This is the crossword puzzle thread

33D: I imagine it's play on beer keg and soda fountain.

I liked today's theme, hard as it was.

33D was the last in and I still don't really understand it?

RIP to my NYT streak, not because of a Natick but because I somehow just forgot to do it, which I didn't even realize had happened two weeks ago.

you're free now

Welcome to the camp! One of us, one of us, we accept you, one of us!

I don't feel free. :(

I skipped a day a month ago, and said goodbye to a 500-day streak. Ah, well. Life goes on.

We’re all normal and we want our rebus.

Here we are now

Enter rebus

happened to be listening to 18A while doing today’s puzzle

In other news, Boswords Fall Themeless started. Hopefully this time I remember to submit every week.

did you do the first puzzle? I was fast but had one dumb mistake

Got them all right, but I took almost 8 minutes.

Today is quite clever.

Boswords: Weeks 1-3, clean sheet, but not so Week 4. :(

I did good on Week 4, but felt like I was totally guessing on a few crosses. rn I'm 4th overall in the Choppy rankings...this is before a bunch of the solvers have even finished, so I'm sure I'll get knocked down a few spots, but I think this is still as good as my competitive solving career is ever gonna get

did thursday's late last night and couldn't parse the mechanism at all, but it's a good one

Interesting grid today, though I'm of two minds on the fill.

Awful SW corner today, I had to brute force my way through it.

Like VU ref today

And Bad Company reference.

Really enjoyed this Friday puzzle by Simon Marotte.

Fri and Sat puzzles were good but they were both too easy. I spent no more than 20 minutes on the two of them combined (and I wasn't even speed-solving). I need more resistance, this is getting ridiculous. I habitually set aside 30 minutes to do the Friday puzzle and 30 more for the Saturday puzzle but I feel like I'm getting ganked.

Maybe, but wasn’t Thursday a little more dit than usual?

Difficult

I don’t do the Thursday ones. Maybe I should start.

i thought Thursday's was medium-ish, tough going at first but fairly easy once you figured out what the trick was.

the Thursday reminded me of why I fckn hate the Thursday ones.

I think on Thursday I got 15 across, and then combined that with the fact that 10/11/12 "down" were such standard NYT filler, which clued me in quickly.

breezed thru fri and sat too. today’s was a bit of a slog tbh.

Today’s was painful yes

yeah Sunday was horrible, after that weirdly easy Saturday

...and then today felt difficult for a Monday - I finished it of course, but it had some kinda thorny cluing.

Yeah, Naticky around 21A, and it took me about a minute and a half longer to solve than the last several Mondays.

I also found today’s a slog for a Monday, although I at first thought it was because I am out of practice.

remarkably easy wednesday

Just did the Tuesday a few minutes ago so will have a look-see now. Maybe my LL reminder will also serve as an Xword reminder.

You are correct, sir, felt like a super-easy Monday level puzzle.

thursday’s 28D is straight-up wrong iirc

That’s really weird.

thursday’s 28D is straight-up wrong iirc

Wikipedia doesn't contradict 28D though -- what am I missing?

TS: ACT vs. NSW

Ohhh, the clue was correct on the web version, which left me very confused.

changing it without noting the correction? where is the journalistic integrity

Saturday’s puzzle fun but pretty easy?

41D and 42A ludicrously weird I thought. And a few difficult refs for a foreigner.

Another too-easy Fri/Sat but yeah, Sat had some weird entries.

I've definitely seen both of those before in there.

How about this Thursday’s puzzle?