Edward

I just did not care for this one at all, for some reason. Half of the fun of misdirected cluing is that you get the “aha” with a few letters left. I had quite the opposite experience: only after slogging through crosses did the answer reveal itself, and by then the “aha” had become “oh, huh?” HTTP was a great example. Like, sure, it kind of makes sense once you already know it. But the clue is so vague that you could ONLY ever get it on crosses—a brutal position for 1D that puts you on the back foot immediately. Other toeholds felt similarly torturous and/or nebulous (TAX EXILE? SKI AREA? SEX MANUALS?) Most of these are outside of common parlance, or have components easily interchanged (park for AREA, e.g.) Most answers just fell into this “lumpy” category for me where I’d maybe have part of a compound word that could go a number of ways, leading to more frustration than fun. But that’s just my two bits.

This was kinda fun, but that had to be the single most egregious use of “UIES” I’ve seen in a very long time. This felt chock full of naticks and glue: -RAMOS / TOJO -MIRA / REPINE -GAMELAN, UIES, PROAM all wedged into that NW corner -Tons of three-letter glue: TEA, ERN, SAS, TON, OTT, TOA -Some very obscure/uncommon phrasing: OVERLIE, PITCHMEN -RENOWNS pluralized? That’s… that’s not a thing. All in all, it felt like a lot of shoehorning to make an (admittedly) impressive visual. But it resulted in a puzzle that just felt completely glue-y. Oh, sorry—I meant GLUIES.

Ugh. What’s with the proper noun bloat/Naticks in this one? By my count: ARSENE SERGIO OLSEN WELCHS DAVIES QUITO ARTHUR ASHE PEZ BBC EVAN JJWATT LISA SELENA EUNICE COCO NATO WATUSI IGOR SAS I may be a bit of a grouch-o when I say “yuck, yuck, yuck” to this one.

I genuinely shouted “ELHI?!” at my phone after solving for SOLE as the only logical cross. Look. I know, in retrospect, that it refers to ELementary-HIgh school, but come on. This is getting ridiculous. Tha, plus the atrocious 3x3’s with obscure, awkward fill to the east and west completely deadened my enthusiasm for the theme (which was actually quite clever.) This is sadly in keeping with many of the puzzles of late. I don’t know what else to say except to express my sincere gratitude to Joel for stepping up in Will’s absence, coupled with an equally sincere (and fervent) hope for Will’s return.

I think two things can be true at once. This puzzle can be an incredibly intricate feat of wordplay and an impressive construction. It can also be somewhat flyspeck-y and Natick-y with some pretty contorted and overwrought clues or obscure, trivial answers. Your mileage may vary, but this one seemed like it was more fun to construct than to solve.

I got the theme fairly quickly, but the fact that the “NE” can disappear from NEwhere and reappear wheNEver it suits made some answers very difficult to parse. It doesn’t help that the themed answers as-written have nothing to do with the original clues (SEATTLE is not a stinging jellyfish, as far as I know.) I always find that type of one-sided themed answer a bit dissatisfying. The wordplay feels much more clever if the resulting answer works “both ways,” and this style ends up feeling more contrived than clever. That, plus some odd/choppy fill like SZA, BAI, PPS, and ATL—this puzzle feel like it need some more time in the oven, rather than a quick PAN SEAR.

I love that they got all them colors in the tee-vee. Why, they even managed to get yeller in there!

The abundance of short, choppy fill (VET, HET, ERG, PCB, BOS, STP, etc.) really soured me on this one. The theme was kinda fun but got completely overshadowed by a lot of dud answers (OVIDUCT? LOUSE UP? CATDOM?) The wordplay felt contorted and cramped, giving the puzzle an overall very shrug-worthy vibe when a word was revealed on crosses. Not my personal favorite, but as always, YMMV. Leaving this here because emus SAID SO.

Dis puzzle was a delighd frub stard do finish. Druly a masderpiece of consdrucshun. Nebermind some of da daysayers and haders, I dink dis was one ub da greadesd Sundays I’be solbed in a long dime. Danks Chrisdina and Kadie!

