Squirreljam

Not bad tho at first i thought it was hard one, my first pass wasn’t great, with a couple of exceptions (see below😆). 27A - what other children of the 80s immediately started singing “Domo ARIGATO, Mr Roboto”? Now that dang song be popping in my head all day…

As a GenXer, it was the GINSUKNIFE/SURE crossing that gave it away - “but wait, there’s more! … operators standing by”

I did love the answer ZOOS…. Always good when you get a laugh out of a clue/answer

Whoo-boy, glad the short answers weren’t too bad, ‘cause my heart dropped when I saw the grid!

Pretty easy for a Thursday but 62a made me chuckle mostly because STEEDS was my third answer after “swords” and “sabers”

Loved this one! TOTHINEOWNELFBETRUE cracked me up.

Glad I knew ALANIS right off the bat, made the rest, as others have said, pretty easy for Thursday.

I was told there would be no math?

Not bad. Gotta say tho, I hate making a mistake on a Sunday, it just takes so much longer to find at the end. In my case, I had nONOTTRUE up in the NE corner and since I never got to the clue for 19d, “Bogus”, I never noticed that nHAM didn’t make any sense- until I had already gone thru all the across clues line by line and started on the downs. In the immortal word of Homer, “D’oh”😆

I liked this but it took longer than the average Monday because after i got to the clue about the Os, I went and filled all the lower ones in - which takes longer than just skipping from clue to clue…

Was fun. The “five train in Brooklyn” made me laugh - after I got it 🤨. Also can’t believe MACGYVERED hasn’t been in before. Not enough of us GenXers around I guess?

Whoo boy. I finished it, not my longest but above average. However even after reading the column, I’m not sure I “get” the hook. I mean, i figured the answers but …😆. That’s why I don’t have a 1700 or 3161 day streak. Signed, The dummy in St. Louis

I got a chuckle out of 26A, “Heads of Ancient Rome”. Threw in senate and moved on. Got to 26D … say what now? I lol’ed.

lol that was fun, tho if not for the riot act, the trick would have taken me forever. May I just tongue in cheek complain about 63a? Of course I kept phonetically reading it as “like duz”. When I finally read it as “like doze” and got it, I groaned out loud…

Ok my initial thought was meh, but that’s just me, took longer than average, but I was ok with it, didn’t really get the “theme”, though I did get the helpers pretty early. When I saw the see note in the clue I kinda dismissed it and just kept going. But now after reading the column and seeing that there were actually bonus clues, the theme makes sense - but now I think the puzzle is bad - but as presented by nyt, not the constructor’s work. If there are bonus clues, a solver should be able to see them with the puzzle, not in a separate article!