Tim

i might be in the minority but i love an unexpected rebus :)

my thoughts that no one asked for this Monday: i've really come around on the early week puzzles. when i started my NYT crossword journey a couple years ago, i could usually manage Monday & Tuesday, Wednesday was a toss-up, and had no hope for the rest of the week. after getting more familiar, the puzzles became more accessible, and i really relished the tough end-of-week/weekend puzzles, and thought of the early weeks as placeholders until the good stuff arrived. maybe my ego abated a little bit, but now i find the soothing solve of the early week puzzles really enjoyable, and can appreciate the construction of them, without it being tied to the difficulty of the clues. thanks for the great puzzle, Andrea!

10/10 puzzle, probably one of my favorites EVER!

i was quaking in my boots over the past 24 hours, hoping that i could get my gold star today and extend to a best-ever streak of 21 days (i impose very strict rules on myself to use no look ups of any kind when solving, so if i can't crack it i use "check puzzle" before reading the daily column/googling to break the streak). the northwest corner was the last to fall, but i made it! here's to the wonderful crosswords that we all enjoy, no matter how we solve them.

okay I'll jump in on the train of posting my solve time: 1:23:24 (and probably double that to account for the time spent pacing/being otherwise unproductive with the puzzle paused -- but the streak remains alive!)

welp, good reminder that you're never immune from having a streak busted by a Tuesday puzzle. although i do think "HETHEY" was questionable fill + clued extremely poorly, since most pronoun pairs are provided in the standard/possessive format, or whatever the proper term for those pronoun types are (she/her, they/them, etc.) and knowing nothing about corsets, my flyspecking was futile.

now THIS is a proper puzzle!

"SKI AREA"? hm...

rarely do i think that 1 square makes the whole puzzle, but the first square of 21A reeeaaally tickled me while doing my fly-specking and correcting the P i originally put there! a double misdirect.

ok, i definitely got a chuckle out of 7D -- on my solving journey, i ended up getting everything except the first letter on the crosses and was greeted with _OKER for a pot-related clue. the magic of crosswords!

ashamed of how long it took me to find "ENO" to "ONO" to get my gold star today

feeling very called out by 102A -- guess I was too excited to do the crossword to go back to sleep!

gotta be a POTY candidate right? so dense and so well done!

breezy and really fun, after an uncharacteristically sloggy early week!

set my Sunday personal best on this one! woohoo thanks for the great puzzle Dylan!

idk if it was just my knowledge gaps or tricky construction but this felt like solving 4 smaller crosswords in one grid! excellent puzzle.

I love when a theme clicks and helps finish the solve! I couldn't figure out what was wrong until I sussed out "DECODERRaNt" which helped me correct 70A to "ERRING". excellent puzzle!

this one stumped me so I'm a little going to be a little salty (thanks, Turbull and pawpaws)... but I find it annoying when spanners are just drawn out versions of already common phrases. "tuckered out", "it's no wonder" and even "loosey goosey" are all waaayyy more common and natural than the 3 bottom spanners and it just seems like an excuse to stuff more letters in there so they go edge to edge. no complaints with the 3 at the top though.

can someone smarter than me explain why, if the constructor wasn't happy with 29A (understandably), they didn't sub the P for a W and use some variation of following clues? 29A: a protector / 29D: alternative to kibble. seems more natural to me...

this was so tuff !

i had MERns for 20D for about 10 minutes and couldn't figure out what i was doing wrong, much less what "KNAVERs" are or who "ERIn" Stonestreet was... it's Mondayyyy!

fun and lovely puzzle! though IMO making the bracketed sections of the themed clues a little more opaque would have led to a more satisfying solve with the 62A revealer clue, it felt a little too obvious to me.