Laura D

@festy Younger people won't be familiar with them? At what point will they become familiar with them? I mean, Snorri Sturlson is from the 13th century, and I know him. Even I wasn't born that long ago. Same with Sousa—long before I was born. Fala is still before I was born. "The King and I" was before I was born, but I guess it was still popular enough in my youth that I would know who Yul Brynner is. Never knew gourde, but I got it from crosses and learned something today. And it's been the currency of Haiti from 1813 until the present day. Yes, I remember when Orrin Hatch was a senator. That was the only thing that happened in my lifetime. I'll give you that one.

@ad Yeah, well, in the US, "Bake-Off" is a trademark of the Pillsbury company and, as such, cannot be used by the show when it is broadcast here. Hence the name change, and the title that most NYT readers will be familiar with.

@SadieDoyle Maybe your musical vocabulary is too good and got in the way. Mine isn't that great, and I got BASSO with no intersecting words. It helped that I'm familiar with a few versions of "Ol' Man River" and know it's usually sung by a deep voice, especially in context in the musical Show Boat. The rebus can be entered in several ways (see Deb Amlen's column, under "Today's Theme"). It doesn't have to be entered consistently throughout. I did some IE/EI and some EI/IE with no regard to horizontal or vertical clues.

@Marty At high school proms, or formal dances, in the US, a prom king and prom queen are chosen from the student body. They have attendants who are called their court, as in a "royal court".

@HeathieJ Agree completely. I had no problem coming up with Sanka, but yesterday's CeeLo had me struggling for quite a while. I can only put that down to generational knowledge. Sometimes it works in my favor, and sometimes not.

@CalGal Speck is a delicious ham that's sort of like a smoked prosciutto. Serrano is the Spanish version of prosciutto. (I guess all my descriptions of ham use prosciutto as the starting point.) "Erm" is in my experience the written British version of the American "um"—because many British accents (or maybe "some" is more accurate) are non-rhotic, "erm" is pronounced much the same way as "um" is in many American accents.

@Barry Ancona - Well, part of the problem is that I never hang out at smoothie bars. And if something is "trending", I'm even less likely to eat it—out of pure perversion.

@Always learning A lanai is a porch (from the Hawaiian language), and it's also one of the Hawaiian Islands.

@Eliz Oddly, I never even thought of healthcare for that clue. Illicit drugs were all that ever entered my mind. A shot of heroin is often mainlined into a vein. Not saying that's what the constructor had in mind, but just pointing out a different way of looking at clue 19D.

@Grant Really? I come across the word "cognate" regularly. It might be because I'm particularly interested in language and etymology, but even without that, it seems a common-enough—and useful—word to know.

@Old Dad - I would still talk about a copper cooking pan being re-tinned. But then, I'm pretty old. And most copper pans are lined with steel these days rather than tin, so . . .

@Hilary Well, going by the Greek, it's actually octopodes, but since it's now an English word, we use an English pluralization: octopuses.

"Paren" is common shorthand for editors and proofreaders.

@Cathy Huh. I didn't know anyone covered it, so thanks for that info on NOFX!

@Jaumbe @Nancy J. Thanks!

@Sam Lyons, So . . . I couldn't read all these comments without going down the rabbit hole. From what I can find, it looks like the quote is actually from Hannah More, an 18th-19th-century religious writer and philanthropist. This is what she says: "That silence is one of the great arts of conversation is allowed by Cicero himself, who says, there is not only an art, but even an eloquence in it." I don't know where she got it from, but the way the sentence is constructed, it seems like Cicero actually wrote something closer to "there is not only an art, but even an eloquence in silence". More picked that up and added "that silence is one of the great arts of conversation".

I came across this same site with its explanation. While I buy the etymology part of heronsaw > hernsaw > harnsa > handsaw, the wind and sun stuff is nonsense. The wind only blows from the north/northwest at 10 a.m.? Birds always fly in the direction of wind? Nah.

In US schools (at least in the '70s and '80s), we had plenty of Robert Service, so dunno why you couldn't have had Robert Frost as well. And I have to disagree about "centre". The clue was about American football, so "center" seems the only appropriate answer.

@Steve L There's really no such thing as multitasking; you just switch rapidly back and forth between two (or more) tasks, and neither gets the attention it deserves. Pausing the TV was the right move.

@Tamara I still don't get it. Yes, hands are on a clock, but what does ... Ohhh. I see. There are two hands on the clock. D'oh! Just realized as I was typing this.

@Classic Hip-Hop Fan: Yes, you've got most of the following day to finish a certain day's puzzle and still have it count toward your streak. I finished Friday's puzzle later Saturday, and it still counted. And I just finished Saturday's puzzle at noon on Sunday and it counted as part of my streak.

@Chris I also like the gin-soaked olives, but I don't want to drink the martini once they've been in it. So I like two separate things: Gin-soaked olives, and martinis with a twist, and never the twain shall meet.

@HeathieJ Often it's called the "Mandela Effect" or "Fruit of the Loom Effect".

Somewhat off-topic but related: When I worked at Starbucks in the 1990s, we regularly abbreviated the name as *$

@Joe Figured out the theme...ahem. Sadly, that never happened.

@Jim Yeah, that soda bread clue was a little off. Soda bread, as the name suggests, is leavened with baking soda. It might contain sour milk as an ingredient, and that sour milk interacts with the soda to create rise, but the sour milk alone will not do it.

@Bonnie Ann On further consideration, I'm also more inclined to let it pass, since the baking soda does need something acidic to activate, and sour milk can be that acidic thing. But it could also be buttermilk or even vinegar. So you do need something sour, but the soda is what's really doing the work of leavening.

@D Bean "Piqued" means irritated. "Peaked" means pale or sickly. Two different words; two different meanings.

@PaganPicnic I thought the same. When I think of mosquito nets, in my mind, they're always hanging on a bed or over a child's stroller. But I guess hats with nets exist.

@B Funny you should be talking about the moderation process today. Usually my comments take a couple of hours to show up, but today I got a notification that my comment had been approved for publication within seconds of posting it. First time.

@Fritz Same. Q*BERT was one of my first 5 fill-ins. Ahh, the good old days at the arcade...

@Akin The house carls are never going to be noblemen in any universe. If they do become noblemen, they won't be carls anymore.

@Akin Ah, so I picked the wrong word. Should be "count", if the Normans had had their way.