mmm

For a Thursday puzzle this is appropriately gimmicky (and brain-teasingly tricky), and usually I delight in this weekday's puzzles. But ... after I solved this one, in terms of filling in the grid, I felt stymied. That is, I was unable to see/grasp the operating gimmick (or theme, as you prefer). So I then read about it here—and yes, I now see how the top row answers link up to down columns. But here's what still puzzles me: Is there any logical basis for those links from the top-row answers to the particular down answers they link to? I.e., why do the first two criss-cross—a nice visual symmetry— leaving the third one to link up to an answer at the bottom of the grid? Am I missing something in the particular geometry? In terms of the actual fill, is there any connective significance to those two long down-answer phrases? I gather not. (As a pair, they certainly do not seem to link up to the starry answers across the top of the grid.) Sure, I know that all clever crossword puzzles are going to have some arbitrariness, no matter how brilliantly they are laid out. But this one just didn't click the way so many of them have done in the past. Oh well, there's always tomorrow ... and next Thursday ..... Thanks for bearing with this curmudgeon.

Puzzle okay, if you like punzles. if not, it's a Missourible day in de Neighboraskahood. (I guess you can please all people with puns some of the time, and you can please some people with puns all of the time; but you can't you-know-what.) Anyhoo, I wonder about a flock of geese as being (punnily) like a V-6 or V-12. The pun's okay, but in my mind's eye, such flocks are headed by a single goose, with co-equal numbers of geese following behind in diverging lines. If so, would not the total in the flock be an odd number, rather than even? Or am I just a spoilsport?

Fantastic puzzle! Great long Across fill!