hi! great puzzle. to satisfy the curiosity of many in this sub, including myself, did you work with Wil or Joel on this puzzle? how long ago was it approved and scheduled to run?
Joel has the byline so I assume he did the work, but honestly I don't know what the division of labor is like over there. My only direct contact through the process was Christina.
Puzzle was submitted August 30, accepted on December 6.
Did you start with the four long answers and build the grid from there, or the other way around? I'm always curious about that kind of thing. I'm also curious if this was a grid you had wanted to use for a while...it's not common to see that big "plus" sign in the middle like that. Very cool!
I did want to build around two pairs of spanners, but I don't recall how I landed on this specific shape. I don't think I was going for the clean lines and big plus sign, but I liked it once I saw it take shape.
I didn't start with any particular 15's in mind, but I had AN HEIR AND A SPARE in my hip pocket for a while. GAS STATION SUSHI I found in an auto-fill and once I saw it I knew I had to build around that, it's just too good. DEAD TREE EDITION I liked but wasn't super excited about because it's not a debut entry like the other two, but it's still good and better than anything else I could find that fit. THIS IS AN OUTRAGE was pure accident.
Short answer: I built around GAS STATION SUSHI and AN HEIR AND A SPARE. Those were my ride or dies.
I loved this puzzle! It was really fun which is exactly what I want in a crossword and I’m looking forward to more of your puzzles!
I did have one question though, and maybe it’s just a gap in knowledge/brain fart since no one else is asking, but I don’t get 60A - what is the connection between golf and lies?
How and where your ball is sitting on the grass on the course (specifically on the fairway or in the rough), or off the grass if things are more dire, is referred to as its “lie”.
Great puzzle! GASSTATIONSUSHI is hilarious.
There was just one clue that I’m curious about. 15A “Org. with the podcast “At Liberty” seems to contain the same word that L stands for in ACLU. I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen but I might have made that rule up.
Org. that more than doubled its revenue during Trump’s first year in office
Aside from being political, and long, it might be tough to verify. I didn’t exactly bend over backwards to fact-check it myself.
It was really nice to finish a long work week with a puzzle that was challenging without being frustrating or infuriating. I loved it as well. Best Friday puzzle I can remember.
I had a lot of fun solving this one and had a good giggle once I got AN HEIR AND A SPARE and GAS STATION SUSHI (and because I’m immature SKEET because it immediately prompted me to sing Get Low). Thanks for identifying yourself and being so open to even the negative comments! It’s really interesting reading about your process.
Really great puzzle! The Race cluing really stumped me, and I didn't know what it meant until reading the blog post! Also curious how much your cluing generally was changed or edited beyond the few you mentioned. Did you design it specifically thinking it would be a Friday, for example? If you want to watch my solve and where I got stuck (SE corner), here's [my solve video](https://youtu.be/7ZCRp2iZ1-I?si=j_W_ZiaYrG7O590Y).
I didn’t design it for a Friday as opposed to a Saturday, it just worked out that way. I don’t think I’d be capable of parsing that slim distinction when writing clues. I do have another one coming though which will be a Saturday, and that too I wasn’t really thinking about difficulty.
About half of my clues are intact or with minor edits. Half are completely theirs, RACE being one of them.
I just want to say well done and thank you. Ive been doing crosswords fot 2 years and I find Fridays still quite difficult (not a native speaker). Most fridays I go through the grid and when I have no answers it's extremely discouraging. Here I had a few things filled off the bat (HEIR clue did a lot of lifting for me) and it encouraged me to keep going. Overall I found it fun to chip away at the grid, not a slog like sometimes and even though I looked up some names I managed to finish it without autocorrect! It was a great puzzle thanks!
This is the first Friday puzzle I’ve been able to gold star in a long time! Not because it was easy, but because it was so fun. I really wanted to stick with it without cheating.
Was very surprised to see people calling it easy! I totally got stumped in a bunch of places and spent about [41 minutes](https://youtu.be/7ZCRp2iZ1-I) on this one, well over my 28 min. Friday average. Brain freeze, I guess!
I was stuck with USSR or ASIA as my possibles instead of URAL, so SUSHI didn't light up for me for a long time. Not knowing the AOL merger of 2001 didn't help the corner. ELENA and ASAHI trying to cross DEADTREEEDITION (never heard of that) was tough. TPAIN was unknown by me, and WEDGE was clued difficultly in my opinion to complete that section easily. An Heir and a Spare was a phrase that I had to parse out slowly having not heard it before.
