David Goldfarb

I managed to solve the entire grid without figuring out the theme — I got the revealer, but I thought that there would be some distortion in the *answers*, not the *clues*. I just figured out the common phrases that made up the theme answers by using crossings. A bit unsatisfying on the whole: the nice thing on Thursday is having the "AHA" moment, not having to go read the Wordplay column to get it explained.

Nice concept. I do wish the online puzzle had accepted a rebus of the number in the theme square, or the numeral, rather than just the first letter. I spent a lot of time looking for errors when that was the problem.

Had a bit of trouble finding my wrong square — a jockish sort could easily be a PRO player, and a bummer could make you say POO....

Knew the gimmick instantly, which led to a Sunday PB of 12:08.

What city are Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues in? Why, Atlantic City NJ of course. That's where most of the property names in Monopoly come from. (I was just lucky I thought of avenues first and seas second.)

I grew up in the SF Bay Area and "Karl the Fog" was a new one on me. Must have caught on after I moved to Houston.

I actually had the exact opposite journey from the article writer: I solved the revealer (with some help from crosses) before I got any of the rebuses, and saw at once that the thing revealed was a rebus of HAND. CHANDELIER came first, the others in due time. I usually enjoy crosswords with a rebus, this one was no exception.

For 8D, I think the idea is that people who are Internet-famous get lots of likes on their social media postings.

The constructor faked me out on 21A. R&B "James" in a puzzle Pavlovs me to ETTA, but not this time....

My strategy is generally to go through all the acrosses, filling in anything I know (sometimes penciling in some guesses), then go once through the downs likewise; then go back to the acrosses, and this time when I put something in, look at all the crosses and see if the new letter sparks anything. And I keep going through each set of clues, continuing that policy. I didn't have a large number of gimmes on the first pass (AVILA, DOVER, ODOR) but things came together relatively quickly, and I was two minutes off my Friday PB, well below my average. This despite a couple of missteps (APE for ANT, JOE for TED).

Oof. Took me *ages* to get into that northwest corner. I hoped that Gertrude Stein would help, but I got POET on crossings and that helped not at all with the first five letters. I had several false starts with the kind of cake. Finally got a right guess with ATT and then worked out SEA OTTER, SERGE, and HOT PANTS.

Cicero's Philippics were in turned named after a series of speeches by Demosthenes of Athens in which he tried to turn public opinion against the growing power of Philip of Macedon (father of Alexander, of course).

The original Greek for Ajax is Αἴας, and we do see the plural Αἴαντες a couple of times in the Iliad. The Latin Ajax would indeed pluralize as Ajaces.

Fun puzzle for Halloween! I got the revealer first, and of course "clue to 4 squares" == "rebus". My first rebus was OGRE in PROGRESS BAR; next up was DESDEMONA, then TEA TROLLEY, and MANGO LEMONADE came last.

I did in fact set a personal record with this puzzle! A bunch of the clues were things I knew, and I was just generally on the constructor's wavelength. I was faster than my average time for a Tuesday, even.

I saw _Altered States_ in the theater when it came out. I'll just be sitting over here crumbling to dust....

>I’ve never watched either show, and I wonder if knowing the end spoils them. In a word: no. Neither one is that kind of show.

My impression from Duolingo is that Italian for "How are you?" would be COME STAI, not STA. COME STA is "How is he / she?".

When I first hit 20A I tried POTATO PANCAKE, which fits into the same space.

Of course ABE VIGODA and HAL LINDEN have the same number of letters.

Lot of stuff I knew + lot of stuff where I seemed to be on the constructor's wavelength == new Saturday PB, a solve time that would be better than my average for a Wednesday. No doubt next week I'll be back to tearing my hair out and doing the occasional web search.