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 misread the clue for 25A as "human's earliest phrase" instead of "phase," according to Freud. And I thought, whoa, this solve is really going to have a payoff, because I sure don't know what Freud though our first few words together were. Tremendous puzzle, just a giant disappointment I created myself.

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 grid is really cool. Turned 90 degrees it looks like the first answer, iomoth.

I take back anything bad I may have said about Sam Ezersky. That was fun and original. Would love to know how many times Will Shortz had to reject the clue for 52 A.

Nice puzzle, back to feeling more ept today. At the end, I was wondering how fire and can were related, thinking it was new slang, but then I got it. Like axe or sack, not flame or butt. After yesterday, I went back and did some Saturdays from 2015, and they generally seemed to be about that hard, at least for me.

Not only did this Wednesday beat me, it also reminded me, in PE Guy style, that I'm too poor to name drop Japanese airports, buy balcony tickets, or stroll the museums of Madrid. Bummer!

Three cheers for Amanda Winters!

Sorry, but I love the days when an angry mob storms the comment section with their pitchforks, misspelled protest signs, and dashed hopes that it'd all be aloe and oreos. Go spend some time doing the archived puzzles from 1994.

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.

It hooked me with "The Sun Also Rises" and tested me in the SW corner. About the only prince I know is from that old prank call about having Prince Albert in the can ("You'd better let him out!) and that ended up working despite earlier wrestling with CONED, NOSE, and GUN for the across clues. Thank you for the puzzle!

Congrats on the debut, but I'm sympathetic to the people complaining about this one. Loading it into the clues instead of revealing in the answers got pretty tedious. It'd be like if Eminem insisted on only rhyming with M words.

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.

Not feeling very ept. Oof.

Congratulations to all who got this one. It definitely took me out. Friday puzzles for me also serve as a measurement of the week's fatigue and I think I've been told I need about a week long nap.

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.

After yesterday's defeat, that was lovely. Thank you! Took a shot in the dark for rabbit stew, and the rest of the puzzle gave way like braised meat.

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

That one got me; I wandered off the mark in about six different ways and could not make the connection to the theme. But what pleasure is a solve without some failures?

That was a good/tough one. NW corner had me for a long time, and then I was stuck nearby in the middle -- that whole COWL, WASH, WHIM, ENHALO area had me wondering AM I NUTS?

Loved that one. The last obstacle was to free myself from my SOANDSOS and HELLA mistake in the southwest.

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!

That was a nice ejoyable puzzle, but can someone explain the theme as you would to an idiot? The column says: From there, the word SEEN is cleverly hidden (and not pronounced) in the clues at 17-, 32- and 40-Across. For instance, 40A [Station set up in a kitchen] yields MISE EN PLACE. So we're supposed to pronounce Miplace? and Cloough? Tiesuploods? Or is it just that it SEEN isn't pronounced as SEEN in each? I guess that's it now that I type it out.

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