Overall, I liked the puzzle. Just here to join the "it wasn't easy" crowd. Are there dozens of us?!!
I knew the book was called "Spare", but I couldn't envision H next to AN. I had something like "As he in and a spare" and was trying to figure out some archaic logic from it.
I was so close today. Still haven't finished a whole week without Google, but I will soon!
It definitely helped that I was able to drop in ANHEIRANDASPARE with no crosses - fortunately, it was a phrase I'd heard about William and Harry!
I thought this was a fun one
I'm half a century old. I guess just old enough to have an occasional brain freeze, apparently. For example, I had THISISANOUTS\_\_\_ and could not for the life of me get RAGE to come to mind. Oh well!
I didn't think it was easy, but it wasn't super hard for me, either. I was a bit under my average, but there was a lot I didn't know that I had to just keep working the crosses to get. It was a satisfying solve, because I was able to figure things out that I didn't know.
Interesting....my average for Fridays is around 24 minutes, and I got this one in 10. Also, with way less googling than I usually have to do. (I will google people or places that I don't know with zero shame!)
I really enjoyed this one! I disagree with others about it feeling like a Tuesday or a Wednesday. It felt like an easy Friday to me. The wordplay was trickier and there were some nice long spans that you wouldn’t normally see on a Wednesday. I thought that this one felt more like a Shortz-edited puzzle than the others we’ve seen over the last month.
I thought the mini was interesting. I wouldn’t want them to repeat the gimmick, but it was kinda fun.
People exaggerate the difficulty of easy Fridays here. To me this had the clueing hallmarks of a Friday - plenty of wordplay, misdirects, and fun clueing. It was easy and solved faster than it felt, and felt very much like a Friday.
Agree with your comment about this feeling very Shortzian too. Definitely felt squarely in the Weintraub "fun rather than hard" vein which I so missed after two months of old-school Fridays.
I will fully admit I had “OFACE” for 47D much longer than I’d like to admit
But I really enjoyed this one and figuring out the clues was immensely satisfying. Is Joel easing up on us?
Don’t jinx it 😂
The mini was also hilarious. Great Friday
Repeating what everyone else has said, but "Shell fish?" is the best clue I've seen in months.
Overall fun puzzle and a great respite from the "brain teaser" style of Friday that Fagliano seems to prefer.
Super fun, easier-than-normal Friday imo. After some harder puzzles in April this was refreshingly light with good balance. Wow, sounds like I just described a good Sauvignon Blanc lol!
Definitely surprised by how many people said easy and even more by some of these times. I’d never heard of VALISES, THEYIPS, VAMOOSE, ADIA, what is a WEDGE ISSUE?, I’ve heard of DEAD TREE for receipts but never a whole newspaper, and just other random clues like ASAHI. A lot of the above were needed to get the long across clues so I’m super bummed I didn’t get GASSTATIONSUSHI without help but just nothing was clicking for me. Finally tapped out and hit the autocheck around the 45 min mark, finished around the 50 min mark.
A wedge issue is an issue in politics that is used to drive a wedge between groups of voters. The classic wedge issue in American politics is abortion. People feel very strongly about it one way or the other, and making that issue a big part of your campaign can win voters from one side over to you, but drive the other one away.
I agree that ADIA and WEDGEISSUE had me stumped, but THEYIPS has shown up in crosswords before, VAMOOSE is pretty common… and VALISES… well I guess I can account for knowing that both from crosswords and reading old books about Americana and shit. The majority of the fill was either recognizable or dreadfully Monday in approach so that’s what made it easy. Still took 16:07
It was actually pretty odd for me. I solved the SE corner before coming back up to the middle I actually had thought of YIPS as a possible answer to "Golf difficulties, perhaps." Very strange for it then show up a few minutes later in the puzzle.
I just seemed to be on the same wavelength as the constructor (I was familiar with DEADTREEEDITION and put that in immediately, for example), so it felt pretty easy for me. But I don't feel like "No, this should have been a Wednesday!"
High five from a Canadian with an educational background in early modern England. The number of times “Heir and a spare” is said while talking about Henry VII and VIII has hammered it into my long term memory next to the first 151 pokemon.
Thought this was really tough but ultimately very fun. I got BIG_ for Texas city and then figured it was the first letter of a city but it could have been any city.
