PhiloTM

@Petrol You are correct about Fort Knox. Henry Knox was an important general of artillery during that first little dust-up between America and Britain, before he became a cabinet secretary for George Washington. For me, this knowledge was useful because it gave me something to contribute to this forum! Strangely enough, I once knew a lady who had (among several other pets) a calico cat named 'Oreo' and a tuxedo cat named 'Jasmine' and I have no idea why the odd name mixup came about. An interesting and entertaining puzzle.

@Bill in Yokohama It's from Greek mythology. In one of their adventures, 'Jason and the Argonauts' set off on a quest for the 'Golden Fleece'. I'd Google more to put here for you, but it's getting close to the time for my morning meds, and I like to be near the front of the line, so as to remain in Nurse Ratched's good graces.

@Amy Museum Lover here also. I was thinking about posting in response to several others who thanked their various levels of Art History education that I'm an amateur art lover, and that my education in Physics and Astronomy might be relatable to 42A, but your comment gave me the perfct chance to see my interests combined. Thank you for sharing!

@Nora I think Andy refers to today's Mini.

@Felicia Apparently, anybody can suffer: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/opinion/republicans-trump-derangement-syndrome.html?smid=url-share" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/opinion/republicans-trump-derangement-syndrome.html?smid=url-share</a>

@EGW Humans can turn practically anything into a weapon. See the "dawn of man" sequence of the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" for an example. Now I will check the TSA website to see whether I can pack a femur in my carry-on bag ...

@Vaer I really liked Sam Neill in the British TV series 'Reilly, Ace of Spies' when I saw it on PBS in the early '80s. He also was good in a little-known Australian gem called 'The Dish,' about the radio telescope at Parkes, Australia that was called into service to receive the TV signals from the moon and relay them around the world, so that we could watch Neil Armstrong make that "giant leap for mankind."

@Mike "But don't stylus as being BLASE about your puns -- we get a BiC out of them !!" .. .. Now a little something for His Nibs, the head emu.

@Helen Wright Art Lover, Anglophile, and WWII History Buff here, and I sometimes tear up when viewing 37A, but almost always do when hearing Churchill's stirring, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

@Brooke It's still broken. I reported it, but, unlike a similar problem recently, the URL seemed to be correct; don't know enough HTML to debug it. Doing this in the dark: had a thunderstorm and a nearby lightning strike brought down the overhead power line. A big gust of wind knocked over a neighbor's tree two doors down onto my next-door neighbor's house. She was asleep and didn't know about it until we called her. Not much apparent damage, and Thank Goodness everybody's OK! Anyway, after a slow start, and tripping over [Burning man?] as many others have reported, I still finished with an exact match to my previous Personal Best Wednesday time. Strange night!

@Mean Old Lady When I was entering college in the mid-1970s, the first scientific pocket calculator was the Hewlett Packard HP-35, priced at $395 (equivalent to about $3000 today). Soon after that, Texas Instruments introduced their 'slide rule' calculator, the SR-50, for $169.95, which I snapped up when the price dropped to $149. Speaking of slide rules, I always found the circular type easier to use than the traditional linear ones. If I rummage around long enough, I might be able to find both my old SR-50 and circular slide rule.

@SN My mistake was thinking that, since the Across answers needed the words spelled out and the Down answers used the doubled letters, the rebus square should have, for example, "SEIZE/CC". Putting in, then taking out, the words cost me a few minutes, but I still finished well under my average time. I also found it enjoyable because most of the pop culture references that I didn't already know could be gleaned from the crosses.

Once Again: I apologize for the premature apology! When I submitted my OP, the link was not in blue. Oops!

@Duncan Thanks for clearing that up. Now, could you chime in on the question of what it is that Scotsmen wear under their kilts? I heard a good joke about that topic many years ago from an Aussie co-worker, but it probably would not get past the moderators, so I'll just chuckle to myself.

@Gianni A violin has four strings, and each string typically has a peg to be used in tuning the string. Some violins employ a single peg for coarse tuning and a different mechanism for fine tuning. I'm no expert, but I guessed that this was the connection, and a quick Google search confirmed the basic correctness of my guess.

@AK You were brilliant! I only missed my personal best by 25 seconds, and I had thought that I was struggling. A confession: I had to do a web search (can't stand to call it 'Google') for the two answers related to 'The Hunger Games,' and the clock stopped during that search.

All: Sorry about the link. I thought I had copied it correctly through Chrome on my Androud phone. It's worth viewing and reading about this work.

@McGuffin Retired software developer here (so much so that we called ourselves 'computer programmers' when I started). In order to converse rapidly with each other, we had shortcut names for some of the special characters, such as: ! = bang # = pound ? = hook ^ = hat etc. Although, in my last two projects, we used Microsoft C#, wherein the '#' was called 'sharp' rather than 'pound'.

@Steve L Thanks for the link! In the early and late 60's my father's favorite female vocalist was Peggy Lee, and I'm also grateful for his eclectic musical tastes, including Chet Atkins, Ramsey Lewis, The Kingston Trio, various Bossa Nova artists, even the Beatles. He also listened to 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport' but no emus were harmed in the production of this song.

@JohnWM Your first example indeed illustrates heat transfer by infrared radiation, but the second is by conduction, not radiation. (Physics geek here)

@Vaer Tried to 'recommend' at 5:58 pm, post this at 6 pm. NYT servers overloaded??

@Mike Sorry that I don't have anything punny to add, but if you're still in search of your lost vegetable, may I suggest that you skip the Moody Blues (they're still 'In Search of the Lost Chord') and consult Frank Zappa. He will assure you that you can 'Call Any Vegetable': call it by name, and the chances are good ... that the vegetable will respond to you. Rutabagas for the emus?

@Grant You must be in the wrong comment forum. There is no 34A in the Monday puzzle.

@Barry Ancona D'oh !! My mistake. I just wondered what the answer to 51D had to do with a bridge in Delaware.