Some guy in

Ended a stressful work week, drank five beers and killed this thing in under 10 minutes. Fun puzzle, no complaints. I'd say that in the days or weeks after Shortz, there was a lot of uproar over some puzzles that Ezersky had a hand in that were fiendlish/unfamiliar/hard. Fagliano's approach for the weekend is more like Wednesday/Thursday without a theme, with a little corner here or there where it hinges on a trivial cross. Everyone is grappling with how attuned we'd become to Shortz's style. I'd just be glad the NYT is soldiering on. They have archives back to the 90s. If you're breezing through these, roll back the clock a decade or two, find something you haven't done. Or get serious and construct a puzzle. That'll fill up your day.

I'm a cyclist and Tour de France fan, so I appreciate that this was a bike racing puzzle -- as in, you have to just shrug when it's a tragic pileup and say, "that's bike racing." Crossing SLADE with LEACHMAN and having a cum clue -- the NYT has seen better days.

The part where I figured out the end was just "giddyup" was pretty funny. Made me hear Kramer's voice in this new version of the poem. Speaking of mangled poetry, has anyone asked Bard to recite the poems of Billy Collins? I always get mangled summaries, but I don't know if that's universal or just because Bard got a laugh out of me and now the pattern has stuck.

I have never hear Obamania stand in for another term I don't recall being used much -- Obamamania -- but I mean that in a good way.

Sam Ezersky is such a national treasure, so smart, so adept at elevating not just crosswords but the other games to rare air where the inexperienced masses only take remorse and dread from the experience. I wish he had his own newspaper games section all to himself, preferably at say the washington post or la times.

Thanks for the answer Chiang in this puzzle. I recommend his short stories! They are wonderful. The beautiful movie "Arrival" is based on one of them. Fun puzzle overall today. As a UW athlete, I was once told that our song "Varsity" is a dirge.

My college rowing coach, who rowed for Oxford, railed against the redundant "crew team." We were crews, or a rowing team.

Kinda some Saturday on a Tuesday, guess that's a holiday week

I guess I don't know as much as I thought about tea or VP Harris -- that's the cross that did me in. Nice fun puzzle though!

That was a great puzzle, one of my favorites in recent months -- thanks very much and my compliments to the constructors!

Cool run, who's fine with the LA Times? What's the difference? My local alt weekly has a weird crossword puzzle too.