Howard N.

Hi everyone!  Constructor here.  I was hesitant to comment because I don't want people to see that I'm reading these and be discouraged to comment negatively if that's how they're inclined! Anyway, as many of you know, NYT typically changes about half of a puzzle's clues, which is roughly what they did here.  As always, I think most of their changes made the puzzle much better!  That said, a couple of notes you may find interesting:--I didn't expressly reference "Wicked" at all in my cluing, as I wanted to (a) accommodate solvers who knew nothing of it, and (b) have the circled letters be an easter egg for whose who did.  I just had the theme answers and circles in green, suggested the animation, and clued DEFYING GRAVITY as "Refusing to obey ... or what the circled letters are doing that makes the starred clues seem to not match their answers."--My clue for NOONEON was "Empty bags?".  I certainly *do* know my baseball, and although the final clue was not mine, I should have caught its inaccuracy when I reviewed the NYT proof. Thanks to all of you for doing the puzzle and commenting -- I appreciate all of them, positive and negative!