Barry Ancona

The complexity involved in creating this masterpiece is mindboggling. We should prostrate ourselves before the constructor, saying "We are not worthy." I see the early birds got the worm; I hope later arrivals do too. Bravo, Dylan!

Cirrus, cirrocumulus, cirrostratus, altocumulus, altostratus, nimbostratus, cumulus, stratocumulus, stratus. CLOUD NINE

Deb, Keep staying in the day, every day, for many many days.

Well, exQQQQQQQQ me! (Steve Martin did this puzzle decades ago.)

Meep Meep.

Deb, 9D? How soon you forget! [Plan B, for seniors] is where you go when you don't get into your first choice college.

One L of a crossword! no L's in emus

Now that was a Saturday puzzle. Thank you, Byron!

Owen, I hope this fine puzzle is just one of the good things to come out of your dark time, and that better times will bring you even more good things, for yourself and to share. And let's hear it for CASTPARTIES!

There is a mistake in the 17 Across clue. The first word of the clue, rather than Classic, should be Former.

CORN BELT two days in a row. EOM

Yes, indeed, Ella. This was a very Thursday Thursday. I hope it has lots of takers. I was taken with it.

Now that was a reasonably Saturdayish puzzle! Nice to see you back, Josh!

Thanks for yet another delightful Monday, Lynn Lempel! N.B. This is NYT XWP #104 for Ms. Lempel, and her 75th Monday. She made her debut in 1979.

I cannot tell a [lie]; this one was fun. My longest delay was wanting to Share A CAB before realizing I needed to SPLIT it. Thanks, Rena, and enjoy Wash U.

Here is the Tuesday puzzle! And a fun one at that. Thanks, and happy birthday, Adrianne.

A tour de force! Bravo, Brandon. Sunday POY contender in my book. U?

I grasped the first part of the theme immediately with 9D, and gasped when I saw the second part at 70D. Jeff Chen has outdone himself in "tech support" for John Rippe's theme. This was delightful solve with a meaningful theme. Bravo! Bravo! Emus are not endangered.

Hi Deb, Re: 16 Across comment In my experience, re-entry before touchdown refers to spacecraft, not aircraft. (Re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.) Your orbit may vary. Your PLANET may too.

Caitlin suggests: Today’s Theme The only indications of today’s theme are eight sets of circled squares... I suggest: This is a Sunday when -- more than most -- reading the title is a very, very helpful indication of the theme.

Very nice, Ricky. This puzzle stacks up well.

I love learning useful things from crosswords. I never knew the band NSYNC was actually *NSYNC. Thank you, Hanh. You're a STAR.

A sad note for Wordplay old timers: Dr W, one of the regular commenters from blog days, has passed. He had not been well recently, and retired from posting a few years ago. We discovered we lived a few blocks from each other, and got together several times. <a href="https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/nytimes/name/stephen-warshaw-obituary?id=54529218" target="_blank">https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/nytimes/name/stephen-warshaw-obituary?id=54529218</a>

I found this very clever and very gentle start to a new year of Sunday puzzles. BASE PAIRS indeed. No cross words for this one, please. Thanks, Gene.

No rebuses. You can come out now.

I think I'll sit down for the reactions to this one. Nice Thursday, Dan!

Hi Caitlin, I had fun with the puzzle, but I didn't read the theme and title quite the way you did. You write "...all of which include at least one two-letter interjection adding another meaning to the entry." But the er or ers don't change the meanings; the words *containing* them have different meanings. The themer clues ask for a wacky reading of an ordinary phrase using a different sense of a word containing the -er. I read ER, IN OTHER WORDS... to mean "ER in words that have other meanings." YMMV MSRP emu

I guess that for New Year's Day, three clearly located and gently clued rebuses should offer a gentle Thursday for post-revelry solving. I mean, this puzzle has ANSWER KEYS in the grid! I hope to see some actual trickery next week. (Nice to see your byline, Deb.)

One of those puzzles where I had absolutely nothing on the first pass Across the top, thought I had maybe a Down or two, and then started connecting, half wondering where I knew some of the words from, but then wondering why they had come so hard at the start. For me, that's a fine Saturday puzzle, but not 16D. Thanks, Byron.

While I wouldn't say I GALUMPHED through this one, it was not EASYPEASY. Nice one, Barbara.

WHATABLAST! It's nice to have a Saturday puzzle for a change. I love the stacks in the pinwheels. Some clever clues and interesting answers. And fair crosses. Thanks, Katie!

A double pangram is a fine accomplishment, and I commend Blake for the effort. Personally, I like a bit more wordplay in a Saturday, and while I'm all for knowing things, the PPP level today was a bit high even for me. I would have preferred a single pangram and a bit more puzzling. But WHATEVS. YMMV.

It took me a while to get onto Kelvin's wavelength. That's a good thing. I like a puzzling puzzle. Happy Friday [puzzle]! Nice one, Kelvin.

It's always fun for me to see OTT in the grid. This is the 431st OTT; my grandmother entered the first 96. I remember her chortling at them when I was old enough to know what a crossword puzzle was. She had run into Master Melvin in a speakeasy in the late 20s (and her late 20s) when she was between husbands. She was a big Giants fan.

JACKIE ROBINSON seems a tad too close to Jack of diamonds, even "in support of a theme." IMO

It's a good thing Deb didn't have to write the column today. We know she was told there would be no math.

Sam, 32A ORD *is* short for ordinal. An ordinal number is a number that tells the position of something in a list, such as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and so on.

Finally, a Fridayish Friday. Fine debut, Fritz!

On xwordinfo.com... Jim Horne notes: A rare themeless Sunday from a rare full-time constructor. This crossword has only 54 black squares — a new record for a 21x21 grid.