Great wordplay. Stared 5 minutes at my cross of UPS / POTHERE before I realized the clue was a different kind a carrier. Long week, I guess!
@Erk I spent about two minutes on that crossing. I was so certain that 2D ended with HERE that I never thought to go THERE.
“IS PEPSI OK” is my favorite answer in a long time. Tough, fun puzzle. I wish every Friday was like this.
@Chris g I wish I could remember the puzzle I recently saw IS PEPSI OK in. I want to compare the clues. Ms Park’s clue confounded me for some time; like other commenters, I expected the answer to have something to do with showing one’s ID.
I found this one very challenging, but in a thoroughly fair way. The answers came slowly, but at a steady enough pace that I was never inclined to lose hope. Really quite solid.
Did anyone else stubbornly hang on to UPS for “Carrier”? To the bitter end for me.
@Ambrose I did. And judging from the comments, we weren’t alone.
A cat’s thoughts on this puzzle’s theme: “Forty winks? Puh-leeze, a decent CATNAP starts at eighty. Also, I’M NOT A ROBOT. When you clean up and leave NOT ONE BIT of the laundry for me to nap on - I suffer. The nap quality was not the best, but STILL I RISE. Let’s also discuss the SITTERS you used last month. There were issues. One of them WENT ROGUE and brought unapproved treats. Unapproved. By me. I did YELL AT them, but they failed to grasp my meaning. Now if you’ll excuse me, the VERDICT is in: more napping required. SO THERE.”
Cat Lady Margaret, Our cats would agree, but instead, they EAT.
I entered this puzzle in neutral-head, and left it high-fiving the world. This was SO ENTERTAINING! Clues that made my brain hustle as it loves to do, clues that made me “Hah!”, gorgeous answers, 13 bigs (answers of eight letters or more) that brought dash, and an emphasis on cracking riddles rather than scouring the memory for answers. Wow! When a puzzle satisfies my brain’s work ethic, brings giddiness from figuring out thorny wordplay clues, brings humor, and immerses me in beauty, it has royally delivered. Beauty? AUGMENT, GAP YEAR, POINT TAKEN, WENT ROGUE, FIRST AND TEN, STILL I RISE. Riddles? One of many:[Take off, as a cap] for UNSCREW, a lovely misdirect. Look at how this clue make a humdrum answer special. Humor? [Testament to human nature] for I'M NOT A ROBOT. Hah! Not to mention the craft behind this: a 30-block grid (translation: seas of white housing a mass of crossing answers), with hardly a whiff of junk. Sparkling. Crackling good. Congratulations on your NYT debut, Kate. And thank you for a cut-above puzzle that has me hungry for more from you. Please!
@Lewis perfect summary. Thank you for sharing it!
Almost an hour over my average time, but it sure felt good to get this one! Felt difficult but fair. No cheap feeling clues to anger me. A bit embarrassed at how long I was happy to leave POTHERE up there like it meant something...
@Ben Glad that I wasn’t the only one thinking parcel carrier instead of aircraft carrier.
@Ben Same. And then I looked it up and i thought “what on earth is ‘sot here?’”
Ben, POTHERE definitely meant a lot to me during its not-short-enough life in my puzzle. It meant “I am really gettting old, the kids have all these new (and likely drug-related) linguistic ways of showing their cockiness. But hey! I’m keeping up with modern lingo by doing this crossword puzzle, like yesterday’s constructor, so now I know this new, hip phrase. Still… what could it mean? I’m cool, like pot, and you’re not? That seems unlikely… (carrier… carrier…)”
What's the VERDICT? This puzzle was LEGIT and the clueing was really SUPER. Brava, Ms Park! Emus: I'M NOT A ROBOT!
I have a feeling that this puzzle will defeat a lot of solvers. I found it to be challenging, although in the end, my solve time was seconds faster than my average...but of course, my average has been steadily improving over the years. These days, I expect every solve to be below my average, because my average on this site goes back about 10 years, when I was already a veteran solver, but not as fast as I am now. Anyway, what made this puzzle tough for me was the vagueness of many of the clues. From the start, [Carrier letters] made me think of packages first, not aircraft. I sat on [Server's question after a drink order] despite having most of the letters before I saw IS PEPSI OK; Coke and its various products are always preferable to Pepsi, although I'd grudgingly accept the latter if I had to. It's very much in the language, for sure. [Took off, as a cap] had me thinking headwear, not bottle tops at first. I didn't know TAI, although I'm familiar with Thai. Apparently, Thai is a TAI language. Who knew? I could go on, but in the end, the puzzle was fair.
