Cathy

Abyss vs Abysm was my main time suck today! Everything else flowed easily, but maximus felt like it could have worked so I ignored it 🤣I had assumed that the lateral symmetry applied to the placement of the clues in the puzzle, not the letters, so it took me a bit 🤣

I really enjoyed this one today! A great Thursday puzzle! I was tipped off to the trick when I could only fit in "court" when the answer was court side seats! Man eating shark still took me a long time to piece together, but we got there in the the end!

Whereas yesterday the tricky theme tripped me up, today I got it right away 🤣 as soon as PERSE was all that fit for PERSEPHONE I knew something was up! Loved the fillers, I enjoy clever word play vs trivia when it comes to those tricky corners with only a few crosses. I guess you can say that I've got one hand in my pocket and the others doing the crossword ✌🏻✌🏻✌🏻

Everyone seems to be upset over the usage of ETUDE but I was over here stuck for a very long time because I was trying to fit some variation of BOOBIES into "breast milk container"! No offense to the pumping mamas out there, but to get pedantic, the container is in the name 🤣

Also everyone mentioning the song "Vincent" because of Starry Starry Night..... I am going to be vulnerable here, I didn't know that the NOFX version was a cover 🤣 I was surprised that the NYT commentariat were quoting a 00s punk song until I looked it up and saw Don McLean sang it originally. The crossword teaches me something new everyday!

I learned something new today! Who knew that okra had a different name outside the US. Here I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out what else you would call Ladyfingers, the type of long skinny cookie.

Very happy today, got the Sunday in 44:37 without asking my husband for any random trivia (house rule is that it doesn't count as a "look up" if the person helping knows the fact off the top of their head 😂) I would have been about 5 minutes faster but a typo in TOTTERS held me up

I solved the puzzle and had to check the blog to figure out the theme! Did not connect the dots with "ryes" Thankfully I had just made a gothic / vampire themed gift for a friend, so I was familiar with Barnabas 🤣 otherwise the bottom right might have been tricky

It's a good day when the first clue you see is BTS 💜💜💜 Lovely puzzle, I enjoyed the theme and got it fairly quickly.

This puzzle made me go LOLOLOLOL when I realized the hook 😂 a 7:40 Tuesday morning for me, I am extremely pleased with how easily the clues came, figuring out the OOOOOOO sort of early on really helped speed things along with the down clues!

I loved this grid! As a kid with dial up internet, I spent a lot of time playing minesweeper waiting for things to load (or for my mom to get off the phone!!) A typo in SEES (I had seas) had me retyping in every rebus before I realized my mistake 5 minutes later 😅

I have a busy day tomorrow so for the first time I'm driving the crossword early 😂 CRANKY CASEY was what tipped me off to the trick. A fun Sunday!

I clutched to cold cases for wayyyyyyy too long until I erased it and suddenly the upper right corner opened up 😂

I am stuck and came to the wordplay blog for hints.... Only to find out I already knew all the tricky clues outlined in the column 🤣

I really enjoyed today's puzzle! The two letter words in the theme answers were quite fun, and I knew most of the fill. A satisfying solve!!

At first I thought there was too many culture references, but I managed to get everything with the cross clues! I was a joy to CATCHFEELINGS with this puzzle! (Except for the N/M typo I made on MEDIUM RARE that completely disappeared and stumped me for a good 5 minutes and turned a 12 min solve into a 17) 😭

Just couldn't get the mini today, 2 minutes 30 seconds is unheard of for me 😭 I've never seen severance and that threw me for a loop!!

This one was really tricky for me, almost 40 minutes 😭 I was so confident about SESAMEMAYO as 1 across that it locked up my upper right hand corner until I finally gave in and read the blog.

As a millennial woman, I immediately figured out the trick was a rebus when I saw "no strings attached" and knew I had to get the star from *NSYNC inserted somehow 🤣

As an ARMY, I'm always delighted to see BTS as a crossword answer, but did you guys have to remind me of 2022 😭😭😭

2 minutes 34 seconds faster than my average! Loved how the answers just flowed today! I even got TAUGHT TO THE TEST without any down clues 😂 And it's a borahae Monday with a BTS clue 💜💜 maybe I'll pull out a Love Yourself tour dvd to celebrate

Really enjoyed the puzzle today! I was proud of myself to get KALE right away lol

I wrote FUNNYHAHA out without any down clues, and was skeptical I was right. Glad my first guess at a long theme clue was correct!

