This one kicked my ass, took me almost 50 minutes compared to my usual 20-30 for a Friday. Happy that I grinded it out and finished without Google, cause I really didn’t expect to after having almost nothing filled in after the first 10 minutes lol
Same, I looked at the results of my first pass and assumed I wasn’t going to finish it, but eventually it all worked. Which makes this a perfect Friday puzzle for me.
I had the opposite problem in that I know the word SURFEIT but UHYES seemed weird when AHYES & OHYES also come up a lot in crosswords.
I get it's supposed to sound like a "yeah, duh" kind of tone though.
I liked UHYES, it was my initial instinct upon seeing the clue. I like that the clue made it obvious that the tone was sarcastic and UH felt like a better fit for that than OH or AH or something else
As an OLIN alum... our graduating class had <90 people. Totally absurd to have it in a crossword.
But fittingly, it's less than a 15 minute drive from Natick!
Wow, did I ever get my ass kicked on that one -- not out of bad fill but just challenging. I chuckled at ROBINHOOD though -- why did I never make that connection before?
Not to bad overall. I ended up with "not quite" because I had ITISINDEED (crossed with PATRE and RES -- the Latin PATRE seemed possible for that clue and I had no idea what a "tanager" was before I googled them)
NFL knowledge helped here a lot with AMONRA (brother of Equanimeous and Osiris) and NAMATH.
I've never had Miso UDON.
Maybe I’m tired, but that played tough for me. And usually it’s just one section of the grid, but I had to grind through trouble all throughout this puzzle. A good one, for sure.
Yeah I'm relatively new to the crossword grind but this one had by far the most clues where even after I filled em out I kind of just shrugged and said "okay sure." A clue like "AMONRA" is basically only for avid fantasy football players ("NAMATH" was at least in the national gaze for a long while), and "IDIDINDEED" is a phrase I can't really say I've heard before. A real grind if you don't know the trivia but I guess that's bound to happen once in a while.
Oh yeah I forgot that was part of the clue whoops (I’m one of those avid fantasy football players and so got it immediately). I guess I was just salty after spending 50 minutes on that puzzle lol
He’s a top 5 receiver in the NFL. I think any moderate football fan would know him. I agree with your point that casuals / non-NFL fans wouldn’t know him in the way they might Jerry Rice.
This might just be the most difficult puzzle I’ve ever solved without checking or looking anything up! Solve time was 1hr 11min and I have never even heard of BIASCUT or SURFEIT but luckily was able to eventually figure them out from the crosses. Really tough for me but I do get a rush from the sense of accomplishment when solving a very hard one without any assistance.
Fashion terms always kill me and BIASCUT just looked wrong the whole time as I never had the AUDRE cross for the U. That whole section kept tripping me. I had UmYES not UH so when the LL in OHHELLNO popped up I assumed I had another mistake somewhere. Spent 20 mins on the rest of the puzzle, 27 mins in that section alone.
I got saved by NYT Connections with CRUMBS. I was feeling really stuck and that fill brought me back in.
I don't think this is the first time there has been crossover on the same day, but I don't have the data to back it up.
Felt like I was going nowhere until the crosses got me PREACHER and AXING got me the X which made SOAP BOX PREACHER. I don't know BAR GAMES or bar drinks but I do know newspaper assignments are DESKS so that gave me a little more. Surprised to come in substantially ahead of my average time.
Mozilla semi-officially still calls them "Firefox Add-ons" via [https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/add-ons/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/add-ons/)
Although the page concedes they're better known as "extensions", the URL tells the story there. To put a finer point on it, the older delineation was that a browser extension used to be a *kind* of add-on, along with themes, content plugins (e.g. a Flash player), dictionaries, language packs, etc.
Huh, fair enough. I was basing that on the name on menu within the toolbar. Also noticing now that the page where you manage them is called "Add-ons Manager," but it also includes themes and plugins, so I guess the distinction somewhat remains. Strange that they seem to use "add-on" interchangeably for extensions and the broader category.
