoyed this very well-crafted puzzle.

Ugh I did not enjoy this puzzle...and I generally adore Thursdays. Got the joke midway through, but the inherent logic of the gimmick seemed unsound and thus was more frustrating than fun. Maybe I missed something here.

Happily went over my average solve time. What a great puzzle...thought I might have to resort to Google but persistence carried the day. Many thanks for the fine effort by this constructor!

Oh my goodness...this is the Friday workout we've all been hoping for. I thoroughly enjoyed every second of this puzzle. I thought I'd need Google at a couple of junctures, but being patient was rewarded with AHA moments.

This puzzle definitely belonged on a Thursday. I say this in deference to those among us who skip Thursdays because they don't appreciate the "gimmicks"; publishing a puzzle like this on a supposedly straightforward day may have been a little stressful for them 😉. That said, I love an outside-the-box puzzle any day of the week so I was happy.

What a wonderful puzzle! Maybe my favorite Saturday of 2026. Great challenge throughout but gettable without lookups.

What a great puzzle! Sailed through in Wednesday-level time much to my surprise. Looked impenetrable at first, but once I got a smattering of crosses the whole thing flowed together. Amazing that a debut constructor came in hot🔥with a Saturday puzzle. Congratulations!

I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a puzzle this much...the Robin Weintraub vibe was strong throughout. Before I go on long flights I do a search and print as many of Robin's puzzles as I can find. Now I can search Kate Hawkins as well.

I would just like to point out (even though someone likely already has) that "root beer float" nestles perfectly in 14D 😋. That said, this was a fun and challenging Saturday. I thought I would need to look something up to crack the NW but perserverence paid.

Excellent mental workout. I had next to nothing on the first pass, but then all of a sudden the whole thing just flopped over. Wonderfully devilish cluing in many places.

Really a fun and well crafted puzzle, albeit super easy for a Saturday. Guess I'll hit the archives for my "fix". I've worked my way backwards to 2016, doing Saturday through Thursday in reverse. Those late-week puzzles 9 years ago are often but not universally more challenging IMHO...YMMV. Happy weekend everyone!

Waaaay too easy for a Friday but I can't complain too much. This puzzle and its fun clues were a thing of beauty.

"Aortal" is not a term that I ever heard in 40 years of nursing (more than half in the cardiac realm). Never having constructed a crossword, I can only imagine how difficult it is to make it all jibe. But this seems like a neologism to me. Dictionary.com wouldn't even cough it up. I suspect Barry A. could weigh in here 😉

This was SO CUTE and fun and fresh and enjoyable and crispy and well done... I think there's an underlying gut feeling that one gets while solving xw puzzles, especially if you've done many many thousands of them over nearly 50 years as I have. Without breaking it down or over thinking it, this one felt like a smile. Happy eclipse weekend to those who are fortunate to celebrate. Man am I ever sorry I didn't plan better.

I'm surprised that wabi-sabi is new to so many. I truly thought it was part of our usual parlance. Maybe it's in high rotation for me because I make things that are invariably slightly flawed. To that point, any objections in cluing that might arise in these comments should be responded to with the rejoinder "it's wabi-sabi". Seems to work for me anyway.

Smooth as satin and just right for a Wednesday. Extremely enjoyable solve. I must say I'm enjoying the caliber of puzzles these days....NYT is always top drawer, but this is an especially nice run of late.

I am happy to report that I've been waaaay over my average time the past few Saturdays. Puzzle heaven. That is all. One more thing...Sam Ezersky brings the brilliance every. single. time.

Man Oh Man this was fabulous. So many times I was tempted to recruit my Google helper but I resisted and soldiered through. Very fun and deviously, deliciously clever. My time was sooo far above average but I loved every minute.

Wednesday PB today. It's been awhile since I've been able to say that. Mind meld with the constructor today...live long and prosper 🖖

Marvelous, marvelous challenge. A few minutes below average but felt much more difficult. My kind of puzzle. Yesterday was also a great ride...thank you to both constructors and to Will Shortz for giving us some bona fide stuff to chew on.

Bravo! This was a worthy Friday and such a fun ride. I thought I would need to resort to Google to crack this baby open, but perseverence paid.

Joe DiPietro never disappoints. Great puzzle.

