Kevin

Great puzzle! One of those ones where I thought I was done for on the first pass but it slowly came together. The clue for DOGBREATH was my favorite. Crossing MARLSTONE with GOREY was pretty mean though, had to run the alphabet on that one.

Surprised at all the negativity. This wasn't my favorite, but it felt like a very typical Sunday: clever theme, lots of questionable fill, and definitely harder than Wednesday difficulty. It even taught me a new word, "chiasmus". I guess it's true what they say- some days you solve the puzzle, and some days the puzzle solves you. (am I doing it right?)

Great theme! I enjoyed trying to solve the word ladder without the crosses. I'm not complaining but I agree with others that this was tough for a Monday (particularly the southeast). It took me double my usual time.

This felt hard while I was doing it because I couldn't figure out the theme, but ended up finishing pretty quick for a Thursday. I finally got it when I saw the nice little pictures. It was definitely easier than yesterday for me. I had never heard of JOHDPURS, it's nice to learn a new word.

Great puzzle! Crossword experience actually hindered me a little today. I got stuck in the northeast for a bit because I didn't read the clue to 7D closely enough- I just saw I.M. and immediately filled in PEI.

Like most Sundays this year, this was much more difficult than the Friday and Saturday for me. I struggled quite a bit with the northeast until I realized that it wasn't HBO and figured out the right orientation to enter MALLET (not HAMMER!). Once I got that sorted out it still wasn't done. I had GIG cars instead of ZIP, which is the version I was familiar with but seems to be limited to the SF bay area. Finally, YENT_/A_OU was a natick for me so I just had to run the letters. All in all though, a very satisfying puzzle! Really enjoyed the theme once I figured it out. It was interesting learning about PLOSIVES and climbing EELS.

Absolutely loved this puzzle. The gimmick was clever and had a few layers, and there were some great clues like the ones for TAG and MARS. Fun solve all the way through.

Really enjoyed this one! Learned ENTRACTES and FRAPPES. I loved the clue for PLANTSITTER. Fun? fact: the TROPICANA just closed for good a few months ago to be demolished to make room for the new A's stadium (I wish all these sports teams would stop following me here from Oakland). I got to walk through on the last day it was open and it felt like walking back into another era. The stained glass ceiling was particularly impressive. I hope they can preserve it somehow.

To add some more positivity here- I really liked this one, felt like the first real Saturday in a while. I especially liked the clues for RADIOSETS and OPENDOORS, and a few others not coming to mind. Lots of the great "aha moments" I crave from crosswords. The SW gave me some trouble because my uncultured self was stuck on sWAmi for too long, but I eventually got it with the crosses.

Weird one today, felt really difficult while I was doing it but ended up being fast. It was neat to learn that (standard) roman numerals have a limit. I was confused by the clue because I had assumed you could just keep stacking on as many Ms as you want. The clue for PESOS seemed iffy to me. Most of the taquerias I've been to use dollars.

Very impressive construction, while also being fun to solve. Never heard FIN for a $5 bill. I tried to look it up and it sounds like maybe it's a Canadian thing?

I agree this puzzle was on the easier end but I enjoyed it. I liked the new (to me at least) clue for 8D. I have Jenny Nicholson's reading of "Trapped In A Island With Josh Hutcherson" to thank for getting 4A immediately.

A bunch of the crosses were a real struggle for me today. Not knowing VENTNOR meant E_IE and CAN_FEEL... each had a few options, and then RITA/RHIANNON was totally unknown. I got it eventually with some guessing but didn't have a very good time. On the plus side, I did like the theme (I was confused the whole time what the circles could possibly be spelling so FIRYEW was a nice surprise when I figured it out). I also enjoyed learning about porcupine fish (different from puffer fish!) and sun roses.

Like others I had a rough time with some of the fill (I also had DERMa, AeON, cLInCH... lots of flyspecking) but I absolutely loved this theme. It's rare that such an impressive construction is also so much fun to solve.

Great theme! It was fun to figure it out without a revealer. SANKA was new to me, never heard of it before. My first guess was DECAF which I see now wasn't too far off.

I really liked the idea of this puzzle. The color at the end was fun. I just wish it weren't so annoying to enter rebuses in the app. It really breaks up the flow of solving, and having so many like in this puzzle really exacerbated that.