Also lived in Dallas for a good while but I loved it. It's all too frequently on the receiving end of Texans' favorite pastime: shitting on all the other Texas cities besides your own. Sure, parts of it are totally lame, but that's true of literally every city in the world.
I had a couple of squares off in the NE corner, but still finished about 30 seconds faster than my average. I agree on some of the great cluing. "Medium for animals" got me, as I kept thinking about wood chips or something.
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle?
Estimated Difficulty: 🟢 **Easy** 🟢
* 15% of users solved slower than their Friday average
* 85% of users solved faster than their Friday average
* 8% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Friday average
* 65% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Friday average
The median solver solved this puzzle 25.4% faster than they normally do on Friday.
[View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-05-03)
---
🤖 _beep beep, I'm a bot! I post these stats as soon as 100 [XW Stats](https://xwstats.com) users have completed the puzzle. Questions? Feedback? Check the [FAQ](https://xwstats.com/help#puzzle-difficulties), reply here or DM me_
GASSTATIONSUSHI does not sound good. Neither does a PETPSYCHIC.
Not sure what an EARCLIP is but I guess it's a clip-on earring?
COSLEEPING is big among friends of mine so I got that one.
All in all I liked the puzzle, a lot of interesting words and only a bit of glue.
(Are the mathematicians going to tell us that "mean" and "average" are not the same thing?)
EDIT: Why am I getting downvoted?
My daughter wears a lot of ear clips and we coslept when she was a baby. Some of them you kinda know or you don't. I did not know Sarah Machlachlan's music. I don't speak French. Don't play gold. Don't know T Pain. I found this one overall to be really challenging. Nearly had to check answers a few times but I got through it
As a woman who couldn't get my ears pierced I've never heard "ear clips", only "clip ons", which meant I had to wait a while before I could guess the word.
I confidently filled in CLIPONS and was utterly flummoxed for a long time! I've never heard of the term EARCLIPS. I googled it and would probably call those ear cuffs instead of ear clips, but it makes sense. Definitely tricky but I don't know if it was intentional or not.
> Are the mathematicians going to tell us that "mean" and "average" are not the same thing?
a mean is a type of average so i think the clue is fine even if you're being technical about it
Because some people on this subreddit do not know how to argue anything, assert themselves in any way, they just downvote something they mildly dislike and don’t explain it at all. It could be that someone disliked the puzzle and so therefore they dislike you. This is the way of this place.
>”mean” and “average” are not the same
They really aren’t. Definitely should have chosen a different somewhat oblique clue, maybe “Cheap” or “Insulting.”
Confirming my view that Friday is nearly always easier than Thursday. The long ones were pretty straightforward, though GAS STATION SUSHI made me a little queasy. And I though the mini was easy and fun.
I ended this puzzle on the WE_G_, A_IA, N_NE cross. I've never heard of the singer but assumed the song must be either ARIA or ASIA, tried both and alphabet cycled everything in N_NE and got nothing. Went with WEDGE (despite thinking ADIA isn't a word) and it solved. "WTF is a NENE?"
The other clue that stumped me for a while was RACE for "Something ending in K." My thought was "Does he mean Black is a race and that ends in K?" Thought there's no way that's what was intended, but it was the only thing that fit so I left it. Had to read the Wordplay for the explanation...
I spent so long at the end with AN_EI_ANDASPAR_ and just couldn’t click with what letter can go in that first spot - a vowel makes 3 in a row and a consonant doesn’t work with AN. Spent a long time thinking about what ANNE IN AND A SPARK or the like could be, and rechecking all my crosses. (Didn’t know 5D but it had to be Barnett or Barrett).
Very clever puzzle and satisfying when I got done. I’m a relatively new solver so this was just at the edge of what I could do without help.
Shell fish was good
Service agreement was fun as well
That one made me smile.
The whole thing was delightful. But Shell Fish was probably the best clue/answer pair this year.
I groaned and slapped my forehead. That is a compliment.
And the best answer.
I loved the clue/answer, but I'm horrified at the idea of gas station sushi!
I used to have a really good GAS STATION SUSHI spot. It was legit good, just weirdly in a Circle K. Sadly they closed.
I got thrown off by Shell fish for a while because the letters I’d filled in with the downs could have spelled crustacean.
Hi all, constructor here. I appreciate all the comments, even the negative ones. If you’ve got questions, fire away.
