Brian

If I ever win a Pulitzer Prize, I hope I won't be labeled as "an obscure proper noun." Shout out to one of my favorite authors Anthony DOERR! Hopefully this will inspire some folks to get familiar.

Did anyone else have SNOWCANO? It did say "rare," but that did started to feel a bit too rare after a while ...

Incredible theme, but came here mostly to ask if anyone else continued the list on 48D as Christopher Guest's character in Best in Show? "Pecan NUT, pistachio NUT, pine NUT, walNUT ..."

Is BORGE a well known clue for everyone? I had BUd for "Buster" because I thought this person might as well be DORGE. The southwest corner had a lot of tougher fact-based crossers. I feel like a running theme of Joel's era seems to be clues with multiple potential answers that you can only narrow down with obscure/little known crossers. I love a tough puzzle when there's something to puzzle out, but the last few weeks have seen a lot more things that I simply don't know. Maybe that's on me, but it's certainly different than the last few years, where I felt there was a good mix of learning new things and working through some wordplay. I'm used to giving a humbled clap when I'm stumped — now it just seems like I'm angry.

Wow, blatant mistake by the Times. Even Derek Zoolander knows 9D is spelled "DAIYE SPA"