Greg

I know what an Egg Cream Soda is because of Spider-Man. I know Goren on Bridge because I vaguely remembered that name in the puzzles section of the newspaper back when I was a kid. (The irony of people complaining about a freaking giant of the puzzle section of the newspaper while doing a crossword in the puzzle section of the newspaper is entertaining to me). I pronounced 'donee' this morning in about 18 different ways 'dobee? docee?' because I am ignorant of Idaho geography and was surprised when it was right, but I don't expect to know everything, and crosswords would be pretty boring if they consulted with me every morning to make sure I'd heard of every person or place they thought of using. I've never heard of Horace or Thomas, but that's probably my fault, but I certainly am familiar with being on the lam (but that story is for a different comment section), so I guessed and figured it out. I couldn't name a single state bird, and in 20 minutes I probably won't remember Hawaii's either, but at least I kind of know until lunchtime. Maybe I'm an old softie, but I guess part of my teaching (and living) style is that we all have different pasts and knowledge bases, and if you're letting your hobbies make you angry because you didn't know something or you think, "That's not fair, how could I know that?!!?!?!" maybe it's time to look inside and realize that you know it and get it now. But that's just me, and maybe I learned too much from Spider-Man.

I was so confused why 'stepsister' was how ikea furniture was assembled for a good part of my afternoon.

Because I believed briefly in God, I also believed briefly in an expression of, "That coward is such a milk dud." I also couldn't unsee Booger Fingers for a little bit, which made me uncomfortable. This was quite a bit faster than average, close to my Wednesday record (I think the top left took half my time), but I'm also only in month three of trying to do a crossword daily, so I guess I'll see. I liked this one. The stuff I didn't know was actually solved by crosses.

Made sense to me. Theme was kind of cool. I knew most of the names of people, so I liked it, if they would have been more obscure to me, it would obviously have been bad. I really liked 'final points in scores'. I am included in the hordes of haters that didn't like the repetitive clicking sounds, but sometimes clues don't make as much sense to me. I had fun, even though I solved without understanding all of the answers, but this puzzle mostly fit me toat.

Today put my streak at 10. It will probably end there, I usually miss on Thursdays. It was mostly fun, but Japans had me puzzled until the end when I just crosses everything into it. It didn't help that I was unfamiliar with that usage of teal, also. We'll see if I can keep it up, I found last Th, F, Sat, Sun all pretty solvable at my level.

I liked this a lot. I think the past week has been full of rather fun puzzles (was it Tuesday's that was hard for a Tuesday? I liked it. And Monday's was cool, and so was Sunday's. I don't remember further back). I did not know the name at 63D, and it took me a couple of minutes to get 45D, so I had DAD__SM for a little bit, and I will not ever repeat out loud (or in print) the letters I put in there to see if they'd work (they absolutely did not).

My first Sunday with zero lookups. A surprising lack of Geography and modern celebrity made it pretty doable for me, which was nice! It took me a bit to figure out how the theme was working, but once I did, everything slowly fit into place. It took 50 minutes, but piece by piece... I liked this one a lot.

I am glad there are not too many names that are _aty, or I would have been stuck in the southwest corner forever. As it is, I put in several very dumb guesses (including one that would make 80% of you blush if it was actually used) until I realized Ms. Perry is now a tv judge (is it her? I have no idea, but I don't know of anyone else who spells their name like that). I liked it. I figured it out when I had III staring at me in the bottom corner and could start making some educated guesses (which did not help me with the fireworks song girl name).