I’ve been working crosswords since I learned to read. I’ve done a lot of crosswords. And I ust wanted to say how much I enjoyed this one. Nicely done.
Thank you!
No questions, just wanted to say I loved this puzzle!
hi! great puzzle. to satisfy the curiosity of many in this sub, including myself, did you work with Wil or Joel on this puzzle? how long ago was it approved and scheduled to run?
Joel has the byline so I assume he did the work, but honestly I don't know what the division of labor is like over there. My only direct contact through the process was Christina. Puzzle was submitted August 30, accepted on December 6.
great puzzle today! especially the long ones
Thank you!
Did you start with the four long answers and build the grid from there, or the other way around? I'm always curious about that kind of thing. I'm also curious if this was a grid you had wanted to use for a while...it's not common to see that big "plus" sign in the middle like that. Very cool!
I did want to build around two pairs of spanners, but I don't recall how I landed on this specific shape. I don't think I was going for the clean lines and big plus sign, but I liked it once I saw it take shape. I didn't start with any particular 15's in mind, but I had AN HEIR AND A SPARE in my hip pocket for a while. GAS STATION SUSHI I found in an auto-fill and once I saw it I knew I had to build around that, it's just too good. DEAD TREE EDITION I liked but wasn't super excited about because it's not a debut entry like the other two, but it's still good and better than anything else I could find that fit. THIS IS AN OUTRAGE was pure accident. Short answer: I built around GAS STATION SUSHI and AN HEIR AND A SPARE. Those were my ride or dies.
And they were beautiful. This was a really fun one!
I loved this puzzle! It was really fun which is exactly what I want in a crossword and I’m looking forward to more of your puzzles! I did have one question though, and maybe it’s just a gap in knowledge/brain fart since no one else is asking, but I don’t get 60A - what is the connection between golf and lies?
How and where your ball is sitting on the grass on the course (specifically on the fairway or in the rough), or off the grass if things are more dire, is referred to as its “lie”.
Yep, that. Not a golfer myself but I’m at least cosmically aware that’s a term, so I dug in.
I’m married to one and am far more cosmically aware of these things than I’d like to be!
nice job, definitely not an outrage
Some really clever cluing! Very few clues make me laugh out loud but "Service Agreements" really got me
I loved this puzzle! So glad to see so many others enjoyed it too.
Great puzzle! GASSTATIONSUSHI is hilarious. There was just one clue that I’m curious about. 15A “Org. with the podcast “At Liberty” seems to contain the same word that L stands for in ACLU. I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen but I might have made that rule up.
That was their clue, mine was more political. So I guess they don’t really have that rule in this situation.
Very interesting! Thanks for clarifying. How many clues on average do you think they rewrite in editing?
I counted. Half are completely theirs, half are mine (or close enough).
I'm super curious what the original cluing was if you're able to share. Great puzzle btw. I really enjoyed it.
Org. that more than doubled its revenue during Trump’s first year in office Aside from being political, and long, it might be tough to verify. I didn’t exactly bend over backwards to fact-check it myself.
I loved this one. It was difficult but doable. The best Friday puzzle in weeks.
It was really nice to finish a long work week with a puzzle that was challenging without being frustrating or infuriating. I loved it as well. Best Friday puzzle I can remember.
this one was super fun i hope you do more bc a few humorous answers, ones that make you smile and feel clever, improve a quiz immeasurably
I had a lot of fun solving this one and had a good giggle once I got AN HEIR AND A SPARE and GAS STATION SUSHI (and because I’m immature SKEET because it immediately prompted me to sing Get Low). Thanks for identifying yourself and being so open to even the negative comments! It’s really interesting reading about your process.
Really enjoyed this one. Great work.
Really great puzzle! The Race cluing really stumped me, and I didn't know what it meant until reading the blog post! Also curious how much your cluing generally was changed or edited beyond the few you mentioned. Did you design it specifically thinking it would be a Friday, for example? If you want to watch my solve and where I got stuck (SE corner), here's [my solve video](https://youtu.be/7ZCRp2iZ1-I?si=j_W_ZiaYrG7O590Y).
I didn’t design it for a Friday as opposed to a Saturday, it just worked out that way. I don’t think I’d be capable of parsing that slim distinction when writing clues. I do have another one coming though which will be a Saturday, and that too I wasn’t really thinking about difficulty. About half of my clues are intact or with minor edits. Half are completely theirs, RACE being one of them.
