Sue

@Chris Thanks for the laugh. It genuinely tickled me how angry you got at a crossword because YOU don't know common words. You even said you've come across GAUNT before in another game! And turning "short blue person" into "little blue men" cracked me up 😂😂

@NanuNanu the funny thing about finding something distasteful is that you're not right or wrong for your take. It's literally not to your taste. And that's ok, you're not a prude for not liking it. I personally have no problem with it and don't understand people's hang-ups when it comes to carnal matters. We're all adults here (hopefully!)

@Sian Same! I had Ewan there and looked at APOLLOwII and thought... "World One One"? "Nintendo"?

@Jane Wheelaghan Eva Mendez can hardly be called unknown, she's married to Ryan Gosling! (Unless you meant unknown to you, in which case I apologise.) Reup is often used for when people sign back up to military service when their time has been served.

@Joshua Wilson Completely agree! I didn't have to look up anything either, and there's puzzles where I need to look up almost everything - and I do! (It's a learning experience!) So it was nice to finish one without ever closing the app to open Google, and I got the theme quite early on. Very pleased with myself.

@S What do you mean? If they'd listed the respective years that the Olympics took place in Paris, Athens and Barcelona, Europe would be a perfectly good answer.

@Niall seems to me our Irish Celtic mythology seems to be the least well known (apart from Manx, probably) but it gives us a great opportunity to learn about Scottish/Welsh/French stories that we may not have heard of otherwise. My sister named her first child after a very well-known Irish folk tale hero, upon which, I looked into his lore and it turns out it's an Irish/Manx legend. I asked my friend from IOM and she had no clue - go figure!

@Jim I believe your collating the words "accessory" and "necessary" in your mind because they're similar. You may need an accessory to use certain things but they're often removable, replaceable, upgrade-able. Think about a menu on a website, it will have *item* and *item accessories* lawnmower blades, vacuum filters, drill bits. All necessary to use the item, all accessories.

@Leelz A "come-hither glance" would be considered a "flirtatious" glance

@Jennifer Thank you. As a non-US solver, I was perplexed as to how [Red State?] Led to just the name of a state.

@Andrzej An answer being both a "huge gimme" and a fact you learned "later in life" should have been your sign to grant a little grace to those who hadn't heard of him yet, don't you think? Have you ever seen the xkcd comic "ten thousand"? I encourage everyone to familiarise themselves and think about it the next time you can't believe someone has never heard of something. <a href="https://xkcd.com/1053" target="_blank">https://xkcd.com/1053</a>/

@Mike R Reminds me of the Simpsons bit where the "discount" at Donnie's Discount Gas was the .7¢ he charged instead of . 9¢

@Catherine From the wordplay column: "For solving purposes, any one of the following combinations should work for the Φ in the rebus position: PHI, I/O, O/I, IO, OI, PHI/IO, IO/PHI, I or O."

@Peter FYI: Imgur has been blocked in the UK due to the recent change in law which requires users to confirm their date of birth to view NSFW material. Even though Imgur was already quite strict about NSFW content, they couldn't be bothered implementing a system for checking their users ages, so they just blocked access in the UK. A real shame because I was an "imgurian" for ~10 years, but hey-ho. Now you know if an address starts with "www.imgur." you won't be able to view it.

@Mu Having read the wordplay column, it appears that the answers would still work for the clue with the circled letter dropped. (IE : COMPANY CAR(D)) Not sure why or how it matters though.

@Eddie She pops up all the time in the crossword. It's the only reason I even know who she is!

@V NORMIE is the noun you use for a normal person. You'd never say "look at all those normals" I'm with you on country HAM though, what even is that? 😂

@Ian Hookham They do use all the letters? If you don't like tricky puzzles like this why not click away as soon as you see the coloured squares, play an archived Sunday puzzle. I myself trawl the archives for puzzles with unusual squares or constructions and was delighted with today's puzzle.

@Rich in Atlanta I appreciate you drawing attention to interesting grids in the archive but wish the answers to the grids didn't jump of the screen (which they do thanks to the "rule" of capitalising answers in comments) There's clearly a lot of love for your contributions so don't focus on one person's opinion (including mine) but... Maybe put the answers after a spoiler header and a few taps of the return key.

@Nora your first two paragraphs were my sentiments exactly. If I'd read your comment before I added mine, I wouldn't have bothered! Bonne année mon ami!

@Marie Sorry to hear that.. (I think) Out of interest, when people comment with just the clue numbers, do they expect people to go back and forth between the puzzle to get the references, or do they think people remember what clue led to what word?

@Paul But... there's no F in Eagles!

@Kathryn I feel your pain. I also know it when I see it but not when it's written vertically!

@Hitch the observer does a few daily crosswords of different levels. Think you have to register, but it's free.

@Steve L We know how long is left in soccer because we can do simple subtraction. Plus they let you know straight away how many minutes of injury time there'll be.

@Ιασων Funnily enough, the star of iCarly was also in the movie School of Rock, where Jack Black teaches her and her classmates about classic rock bands and Neil Pert would have been an instrumental (sorry) part of their homework when he assigned them musicians to listen to and learn from! Apart from that, I believe the two answers are from very different times and categories, so that most eople will know one or the other!

@R.S. *wearily

@Petrol That particular clue is part of the theme and is intended to be read across with the clue following it [put off till a later date]. "CON(S)TABLE"

@Biff If you ever had to read Shakespeare in school, you'll definitely have come across "anon" like when Romeo and Juliet are on the balcony and the nurse is calling for Juliet to come in: "anon, good Nurse, anon!" As for sou, I think it was an old french coin worth a very small amount. (I try not to take it personally given it's similarity in pronunciation to my own name) If you've ever seen or heard Les Miserables, you'll have heard the crooked M. Thenardier singing about his guests at the inn and how he's "ready to relieve them of a sou or two" The theatre can be very enlightening.

@aggrieved taxpayer Maybe for American English speakers 😌 (sorry Sam)