Michael B

The pun/theme today was . . . okay. But for some reason I found the whole thing just annoying to solve, even absent the themed ones. I think the combination of the revealer having many acceptable answers . . . being a pun . . . that even if un-punned was difficult to figure out . . . for clues whose crossing letters were often difficult to sort out . . . just made the whole thing a bit of a headache. I'm glad some folks really enjoyed it. For myself, I need an analgesic (though not THAT kind. . . )

[finishes puzzle, doesn't get it] [reads wordplay] [goes back and looks at clues] [still doesn't get it.] Sorry, the theme was hot mess today.

Just to be a stickler, canonically cooties are lice, not what the answer was today.

Biggest trip-up for me was the largest country in Africa. Two different sense of large, two letters difference. :(

SPOILER and nitpick: Calling Gaels "ancient Brits" is strictly incorrect in a number of ways. "Gael" technically just means "native" or "local" and specifically refers to a speaker of one of the Gaelic languages (mostly Irish and Scots but a few others exist). And they're not "ancient," there's several hundred thousand alive today—it would be like calling English people "ancient." Beyond that, the language isn't named for them, Gaels are literally people who speak Gaelic as a native tongue, so the people are named after the language. Obviously there's the usual muddle in ethnicity between language and culture and to a lesser degree genetic descent, but a lot of the traditional Gaelic areas are in sea-faring areas with people constantly leaving and settling, it really is the language that defines the people as much as anything. As I said, a nitpick, but the NYT usually tries to get these right.