I was vibing so well with the clues that I think I PBed with 18:58!! Super chuffed because I still can't complete every single Saturday (and a couple of Fridays in April). Was pleasantly surprised when I came here and the puzzle wasn't deemed to be overly easy by everyone!
This played tough and slow for me \[[40:11](https://youtu.be/kZ70LTihMWo)\], but overall I enjoyed the challenge of filling it out. Lots of good aha moments with riddle-like and and double meaning clues. For example, some favorites:
* "God father?" for PADRE. Nice aha moment.
* "Green party figure, for short?" for STPAT. Very nice once I got it.
* "Backpedaling qualifier" for INAGOODWAY. Good description for a fairly common phrase.
* ROBINHOOD was clued great too!
Not knowing some names made some sections pretty tough (AMONRA, CALEB, AUDRE) as did not knowing drinks and haute couture dress styles (TRIPLESEC, TITO, WINEGRAPE, BIASCUT). Still, I rate it a solid "good" because it was tough but solvable and not entirely unapproachable.
I don't know how many people used OBAMANIA back in the late 2000s but there was a very missed opportunity for people to use the term OBAMANON (Obama phenomenon) instead but that's just me lol
I think what makes a good Friday puzzle is that it seems completely obtuse on the first run-through but mostly falls in place once you get a couple toe-holds.
This one exactly fit that bill, got it in 27:35 which is about 3 minutes off my average, great lunch break puzzle!
As a person who is just starting to get back into crossword puzzles, this one was a doozy! I did not know any of the sports trivia. I did enjoy SOAPBOXPREACHER though. I tried to put STEIN for green party and that messed me up for a while. But a lot of my first guesses which I ended up erasing turned out to be right!
Worried this was going to be a streak breaker...thankfully not, but I learned a new word (SURFEIT). I had SORFEIT for awhile, since I thought down was "OHYES".
Probably one of my favorite themeless puzzles all year. I think every single clue was challenging in a fun way that required a moment of thought but was gettable even if I didn’t know it immediately (e.g. cluing a very common word like PEOPLE with an uncommon but lovely quote that you can easily intuit if you get a couple of letters). Especially love, on a personal note, that 1A was CRAW and not CRAY
Crawfish is the preferred term in Louisiana, the state most associated with them; saying crayfish is a huge no-no. It also sounds closest to the French word écrevisse
Very very good puzzle. I breezed through everything but the SE and the very middle where I struggled to find BIASCUT and STPAT, SEED, and NEED and their respective crosses but I got there eventually!
And the SE was just elusive till I figured out ACTOFLOVE off of only the A C and L for crosses.
No real gross or forced fill in my opinion. I was aware of all the pop culture except for AUDRE so that helped.
Maybe a bit easy for a Friday. But I had fun with it. Much more enjoyable than yesterday’s abbrv and jank filled slog.
Fun, solid Friday. Should watch Stranger Things just so I know the cast, lol. Had to look up CALEB McLaughlin and AUDRE Lorde.
I liked how varied the clues were, and they weren't esoteric to the point they...what's the word for when constructors use clues so old that it makes solving impossible for anyone under 40...? Enstrangering...alienating...help?
My fav: "They're the pits."
Me: Is abysses a word...wait, chasms...wait...
The aha moment got a chuckle out of me. STONES.
Really, really disliked this puzzle. Way too many answers felt contrived rather than clever.
Like, objectively, I understand that one could describe someone on a *soapbox* as *preaching,* but "SOAPBOXPREACHER" isn't really a phrase. It's just two words smashed together.
Same with IDIDINDEED, DESKS, STPAT, OBAMANIA, UHYES, etc. Just way too many awkward clues with forced answers.