Every once in a while an answer comes to me by pure luck. I was taking a break after getting stuck last night and youtube recommended a video about ADRIEN Brody, which made me realize I had his name wrong. I solve without lookups, but I won't say no when the universe sends some relevant trivia my way. I found this one comparable to other recent Saturdays. The SW in particular was really tough for me, I didn't know much of the trivia and had New Mexico for a while. Then even once I got it, I wasted a ton of time trying to find my error there when the real issue was MuAHAHA. I can never remember all the different crossword fabrics so TuILL seemed reasonable to me, but I think I was getting it mixed up with tulle.

Loved having a rebus without any circles, feels like it's been a while. It makes it way more fun to figure out. The southeast was a nightmare though, I didn't know any of SHILO, CABALA, CAROUSEL, OLETA, or MISSM. I like learning new trivia from the crossword but not this much at the same time all crossing in one corner.

Really enjoyed this, one of those ones that felt impossible at first but all came together once I got a few toeholds. There were a few answers I thought were pretty questionable (TAN for buff, WAG for jokester, SETS for going down) but it turns out that they were mostly definitions I didn't know, so I got to learn something too. That said, even though I got it pretty quickly I'm not a fan of "SUMOS". That's just not what that word means. My most charitable interpretation is that it's a shortening of "sumo wrestlers" in which case the clue should have indicated it was an abbreviation/slang.

This is my favorite kind of puzzle- very tough but still doable, lots of clever, tricky wordplay, and minimal trivia.

Wow, that was brutal! Quite the wake up call after a relatively breezy Friday and Saturday. The middle left with Riesen, Ken Kesey, and Senta almost did me in. The theme was clever but didn't help me much with solving.

While doing this puzzle on my phone I found myself wishing I could put letters in the black squares. This would be easy to do on paper, but allowing it in the app would give away the gimmick. This got me thinking- how much are gimmicks limited by needing to work in the app? Are there any past gimmick puzzles created when they were paper only that are difficult or impossible to solve in the app, or did the NYT never get that adventurous? For example I'm thinking of things like having symbols or other non-letter things in answers, or going outside the grid.

I spent as much time checking over the puzzle to get my star as I did filling it in in the first place. I was so convinced that REDOUND couldn't be a word that I missed my obvious mistake with EVe where the clue along with the previous answer gives it to you exactly. Anyway, I enjoyed the puzzle up until the flyspecking. The theme did help me a little I watched most of Friends while it was on and liked it at the time, but for whatever reason it doesn't hold up as well for me as other sitcoms of the time like Frasier.

I was not at all on the same wavelength as the constructor today- lots of answers that technically match the clues but don't feel quite right. I did like a few like FUSSYEATER, and I appreciated the NOD to the narrows. It was a tough one to flyspeck with all the names. I kept focusing on LARTER which sounds a little off to me, I think I wanted it to be cARTER or something more familiar. It ended up being that I had HOkEY instead of HOOEY.

I was just not on the right wavelength for this one. Even after solving I had to come to the comments to understand many of the clues (7 up, Trigger hair, Matches with forensics). Most of my hour+ solve time was trying to figure out where I had gone wrong in the SE since ZARF couldn't possibly be anything. I came back to it with fresh eyes this morning and saw the real issue was HAGEr/WHOTEr. I did really enjoy the clue for EPT though.

Tough but satisfying. I misunderstood the Ford clue until I finally got the L by running the alphabet. I thought maybe there was some old Ford model called a Gerand or something. Also despite seeing it written many many times in games, books, and other media, I just learned that "wookiee" has two Es.

Frustrating one. Great clues and generally easy for a Friday, except when I got to the end and got the failure message. I try not to fly speck (unless it's an obvious typo that jumps out at me) and just accept the loss because it always sours the whole experience for me, but today I felt like I was close and couldn't help myself. After spending double the time I spent filling in the grid just staring at and fiddling with it, I finally gave up and auto checked which revealed my issue to be ETTe/ROMe (yes, I see now how A fits better). Oh well, hopefully I'll remember this next time and give up earlier.

Fun one! It felt breezy after yesterday. Hit a couple snags (RENATa, MARLa) but pretty smooth overall. I liked the clues for QUID PRO QUO and JUMP FOR JOY.

Not a fan of clues like 3D, they read like ads to me. Otherwise it was a fun puzzle.

Cool puzzle! I thought I had the wrong key so I started going down increasingly convoluted roads: four square -> X -> X marks the spot -> the only other X is surrounded by E's -> E? USE is below END OF THE ROAD -> USE = U's -> U? Finally gave up and realized I had gotten the key right but had STATESMaN/MIaN. Oh well.