Sam E.’s puzzles tend to be very overwrought and best described as “too clever by half” and this is no exception. Arbitrarily difficult, not by virtue of fun or whimsical wordplay, but by self-indulgent trivia and glue-y crosswordese fill. From start to finish, the clunky 3-letter answers were either yawn-inducing (ROO, EAR, MEW) or hair-pulling oblique (MSG, NRC, HAR). The 4-letters weren’t much better: ADDY, SWIT, LINT, PHIL—none of it particularly fun or interesting. The themed answers were just a very basic form of wordplay where one part of a word gets rearranged and some contrived clue gets used to describe the otherwise nonsensical result. Not particularly fun or interesting, and about as close to themeless as one could reasonably get away with for what’s supposed to be a heavily themed puzzle. Pile on a truckload of proper names and obscure trivia, and this puzzle (for me at least) failed that most golden of rules: it ultimately does not pass the Sunday morning coffee vibe check.

The theme was fun, but I always dislike it a bit when the answers as-written are nonsense. I caught on quickly to what was happening, but ZZBUALDRIN just don’t have the same pleasing visual impact of a theme/rebus with answers that are actual words. That northwest corner was also a bit torturous with Don PARDO, the SOUNDERS, and NAZCA all collectively pushing the boundaries of my (admittedly ZZFUY) memory. Still, a fine Thursday, but perhaps not my favorite kind.

No thank you. Not at all. Not even a little bit. This was a classic example of how service to a theme resulted in choppy, shoehorned filler. None of the clues were fun, memorable, or clever for me. This puzzle just felt entirely soulless. Perhaps I was soured by the Midi only accepting an ampersand and not “N” or a rebus “AND” which already predisposed me to nitpicking. Nevertheless, I did not enjoy either of today’s puzzles in the least.

The theme was fun, but some of the cluing and fill was wonky, to say the least. WNBA FINALS had no acronym/abbreviation in the clue. ECHECK isn’t a dictionary word, and also doesn’t seem like particularly common parlance. TMEN? Come on, nobody calls them that outside of obscure ‘40s noir films. Calling chips and cookies TECH is a bit of a stretch, too. I see we’re doubling down on “ATTA way” again, which is gonna earn some ire from last Saturday’s crowd. WONT DO clued simply as “is insufficient” felt pretty oblique for a pretty crucial central cross, especially give the options for “goggle” (GAze, GAWp, GApe). ARE OUT for “have no more in stock” just felt plain… meh? I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I was completely underwhelmed by a lot of the clues and answers today. I didn’t really giggle or smirk at any of the fun wordplay because I was stuck scratching my head over some of the very contorted phrases used to make it all fit. A little bummed because I usually love the Thursdays (especially from Sam.)

This one was really ruff, but I made it threw. I dough my cap to Meghan Morris, and bough my head. Such construction is no mean feat—it must have been incredibly tuff to put together. Thanks for a delightful Wednesday!! P.S. What did Bilbo tell his nephew when they were baking cakes for the birthday? THROW DOUGH, Baggins!

Just chiming in to once again add that while there are plenty of people who may enjoy Sam E.’s style of cluing, I am consistently put off every time I see their name in the byline because the puzzle will almost inevitably be a slog that saps all the fun out of solving. Their puzzles tend to be chock full of obscure trivia, which is the primary source of difficulty. For those who (like me) tend not to enjoy Sam E. Saturdays, I recommend simply looking up some of the obscure references. I don’t know all the names of NBA commissioners, French stewards, or best directors. Plugging just a handful of those in using lookups made the puzzle a much more enjoyable experience. That said, AGORAE is still not a thing, and no one writes out the “10” in 10K, either.

Back when Episode I first released in theaters, my friends and I went and had a blast. Everyone was dressed up, greeting each other with the stereotypical “May the Force be with you.” You could pick out the Catholics in the crowd easily back then because they’d all reflexively respond “and also with you.” Nowadays, it’s “and with your spirit,” but I still get a little chuckle every time I hear it. Bravo on the incredibly tight turnaround for this puzzle—a delight from top to bottom!

This puzzle was a real EXC(A)V(A)TION. (“Ace in the hole,” emus.)

