jes

Hey now, HAL was not evil, that's sort of the point. It was logical and had conflicting orders. Like many of us! (Note also H A L are alphabetically each one letter before the other big computer company at the time.)

I finally had to look up usage of “tec” because I have only ever seen it in crossword puzzles—and I have read a lot of detective novels! I guess we all have just blithely accepted this as a valid abbreviation and gone about our puzzles, but having never seen it outside the NYT, i had to find out. So, just to enlighten all of you, it was slang first published in 1879, with a usage of 0.1 words in a million. Then it dropped, made a comeback to that level in the late 1940s (who used it? No idea. Magazines maybe?) before dropping to its current level below 0.02 words in a million. Also used as a verb, to spy on.

VI kingships for the win!

Bravo. Really nice puzzle, long entries in a mirror pattern replete with bad puns. Very nice.

"Got a light mac?" "No, but I've got a dark brown overcoat." ---Bonzo Dog Band, another meaning of Mac.

So... I thought Buffet was all Florida, they wear leis? Ok then. Also, just a pet peeve, but looking at the USA from outside, the Dems aren't really very left at all.

Ebow, nice. Debut for that? Now, I just just want to point out that Max Martin, who wrote "Oops, I did it Again" benefited greatly from the previously great music education system here in Sweden, and it shows in very obvious fashion in this song: it's basically stolen from 400 year old madrigals. Richard Thompson included it in his 1000 Years of Popular Music shows a while ago, and it was pretty funny to hear it played in that context.

Oh, some awesome punning, love it. Especially with the dad joke response in there. (And yes, turtle's hell was the gem.) Skosh, the word, always bugs me, I guess knowing that it came to English from GIs in Japan (sukoshi = a bit) and somehow landed in the US without acknowledging that. At least "moose" (musume = daughter) didn't catch on for girl.

Just here to say that it's nice to see Jennifer Egan name-checked, I love her books. How cool that must be to have your name in the NYT crossword!

Oh, those repeats! I was second guessing myself all the way through. Nice one!

Just gonna say: nowadays, movie trailers do indeed often give you the whole picture! They basically play out a super edited overview of the entire plot. Mostly it makes me want to skip the thing, if it can be summed up like that.

I really wanted 28D to be pink dolphins, was happily filling it in till the last i. Oh well, I'll settle for tetras.

Since I boringly start NW and work across and down, I was getting grumbly about all the sports stuff (honestly the only reason I know anything about team names etc is due to NYT crossword puzzles!) But then we had La Tosca, and BMI followed by Half Step, so I calmed down. There you have it, how to please everybody.

Nice one! I have stopped racing the clock so i can really enjoy the puzzles, and I really liked the slow reveal on this one. Figured out it had to be a rebus by about a quarter way down, started filling them in in the circles.. And so forth. A couple name-crossings, but not undoable. Thanks!

Nice! Lots of long answers, took quite a while just to fill in all the letters! I did cheat, though, had to look up a name. Always tough with names, but I did get Toni Stone on a guess.

Hey now, that was just a big Monday. 15 minutes. Also: donuts are not baked.

Nice one. You know I'm going to be using some of these just to confuse my friends. Like others said, however, IM and DM in the same puzzle, hmmm. One of the funny things about current references is that you never know how long they'll last, they could age out by next year, could take a decade. I mean, if you too back through the archives (I started going backwards a few years ago, hit 20 years back this week) you'll come across so many things that don't exist anymore (Napster, ipods, etc.) And pop culture references that are best forgotten, perhaps. There's also a puzzle from 1942 on the website, that was really tough with the people, places and things that people were expected to know then. Autocheck on.

Often I don't like the tricks in Thursday puzzles, but I really enjoyed this one, especially once I figured out that the answers to the parentheses made actual phrases and not word salad! Not my fastest, but not the slowest either. Several wrong turns for me (as others have noted, tree for smog, sole for hake) and a few blocked pipes in the brain till the coffee started working, (seriously, couldn't remember Jamie's surname for awhile there.. Duh.) but I made it through! Oddly Moana was called Vaiana originally here in the EU, though that has now changed (no idea why it was too begin with), but as my kid was Vaiana age when we watched it, that's stuck in my head still.

Didn't get the trick, finished in 15 minutes. Not sure I really appreciated it.

While I appreciated the musical refs (arco, Strat, paradiddle), overall this was way too easy. Finished before finishing my coffee.

Yeah, nice but pretty easy. And I say that not just as a former Californian. (15:14!)

I know I'm exposing sensitive personal data but: Early 80s UCSC, at The End party we had a naked jello slip-n-slide.

Super fast Saturday (8:46!) but providing us with gold in the comments section. Note, in my retrograde archive solving yesterday I got to Sunday March 3, 2002, where the clue for 106 across was "type of plane". Same answer as today's 1 down so I was in the mindset from the beginning.

Wow, good one. I had a lot filled wrong, changed, changed again. Good clues, good answers! Thanks!

Wow, tough one. I did not get the trick until I was done, got all the two/threes by crosses.

Good puzzle! However, a lot of guesswork from my end to complete it. Many things I didn't know and guessed as working around the answers (mostly names, though I did know the Shaw quote.)