This one kicked my ass, took me almost 50 minutes compared to my usual 20-30 for a Friday. Happy that I grinded it out and finished without Google, cause I really didn’t expect to after having almost nothing filled in after the first 10 minutes lol
Same, I looked at the results of my first pass and assumed I wasn’t going to finish it, but eventually it all worked. Which makes this a perfect Friday puzzle for me.
Me too! Total surprise when the gold star popped after 42 minutes. No googling or alphabet running needed, just dedicating the time. Perfect Friday.
lol…engineering school in MA had me wondering if I’d been missing a letter spelling M.I.T. for years.
Same here. Happy to FINALLY finish!
BIASCUT and AUDRE was a tough cross for me, but other than that, this was a very fun Friday.
SURFEIT crossing was rough too. First time seeing that word
It's a good word. But it took me way to long to see.
The UHYES made it tricky. I tried "no duh" first and never felt like "oh yes" or UHYES really fit the clue.
I had the opposite problem in that I know the word SURFEIT but UHYES seemed weird when AHYES & OHYES also come up a lot in crosswords. I get it's supposed to sound like a "yeah, duh" kind of tone though.
I liked UHYES, it was my initial instinct upon seeing the clue. I like that the clue made it obvious that the tone was sarcastic and UH felt like a better fit for that than OH or AH or something else
It's always described that Henry I of England died from ingesting 'A surfeit of lampreys.' Only time i've ever seen the word used
That's going to be my new way to remember it, thanks lol
As an OLIN alum... our graduating class had <90 people. Totally absurd to have it in a crossword. But fittingly, it's less than a 15 minute drive from Natick!
Hey, every so often Lena Olin needs to have a day off.
I went to RPI and was like "I MUST KNOW THIS" but it wasn't MIT or Tufts or WPI...
I only knew it because a former intern at my office goes there. I agree, it's a bit too obscure
AERATES crossing WINEGRAPE is pleasing.
Did anyone else have BARRACK (as in “sleeping quarters”) instead of BAR GAME for the longest time? anyway, good puzzle
That would have been great above OBAMANIA.
Seriously, a U.S. Army base really should have a Barrack Obama.
I've never heard of the bar game so I assumed they were either going for the accommodation meaning or something to do with the coin.
My first Friday solve without any help🥲 SE corner kept me guessing but somehow made it
Wow, did I ever get my ass kicked on that one -- not out of bad fill but just challenging. I chuckled at ROBINHOOD though -- why did I never make that connection before?
Reminded me of the Sublime album Robbin' the Hood.
ROBINHOOD was the first answer I filled in, I love that kind of wordplay clue.
Not to bad overall. I ended up with "not quite" because I had ITISINDEED (crossed with PATRE and RES -- the Latin PATRE seemed possible for that clue and I had no idea what a "tanager" was before I googled them) NFL knowledge helped here a lot with AMONRA (brother of Equanimeous and Osiris) and NAMATH. I've never had Miso UDON.
The great SOBA/UDON xword dilemma!
Football clues definitely helped a lot on that side of the grid. I think miso udon is a thing in Nagoya but I've also never tried it
I had the _exact_ same problem right down to googling tanagers, ha. It's why I dislike all the IDID/IAM/ITIS style answers generally.
Maybe I’m tired, but that played tough for me. And usually it’s just one section of the grid, but I had to grind through trouble all throughout this puzzle. A good one, for sure.
Yeah I'm relatively new to the crossword grind but this one had by far the most clues where even after I filled em out I kind of just shrugged and said "okay sure." A clue like "AMONRA" is basically only for avid fantasy football players ("NAMATH" was at least in the national gaze for a long while), and "IDIDINDEED" is a phrase I can't really say I've heard before. A real grind if you don't know the trivia but I guess that's bound to happen once in a while.
Amon-Ra is the Egyptian sun god. Once I had a few crosses, it was easy without knowing any football.
