spurious

I would like to complain because I am not solving every Saturday, along with every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday within half a second of every other Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. This was either slightly too easy, or slightly too hard, or both, and took me either 15 seconds more or 15 seconds less than the precise number of seconds I had allocated to solving it. Yeesh.

This may offend some, but be that as it may. If you comment, ‘the puzzle was too easy—I only needed X look-ups’ then you didn’t find the puzzle easy—you found it unsolvable. Yes, some of those look ups will be trivia, to be fair, but trivia is part of crosswords. Perhaps I’m just grumpy because this took me a respectable 40 minutes. They were enjoyable minutes, nonetheless.

Brutal. A mix of things I didn’t know and other things I didn’t know. Somehow got there in the end.

A pleasure to finally solve when, after 30 minutes, you are looking at maybe 10 answers filled in, and suspect none of them may be right.

Great fun. Only stumbling block was MOCHI and MOOD. Mochi I should have known. Mood I would never have known, though perhaps I should have asked my daughter, her being in the neighboring room and always pleased when Dad gets shown up.

Once in a while you simply know you won’t enjoy brute forcing your way through it, click reveal and move on. Nowt wrong with, just a speed date gone wrong.

Enjoyable, but I was eventually done in by KSU and KITES. I had LUTES initially, which fixated me on stringed instruments, and had the weird effect of making me miss KITES even when I went through the alphabet. The K of KSU I could only guess, and after 5 minutes of flyspecking I lost patience and clicked Check Puzzle.

Done in by INTERNET AD, which I had as INTERNET ID, despite having written dozens of the things in a past life. (None for the purposes of click fraud, at least AFAIK.) Need to start studying a list of definite non-words, so I don’t again assume ORCI must be an unusual pluralisation of ORCA.

Crossing of LANAI and ANGI meant I had to hit check puzzle or double my time, already a bit tardy for a Monday. Couldn’t flyspeck as I just couldn’t see MILLIONTHS as anything but MILLI ONTHS, and thought it was wrong. Happens sometimes. Note to self: memorise ANA de Armas. Or actually watch a film made after 1983.

I can in truth say that took longer than Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday put together. If I can somehow get tomorrow done in a PB, it might turn out to have taken longer than the rest of the week.

Cruel top middle for a non-American. (Well, this Australian, anyway.) BANFF, FELIX, NILLA along with two possible spellings of FLYER and the fact that we do not use FLOOR WAX — at least not under that name. (Meaning FELIX couldn’t be guessed.) Thus even a Monday can present troubles.

I’m no hater of rebuses, but with my eyesight, on a phone, trying to see if I have exactly five tiny chocolate treats in the right places . . .

Just under an hour, but pleased when I got there. To those xwstats prodigies who did this in 25 minutes, I can only confess my envy.

If I can’t complete a puzzle au naturale (let me not accuse looker-uppers of cheating), I do like to ask myself _could_ I — or perhaps _should_ I have been able to — do so without help. In this case no, for a chain of difficulties I won’t go into, but that they involved a series of abbreviations for sports teams I have never heard of in sports leagues I could not identify. At least I assume they’re sports teams….

After a brutal Thursday and a fair but tough Friday, nice to go easy on my eyesight and not have to stare at a phone screen for more than 20 minutes. Definitely on the constructor’s wavelength, frequency and amplitude.

I’m sure this will annoy one of the comments section’s elder statesmen, but that was a terrible puzzle. For those who enjoyed it, I’m glad it held some value.

So of course in AU Rice-a-Roni is called Rice-a-Riso (it’s a slightly different product, but same basic idea), which I filled in on auto-pilot. Also, SNL is about the only well-known US TV show we don’t get, so Cecily Strong was unknown to me. Took a while flyspeck that crossing.

As hard as any Friday for me, due to (I’m assuming) fairly basic trivia I just didn’t know. Eventually hit reveal rather than brute force three or four naticks.

