DZ

I thought it wasn’t possible. But here I am. Sitting here. With the gold star on my screen. I just did a Sunday puzzle without any lookups, hints, help, or even coming to the column. In 31 minutes. AND I guessed the theme all on my own :) I do apologize for gloating but I’m gonna have to pat myself on the back for this one, do a little tooting of my own horn. I’m submitting a screenshot of this in lieu of my homework assignments this week. I feel a thrill, a rush, a newfound vigor. While this was no Thursday/ Friday/ Saturday, soon no puzzle will be safe from me >:) This is merely the beginning. Let this be a beacon of hope to all you crossword newbies out there, young and old, digital or paper users: the day WILL come. Whether it be Monday or Thursday or Saturday or Sunday, your first 100% no help grid awaits Now to retreat back into my corner of crossword obscurity as I continue to thrash through the archives. Have a lovely day, all :)

as someone who’s hair is currently in BOXBRAIDS to avoid getting up extra early to do it before my 830s, I adored this puzzle! I actually managed to figure out a Thursday theme!!!! (well ~kinda~ bc I “unbraided” the entries on the downs, THEN noticed the acrosses were weird and had to go back.) but that didn’t stop me from hyping myself up because I made halfway before even opening the wordplay!!!! I even managed to avoid ye olde ECG vs EKG debacle! 🤩 my recent obsession with crosswording to get through a boring lecture is paying off (don’t worry, my grades are great as well 😌) still had a few look-ups— one day I’ll learn every achievement of Mr T and these various celebs of before my time but for now I gotta go to class. do the emus like ANNIES? I heard their cheddar bunnies are yummy, might pick some up for a snack after class 🐰

🅱️limey! 🅱️ecause I was 🅱️ARred from 🅱️reezing through this 🅱️rainteaser by references that 🅱️oggled my 🅱️rain, and 🅱️eing 🅱️are a 🅱️estie to 🅱️ounce ideas off of, I 🅱️anked on the 🅱️ane of 🅱️ing’s existence (Google, my 🅱️eloved crossword-helping 🅱️lessing) to 🅱️egin 🅱️iting 🅱️ack the clues that had 🅱️efuddled this 🅱️aby crossworder to 🅱️eat the 🅱️runt of the puzzle. It wasn’t too 🅱️rutal though, not enough to 🅱️reak me! 🅱️ounded to the end before class ended. (ok I’m 🅱️urnt out of 🅱️ words hehehe) emus, I didn’t grab 🅱️reakfast before my 8:30, but I’m picking up a snack 🅱️etween classes. lmk what y’all want

i would like to formally dedicate today’s perfect, lookup-less, column-less Friday solve to the Seattle Mariners. thank you for keeping me in the loop on MLB news (that I would otherwise not pay any attention to) juuuuuuuuuust enough to have read several headlines containing the name Shohei Ohtani in the past year or so. luckiest “what if it’s this guy lol” first guess for me, ever! hoping the team has the same luck for the rest of the season :) go mariners!

no 8:30 class tomorrow so I get to stay up late and do the crossword (and catch up on Bridgerton hehe). ASARULE i only do a crossword on the day of, so I started right at midnight (but made a snack halfway through). still finished in 8:59 though!! not my Monday PB but I still GIVEPROPS to myself for only one google search (sorry Ms. Kagan and whoever the Mad Men are). any Motorsport fans in the crossword-dom? the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix and Indy 500 really PUTONASHOW on Sunday (though the latter more than the former)!! 🏎️🏁 Dearest Emus, I’m afraid I finished my midnight snack but I have some vanilla bean gelato I can share if you’re willing to watch Bridgeton with me 🍨🐝

what if i started using a QUIPU to track my personal finances…🤔

crossworld, are y’all feeling this heat? just got one degree hotter for the class of 2025 🎓😎🎉 (seemed like i BLINKed and just like that i was walking across the stage) it’s been a few months since i’ve done the crossword (couldn’t let that degree slip through my fingertips when i was so close to the finish line) but now that all that uni stuff is finally over it’s time to put my degree to the REAL test: the NYT Tricky Thursday crossword puzzle. luckily this one went pretty easy on my fledgling degree. pretty decent first pass, got the revealer instantly, and was able to fill in most of the rest before i had to rendezvous with Ms. Amlen to wrap up the rest. the smooth fill had me considering going back for my masters of science in crosswording… but let me see what the end of the week brings before i start putting in any applications 😆 ❗️spoiler❕ just a personal preference 😅 but… it would have helped me a little bit if the answers for the (R) downs followed the same convention as the acrosses, with the clue on the right being when the right ‘blinker’ was ‘on.’ ex: 5D might have been [Christmas entree/ Injury]: right blinker off = HAM; right blinker on = HA(R)M 🎉congrats to my fellow class of 2025 grads! 🎉 no assignments = time to catch up on the archive :)