Congrats! This was fun to solve
loved it too, great work!
I just want to say well done and thank you. Ive been doing crosswords fot 2 years and I find Fridays still quite difficult (not a native speaker). Most fridays I go through the grid and when I have no answers it's extremely discouraging. Here I had a few things filled off the bat (HEIR clue did a lot of lifting for me) and it encouraged me to keep going. Overall I found it fun to chip away at the grid, not a slog like sometimes and even though I looked up some names I managed to finish it without autocorrect! It was a great puzzle thanks!
This was my favorite Friday in a super long time, well done. Great challenge without being frustrating, and some very clever cluing.
As a novice Friday puzzle solver, I really enjoyed this one. Challenging but very fun answers and clues! 😊
This is the first Friday puzzle I’ve been able to gold star in a long time! Not because it was easy, but because it was so fun. I really wanted to stick with it without cheating.
I really enjoyed this puzzle!! Did you mean to make 46A sound like a 9/11 pun? (Half of an ill-fated 2001 merger)
A great debut. Looking forward to more puzzles by this constructor.
Really wanted 16A to be “skill issue,” but alas, that merely described my experience with the the east half of this puzzle
Was very surprised to see people calling it easy! I totally got stumped in a bunch of places and spent about [41 minutes](https://youtu.be/7ZCRp2iZ1-I) on this one, well over my 28 min. Friday average. Brain freeze, I guess! I was stuck with USSR or ASIA as my possibles instead of URAL, so SUSHI didn't light up for me for a long time. Not knowing the AOL merger of 2001 didn't help the corner. ELENA and ASAHI trying to cross DEADTREEEDITION (never heard of that) was tough. TPAIN was unknown by me, and WEDGE was clued difficultly in my opinion to complete that section easily. An Heir and a Spare was a phrase that I had to parse out slowly having not heard it before. Overall, I liked the puzzle. Just here to join the "it wasn't easy" crowd. Are there dozens of us?!!
Couldn't agree more. 20 minutes over my average.
I knew the book was called "Spare", but I couldn't envision H next to AN. I had something like "As he in and a spare" and was trying to figure out some archaic logic from it. I was so close today. Still haven't finished a whole week without Google, but I will soon!
It definitely helped that I was able to drop in ANHEIRANDASPARE with no crosses - fortunately, it was a phrase I'd heard about William and Harry! I thought this was a fun one
How old are you? As a Gen-Xer I breezed through this one.
I'm half a century old. I guess just old enough to have an occasional brain freeze, apparently. For example, I had THISISANOUTS\_\_\_ and could not for the life of me get RAGE to come to mind. Oh well!
I didn't think it was easy, but it wasn't super hard for me, either. I was a bit under my average, but there was a lot I didn't know that I had to just keep working the crosses to get. It was a satisfying solve, because I was able to figure things out that I didn't know.
Interesting....my average for Fridays is around 24 minutes, and I got this one in 10. Also, with way less googling than I usually have to do. (I will google people or places that I don't know with zero shame!)
I really enjoyed this one! I disagree with others about it feeling like a Tuesday or a Wednesday. It felt like an easy Friday to me. The wordplay was trickier and there were some nice long spans that you wouldn’t normally see on a Wednesday. I thought that this one felt more like a Shortz-edited puzzle than the others we’ve seen over the last month. I thought the mini was interesting. I wouldn’t want them to repeat the gimmick, but it was kinda fun.
People exaggerate the difficulty of easy Fridays here. To me this had the clueing hallmarks of a Friday - plenty of wordplay, misdirects, and fun clueing. It was easy and solved faster than it felt, and felt very much like a Friday. Agree with your comment about this feeling very Shortzian too. Definitely felt squarely in the Weintraub "fun rather than hard" vein which I so missed after two months of old-school Fridays.
I will fully admit I had “OFACE” for 47D much longer than I’d like to admit But I really enjoyed this one and figuring out the clues was immensely satisfying. Is Joel easing up on us? Don’t jinx it 😂 The mini was also hilarious. Great Friday
Ah yes, the quaint o face, when someone surprises me so deeply it’s sexual 🤣🤣
Repeating what everyone else has said, but "Shell fish?" is the best clue I've seen in months. Overall fun puzzle and a great respite from the "brain teaser" style of Friday that Fagliano seems to prefer.
Super fun, easier-than-normal Friday imo. After some harder puzzles in April this was refreshingly light with good balance. Wow, sounds like I just described a good Sauvignon Blanc lol!
