Aarglefarg

@LARRY The theme is the whole reason the puzzle was designed as it was from the start. It's not a case of a puzzle not working out so let's just leave out a letter or add more letters in. There are six symmetrically-placed theme entries plus the central grid-spanning (16 letter!) revealer that explains the concept perfectly. I can't imagine seeing someone created a puzzle like this and thinking that something just didn't fit and the constructor should have just tried harder.

@PokerGeek It's the 41st highest. :) <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Scrabble/HighestDaily" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Scrabble/HighestDaily</a>

@Logan Et alii, aliae and alia are the same thing, just with different genders. Masculine/mixed, feminine and neutral respectively.

@Ellen There are the snack foods called OAT bars, or granola bars.

@mainer Will Shortz is recovering from a stroke he had in February.

It gave me a moment's pause too, but 'predecessor' doesn't always have to mean the immediate predecessor.

@Spmm Escalators are the moving staircases.

@RA Yes, "bad actors" in this case isn't about people acting like in a movie, but people doing harmful actions.

I put in TRANS immediately but could only think of "rights" as what could follow (too long) until I revisited it.

Nu is a Greek letter that fits the clue, pluralised.

@JDJ So and Sol (and Soh, in British English) are different names for the same note.

@Ron It's part of the theme. See the T made up of the black squares below it? With it, the answer is read as DAYS PAST.

@dutchiris You rotate it mentally, not on the screen. There is an animation after the puzzle is solved, however.

I emailed support when I had a the same issue (a personal best time showing up in error) and they corrected the record for me.

Multiple dictionaries show "U-ie", which would be written into a crossword as UIE. <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/u-ie" target="_blank">https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/u-ie</a> <a href="https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/u-ie" target="_blank">https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/u-ie</a>

The more direct cluing is part of the charm of Mondays, giving texture to the week.

It's a hint there's something special about those squares. They could have left them unshaded but it would have made it harder for people to understand.

@Steve L It accepted my W/D fill.

@Graham Hackett A few dictionaries have an entry for "what'd" (Collins, for one), it's widely used and we understand what it means so it sounds pretty recognised to me.

@Ken From what I can see, they were both associated with lyric poetry at different times. Erato usually gets the title.

It's short for Parenthesis, a name for those ( ) symbols. The clue asks for an abbreviation. I wasn't familiar with the abbreviation but it is real. <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/paren" target="_blank">https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/paren</a>

@Nick P It would be fun for the paired clues. I'm sure there'd be complaints though, about crossing two names.

Congratulations! It's a personal best for me too, better than my best Thursday time.

@Sarah It isn't considered a prime number. Prime numbers having "only two divisors, 1 and itself" doesn't allow those divisors to be the same number. It would complicate maths and overthrow some principles to overlook that and count 1 as prime.

@Dhiren It's a case of countries being divided by a common language :)! There are regional differences in what is called 'lemonade'. In a range of countries, it does refer to a carbonated drink (Sprite and 7up are two brands).

To add to that from XWord Info, the first time it was ever clued in the NYT (1943), it was as the flour. It wasn't clued in the encouragement to a boy sense until 7 years later in 1950, or as a gender neutral encouragement until 1979 (unless you count 1954's "colloquial form of 'that's a'"), and not until 1981 to a girl. I noticed that, the first time ATTA appeared in the Will Shortz's era, it was "____ girl!" and there's been a good balance since then.

I just used the letter twice as a rebus, but it should also solve with the letter once (since the first letter of a rebus is accepted as an alternative).

I happily put in ETUI right away. I learned it a few years ago via the crossword blog "Et Tu, Etui?", and today was the first time I could put it to use!

An exclamation point is a lot like a question mark in a crossword clue. It's the kind of clue described in this blog post a few years ago, for (that puzzle's) 37D: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2023-02-22.html" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2023-02-22.html</a>

The clue says in 1978, which is when SADAT was awarded the prize. Unless the sources I'm seeing are wrong, Abdus Salam won the prize the following year in 1979.

@Barry Ancona "Don't touch that DIAL" is a cliche that lives on.

@Leontion Like with Caitlin in the column picking HUGO instead of COCO, it's remarkable how often a wrong guess appears later on!

@Joe The end of the blog post has a link to the answer key, to help point you in right direction. The Today's Theme section of the blog post also helps if that's where the confusion comes from.