Too much trivia, not enough fun. The cluing felt more contorted than clever. Even the grid spanners felt dull and uninspired. This many proper nouns, acronyms, and abbreviations felt like sawdust filler in already-stale bread: -AUDRE LORDE -PSP -UGA -MONET (Naticked with Ma/ONTERO) -SDSU -ADU -TOM -HEDY -CTR Glue, glue, and more glue. No shine, no sparkle, no stars, no thank you.

A fun theme with a good “aha!” But it will always bug me when an answer fails to stand on its own. PSTORE, TENTIAL, ALLIONS, etc. are nonsense on their own. While still fun (and in service of a clever Thursday Theme) I just plain don’t like it when the resulting answer isn’t a valid word/phrase, and I couldn’t tell you why.

A smooth, easy, and flowy Friday. Great fill and cluing from top to bottom, with some lovely thematic answers for V-day. I hope today, everyone finds love—whether a secret AMOUR or your longtime ONE LOVE, may today be a day of people who CATCH FEELINGS watching ROM COMs. Many lovers today will share a huge moment—THE KISS and perhaps even a few I DOS. Some will just CANOODLE while their partner WOOS them with hugs and chocolates. And some will choose today to love themselves, settling in for some VITAL self-care with NO MESS, and I think that’s SO SWEET too. As for me, I’M DOING OK and I hope all of you fellow puzzlers are, too. Let today be a reminder to love everyone, including ourselves. ❤️ Love!

I was willing to give this puzzle a fair shake until MDCCC for “last year of John Adams’ presidency.” So chock full of trivia and god-awful 3-letter drivel to do… what? Shoehorn in 13 state names? Terrible, terrible, terrible. No fun wordplay, no “aha!” moments, just a very transparently obvious theme that obnoxiously impedes a bevy of “meh”-inducing answers. I do the NYT crossword for fun and interesting wordplay, which was unfortunately entirely absent from this dull puzzle. I don’t like to criticize crosswords too unfairly or harshly, but this puzzle was one I genuinely wish I could undo and spare myself the time and headache.

Not me confidently plopping down “gastritis” instead of DYSPEPSIA. It’s not my fault they’re the same length. Anyways, not a big fan of this one. A lot of trivia and odd crossings (MITES/TILSIT being the most commonly cited example.) This felt significantly harder and required some lookups (with apologies to SUSAN LUCCI.) These kinds of Saturdays are just never my favorite. There were some kind of fun wordplay clues (Precipitous for RAINY, par example) but overall this felt more like bar trivia drudgery than a crossword to me. It’s fine I guess, just not my slice of cheese.

I do sincerely hope that this crossing of BRAIN SURGERY and ROCKET SCIENCE is a nod to the fantastic Mitchell and Webb skit of similar theme. Fun side tangent: my father was often fond of the Spoonerism “it’s not exactly rocket surgery,” an aphorism that I couldn’t help but use myself.

I did not care for this one at all. Unnecessarily oblique cluing, given that the answers themselves were already difficult to parse. CPLUS as a 2.3? Obtuse, at best. Crossing the PRU, a 3-letter Natick? Oof. PFLAG over DIAERESIS? Rough. Add to that a significant amount of Spanish trivia, and this puzzle sagged, rather than sang. Not a fan.

My puzzle “solved” despite me missing the “C” in MAC/ONE ACT (it was penciled in by our mysterious PRIOR PASSENGER.) And if that ain’t the most devilish, maddeningly adorable twist to this banger of a Tuesday, I don’t know what is!

CBGB crossing GMC on a Monday was one of the most Naticky Naticks in recent memory. The theme was… fine, I guess. But I just kept hitting too many speed bumps for it to feel like a typical breezy Monday. It made me frown into my morning coffee, which is never a good thing on Monday.

While I understand (and relate to) the outpouring of frustration re: underlining, it's a little sad that any comment or critique of the puzzle gets lost so easily. Technical issues aside, I found this to be a delightful and breezy Thursday puzzle, with some excellent cluing ("Go from 0 to 60, say" for COUNT was my personal favorite). I didn't encounter any true Naticks, learned a few pieces of trivia (RABAT has a royal palace!) and had fun deducing the theme once I caught the COLA in Carol Brady's name. Overall, a very fun and fairly easy Thursday that seems to have been done a great disservice by technical issues.