The intersection of RAY (a person I'm not familiar with) and KRONA (a coin for a country I've not visited) means I was pulling my hair out trying to find the error because REY and KRONE made perfect sense to me 😭

I was finished in under 10 minutes...... Until I got stuck at the crossing of "fished off the coast of Maine" and "vast amount" I got there in the end by running through the alphabet and now feel supply that I didn't see it!!!

Five minutes! That's a record Tuesday for me!

As a millennial and the mother of two teen boys, I'll admit that I got "Kamehameha" from the down clues very quickly, but got stuck for a long time trying to connect Dragon Ball Z to "Hiking" and was looking for other anime clues in the puzzle 🤣

I had some look ups because I couldn't get the theme and was really set on "they them" haha. I had to read the column to make it make sense 😅 today wasn't my day!

Well that was a streak breaker for me! I thought I was going crazy because I knew my across clues were correct, but I also knew that DADDYLONGLEGS and LONGJOHNSILVER and LONGTIMENOSEE were absolutely correct. I had to check the puzzle, erased almost everything, and then realized the commonality of the word LONG having been omitted. I would have liked a revealer clue, but I guess that's on me for not thinking outside the box on a Wednesday!

I don't know what happened today but I had to use check puzzle after 30 minutes. The top half of the puzzle really had me stuck with the people trivia on the down clues and the long acrosses. Some days you got it and some you don't!

Really enjoyed this April fools puzzle! The AVER / AVOW and DNA / RNA are my most common mistakes so I appreciated this one 🤣

I got stuck on EM DASH and was trying to make HEM TAPE work for "come unglued". It wasn't until I read the article that I was able to move past it 😂

I was convinced that I was going to find the word "all"on top of each of the theme clues 🤣🤣 I didn't let it show me down but I didn't get the connection until I read the article.

I was so confused on the key to this one until I got to headgear for a cyclist and realized all I was missing was the HE!! This puzzle made it very difficult to check for Typos 🤣

As ARMY I appreciated the inclusion of my BTS boys as a clue 💜💜💜

I enjoyed the theme once i figured it out! (I was worried a head transplant was shortened to "headsplant" , but can't for the life of me put together "walks, for one" and "stat" what's the connection??

Got this one pretty quickly this morning! I plugged in "NOTMY RODEO" right away and figured out the clue. I had some trouble in the bottom left corner, I can never remember if it's RPI or RBG or RBO or whatever that baseball stat is 😭🤣

Learned something new today, I've never heard of SYRAH wine! I don't drink alcohol often, so those clues always get me 😅

I had to read the article to get ONEMANBAND, I had a bunch of the cross clues but I couldn't make my eyes see the solution 😂

This was a tricky one, I knew there was something with the missing "IT"s, but I didn't make the connection with the extra letters on the other clues until I read the blog!

BONESUPON was wild to me!! I had it as READSUPON for almost the whole grid until I realized it didn't work with any of the down clues. Guess I'll have to bones up on my Jugband instruments!

This one took me 20 minutes, but I blame the fact that I didn't realize the brunch food item part of the theme until after I finished and read the article 🤣 I got the bottomless part, but the brunch food never clicked!

The middle left really tripped me up! CORE, GABE and ELISSA really left me scratching my head for a while, and the long down clue didn't help 🤣

I got stuck right at the end with the Disney clues. I feel some kind of Mandela Effect, because I watched A Bugs Life so many times as a child that the VHS tape wore out..... And I will swear her name was Anna 😵‍💫

I had to check because I felt like I was losing it!!!! Necco wafers DID go out of business in 2018!!!! A Coincidence that two 5 letter candies would be discontinued in the same year. And the center of my grid suffered from my certainty in NECCO (I remember the Wait Wait segment about necco wafers so vividly which is the only reason i retained this haha) From Wikipedia "In 2018, the future of Necco Wafers was unclear after the Necco company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.[6] Round Hill Investments purchased the company out of bankruptcy for $17.3 million in May 2018, but then abruptly ended operations at Necco on July 24, 2018, citing "sanitation issues" it claimed it was previously unaware of."