@Steve L Definitely fair, but definitely more Saturday-like than Friday-like for me.
@Steve L I'd call those clues misdirects. And they work!
@Steve L You and I had much the same experience. Maybe my start at solving this was slow because I was sleepy, but my time was 25% higher than my all-time Friday average, and probably twice as long as Fridays usually take me now.
Like many others I found this one quite difficult. How tough was it? Twice my Friday average. Good thing that I enjoy a challenge. ISPEPSIOK - favorite answer today. The editors wondered if this was in the language--really? And to be clear, no server has ever asked "Is Coke OK?"
Deb, you make my day. Just wanted to get that out there.
Woo. That was a toughie. Lots of tricky cluing, e.g. [Card letters] and [Carrier letters] together were a double misdirection since neither had to do with the mail. [Testament to human nature] along with the Biblical fill in the blank had me going in the wrong direction as well. Glad I stuck with it!
@Dan Thanks for explaining the Card letters! Emu
Holy moly. After this Friday's puzzle, I'm terrified of Saturday.
ISPEPSIOK is my favorite answer of the year so far.
@Seward Parker I really liked that one, too. Conversely, SOTHERE is one of my least favorite answers of the year. Partly because UNS can stand for Unified Network Services (which, if a network is carrying your data, seems close enough for me) and NOT HERE is no less nonsensical than SO THERE.
@Seward Parker For the record, Pepsi is not okay. I’ll just have water. ;)
If you thought today’s puzzle was hard, xwordstats.com agrees. Of the users who have synced their data since completing the puzzle, 90% solved more slowly than their Friday average, and 74% were at least 20% slower than usual.
@Eric Hougland Yay! That makes me happy to hear because I found it very hard but I also got through it with no helps, which as you probably remember, is my goal... No helps! I don't really care about time and it took me a very long time, but no helps! Huzzah!!
Yet another puzzle that ran circles around me... The SW was messed up when for "what's the...?" I got stuck on "big deal" for a while. Then there was "This and that" which first spurred a thought of "tchotchkes," followed by what I find to be one of the most beautiful songs from Fiddler on the Roof, a favorite musical of mine. The song is "Anatevka": A little bit of this A little bit of that A pot, a pan, a broom, a hat... So, I stopped solving and revisited the video on Youtube. When I got to STILL I RISE, I did it again. (For those who missed out on the video when it was previously posted, here it is, with Maya Angelou oozing charisma: <a href="https://youtu.be/qviM_GnJbOM?feature=shared" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/qviM_GnJbOM?feature=shared</a>) Yes, I was very distracted solving this puzzle, and I made a lot of mistakes, but that ultimately got corrected and set off what our fellow commenter Warren from Malta, NY calls "the domino effect." Oof! Laughed at IS PEPSI OK? But seriously, no, it isn't. Not ever. (Hi, HeathieJ!) When I say "Diet Coke, please," I absolutely mean "Diet Coke, please." To be honest, I skip this whole conversation and go straight to "Do you have Coke or Pepsi?" I like to think that waiters are grateful that I don't waste their time and get straight to the point. And the point I haven't yet made here is that I loved this puzzle, despite of, or maybe even because of my foibles and distractions. I don't mind that it ran circles around me and sent me off on tangents. It was loads of fun. Thank you Ms. Chin Park!
@sotto voce Yeah, has anyone ever ordered a Rum and Pepsi?
@sotto voce @Warren Google "diet coke health effects" . . . Coke or Pepsi, if you're drinking the diet version, it isn't healthy. The tastiest Cokes are from Mexico, where they use sugar to sweeten them.
No padding (ESTEE and OBI don't count), just clever offbeat cluing, and great fun. I was looking for something to do with IDs for the drinks orders, and when IS PEPSI OK sneaked in I started laughing. I'd say this was FIRST AND TEN from the get go (git go, if you're from where I came from), and I'm looking forward to more puzzles by Kate Chin Park. Thank you!
Loved this! Chip chip chip! Years ago someone did a chemical breakdown between coke and Pepsi and the ONLY diff was coke has an orange extract and Pepsi has a lemon one. They did further studies that younger folks prefer the lemon (thus the add to appeal to a Pepsi generation, etc) I’m old and clearly can taste a diff. That said, I recently had to give up Coke Zero (I thought I was ok, no sugar, no caffeine, no anything) But according to my doctor the synthetic stuff they have in there is so much worse than all those things “regular” has. She was right, gave it up and all my problems went away (except for my landlord situation!) On another note, I once made a puzzle that had PEPSICOLA and its anagram EPISCOPAL which is my favorite thing to share with clergyfolk!!! Cheers to Kate Chin Park to sticking to her guns (or whatever the latest woke phrase would have it!)