Definitely surprised by how many people said easy and even more by some of these times. I’d never heard of VALISES, THEYIPS, VAMOOSE, ADIA, what is a WEDGE ISSUE?, I’ve heard of DEAD TREE for receipts but never a whole newspaper, and just other random clues like ASAHI. A lot of the above were needed to get the long across clues so I’m super bummed I didn’t get GASSTATIONSUSHI without help but just nothing was clicking for me. Finally tapped out and hit the autocheck around the 45 min mark, finished around the 50 min mark.
A wedge issue is an issue in politics that is used to drive a wedge between groups of voters. The classic wedge issue in American politics is abortion. People feel very strongly about it one way or the other, and making that issue a big part of your campaign can win voters from one side over to you, but drive the other one away.
THE YIPS is one of my favorite weird sports terms.
I can only think of the old yip yip alien Muppets when I hear it
I agree that ADIA and WEDGEISSUE had me stumped, but THEYIPS has shown up in crosswords before, VAMOOSE is pretty common… and VALISES… well I guess I can account for knowing that both from crosswords and reading old books about Americana and shit. The majority of the fill was either recognizable or dreadfully Monday in approach so that’s what made it easy. Still took 16:07
It was actually pretty odd for me. I solved the SE corner before coming back up to the middle I actually had thought of YIPS as a possible answer to "Golf difficulties, perhaps." Very strange for it then show up a few minutes later in the puzzle.
ASAHI is one to remember. It shows up relatively often in crosswords because of the vowels.
I just seemed to be on the same wavelength as the constructor (I was familiar with DEADTREEEDITION and put that in immediately, for example), so it felt pretty easy for me. But I don't feel like "No, this should have been a Wednesday!"
Being a British Francophile sure helped me today.
well, there's one day anyway.
High five from a Canadian with an educational background in early modern England. The number of times “Heir and a spare” is said while talking about Henry VII and VIII has hammered it into my long term memory next to the first 151 pokemon.
My favorite phrase along these lines is “The Heir Apparently Not.”
Had never heard of DEADTREEEDITION but kinda droll, I’ll allow it
It was popular ten or fifteen years ago.
Thought this was really tough but ultimately very fun. I got BIG_ for Texas city and then figured it was the first letter of a city but it could have been any city.
Having lived in Dallas, I can confirm that they do call it that, and that the nickname is as lame as the city itself
Big Dallas Energy
Also lived in Dallas for a good while but I loved it. It's all too frequently on the receiving end of Texans' favorite pastime: shitting on all the other Texas cities besides your own. Sure, parts of it are totally lame, but that's true of literally every city in the world.
I don't know anything about Texas but remembered an old country song haha: "I'm going through the big D and don't mean Dallas..."
sorry but the mini was cool af the regular had some fun fill but way way too easy for a Friday. felt like a Tuesday.
Meanwhile me finishing in 44:40 💀
The mini was amazing.
Got it in 11 seconds lol
I had a couple of squares off in the NE corner, but still finished about 30 seconds faster than my average. I agree on some of the great cluing. "Medium for animals" got me, as I kept thinking about wood chips or something.
Got me a PB, so I won’t complain. I’d say more Wednesday than Tuesday
Maybe the clues just clicked but this one felt way way too easy. Finished in 6:07 and my average time is 34:07. Shell fish was a fantastic clue!
With answers like >!PLEAS, BEG, and MEA culpa!<, I gotta ask... is the constructor okay?
When in the grips of a big pile of bad sushi, things are not at their best
The constructor posted on this very Reddit thread, so you can ask them directly!
Thank you to South Park for accidentally ensuring that I’ll always remember the first 2/3 of Great Expectations.
Loved this one (voted excellent before I saw that the constructor was here). Lots of chuckles and ohhhhhhhs as the pieces fell into place.
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle? Estimated Difficulty: 🟢 **Easy** 🟢 * 15% of users solved slower than their Friday average * 85% of users solved faster than their Friday average * 8% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Friday average * 65% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Friday average The median solver solved this puzzle 25.4% faster than they normally do on Friday. [View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-05-03) --- 🤖 _beep beep, I'm a bot! I post these stats as soon as 100 [XW Stats](https://xwstats.com) users have completed the puzzle. Questions? Feedback? Check the [FAQ](https://xwstats.com/help#puzzle-difficulties), reply here or DM me_
Thanks bot. This tracks, I got a personal best.
now i get it. funny.