Just did the controversial Tuesday and was too late to comment on that one. But wanted to say: it was a fine puzzle but a rubbish Tuesday. The difference between Friday and Tuesday is not even necessarily difficulty but the type of clueing one expects. Editors are to blame, as it could easily have been nudged up to an enjoyable Friday. One could say more, but typing on a phone is painful, metaphorically speaking. Now to do the Sunday. ; )

I much prefer a puzzle to take 30 minutes than an hour and 30 minutes, so enjoyed this. SW more tricky than NW, as I had NSA instead of NSC and couldn’t think of any combination of words that featured the string eaoi.

Even at a perfectly reasonable 35 minutes a crunchy Friday, requiring the odd bit of spellchecking, which I consider within the bounds of fair play. I also permit myself to look up US TV networks. You folks seem to have hundreds—streaming platforms aside we have about five.

Quite a few early PBs. Mine was prevented by the crossing of IRS and ATLAS, both Americanisms. (In AU we used the term street directory — an atlas was for places that required more than a car.)

Really this was a spunky Tuesday, but I got absolutely blocked in the NW. Could not see ANDROIDAPP for the life of me, had SAMSUNGAPP instead. Knew 1A was some sort of pose but not what, and was mislead by 14A, thinking I’d forgotten some well-known sutra. (No doubt the intention.) Plus I don’t know any baseball players, MLB or otherwise. What should have taken 10 minutes took 40. Yeesh.

It is official: BIOME is the new black and white cookie. Two seconds off a sub-10 minute Friday. Bugger. Still a PB.

‘Does as a group?’—clue of the year thus far. Only nitpick was whether it needed the question mark. (And I say this as one bamboozled by it.)

Tough but fair.

A fine 45 minutes I thought, though after lying down for that long I now feel like a late afternoon nap. 46D Namely = idest, i dest, id est, ide st or ides t? What am I missing?

My downfall was basically not knowing a MALIBU was a car nor having heard of SDSU, along with guessing 18A was RIOT. It might seem strange that one might think AUTI is a word, but I just assumed a malibu must have been a type of one.

Good level of Friday, I thought. Stuff like 44a took a while to deduce (know the parts, not the phrase) but were deducible.

After somehow missing a flight I gave myself plenty of time to catch (goodbye, $900) I was at least pleased to make my way through this puzzle while I wait for the next one. (Flight, not puzzle.) Wasn’t sure I’d finish initially. Spent a good amount of time wondering what sort of JOKE BOARD smartphones had, and why I’d never noticed the feature.

Was thinking surely 35D can’t be the hardcore dance style GABBER, that’s too obscure even for a Saturday as clued. But you meant GABBER, someone who talks a lot and won’t shut up. Right . . .

Done in by CROCKER, TENREC and, would you believe it, NOOK. Immediately realised crocker was a US brand I wouldn’t know, but missed nook, even going through the alphabet, because I automatically looked for rhymes with noon. Tenrec is new to me, though now I see it written down it rings a very faint bell.

Straightfoward clueing obscured by a trivia-dense north. A 15-minute puzzle that took half an hour, though I myself was dense for failing to guess OKRA sooner.

Thought BWANA was spelt with a U, so couldn’t see WIG, and couldn’t bring to mind NEMEA. Which I also, for some reason, think is spelt with a U. Tough corner.

I don’t think it’s too much of a gripe to say that KIMS CONVENIENCE is a no-doubt fine but very niche North American reference. Apart from a lot of ‘you either know or you don’t’ answers crossing it, a fine puzzle for those of any latitude or longitude.

Tougher to fill in than to solve (on phone), but was surprised with the gold star—expected a good 10 minutes of flyspecking.

Cute Monday. Had to cheat and look up ORO to get MOJO. For some reason just could not see APART, though was pretty sure of JACKSON HOLE just based on letter probabilities.

Amusingly, I did last Thursday thinking it was today’s Monday, got a PB and it took a minute less than this. Whenever a Monday takes around my average I consider it a firm puzzle, as that average is no doubt skewed by many laborious early attempts.

Would have found 25A easier had it just been SAWS. I’ve sawed through things, don’t think I’ve ever sawed anything up. I feel like if I were to saw up some wood, there’d be wood at the end but not at the beginning.