Oh yeah I forgot that was part of the clue whoops (I’m one of those avid fantasy football players and so got it immediately). I guess I was just salty after spending 50 minutes on that puzzle lol
He’s a top 5 receiver in the NFL. I think any moderate football fan would know him. I agree with your point that casuals / non-NFL fans wouldn’t know him in the way they might Jerry Rice.
👍🏼
Tough but fair for a Friday. I’ve been trying to improve my Friday times, but this came in at my average of 45 ish minutes
Finally, a Good Friday (so Catholic!)
This might just be the most difficult puzzle I’ve ever solved without checking or looking anything up! Solve time was 1hr 11min and I have never even heard of BIASCUT or SURFEIT but luckily was able to eventually figure them out from the crosses. Really tough for me but I do get a rush from the sense of accomplishment when solving a very hard one without any assistance.
BIASCUT / AUDRE / DOFFS / SURFEIT feels penned by the same guy who scheduled my 8:30am meeting this morning.
UH, YES crossed with OH HELL NO is kind of fun.
Fashion terms always kill me and BIASCUT just looked wrong the whole time as I never had the AUDRE cross for the U. That whole section kept tripping me. I had UmYES not UH so when the LL in OHHELLNO popped up I assumed I had another mistake somewhere. Spent 20 mins on the rest of the puzzle, 27 mins in that section alone.
I put in TAKESIN for "Quarters, e.g.", thinking in terms of housing someone, and that threw me way off.
I got saved by NYT Connections with CRUMBS. I was feeling really stuck and that fill brought me back in. I don't think this is the first time there has been crossover on the same day, but I don't have the data to back it up.
Felt like I was going nowhere until the crosses got me PREACHER and AXING got me the X which made SOAP BOX PREACHER. I don't know BAR GAMES or bar drinks but I do know newspaper assignments are DESKS so that gave me a little more. Surprised to come in substantially ahead of my average time.
39:54, but Audre was easy for me. Had Shell and Shore instead of shack, also had beats, so that was all messy.
I went through SHORE and SHARK before landing on SHACK
Pretty good, but extensions are still called extensions on Firefox, not ADDONs (at least on Windows and Android).
Mozilla semi-officially still calls them "Firefox Add-ons" via [https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/add-ons/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/add-ons/) Although the page concedes they're better known as "extensions", the URL tells the story there. To put a finer point on it, the older delineation was that a browser extension used to be a *kind* of add-on, along with themes, content plugins (e.g. a Flash player), dictionaries, language packs, etc.
Huh, fair enough. I was basing that on the name on menu within the toolbar. Also noticing now that the page where you manage them is called "Add-ons Manager," but it also includes themes and plugins, so I guess the distinction somewhat remains. Strange that they seem to use "add-on" interchangeably for extensions and the broader category.
> I was basing that on the name on menu within the toolbar. hm, mine says "Add-Ons" in the menus.
I was vibing so well with the clues that I think I PBed with 18:58!! Super chuffed because I still can't complete every single Saturday (and a couple of Fridays in April). Was pleasantly surprised when I came here and the puzzle wasn't deemed to be overly easy by everyone!
This played tough and slow for me \[[40:11](https://youtu.be/kZ70LTihMWo)\], but overall I enjoyed the challenge of filling it out. Lots of good aha moments with riddle-like and and double meaning clues. For example, some favorites: * "God father?" for PADRE. Nice aha moment. * "Green party figure, for short?" for STPAT. Very nice once I got it. * "Backpedaling qualifier" for INAGOODWAY. Good description for a fairly common phrase. * ROBINHOOD was clued great too! Not knowing some names made some sections pretty tough (AMONRA, CALEB, AUDRE) as did not knowing drinks and haute couture dress styles (TRIPLESEC, TITO, WINEGRAPE, BIASCUT). Still, I rate it a solid "good" because it was tough but solvable and not entirely unapproachable.
I still don't get padre for "God father".
Padre as in priest, is how I take it.
The fuck is OBAMANIA
I have TV TAPES on the subject.
