Vincent R

This was not for me and ended my 10 day streak, longest as of yet, on my 40th birthday! Too many Americanisms, combined with a cryptic and unintuitive rebus mechanic. No amount of head banging against the wall would have gotten me there. Here’s to a fresh start tomorrow for a fresh decade!

I understood the theme while filling in the puzzle and while it is not a Thursday I will fondly look back on, I didn’t mind it. The fill and clueing however fell well below the standards I would expect the NYT to hold itself to. Natick galore, partial phrases, ambiguous crosses like EMEND / AMEND, LOUSES UP (???), CATDOM, ERG for the 3rd time in a week … a slog to complete. I only started doing the crossword regularly about 18 months ago and have to say that I have noticed a marked drop in quality over the past month and a half. Here’s to hoping this is just a blip!

This was a Saturday PB for me by a wide margin. Knowing how to spell GONGXIFACAI felt a little bit like cheating and may be the reason why so many found it easy and others so hard. Thank you for an enjoyable morning brain stretch!

As a non native, the hardest puzzle in a long while. The combination of a complex theme (which is fine as it's a Thurday), and US-centric clues never allowed me to get a proper foothold. I gave up after 25 minutes with little to show for it. Looking forward to tomorrow!

While I am always grateful for constructors putting in time and effort to entertain and stimulate us regular solvers, unlike most commenters I did not enjoy this puzzle at all. I thought the amount of crosswordese and proper nouns was not only abnormally high but also positioned in ways that required brute force or cheating to get through. MOOSHU crossing with ASHWAN, MUIR with RUE, POE with YEET is just not my idea of fun. This one took me twice my normal completion time. That being said, I am glad it seems to have hit the mark for so many others. Happy Sunday everyone.