@Andrea Carla Michaels Don't you mean "a-peel to a Pepsi generation?" Also, congrats again on receiving the Merl Reagle MEmoRiaL Award at this year's ACPT!
@Andrea Carla Michaels --"Except for my landlord situation" -- Hah! Glad to see you here! Et tu, emu.
This was a challenging and very entertaining puzzle. The Pepsi answer was the kind of wordplay I greatly enjoy. Great puzzle, Ms. Park.
I think this was about the perfect Friday for me. Some clever misdirects, nothing too arcane or trivial, fun facts and some fun clues. I thought it was more challenging than usual but I actually came in 4 min under my average , but it didn’t feel like it
@SP I agree! The perfect amount of misdirects. I was bummed when I read Wordplay after and saw that Deb uses autocheck, because that robbed her of one of the most fun parts of this puzzle. (Almost two minutes over my Friday average, for me!)
@SP Agree. Great puzzle and perfect for a Fridag
I filled “ISPEPSIOK” on my first pass, half joking, believing it wouldn’t possibly hold up throughout the solve. When it did, I was once again amused by this minutiae of our shared realities. Good puzzle. Happy weekend to all.
Only 22 comments over two hours after the puzzle dropped? I evidently was not the only one who found it challenging. Lots of blanks, especially in the SW until I left it for a couple of hours and let my unconscious mind work on it.
When I want to say "in your face!", I always say pOT HERE. But that's just me. Seriously, I ran the alphabet trying to find a way to change the carrier "UpS" to something that would make 2D make sense. But I skipped right past "S" because I was definitely HERE and not THERE. Despite my DNF, I adored this puzzle and was sorry when it was over. It's lively -- with some wonderful clues for STORY LINE; GAP YEAR; and I'M NOT A ROBOT. And I also really liked the answers DREAM DATE; POINT TAKEN and FIRST AND TEN. But the funniest -- and I would ALLEGE the most controversial -- clue/answer is: "IS PEPSI OK?" No it's not OK, you stupid server, I would think to myself -- not when I ordered Scotch! Needless to say I had my hardest time in the puzzle with "IS PEPSI OK" -- which in addition to being counterintuitive for non-soda pop-drinking me is also a really, really DOOK-y phrase. A perfect Friday. Plenty of thinking required but no suffering.
@Nancy thank you and I’m glad I wasn’t the only one. Came here for help because my brain couldn’t see SOTHERE and had POTHERE for ages. Facepalmed myself on USS instead of UPS!
@Nancy I was right HERE with you on 2D. It took me a few minutes to figure out what letter worked THERE.
Not a fan of this, if I am being honest. I am happy with a difficult puzzle, but this had a several archaic words (Stets, Scads), crosswordese (sys, ltr, fla, lsd, stl), and obscure proper nouns (who remembers Stanley Tucci's character's name in a 15+ year old film?). is pepsi ok was a highlight though
@Elijah Bush there is nothing archaic about STET. It is routinely used in editing. And SCADS is not uncommon; I use it in conversation.
Elijah, Your "obscure" proper noun may be my "gimme," and vice versa. Lucky for us, crossword puzzles cross words. I did not recall the name of the character -- if I ever knew it -- but NIGEL filled easily from the crosses. P.S. Crosswordese is reserved for words that appear more frequently in the puzzle than in real life. Based on my real life, you haven't cited any examples. YLMV.
Challenging but rewarding. For the first ~20 minutes I had very little I was certain of, and was steeling myself for a handful of unsatisfying answers I and other commenters could stew over later. But as I worked through it, everything fell into place elegantly. For my money there isn’t a single clumsy clue or answer here, which is hard to accomplish with such an (initially) challenging solve. Well done!
Deb, seeing your process is helpful for me. Thanks for this column ❤️! This and the link that Big Jim from Mt. Hood passed on (a link to a youtube solver) has made me look at solving differently.
I raced through three quadrants but doubled my time in the South West. I had loADS instead of SCADS. That, plus HEAVE HO slowed me down quite a bit. Really liked: IS PEPSI OK LSD IM NOT A ROBOT Mad at myself for not getting SALINAS right away. We spend a fair bit of time on the coast just west of there and Steiny looms large throughout the region. I thought that was a proper Friday. Thank you, Kate Chin Park!
