Emmy

If this was 'easy' please no one burst my bubble. I'd rather believe I'm finally cracking the Thursday code! I was pretty stuck at one point, but there were two tricky clues I had yet to get. With those, I was able to finish 6 minutes under average with no other lookups. TWENTYONEACROSS was my first theme solve. I was feeling so excited about my new career as a crossword editor (as obviously they needed my keen eye) until getting WEDNESDAYPUZZLE. This was my favorite puzzle in some time.

It took me way too long as a millennial to realize it's *NSYNC and not N*SYNC. CON sort of seemed to work so that left me very confused about who the _ustar could be.

While not a question, I really wanted the answer to the clothing compliment clue to be "it has pockets" (which does fit!).

Band aid unnecessarily annoyed me. Not as poor cluing or anything, just because I truly couldn't get my brain off of the brand name and into the other meanings. My own fault and a very FACEPALM solve, if you will. ;) I don't typically need a lookup on Tuesdays, but I struggled in the southwest corner until looking up the Alicia Keys album. Also: team 'don't really get the hate for LAY' check in here. I thought it an easy solve on crosses even if the definition was new to me.

I was shocked to read in the article that HANKERING hasn't appeared in a crossword since the 70's! It just kind of seems like it would have, I suppose. I was nervous after my first pass that I might be doing some lookups on this one, but somehow I just always got enough crosses to keep going until the end!

I wasn't personally a fan of the IN and ON containing answers as they felt a little bit clunky, but overall interesting puzzle. I liked the almost sudoku-like aspect of ruling out which boxes couldn't contain a rebus even if I didn't know the answer just yet.

Bummed at the amount of tired fill in this one

Once again, I'm begging for there to be proper usage of asocial/antisocial. Antisocial typically involves intent and actively being against. Asocial means more withdrawn, quiet, solitary.

While I can understand where the difficulty comments stem from, I thought the theme of this puzzle made it easy enough for a Tuesday. It allowed for many blanks to be filled even if you didn't have the full answer nor the cross through a little logic. I.e. _ _ _ _ _ E_IST easily fills to E_ITSE_IST.

I didn't have much filled after my first pass, but somehow the theme clicked very early for me then the long answers helped me along. Clever clues!

Funny enough, I recently did a May 2020 archive puzzle with an extremely similar theme! Maybe a bit easy for a Tuesday (I finished in one pass by solving as blocks) but it was still enjoyable. (:

GOODNOTGREAT was my first theme entry get (with no crosses!) but I unnecessarily stumped myself by filling in donOtMISS -- obviously a 5, rather than 3 star, review. Idk, is REPLY really the opposite of forward? It seems to me more of an alternative, but I'm open to correction I suppose 😂

I very nearly solved by going straight through the across clues (even got the theme clues without crosses). My downfall was GLINT instead of GLEAM. Very obvious correction when I went through the downs though! Definitely would have beeny record were it not for that mistake.

For whatever reason, Thursdays are harder for me than Fridays and Saturdays. That said, I was able to finish this one with no extraneous lookups besides the 'tricky clues'. POTATO was the theme "clicker" for me with OZARKS being the confirmation. Not a fan of SOO, but I thought other fill was much better than yesterday.

PR by a mile 🥳 I had this solved in two passes (across-down, across-down), and am now wondering, what is everyone's preferred solving method? Quadrants, bottom to top, straight through as written...?

As some others have said, it felt a bit easy for a Sunday to me, but I really liked this puzzle none the less! My time is pretty inaccurate as I left the page open while making my kids' breakfast (oops!) otherwise I think this could have been close to a record for me as it wasn't far off from my average.