Francis

@HeathieJ Consuming Ayn Rand can be hazardous to your mental health. I read "Atlas Shrugged" twice. Once in high school and once in college, and I'm still recovering. One thing I will say, though, is that Ayn Rand characters, unlike modern financiers, to their credit actually produced something: Roark produced architecture, Talbert produced rail traffic, D'Anconia produced silver, and Rearden produced steel. All current money masters do is move money around, buy a company to load it up with debt, and sell all the assets for profits, and impoverish somebody else. Nothing whatsoever is actually produced to back that wealth. We don't even live in an age where wealth actually does something. All it does today is produce more wealth, with nothing substantial to back it. Our entire economy is a pyramid scheme.

@Jesse R. Maybe. And not soon enough. Not before I GOESBERSERK, losing even the ability to conjugate verbs.

@Steven M. I find that stunningly fast. I was almost four times slower. Most of it was in the squares on near the eastern boundary, including SEXILE, PLANE, DONICELY, and ANTITAX.

@Andrzej I think you just gave a great example of crossword quicksand! The entry of the very reasonable STOOD tilted the rest of your solving, but not enough to make it blindingly obvious that STOOD was wrong. I think that's the very essence of the concept of how a reasonable mistake can make a puzzle quickly difficult.

@Eva H. Why don’t you construct some without proper nouns and just good old American words?

@Darren Please change your location. I don’t want posts like this identified with Minnesota. I’m not saying you should leave the state, although that would be even better. Saying that a debut constructor should be banned. There simply is no excuse for such mean spiritedness.

@Eva H. This isn’t politics. It’s sociology.

@Chris Try not to let the comments bum you out. We only compete with ourselves here, not each other. If you’re happy, stay happy.

@Darren Someone once told me they loved every second of a movie, but it was too long.

@DawnW Me, too. But I never noticed how bad I was at spelling it.

@Roberta Why not make a joke? It's not like there's anything we can do about it. We're only along for the ride. It's not our country, it's not our lives to do with as we wish. We live only to serve our billionaire overlords, to make them ever more properous. Writing our congressmen doesn't work. Writing our senators doesn't work. Appealing to the judicial system doesn't work. Praying doesn't work, and Lord knows I've tried. We might as well laugh as we await our demise.

@Charles Lots of laudatory posts below for this debut constructor.

@Francis Come on, people, that was funny. Don’t make me “like” my own post. 😀

@Lewis You’ve found a way to make it a different kind of chalk. The perfect remedy for those who aren’t challenged enough.

@Andrzej I love the alertness of dogs, especially puppies. It's like they've blocked out everything else other than their current focus of attention. By chance I've had a string of older dogs. My daughter and son-in-law have two genuine puppies, and the energy is just phenomenal when you've been away from it for a while.

@Emma Congratulations! Solving your first rebus is the second greatest feeling in the world.

@Nancy I don’t get the tie, either. Makes no sense at all to me.

@Bigbee Half the commenters think they’re getting too damn hard. The other half think they’re getting too damn easy.

@Matt These days my better half and I mostly go out with kids and grandkids to eat, not so often when it's just the two of us. So, yeah, it's been a while. Maybe I should get on that.

@Paul Turner I have terrific memories of those countdowns. I think I was in the third grade when the Mercury missions started. The delays, wow, they were so annoying. Like I was going to have to be walking to school when it actually took off? And I had to hope the TVs would be on at the schools? And this was going to be my last chance to see it ever in my life? I got to be careful or I'll flip entirely into Old Man "when I was your age, sonny....".

@HeathieJ I don't know. That's never happened before.

@Bill No need for alarm (clock)—I’m already up and out of bed.

@Suzanne You can get support to restore your streak. They’re glad to do it. Cost them basically nothing.

@Matt Waiter! I'll have what he's having in the last paragraph. Make it a double.

@Marc A. Leaf At some point I thought I could lean on that Z enough to fill in the ERO after the Z. I think that was a quantum leap in my solving, that I began to see parts of the answer even if I didn't have the whole answer.

@Chet Color me shocked.

@SBK 😂 Yeah, that pretty much says it all. I'd love to have some stats like "What percentage of your full answers without crosses turned out to be right?". Or, "What was the longest time period with no activity whatsoever, i.e. befuddlement time?"

@SBK Well, I have to admit, a "Black Mirror" episode with anything remotely approaching happy is a bad bet. I also have to admit that the dark drama and humor seems to help me in some mysterious way. Like the Blues in music are seemingly cathartic, though they've not helped me much. Hard to know how to navigate life.

@Bob 😂 Or as writers for an epic episode of "Cheers" might say about [Nelson Mandela and Charlie Chaplin] "two people who've never been in my kitchen".

@Joan Is that an order?

@BB It seemed to me that many of the answers were especially hard to spell, with the two or three vowels a seeming possibility. And with psilocybin, we even have a "y", which, from my recall could have been the third letter or the seventh letter, or both, or neither.

@Times Rita This should come as absolutely no comfort to you whatsoever, as I frequently trip before reaching the finish line, but that's exactly where my problems was. No puzzle is easier than its toughest cross.

@Al in Pittsburgh Nice. Thanks. I tend towards pessimism, and it's nice to hear someone talk solid sense.

@Ruth Gerard Poley 😀. And here I am, old as sin, still tripped up. I did get SNEAD and Lehrer, though. 89 and still doing these. Twere I so resilient.

@B Not sure “ self-flagellating” works here. You think the constructor is sharing our pain, those of us who experience it? More likely you’re frustrated and angry with yourself and are transferring the blame onto someone else.

@Marshall Walthew Why, solving a Saturday puzzle, of course. What else? ;-)

@Eric Yeah, it’s a bit of a reach from the ore to fuel rods. Amazing amount of technology to enrich the 235.

@Scott You’re not the only one. Scroll down.

@Bob “Summers” can be people who sum. CPAs are people who sum.

@Nancy J. I humbly accept your deeper wisdom.

@SBK 😀 Maybe you should write for "Black Mirror"?