New here! Well, to commenting at least. Sometimes I get a really good flow with a puzzle and have that self-satisfying crossword completed-smoothly-buzz. Sometimes I think I've finished but I have to scour all my answers for that one letter I made wrong on guess. (And contemplate clicking that Check Puzzle button.) Today's puzzle was a pretty big struggle for me to get all the clues filled. Especially that bottom right quadrant. I really appreciate all you folks' clues in the comments!!
@michalightning We're always glad to have new commenters here. Welcome!
Best Friday in a while. I loved "preference for leggy types" in addition to the hilarious centerpiece of the grid.
Laughed out loud at IS PEPSI OK. Possibly my favorite answer ever (in a puzzle, not a restaurant). Thanks for hanging in there, Ms. Park!
Hats off to Ms. Park – this puzzle was a brilliant brain-bender! Deb, I needed this First Pass Friday today. It's reassuring to see that even experienced solvers like you found this puzzle challenging. My initial pass mirrored yours exactly, which was both validating and humbling given how little we both managed to fill in at first. I appreciate your candid approach, especially your willingness to use the autocorrect function and try different letters when at a loss. It's a great reminder that solving isn't about proving how smart you are, but about enjoying the process and learning. As I slowly pieced together the answers, the puzzle gained momentum. Those 'aha' moments when several clues suddenly clicked were incredibly rewarding, leading to a deeply satisfying finish – even though it was one of my longest Friday solve times! While incredibly difficult, this puzzle was fair and immensely satisfying. It's constructions like these that really stretch our solving skills and keep our minds sharp. Challenging, but in the best possible way!
I stared at a lot of blank space for a long time and thought to myself: the streak ends today. Sigh. Then I changed locations, got the ball rolling, and suddenly it was done. Thanks, Kate, for a very special, challenging yet fun puzzle and for your notes regarding its history.
This crossword was so awful. I understand that the creator is obsessed with including her pet phrase is Pepsi ok, and I am very happy for her that it finally got published and that so many other people are enjoying it. I am not one of those people. This crossword felt like it was challenging for the sport not to exercise the mind and wit.
Solidly tough, but I eventually got there without any hints, and I got a good laugh at the persistence of getting ISPEPSIOK into a puzzle. My main comment was going to be about my confusion in solving the puzzle by guessing the second T in STETS for "Decides to leave", I was completely baffled by the answer. But I realized while typing this up that it's just a form of the old crossword standby STET for leaving something *in*, I just don't remember seeing it used in an active form before. Mystery solved!
@Dave STETS was a mystery to me for a while as well. In order to move on, I entered STEmS with the rationale that a plant, for instance, must STEm before it leaves.
@Dave My very last letter went to STETS and I fully expected to have to make collateral revisions in that block so was frankly shocked to hear the completion fanfare. I don't think I would've found my error had I approached it from the vertical clue.
Leapy, It was great to see you posting yesterday. I was too busy to comment, but I did see you mention Deadline, who has been missing for a while. I let her know you had mentioned her, and she posted very late yesterday, commenting on the puzzle and acknowledging your mention. If you missed it, take a look. Perhaps she will be back earlier today. (I thought this was a fine Friday after terrific Wednesday and Thursday puzzles.)
@Barry Ancona Nice to see you back! You've been missed. . . . . . .
Card letters: STL - could somebody please explain that to clueless me? This was an extremely hard puzzle for me on general, impossible to solve without autocheck and lookups, but at least I understand all of the answers except for this STL thing. Well, I suppose I don't get FIRST AND TEN either, but at least I know it has something to do with American football, whereas STL is a complete enigma.
@Andrzej The Saint Louis Cardinals are a baseball team, colloquially known as the Cards. STL is the way the city name is abbreviated when reporting game scores. It is an extremely tricky clue, especially because while the team is known as the Cards, I do not recall ever seeing a single player referred to as a "Card." As far as I know, the abbreviation is used to refer to the team, in the plural, but a single player would be a "Cardinal."
@Andrzej In American football when a team gets possession of the ball they get four attempts to advance the ball at minimum TEN yards. If they succeed they are awarded four more attempts. Each attempt is called a 'down', and are referred to as FIRST down, second down, etc. So, on the first attempt it is FIRST AND TEN yards to go.
Wow, hardest puzzle in quite some time. I came here to cheat - the only way I could finish this. I'm not complaining, it's good to get a challenge now and then.