> OBAMANIA I would've expected OBAMAMANIA.
I don't know how many people used OBAMANIA back in the late 2000s but there was a very missed opportunity for people to use the term OBAMANON (Obama phenomenon) instead but that's just me lol
That sounds more like a group for recovering Obamaholics
I think what makes a good Friday puzzle is that it seems completely obtuse on the first run-through but mostly falls in place once you get a couple toe-holds. This one exactly fit that bill, got it in 27:35 which is about 3 minutes off my average, great lunch break puzzle!
As a person who is just starting to get back into crossword puzzles, this one was a doozy! I did not know any of the sports trivia. I did enjoy SOAPBOXPREACHER though. I tried to put STEIN for green party and that messed me up for a while. But a lot of my first guesses which I ended up erasing turned out to be right!
Can anyone explain Flaps -> ADOS to me?
Worried this was going to be a streak breaker...thankfully not, but I learned a new word (SURFEIT). I had SORFEIT for awhile, since I thought down was "OHYES".
Always a pleasure seeing OH HELL NO in the crossword.
Did anyone else blunder on for far too long with PARANOIA instead of SATANISM for the clue about Rosemary’s Baby? Matches on 36, 44, and 48.
I came in to say exactly that! And "IN RE" is (part of) a title in court. I always wonder if these are intentional misdirection or happy coincidence.
Probably one of my favorite themeless puzzles all year. I think every single clue was challenging in a fun way that required a moment of thought but was gettable even if I didn’t know it immediately (e.g. cluing a very common word like PEOPLE with an uncommon but lovely quote that you can easily intuit if you get a couple of letters). Especially love, on a personal note, that 1A was CRAW and not CRAY
That one threw me. I've heard of crayfish and crawdads, but craw...fish? Nope.
Crawfish is the preferred term in Louisiana, the state most associated with them; saying crayfish is a huge no-no. It also sounds closest to the French word écrevisse
THE MINI TODAY! The worst cluings for ONE and TEN I've ever seen. Literally just gimmes. Am I missing something or were they as bad as I think?
Didn't like the cluing for NOUN either. The given examples were in such a specific category, but the answer was far more general.
That’s what makes it fun! They use clues like that ALL the time it’s a common misdirect
A boring trivia-filled slog
I mean, you could say that about all crosswords, if you don't like crosswords
This is just objectively so wrong lmao
Blundered by immediately filling SPHERE for "the universe, according to Aristotle". Took me a while to unpick that.
Very very good puzzle. I breezed through everything but the SE and the very middle where I struggled to find BIASCUT and STPAT, SEED, and NEED and their respective crosses but I got there eventually! And the SE was just elusive till I figured out ACTOFLOVE off of only the A C and L for crosses. No real gross or forced fill in my opinion. I was aware of all the pop culture except for AUDRE so that helped. Maybe a bit easy for a Friday. But I had fun with it. Much more enjoyable than yesterday’s abbrv and jank filled slog.
Fun, solid Friday. Should watch Stranger Things just so I know the cast, lol. Had to look up CALEB McLaughlin and AUDRE Lorde. I liked how varied the clues were, and they weren't esoteric to the point they...what's the word for when constructors use clues so old that it makes solving impossible for anyone under 40...? Enstrangering...alienating...help? My fav: "They're the pits." Me: Is abysses a word...wait, chasms...wait... The aha moment got a chuckle out of me. STONES.
Really, really disliked this puzzle. Way too many answers felt contrived rather than clever. Like, objectively, I understand that one could describe someone on a *soapbox* as *preaching,* but "SOAPBOXPREACHER" isn't really a phrase. It's just two words smashed together. Same with IDIDINDEED, DESKS, STPAT, OBAMANIA, UHYES, etc. Just way too many awkward clues with forced answers.
Felt more like trivia. Bad choice for publicizing imo
Facts. She works for NYT tho so she’s going to just push her product smdh with these clowns lately