Lou

It's rare that a theme makes me genuinely smile like this one did. I had a pretty sparse first pass, and then I saw C◯O◯W -- HOLY COW! What a reveal!

Love to see a Gil Scott-Heron mention. Anybody else have Whitey on the Moon stuck in their head lately?

Mixed feelings today. I liked the schtick quite a lot, but some of the trivia was underwhelming and the awkward crosses didn't help.

Looks like I'm the odd one out today! I had a weirdly tough time with this one. I think Robyn Weintraub and I have very different brains. To be clear, I enjoy her puzzles, I just think I have a disproportionately tough time of them. I loved a lot of the cluing today, especially CEMENT MIXER and ONION RING, which were among the few that I got on a first pass. For some reason I just struggle with Weintraub's clues for plainer fill, like CRAB, LURKS, PITA, FOB etc.. Anyway, always fun to come to the comments and see the people who had the opposite experience to yours. It hit me at just the right time, too -- I've had some really easy solves in the past week, setting new personal bests on both Sunday (16:08) and Wednesday (5:46) -- if it hadn't been for this I might have started to get pretty full of myself.

As usual, I am running against the grain! KIMSCONVENIENCE was my first substantial fill -- I saw the stage play before it became a TV show. Cried like a baby.

This might be my favourite crossword. It was maybe a bit easy for a Saturday but it was still a very rewarding solve with some very clever cluing. Good stuff.

Rare case where I share some music taste with the puzzle maker.

Cute! I'm moving slow today and this still wound up being a new Sunday record for me (16:08). I'd like to thank my childhood nosiness for making me a very proficient UPSIDE DOWN reader. I especially enjoyed 25D and 39D. I actually found myself misdirected by the question mark in 114A, since the fill there struck me as such a reasonable response to that clue. Would the more usual interpretation be launders?

21D is one of my absolute favourite shows -- if you're reading this, watch the gas rebate episode -- but even in Canada it's not exactly ubiquitous, so I was surprised to see it on here!

45A hint should probably say "blond" instead of "blonde."

Loved the theme today, and got to pull out some old tidbits from my childhood fascination with ancient Greece on TAU, ABYSM, and ARCADIA.

Maybe a bit easy for a Friday, but what a satisfying solve. Lots of great cluing all around, but 31A takes the cake for me. Robyn Weintraub never misses.

On my first pass, I had "bodyguard" for 1A. Second pass, noticing a real lack of down fill in that area, I replaced it with "paparazzo." Suffice it to say the NW corner gave me some trouble today lol. That star had me thinking a bit too far outside the box.

Not too fond of 53D, but that troublesome first letter was plenty fixable with the cross. Mostly, I just got tangled in my canadianisms (15A). And I loved seeing 46D in the wild!

Life is hard for us non-golfers.

Once again I'm the odd one out! I had a very sparse first pass, and SHAKSHUKA was one of the only words that I got immediately.