Pros and cons with this puzzle. Con: I'm away without access to a printer, so had to do a rare online solve. Not fun. Pros: Everything about this Kate Chin Park creation. Perfectly vague cluing, great coversational fill like SO THERE and POINT TAKEN, and the excellent [Testament to human nature?] for I'M NOT A ROBOT. Wonderful Friday puzzle, Kate. Hopefully you'll be back soon. IS PEPSI OK reminded me of someone I worked with 45 years ago. He insisted he could tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi and would only drink Coke. When he was away from his desk, we dumped out his Coke and filled the can with 7-up. We finally told him later in the day, but he never noticed.
@Nancy J. Unless he had no taste buds it would be impossible to not notice the difference between Coke and 7up. Same for Coke and Pepsi.
Tough but fair, coming in right at my average after several erasures and “ohhhhh!”-ing. Several delightful reveals for me, including ISPEPSIOK, AISLESEAT, and IMNOTAROBOT. Several mischievous misdirects to untangle made this puzzle a real joy to solve. All the more impressive that it did so without overly relying on proper nouns or obscure trivia—just clever wordplay. A consummate Friday brain-twiggler!
If something is REALLY.... isn't it SURER? Or so I convinced myself, even though it left me puzzled....nay, stumped!...at 35A. Around here, the question is, "Sweet or Unsweet?" Because the order is ICED (please note the D) TEA. (I'm the one who asks for "Water with very little ice.") FLA claims it has a 'mountain' (300 ft elevaton last time I saw it) which of course is laughable. Frankly, I have been plumping for a project to saw off a section just below Macon, GA, and let everything below that sink/float away. So far, hasn't happened, but this storm that's headed NNE might be The Big One. I fell for every low-down, sleazy trick in this puzzle's clues. I took out no less than four correct answers due to conflicts with wrong guesses. SNOOZE. KAN. SSN. LAO. EMT. SLEWS. UNCOVER. I had a wonderful time. Kate, enjoy having that white-haired trophy on your wall. It'll be a real conversation piece.
@Mean Old Lady I had KAN for too long because my mother always said Kansas was flat as a pancake. I read several years ago that a scientist had proved that true, too.
@Mean Old Lady Hah! Yet another preference to drive servers crazy. With ice. Without ice. With lots of ice. With just a little ice. (For me, it's no ice ever. Ice it, and I start to shiver as if I'd been locked inside a freezer.)
I just love ISPEPSIOK. Simultaneously strange and familiar.
@Nitpicker same here! When I finally figured this out, I giggled internally. I’m surprised the editors first rejected it!
I've driven across the state of Kansas many times...you cannot convince me that it isn't the flattest place on earth, let alone state in the US! Emus like hills, it makes them think they're flying.
@Leanne Next time, try heading up from KC thru Olathe and the Flint Hills before going west. I found the area full of wildflowers and beautifully unflat. Living for years on the North German Plain has taught me to appreciate flat and flattish landscapes.
@Leanne The highest point in Florida is 345 feet. The difference between highest and lowest in Kansas is 3300 feet occurring as you travel east to west as the great plains rise towards (eventually!) the Rockies.
Great puzzle! I was sorely intimidated after my first run-through but managed to slog my way through with no lookups. And I had to chuckle at IS PEPSI OK, as I heard those exact words from my server today at lunch!
What a nice puzzle. I was absolutely convinced that I was going to have to look at least a couple of things up to get enough seed letters to get me going, but knowing FLA is the flattest state and that SALINAS was Steinbeck’s hometown gave me just enough purchase to begin to crack this one. The dam broke when I quit trying to find some way to fit ice or rocks into the drink order clue, and came up with ISPEPSIOK. That one RESONATES with me, because my wife always makes a sour face and changes her order when she hears that question. Great clue and answer, and a fitting Friday challenge.
Whew. Glad to see that for once I'm not the only one who struggled with this, but ended up being a tough but enjoyable solve. Some nice aha moments when I had enough crosses for something to dawn on me. And yep - ISPEPSIOK really took a lot of work. No complaint. And... thought that STILLIRISE was quite appropriate at this moment in time. Oh, and of course my puzzle find today. A Sunday from March 23, 1997 by Bryant White with the title "Pop culture." Some theme answers: BALDMOUNTAINDEW CLOCKWORKORANGECRUSH FREDANDGINGERALE THEMAGNIFICENTSEVENUP IMOGENECOCACOLA Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=3/23/1997&g=97&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=3/23/1997&g=97&d=A</a> I'll shut up now. ..