Sailed through this fun puzzle without comprehending the hook (starred entries made zero sense but were obvious from the crosses). Once I was done and put 2+2 together, I had to buzz over here to tip my hat to the constructor. Fantastic debut! My only comment would be (as a health care professional) "rotary joint" isn't common parlance. This may be addressed elsewhere in the ~300 prior comments ... I offer my profuse advance apologies to the comment cops if I'm repeating other posters.

Appropriately thorny. Great misdirects. The pirate clue was genius. Got there in just under average time with no lookups. I just love a good Saturday workout...thank you David for your great creation.

This was a somewhat unique solving experience for me. There were more that the usual number of factoids which are not in my wheelhouse, yet all were gettable via crosses and none intersected (therefore no dreaded naticks). Ended up well below average time but it felt challenging throughout. I just love my Saturday morning coffee and NYT Games. I look forward to it all week.

I sailed through the top 1/3, ambled through the bottom 1/3, and cheated through the midsection (had to look up the philosopher, but once that was in place the rest of the puzzle slowly fell). I love Sam's puzzles. I can't remember how I did this but somehow I got a list of his NYT puzzles (along with Robin Weintraub and Joe DiPietro) and printed a whole slew of Friday and Saturday puzzles. They live in my carry-on bag along with 2 pens (because flight attendants don't have spares if you need one). I'm always happily entertained and the time (forgive me) flies by.

Today we have a smooth, enjoyable and fairly easy solve on this chilly Saturday. I just love puzzles on cold days for some reason...hot chocolate is definitely in my immediate future plans.

This puzzle was a gem. I figured out the gimmick fairly quickly and the puzzle flowed nicely...except for the NW corner which was somehow impenetrable to me. I had to look up one proper name to kickstart my brain. As I've said before, I am amazed by the creativity and cleverness of these Thursday puzzles (or any day of the week for that matter). I don't know how these constructors do it.

I usually relish a tough Saturday. However, I sought a little help from Google in the SW because it just wasn't coming together for me and frankly I was just over it and wanted to be done. I can't quite put my finger on it. A few of the clues were maybe too tangential, in the sense that they seemed almost random. YMMV. Overall a worthy exercise.

This was a great Saturday solve (just above average with no lookups). Lots of white space at first pass which gradually came together bottom to top (with the NW last to fall as many have commented). Hats off to this very assured debut from our newest constructor... looking forward to more! Road trip games must be very regional if not family-specific traditions. We had some truly weird ones when I was growing up. Maybe this explains a lot.

Oof. Couldn't have done this without a little help from Dr. Google. If I'm irretrievably stuck I'll look up either a short sequence or a heretofore unknown factoid (i.e. who on earth was the father of the American cartoon?) which is sometimes enough to kick start the rest of the solve. Love me a good chewy Saturday crossword!

Masterful debut. I have missed many Pixar movies, as we're on the cusp between parenthood and grandkids (if that happens). But I have immensely enjoyed each one we've seen. Hard to pick a favorite but Ratatouille and The Incredibles would be right up there. I forgive the constructor for not shoehorning either one into a rebus (although I would have liked to see her try).

Oooh this was a fun one. Love a good Friday challenge. This was a seamless puzzle with chewy cluing and wonderful misdirects.

Wow.... I think this was my slowest Tuesday ever and that's a good thing. I usually just get the early week puzzles quickly out of the way en route to the (more fun) end-of-week challenges. But this puzzle got my attention! It was only after reading the comments that I was able to grok the raze/raise clue. How do these constructors come up with gold like this?

Very nicely done Mr. Neuthaler. A devilishly tricky Tuesday and a very fun solve. Great way to get the neurons firing along with a good cup of coffee and a lap kitty 😺.

Wonderful. Absolute puzzle heaven. I had to cheat for the first time in quite awhile. To wit, I looked up a couple of unknown proper names to fill in a missing letter or 2. This was sufficient to jog my brain, unlock the relevant sections and get the hard earned jingle (love that song!).

Pure genius. What a ride!

Tuesday level 😐. I need to get my day going, so not entirely a bad thing. There's always the archives to get my difficulty fix later on. Puzzle was super fun so all good.

This puzzle was AWESOME. Wonderful challenge for a Tuesday. I was surprised to beat my average time because it sure didn't feel that way...maybe this is my favorite kind of puzzling experience.