Michael G

Very hard but worth it. However, I doubt that the Hebrew for Fathers is ABBAS . I suspect Sam is combining a Hebrew singular with an English plural ending. Not quite kosher.

Octogenarian here. Got eboy from crosses. Good, hard puzzle, but not that hard for us olds who know about Turing tests, Bose, and dung beetles…

@Deb Amien: Keats's famous poem is a bad example, since it's "Ode ON a Grecian Urn" not "TO".

An excellent puzzle, in that I was almost totally at sea at first, getting only tog in the NW, and hardly more anywhere. But then it slowly emerged from the fog. Jesse Cohn mentions the movie of the “King and I,” Which I never saw, but I did see the musical on Broadway with Yul Brinner in the 1950’s, so, already having an m at the bottom of 8 D , I put in Siam down there. Never having seen the Disney show I was even less sure about that cross. I never look anything up, but I am very pleased when it all comes together from nearly nothing. That’s the mark of a great puzzle.

Pluot season here in the SF area lasts lots longer than the pure apricot one. So that was easy for me. But I hate sports , am too old for Mario, never heard of the book or author of 1A, and had no idea about Riri. Still, I’m stubborn and finally finished correctly. Interesting challenge. Got the flute indirection quickly and suspected the cab one, but took awhile to realize the very familiar Napa.Enjoyed the slog.

Too easy for this octogenarian.

Caitlin quotes what Adlai Stevenson may have said, but he also memorably said, as I recall: “Eggheads of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your yokes.” I’m glad I got some current slang , but still no real idea who Ayo Edebiri is. I too would prefer a harder Saturday. Puzzle, that is.

“Hoo-ha” in my mind is quite different from “hurly-burly.”The latter refers to something like a battle, or at least the noise of it, as in Macbeth, whereas the former is conversational excitement, say about an exciting new product or restaurant or perhaps a political upset, as in Mamdani.

Nice clues, but too easy for a Friday. We octogenarians these days need more distraction, please.

I finally have learned the original of the term whack-a-mole. I guess I only frequented pinball parlors before the game came out. Pretty easy puzzle, but fun.

Disappointingly easy even if one is clueless about nail polish.

I prefer a Friday puzzle that is too hard to just fill in, unlike this one. I started at top left and sailed through.Feeling frustrated and almost at a loss and then managing to finish correctly is somehow more satisfying and reassuring.

Am I getting quicker in my 80’? Or with Will back, is he being too easy on us? Despite lots of unknown answers, this went very fast. Antipattern?

I’ve known since childhood that Astatine used to be called technetium because it was thought at first to be only human-made (Or man made., as said back then) but was later discovered in nature.)

I’ve been taking longer lately to do the puzzle on my phone, partly because of my many typos. But yesterday went by quite swiftly, and today was my fastest for a long time. Intentional trickery like rocky road ingredient just has come to feel obvious.

I wonder if JR and JC were aware that "conservation law" has a completely different meaning? In physics it means that some some basic property (usually of particles) never vanishes. Had there been a conservation law of this ikind for species of liviing things, there would be no need for the Endangered Species Act; nature would have taken care of its own. However in that case, there would also be no evolution, so the species discussed wouldn't have evolved, nor would we have. (Unless course, you believe in Creationism, which I very much doubt.)

I enjoyed the puzzle, but what is meant by the word found in many comments: "emu"? is this just a hope that the flightless bird not appear? Or is it some acronym? Please explain, someone.