This puzzle did not sit well with me at all! Sorry! Going through the comments: I agree with Teresa, too many random phrases, and Chris had a good reply to that: "sneerat and yellat do not belong in the same puzzle. Once is pushing it, twice is lazy." TMD didn't like the cluing and thought the puzzle a slog with few fun answers. My opinion as well. Rajeevfromca found too many vague clues, and I agree STETS is not "leave" strictly speaking. I might add that I never see it as a verb, nor do I ever see the plural EROSIONS. Many people didn't like 13D [card letters] for STL and I didn't either, it's not a vague clue, it's just obscure for no reason. While I'm at it, 15D [color for un campeon] is the best clue you can come up with for the Spanish word for gold? Besides, do gold silver and bronze really refer to the colors of the medals or the metals they are composed of? 30D SUPER. Really? 50A PEG [Part of a violin quartet?] Please. Hopefully better puzzles will come. Development through experimentation! What else. Yeah, Pepsi's ok.
@Roberto This might have been better placed as a Saturday, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with any of the clues except that they were hard. They were vague and they misdirected, but that's a feature, not a flaw. Fridays and Saturdays are supposed to be hard; this one was a bit harder than most Fridays. STL isn't vague for baseball fans; in fact, it's quite clever. The only question was whether it was STL or ARI. I'd find clues about Barça or Real Madrid would be hard for me, but this is an American crossword after all. Gold is the color of the metal as well as the metal's name. Clue seems fine to me. (I get that in Spanish, the color would more likely be "dorado".) Repeating a minor word like AT is common and may not be your preference, but it doesn't run afoul of any rules. SUPER for [Really] makes sense in the pair "This puzzle was SUPER/really tough." Close examination would tell you to look for something like PEG or string for [Part of a violin quartet] because four musicians playing together is generally a string quartet, with viola, cello and bass, or some combination thereof. "Violin quartet" tipped me off that it was something else. I'm not denying this was a tough one for a Friday; I said so last night. But that doesn't mean there was anything wrong with it besides, perhaps, misplacement a day earlier.
Seemed like an excellent Friday puzzle. As a Coke drinker, I've certainly heard ISPEPSIOK from servers many, many times. Lots of interesting long entries here: IMNOTAROBOT, STORYLINE, FIRSTANDTEN, POINTTAKEN. Even 1A was tricky. Had UPS there for a long time, until it led to POTHERE. Only then did I realize that "carrier" meant aircraft carrier, as in a naval vessel. I'm always amazed by the trivia my brain has retained. I read "John Steinbeck's hometown" and *immediately* SALINAS came to mind. No idea how that works. Still not getting the connection between "Really" and SUPER, but maybe it will be explained in the comments I'm about to peruse. Solved this puzzle unaided, and only took me about half-an-hour, which for me on Friday marks a job well done. Will probably pay my dues tomorrow.
@Xword Junkie you know this! Really and super are both used to increase or emphasize an adverb, the same as “very.”
@Xword Junkie I had "surer" there for quite a while, until I got "ISPEPSIOK". In this case "Really" as in very much. It's REALLY hot = it's SUPER hot.
OMG, this was really difficult -- and SUPER fun!! Once I was fully caffeinated, at least. I had to turn to the column, and inched my way line by line down the screen to reduce getting too many "cheats" at once. So it was perfect timing for a First Pass Friday. Thanks, Deb! I will add to the chorus praising IS PEPSI OK. Add me as well to the crew gob-smacked that anyone might possibly think that phrase is not "in the language"! Truly an alternate world to mine. (Hello, @sotto voce @HeathieJ!) Absolutely loved the STL clue, once it finally clicked. Ditto USS, though that resolved faster for me. (I should've known when UpS went in waaaay too quickly!) Literally all I know about US football is that there are 4 downs possible in each drive. FIRST AND one, since it's the start? Lol. I had to "run" the "digits" for that last area to fall -- in no small part because the clue for 54D was awfully clunky. (As others have noted, "letter" is not remotely a [layout] terminology. ...I suspect some non-Coca Cola drinking intern dropped that one in! Lol.) Lastly, I will now once again have the roguishly clever Wet Leg seeping through my brain today! Thanks to LET'S BEGIN (and possibly the AISLE clue). <a href="https://youtu.be/tjpgJjdk52c?si=w-yGe5zcGWDhpLEg" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/tjpgJjdk52c?si=w-yGe5zcGWDhpLEg</a>