Mark

@Bill Love stories like this in the Comments, much more than reading people complaining about a puzzle because they are just oh so fast. Which, anyone is certainly entitled to post, and I know, I could just choose not to read the Comments, but then I'd miss out on cool stories like this. Please keep them coming!

@Lewis That might be a good passage to read every morning upon waking up.

@Dan Tre is a pretty common name for someone whose birth name is ____ ____ III.

@Barb Prillaman 54 Across is a tennis score. After "deuce," i.e., 40-40, if the server wins the next point, the score is "ad in," short for advantage to the server. (If the other player wins the post-deuce point, it's "ad out").

@The X-Phile I usually pronounce it "ab-STANE" or "shun." But, on a rare occasion, "e-SHOO." Although it feels like it's somewhere between "ess-CHOO" and "e-SHOO." Good question, curious how others would answer.

@Times Rita Sorry, when I visited my niece IN LONDON. That probably helps the story a bit.

@Steve L I agree, one could say "doubt" or "reservations" interchangeably. I have some doubt about that. I have some reservations about that. Just because you could also say, I have some doubts about that, doesn't make the first one wrong.

@Anonymous As a decent but not yet highly skilled solver, I tend to agree. Over the last five years, I'm finding some - certainly not all - of the Thursday - Saturday puzzles more doable than earlier. I'm sure some of that is just me getting better at it, but although my ego fights the concept, objectively I have to acknowledge that part of it is that these "second half of the week" puzzles aren't quite as challenging as they used to be. If I'm able to do more of these puzzles than I used to, and in significantly faster times, that doesn't speak well for their difficulty -- realistically, I shouldn't be able to complete many of them yet. Now, in defense of the NYT, I'm betting that a lot of people subscribe primarily for the puzzles, and in this age of declining readership and trending away from traditional newspapers, they have to keep the majority of those "I'm here for the games" subscribers happy -- even if that means disappointing the small minority of "elite" solvers.

@Cat Lady Margaret Excellent, CTM!

@Aaron P. Pretty commonly heard on sports fields and courts.

@Adam Crapper is clever; a perfectly acceptable reference to a plumber who obtained several patents relating to the much-appreciated advancement from chamber pots. For those offended by Crapper, you'd probably be even more horrified by a clue where the answer is one of his patents, the floating ballcock.

@Matt Agree. It would have been great if every "number of nine" was JERI. More JERI please.

@lucky13 Thanks for putting us onto this video. I've seen videos like this before, and they never get old. Fascinating skill and patience.

@Andrzej I get it about golf. I can see why a lot of people wouldn't have any interest in watching it. Thus, the slogan, "Golf, a good walk spoiled." But, millions and millions of people do enjoy watching it, many of them love it, and some are addicted. Name me what you like to watch (sports, types of movies, etc.) and I'm betting we can find plenty of people who would say, "How could anyone want to watch that?!" And yet, that wouldn't detract one iota from your right to enjoy it. To each his own; live and let live.

@SP Carrie and SP, thanks for the positive spirit of both of your posts. SP, I think what Carrie is getting at are the comments that are not as constructive or diplomatic as yours in the way they convey their "point of view," particularly those who come across as angry, or as insulting to the constructors. I think a lot of us want to keep the tone more in line with these two posts.

@Ann Yup, also got stymied with BUSINESS SAVVY for awhile.

@Keith Thanks for adding this one to the mix, I hadn't been aware of it!

@Steve L I admittedly have nowhere near the experience of a lot of NYT solvers, but I have done at least a couple hundred or more. And nothing has ever given me the idea that I can type a letter in a black square. I fill in rebuses (rebi), and yes, they are uni-directional, but I thought I had read somewhere that this was one possible use of the rebus. So, today, it's one of the not-all-that-frequent times that I complete a Thursday puzzle. I even got that the "trick" involved HORSES both Across and Down, and I found and rebused all of them. But lo and behold, the pop-up window told me I've got mistakes. I went through the puzzle four times, word by word, and couldn't find a mistake. So, I had to hit Reveal, which was a huge disappointment. And that's when I learned that the puzzle called for typing letters in black squares. If they had only made those squares gray, or given them some way to be distinguished from the other black squares, I would have gotten it. Thus, on a day that should have felt like a big triumph for one who can complete a fair number of the puzzles but only a relatively small minority of Thursday ones, it felt like a kick in the nads. Which is too bad, because it was a beautifully clever puzzle / theme.

@Bill Bill, I LOVE questions like this. Hope you get an answer from Francis, who is to be commended for her very interesting and diverting "comment."

@Times Rita I've never understood why driving in Manhattan gets such a bad rap. I get that it can be quite busy and noisy, but I'll take driving on a grid any day over the haphazard, apparently-laid-out-during-a-hangover mazes that you find in a lot of major cities. I visited my niece several years ago while she was there for ten months working in a high-level job on the set of Mission Impossible. They rented her a nice house and a car, and on the first day she tried driving from the house to the set, she ended up pulling over in tears. And she's a good driver, having lived in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Nashville.

@Katie Agree. I'm not a particularly skilled solver, and even though I sometimes eventually get them, Thursday puzzles are usually quite a challenge for me (even when those more skilled are complaining that they're too easy). This one, though, came together without a lot of trouble. I struggled with Roman Elder and Younger (how could it not be PLINY), and had never heard of RMONTHS (not being an oyster guy), but overall it was fairly straightforward. Removing the circles and arrows (or at least one or the other) would have made it a little tougher to find the Waldos.

@sonnel You weren't alone in getting stuck on the "O" for a while, before changing it to "U."

@Nancy Yes, while Trey is the more common spelling of this nickname, a number of them go by Tre.

@Barry Ancona Okay, now I see it, thanks. Wasn't looking at it the right way.

@Jane Wheelaghan We had a laundry chute in our house growing up. There was a small door just above floor level in the main floor bathroom that opened to a "chute;" we would drop clothes through it and they would fall through the chute into the laundry basket in the basement, where the washer and dryer were.

@G Sorry, Francis, I was just groggy enough still to not have paid attention to e v. i, but of course, yes, I should have discerned yours was the male version of the name. I put "comment" in quotes because while that's technically what it was (being in the Comments section and all), it was substantively more than a comment, with its interesting / academic / educational diversion from the more standard fare we generally see in the Comments. It was an enjoyable read, thanks.

@Francis In case you come back to this, Francis, my bigger gaffe was not commenting on your Grand Marais locale, what with me having spent many summer vacations at Lutsen Lodge and my dad and brother and his family living a little ways to your west, on the Iron Range.

@Bob T. Love that, I'll get some good mileage from it! Thanks.

@Anonymous It's probably too late for you to see this, and I agree with much of what you say, but as to you having more difficulty with puzzles from 14 years ago than current one, I think you'd likely acknowledge that a certain percentage of clues are always going to be more accessible to the synapses in real rather than historical time.

@SBK in TO Northeast corner (upper right quadrant)

@PoloniusMonk What would be a better system / approach, to give solvers a chance to complete the puzzle? I don't fret over those, they just tell me I need to keep looking harder and put in the work. You could always just ask for the reveal. Any other system would feel like getting a "participation ribbon."

@Sue Yeah, that was probably the one clue I have a bit of a problem with. Mostly because of the hyphen, I just don't think that's an accurate clue.

@Mu Our laundry chute was through a small door just above floor level in the main floor bathroom, through which we would drop clothes down the "chute," where they would land in the basement laundry basket.