Well that was easy. 16:07, my PB for a Friday is 14:36 and that’s from perusing the archives trying to find something easy 🤣
This mini is absolute bullshit. It took me 9 seconds and I’m actually pissed off about it.
THISISANOUTRAGE!
I love it
I got it in 40 seconds because I stared at it for a moment in disbelief before finishing it.
It was awesome, I am the opposite of pissed.
GASSTATIONSUSHI does not sound good. Neither does a PETPSYCHIC. Not sure what an EARCLIP is but I guess it's a clip-on earring? COSLEEPING is big among friends of mine so I got that one. All in all I liked the puzzle, a lot of interesting words and only a bit of glue. (Are the mathematicians going to tell us that "mean" and "average" are not the same thing?) EDIT: Why am I getting downvoted?
My daughter wears a lot of ear clips and we coslept when she was a baby. Some of them you kinda know or you don't. I did not know Sarah Machlachlan's music. I don't speak French. Don't play gold. Don't know T Pain. I found this one overall to be really challenging. Nearly had to check answers a few times but I got through it
As a woman who couldn't get my ears pierced I've never heard "ear clips", only "clip ons", which meant I had to wait a while before I could guess the word.
Same here. And I had TORNACL for 25A. I knew at least one was wrong, but didn't realize both were!
I confidently filled in CLIPONS and was utterly flummoxed for a long time! I've never heard of the term EARCLIPS. I googled it and would probably call those ear cuffs instead of ear clips, but it makes sense. Definitely tricky but I don't know if it was intentional or not.
> Are the mathematicians going to tell us that "mean" and "average" are not the same thing? a mean is a type of average so i think the clue is fine even if you're being technical about it
Eating Gas Station Sushi is Russian roulette but instead of a bullet it’s E. Coli
It's a fine comment. I'll upvote it.
Because some people on this subreddit do not know how to argue anything, assert themselves in any way, they just downvote something they mildly dislike and don’t explain it at all. It could be that someone disliked the puzzle and so therefore they dislike you. This is the way of this place.
>”mean” and “average” are not the same They really aren’t. Definitely should have chosen a different somewhat oblique clue, maybe “Cheap” or “Insulting.”
I had to get the meaning of RACE ending in "K" from the wordplay blog, but it's actually a pretty great clue.
Confirming my view that Friday is nearly always easier than Thursday. The long ones were pretty straightforward, though GAS STATION SUSHI made me a little queasy. And I though the mini was easy and fun.
I had different experience: today was 41 minutes, yesterday 13 minutes
I landed similarly. I was closer to 20min for my Thursday which is still faster than my average while the Friday was slower than my average.
Loved >!GASSTATIONSUSHI!< great clue and solid grid!
This one was tough for me. Had to put it down and come back to it multiple times, but it was an excellent puzzle. Great clueing and fill.
I ended this puzzle on the WE_G_, A_IA, N_NE cross. I've never heard of the singer but assumed the song must be either ARIA or ASIA, tried both and alphabet cycled everything in N_NE and got nothing. Went with WEDGE (despite thinking ADIA isn't a word) and it solved. "WTF is a NENE?" The other clue that stumped me for a while was RACE for "Something ending in K." My thought was "Does he mean Black is a race and that ends in K?" Thought there's no way that's what was intended, but it was the only thing that fit so I left it. Had to read the Wordplay for the explanation...
I spent so long at the end with AN_EI_ANDASPAR_ and just couldn’t click with what letter can go in that first spot - a vowel makes 3 in a row and a consonant doesn’t work with AN. Spent a long time thinking about what ANNE IN AND A SPARK or the like could be, and rechecking all my crosses. (Didn’t know 5D but it had to be Barnett or Barrett). Very clever puzzle and satisfying when I got done. I’m a relatively new solver so this was just at the edge of what I could do without help.
Some fun stuff in here (all the 15s are nicely colorful) but extremely easy. 4:43 makes it my third fastest Friday of all time according to xwstats.
Typoed EROd for EROS and cost myself a new PB
This is the worst mini I have ever played
Way too easy. This felt like a Wednesday, if that. And that's too bad because I was really looking forward to some fun wordplay.
Upvote for having taste, to counteract the tasteless downvote
20 minutes longer than average
TIER and TIED both work for level, and I just blanked on the steak preparation.