Ruby

@Skeptical1 You'd be surprised at how difficult it can be to create a crossword suitable for a Monday, which welcomes all solving levels. Let's drop the bot accusation and start recognizing the hard work of constructors, please!

@Tim I see two comments that could have set Lou off - one describing Mahershala Ali as "a Muslim actor you’ve never heard of" and another as "random letters". I would prefer to see more positive comments (along the lines of "I hadn't heard of this actor before but his work sounds interesting" or "this was tough because I don't know a lot of actors or movies") rather than disparaging comments like those I quoted. And, I personally found that COE (a white athlete) was tough fill for me but possibly not for others. Sometimes knowledge is relative, and sometimes we do need to ask questions about what we assume "everyone" knows. That said, I don't think comparing fill or comments is the point here.

@Charles Anderson Could you provide some examples of words you found "dull" and "pointless"? Personally I thought the freshness of the grid extended beyond the longer answers to the cluing for shorter/more common words - like EDIE Brickell, Virgil's thoughts on ETNA, or religious ICONs. To each their own, I guess...

@Sandip Jersey is a breed of cow, so a "new" Jersey is a baby cow or calf. That took me a moment too!

@Lewis I noticed a really low number of 3-word answers too, which is super impressive construction for such a constrained grid!

@Helena 17A and 31A are explained in the column as theme clues, and 18D is explained in the column under tricky clues. For your other questions... 48A [Single or double] refers to two types of HITS in baseball - a single lets you run one base forward and a double lets you run two bases forward. 51A [Beltway bigwigs] uses a shortening of politicians, POLS, to describe the people in power ("bigwigs") in the US capital/DC region (also called the "Beltway"). 51D [Hoosier hoopers] is asking about a basketball team ("hoopers") whose members are based in Indiana (residents are called "Hoosiers"), so the Indiana PACERS fit the bill. Hope that helps!

@Jane Wheelaghan You'll get the hang of it after a while, and as Helen pointed out people are always happy to help in the comments. For what it's worth, I've been solving US-style crosswords for many years and when I went to London recently I found myself unable to complete any UK-style crosswords in the paper. It's a different style but definitely rewarding and fun!

@Sean I'd guess that "razor" is meant to indicate (somehow) that the owner is a man. Not sure I know any men who'd carry around a razor in their bag (presumably for shaving on to go?).

@Patrick J. I hope you got a chance to read more about Anna May WONG and her work (and racism in early US cinema)!

@Nancy the "valley" part of UNCANNY VALLEY makes more sense when you see the associated visual - with "human likeness" on the x-axis and "affinity/positive feelings" on the y-axis. wikipedia has a graphic i found helpful: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley#/media/File:Mori_Uncanny_Valley.svg" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley#/media/File:Mori_Uncanny_Valley.svg</a>

@Nancy Delighted to learn that WSJ crossword is accessible without a subscription. Looking forward to solving your puzzles!

@Aidan Deshong Harvey Mudd stays winning!

@Kate thankful for you and other gardeners/farmers in the comments for helping me fix my error in the puzzle and learn more about how plants grow!

@Bill I didn't know about Tara Hill, so any of the other options seemed just as feasible to me. But now I do know, or at least can look it up, so I get to learn something new out of my frustration!

@Etaoin Shrdlu Agreed, the acrostic knocked it out of the park! I wish it and the other Sunday variety puzzles were still available online.

@Mia Video game ratings are slightly different from movie ratings. A game that's RATED E is "E for everyone", as opposed to movies rated G as in "general audience". Definitely tough to get that last letter without some familiarity with video game ratings, but worth knowing!

@Helen Wright you may be combining (as i often do) ULURU, the cultural site in Australia, and UHURA, the Star Trek character, into UHURU. and that poem is lovely, thank you for sharing!

@Linda F I've previously reached out to the tech crew about this sort of thing! You could try emailing the folks at <a href="mailto:nytcrossword@nytimes.com">nytcrossword@nytimes.com</a> (Also, for some reason my streak is more likely to break on desktop/browser than on the mobile app.)

@LORI as Barry says below, that crossing technically doesn't break any broad crossword rules/conventions. duplicating words between the answer and its clue is a no-no, but duplicating words in one answer and a different clue is subject to the editor's opinion (some publications care more than others - NYT clearly is not bothered by this!).

@Jim you got this!

@RozzieGrandma Just keep in mind that "cai" sounds more like "tsai", and that your local Chinese restaurant staff may speak Cantonese (rather than Mandarin), and you'll be a-okay. You can also say "xin nian kuai le" or happy new year!

@Mike 1A took me some re-reading. It's US EMBASSY, a "home" in a (non-US) "country", playing on implications of country more like 43D's TWANGY country singers. A little too stretchy for my taste though.

@Ray the puzzle was definitely old-school crunchy (though not so much as to be un-fun for me). but yes, i challenge complainers to try making puzzles with no crunch - it's not as easy as it seems!

@ad absurdum would LOVE to see Sasha Fierce in a puzzle!!!

@Jim or a secret third thing - you're getting better at crosswords!

@Captain Kidnap bing bong!!!

@CrispyShot They may not have that in Rome's Colosseum, but Verona has their own coliseum that still puts on concerts, operas, and more - maybe they do tailgating there!