Alex

Really liked the theme, but some of the crosses seemed a little natick-y. IROC with IONIAN and CHET? And then the LSD/ERA/SRI/DANUBE cluster was clued a little too noun-heavy, especially with the LAIN/LAId for 36D. Still thoroughly enjoyed, just surprised that wasn’t cleaned up in editing.

I wanted propENGINE, which threw a brief wrench, but otherwise smooth and sparkling (wine) for ME!

Not a fan, unfortunately. The theme was clever enough (though I had no idea how to pronounce Ensign properly which was both a good and bad thing). But the fill and cluing just felt a little too forced for not enough sparkle from the theme. I’m not a fan of words that typically have accents (MASSÉ) and a lot of classic crossword ‘make it longer’ cheats: “US VISA”, “KALES”, “YENS”, “USE ON”. And cmon, “Time WAS”? There had to be a better way to clue that.

Weird choice to clue DESI as a white woman. Also interesting cross with ATALANTA and UTA and LOMA LINDA with everything (PAESE/ADLER/ACE). Also DITSY is pure wordlist nonsense, DITZY is by far the more common variant. But all of that I muscled through, until I was felled by BETeY/FREeSAW. Alas. M

Any chance the Mini leaderboard on iOS is going to be fixed soon?