Kelp

I feel that i'm about to kick a hornet's nest, and at least three inner voices are crying, Why, Kelp, why? But i've been wondering for a while, so ask i must. Why is it that some international solvers complain that the NYT puzzle contains so/too many US cultural references? It is a puzzle published in a US paper. As a northwesterner living two hours from the Pacific Ocean, i am often baffled by New York and East Coast references from 3,000 miles away that i can't possibly know, but i accept that the puzzle is published in New York. And i learn the words over time. TIL there is an RFK bridge. Some years ago i really tried to conquer the British type of crossword we in the US call an acrostic. I played the ones in British papers. There were a LOT of British cultural references on top of a wide array of wordplay patterns that i apparently could not crack. I'd fill in at most six or ten words and then admit defeat. But it didn't occur to me to complain that the puzzles were too British?

Well, by way of this delightful puzzle, which i enjoyed the heck out of, i learned that conductor Seiji Ozawa died last year. I type these words as a small ode to him. My mom gave me an LP of his version of Dvorak's New World symphony, with the San Francisco orchestra, when i was a teenager. I would sometimes lay on the couch and just listen, like you would in a concert hall, but getting up partway to turn the record over and then slip back into the musicdreamspace. Often when i played an album i would prop the jacket up in front of the turntable, like in a record shop, as the now playing selection. Over the years, i must have spent several hours gazing at the cover photo of Mr Ozawa looking past the Golden Gate Bridge like an explorer, a man finding a new world. I only know him from that photo and the music he guided other musicians to make. Thank you, Jeremy Newton, for inspiring me to dig out that record and play it again.

Mini. Sam. Seriously. Tesla? Imagine i'm a federal worker. Imagine i have a loved one in a Salvadoran prison camp. Imagine i just got my first Social Security check and am scared it will be my last. Imagine i'm any world-dwelling puzzle lover not expecting a punch in the gut.

Deb once gave a piece of advice along the lines of: relax, your brain knows this. To one who is circling 70, and who cared for a mom with dementia, memory is a fragile, fickle-fingered thing. While i can, i wait for these figures to walk back to me and often they still come. Haw flakes. Toni Morrison. Free trade. James Baldwin. Boss, i'm ok.

Hey, puzzlers. Hope you all have food. Great grid, Rafael, thanks. Started out stumped, but the path took shape and i only had to look up a few writers and a model. Particularly enjoyed the clue for the letter-shaped construction material. Caitlin, as at least one other noted below, film stock hasn't been made from nitrate since the 1950s. Since then, it's mostly polyester. Tough and not very dangerous/flammable. In one little neighborhood repertory theater where i worked in the '80s, we were still using carbon arc lamps, which used to be standard in cinemas until the '60s. This arcane technology involved two pencil-like rods of carbon pointed at one another and kept by a motor in (theoretically) ideal proximity to maintain an actual flame between them, the light from which shone the film image onto the screen a hundred feet or so away. The motor of course did not work ideally, so the rods were prone to fusing (getting too close and hot, so film frames burned) or separating (getting too far apart, picture goes dark) if the projectionist wasn't constantly paying attention and jiggering the spacing with a little knob. From the '50s back, film projection (and spectating) was a death-defying act!

Still working on it, but i'm just piping up to object to 125A. Not all witches are crones; only the old ones are. And i must be living in a feminist bubble out here in the Pacific Northwest, but i thought we had reclaimed the word crone from the fairy tales *ages* ago --- yet three dictionaries i just checked online (Merriam-Webster, Webster's New World and Oxford English) say the old pejorative stuff about cantankerous hags. Geesh.