What’s good crossworld! Your resident GenZ crossworder here. Been lurking around on the wordplay page for a while but thought I’d join the fun and give some views as a younger crossword solver. I only started doing the crossword a month ago but I’ve been working my way through some of the archives for funsies 😜 Today was SUCH a fun puzzle! Wasn’t hard at all (even I managed to get through it in 6 with no looks ups lol, I’m far from a crossword purist), and loved the theme and animation. Nice n short so I wasn’t distracted from lecture for tooooo long ahahaha I’ve gathered I need to leave food for the emus?? Do they like popcorn chicken?? Just grabbed some on the way home from class

this was difficult for me, a really really hard one— BUT!! this was the type of puzzle I like!! I didn’t feel like I was stuck because I didn’t know the capital of a bygone empire from ye olde chamber pot days, but because I simply had to expand my mindset a little. google and Siri felt a little left out during this solve but that’s ok!! defo the type of puzzle I had to circle back to a few times, and felt proud that I got it done! reading the comments lets me really see the diversity of us crossworders. the CHA CHA SLIDE and cupids shuffle were considered old school line dances but were STAPLES at every dance from elementary school to high school. 💃🏿🕺🏿💃🏿🕺🏿🪩 emus! just grabbed a burger from a certain Seattle burger chain that I’m sure won’t SLIDE if I type it’s name. ate the burger and milkshake but I have some bottom-of-the-bag fries if you’d like🍔🍟🥤

bit late but popping in to say Gen Z (well most of us) know what ascii is!! beginning coding often uses ascii art before programmers know how to use proper graphics. as for the sentence following it in the blog… yeah idk 😂 I could read each word individually but in that order, you lost me 💀💀 (happy to provide a translation if needed😁) as I was working my way through the archives for PuzzlePractice™️ i was JUST wondering what happened to the blackbird poems!!! nice to get a lil update, though I still have no idea where this may be going emus, I went to my local weekly farmers market and I have fresh apples, bread, and cheese. a quaint meal but I do love to set my LEDs to a candlelight- like color and pretend like I’m in the 1600’s with such a meal. willing share an apple🍎

loved this puzzle today!! As an uni student, MCGRAW hill, READing AHEAD, and SCIENCE LABs were perfect references. a nice, doable Friday for me, and I didn’t have to keep asking Siri about bands or movies from before my time! speaking of LOOSING SLEEP, I did this puzzle coming off an all nighter for a project (the Formula One 🏎️ race weekend in a wildly different time zone pushes me through the wee hours of the morning). I think the sleep deprivation did me well as I came up with answers I didn’t even know I knew💀. won’t be trying it again bc I thought “CHEESE Whizz” was a perfectly acceptable answer. will, however, be taking a nice long nap immediately after class today. To the author: if you get on Survivor, I’ll be cheering you on!! 11 year old me tried to record an audition tape on my iPod, was devastated to hear there wasn’t a Survivor junior i could be on 😭. your puzzle didn’t ~Outwit~ me, but hopefully you’ll ~Outplay~ the competition and ~Outlast~ them as I did with this puzzle!!! 🏝️ emus: y’all can have a sip of my energy drink, I suppose. is caffeine bad for emus?

This GEN ZER does not plan to do any BABY PROOfing anytime soon in her life. I do, however, like to make comically useless robots using SERVOs, play on my MOBILE PHONE (in my IDLE time between homework and classes), and eat GUAC. oh yeah, and do the crossword hehe 😊 Do the emus like ramen? im a uni student I have plenty ofc🍜🍜🍜

Fun puzzle and not too many references I had to look up! I love a good pun, though it was hard trying not to giggle as I solved it during my lecture today hahaha! My friend got in on it, we had fun solving it together 😆 Do the emus like cheese? I can share some of my panini I grabbed after class

This one spilled past my usual puzzle solving time in class today (and my friend isn’t in this class so I had no help 🙄 I pay attention in lectures I promise😭). I refused to get rid “thou shalt” so I was cooked in the SW for a minute but I got there eventually lol Do the emus like hand pies? Just picked up a butternut squash and a beef and cheese pie 😋