Tough but fair, coming in right at my average after several erasures and “ohhhhh!”-ing. Several delightful reveals for me, including ISPEPSIOK, AISLESEAT, and IMNOTAROBOT. Several mischievous misdirects to untangle made this puzzle a real joy to solve. All the more impressive that it did so without overly relying on proper nouns or obscure trivia—just clever wordplay. A consummate Friday brain-twiggler!

What a satisfying Saturday. Just enough crunch to make you frown in concentration, but plenty of wordplay to make you grin when you catch on. Even the fill felt lively and fresh. This is now my third puzzle that I remember really enjoying from Katie, and I’m excited to see what else she comes up with. Thanks for a great Saturday!

Everyone is really up in arms about the wrong thing here. Why are we not talking about how heinous that HECHE/LAHIRI/AGEE proper noun crossing was?! emus: please resolve the conflict in the comments

I do not like these proper names, They make me TENSE, my interest WANES. It's fine to know about Aunt VIV, But clearer clues you then should give. ESSO too would have been fine, But NADU/SANAA crossed a line. On a scale from ONE TO TEN I would not solve this one again.

This one just felt wonky to me. A lot of “Huh? Oh, right, I suppose” soured me a bit on some of the more fun wordplay. STICKUM is not a word I’ve heard before, achieved on crosses through the mildly archaic AUGUR. TACH for “dash device” felt needlessly oblique, as most people hardly call it that (not to mention it’s technically a shortening of “tachyometer” clued sans colloquialism.) URANIUM ORE was chuckle-worthy, but frustratingly difficult to deduce given the somewhat contorted “BEAUTS” (itself clued pretty ambiguously.) Not my preferred cup of tea, but I can see some folks enjoying the challenge this one serves up.

Everyone is glowing (justifiably so) over the mountain of fun answers and clues, but are we really not going to talk about RDA / ADESTE / ANGLE? What a brutal crossing. Emus please don’t throw SHADE.

I’m just here to object strenuously to “WPA MURALS” being clued sans acronym/abbreviation, as is customary. These conventions exist for a reason, and when applied inconsistently, cause ambiguity of the least fun variety. Emu food

Oh this was positively delightful. It took a few moments after staring at the revealer to unveil the theme. My smile got bigger and bigger with each across answer I made the connection on. Truly a fantastic little Tuesday for me. It hit the sweet spot of difficulty (for a Tuesday) with an absolutely guffaw-inducing theme. My hat’s off to you, Mr. Cheng. TANKS for such a wonderful start to my day.

A few minor speed bumps on this otherwise pleasant Tuesday. I add my voice to the growing chorus of “What the heck are EARLAPS?” I was similarly stymied by Death of a Salesman’s cross with the Zambian capital—a bit of an obscure proper noun crossing for a Tuesday, to my taste, but somehow LOMAN dredged itself out of my distant memory for the solve. Despite those minor nits to pick, the theme gave me a hearty chuckle, and I’ll forgive quite a bit in service to great wordplay. A solid debut for Mr. Werfel!

It seems I'm in the minority here, but despite enjoying the theme, I found a lot of the clues/answers to be just a shade too oblique for my tastes. SWAK was a great example of this. Only after filling it in on crosses (then tilting my head and squinting) did "sealed with a kiss" pop out. There was no "aha!" when filling it in--only a tepid, post hoc "oh, I guess." A lot of the clues ended up that way for me: CAR for "F before E" crossing the mildly obscure SQUAB (a dish that I imagine is pretty far outside most people's culinary and linguistic wheelhouses.) Add that to the nearby CREEL crossing QUEUES, and that whole NE corner felt more like a slog than was necessary. Even some of the longer answers felt a bit... off? MILD instead of "warm" WINTER; ON IN YEARS omitting the "getting" bit; KEWPIE for a dash of extra obscurity crossing the equally likely DWI/DuI. Just not on the constructor's wavelength with this one, I suppose, but I'm glad others seem to be enjoying it more than I did.