GAH! I loved this puzzle. Thank you, Dylan, for this wild ride through space and time. There was a regular Wordplay commenter (don't remember their handle, but i'm sure some of you do) who used to encourage us to take a moment to look at the grid before we dive in. I've been so grateful for that advice, and today it served me well: i noticed six circles in colored pairs. When the wormhole theme dawned about halfway through, it was a quick jump back to those pairs. (With help from past Star Trek viewings, as i'm no astrophysicist.) The construction was genius. As another poster said, solving took us all over the grid. And it took us all through the culture, from Frank CAPRA to OUTKAST, from RICE-A-RONI to TREACLE. Speaking of treacle, did anyone else notice a fair bit of British English here? It was like a lovely wormhole across the pond. Last, thank you too, Caitlin, for the tip that the three wormhole terms are kinds of worm! It just keeps getting... bigger...

Wow, hard in a good way! Only two lookups; just pass after pass and sifting down through the brain layers till something showed up. Loved learning that bees have 5 eyes. Add that to the fact we learned a few months ago, that some scallops have 200 eyes. In my next life i shall become a veterinary ophthalmologist!

It's been a while since i've enjoyed a clue as much as "Bottled spirits." Thank you!

Well, i really enjoyed it, Dan. Thanks! I cottoned on pretty quickly to the letters getting BUTTed OUT, even though, like many, i didn't know they spelled out butt synonyms until reading Deb's column. I saw red letters moving away in the animation, but didn't grok that they formed words. I thought the answer to 66A, "This might come in a saucer," was truly delightful. For quite a while i thought it would be cream.

Caitlin, also, thank you for that Magritte painting. Never seen that one! It is so... delightfully... wormy. And weird as all get-out.

Enrique, thank you for this puzzle. It was hard, and then it was't. It made me worry i was losing my mind, then it made me rejoice that i wasn't. Been a while since i've had such an ultimately satisfying roller coaster ride (but wasn't). I only had to look up one word, because i'm dim on boba flavors. I heart it! Sean, i'm just getting to know your writing and i'm enjoying it a lot. Clever, helpful, funny and kind.

As an elder who does M through Sa puzzles on my phone (often with magno glass at hand), and usually skips Su because it's too much work resizing and scanning, this was a lot of fun. Turning the phone upside down was no trouble at all (as a novel activity). Thanks! (My earlier lament about the second clue in today's Mini puzzle seems not to have made it past the emus, although i thought it a model of civility. Please note my objection.)

Not a complaint, but a question: isn't FAST CASUAL redundant? Are there fast formal places? Having been under a rock for the past several years, it seems it's a brave new world. I loved and pit fell where others have mentioned. So a shout out for some so far under-favorited things: - Shakespeare meets Audre Lorde and Kurt Vonnegut (again?) - The stack of ELK, ELF, OAF - The trick that might get one out of a jam (summoned an immediate mental picture of a film noir, with frantic turns at high speed, for the era) In part, i'm testing to see if i can post comments today. Yesterday i kept getting "try again later," here and in the Spelling Bee forum. I had so much to say! Alas, the help desk didn't help.

Do those of you who dislike "kayo" have a problem with "okay"? Because to my way of thinking they are the same, a spelling out of an initialism for whatever reason. The latter is largely accepted, in fact many think it the standard/proper spelling of OK.

It's fascinating to me how many commenters seem to think that if they don't know of something, then that thing is obscure (i.e., not worth knowing?). If we started out that way as children, we'd never learn anything at all.

I can never remember jokes. But when i read the clue for 15 down i KNEW what the answer should be. But nnoo, it didn't fit! I was so disappointed, until that knowledge ended up giving me the trick. Wahoo! Loved it. Thank you! Also loved the nod to J-L Goddard. ❤

Loved all the Dracula jokes. I found them cleverer than (candy)corny. The best joke of all, though, for me, was 32A Felt something on your head. Thanks for the levity therapy, John Donegan!

Chiming in to say thank you, Joseph, this puzzle was delightful! Our wheelhouses appear to fit in the same sliver of a Venn diagram. Loved the chemical symbols, state codes, blood types... Perfect amount of crunch.

Erik, my hearty compliments!

I'm half serious, but does the Times get paid at all for product placements, maybe especially of Oreos? In these times, could be a useful income generator...