Robyn Weintraub’s puzzles are always a delight, and this was no exception. The NW corner started out mystifying to me, forcing a meandering clockwise journey until I finally circled back, armed with more crosses from below. Somehow managing to dredge LEOPOLD Stokowski from the MIST of memory was the key I needed to finally crack CARGOPANTS. I was off to the races from there, opening up my GAIT to a sprint to the finish! Just enough crunch for a Friday without being too obtuse. Perhaps a titch on the easier side, but still firmly in end-of-week territory. Bravo, Robyn!

Great puzzle with a chuckle worthy theme. Fun fact: SELF-REFERENTIAL fits very neatly for 20A. Signed, -A guy who very confidently (and rather erroneously) plunked down “SELF-REFERENTIAL” for 20A.

A brilliant, fun, and highly engaging solve—albeit a titch “soft” for a Thursday. Still an absolute delight. Still, as a native-born Michigander, I’ll still grouse about the coastline trivia. Most measures either exclude freshwater coastline (there goes MI) or include freshwater coastline AND ALSO tidal inlets (so FL gets a massive boost.) If we go by most laypeople’s’ definition of “coastline,” MI beats out everyone but AK quite handily with 3000+ miles. But I digress. Great puzzle, Kolkowitz(es? i?)!

I’m a big fan of Robyn, and some of the larger entries were brilliant. BABY GROOT was a notably excellent debut. My only nit to pick is that INDO had to be filled in on crosses—despite INDOChina being a term I’d heard a few times, it just didn’t ping my radar for whatever reason today. Otherwise a typical peanut butter puzzle from Robyn: somehow both smooth and crunchy, and unmistakably delightful.

A good theme is like a good punchline. It should give you pause, then snap into place and make you feel a bit silly for not seeing it coming. This did neither of those for me. Moreover—just like a joke—if it takes a full paragraph to explain it, it probably wasn’t all that good. How was the solver supposed to know which letters to remove? Nothing in the puzzle indicated you should remove the same four letters. Even after getting the solve from crosses, I kept scratching my head trying to remove the first four, last four, and fourth letters. Conceding defeat and turning to wordplay left me with a feeling of “Oh. Huh. Sure, I guess.” Such a response to a puzzle’s theme (much like to a punchline) tells you a lot about its appeal.

Confidently entered “stupid autocorrect” for the revealer, only to be firmly disabused once I started working the crosses. A fun, albeit unremarkable Sunday. Emus fat-fingered this comment

Fun, but a little clunky in spots. I agree with others that WHEREDO(WEST)AND reads very oddly, as the revealer might suggest writing “west” backwards to some. I’m also not a fan of word soup in favor of theme, so here’s some clues for the wonky ones: DRI(NORTH) - Arid (or abstaining) upper region? DNA(WEST) - Kanye’s line of genes? (EAST)ORE - Virtual marketplace? (SOUTH)OPE - Transplanted Midwesterner’s “Pardon, pardner”? ZIA/ZOROASTRIAN was a teensy bit Natick-y too, and EXURB/AXON plumbed some pretty deep vocabulary for a Thursday. Nevertheless, an enjoyable (if slightly more challenging) Thursday!

Way too many proper nouns and obscure trivia for my tastes (“What do you mean you’ve never heard of a TENREC?”) Especially natick-y in the top left corner where READPALMS and READhAndS work equally well if you don’t know MEARA, LEDA, and (ugh) PAH. A few of the fun longer entries (GOTCHA DAY, FRIENDLY REMINDER) still couldn’t quite save the fun for me on this one.

I DID not karat all for this puzzle. Not even A TAD.

I know that Friday is meant to be a “straight” puzzle, but I confess I was a little disappointed at such a stark absence of Halloween-related clues—especially considering the uniqueness and timely themes of today’s Strands, Connections, and full-app “dark theme” unveiling. Still a very fun and solid Friday, but a part of me wishes that it had some more seasonally appropriate “crunch” (like some candy being distributed today!)

My flyspecking experience at the end of this delightful puzzle: “ETHENE? SHEESH!”