C. ODell

I love Toni Morrison’s novels, so this crossword was a pleasure—and a nice tribute to a great writer.

I believe it takes two buns to make one derrière.

I am in the minority, I guess, but I loved this puzzle. At first, the missing pieces seemed impossibly mysterious. Put in the rebuses, then took them out. (I forgot to click on the I for instructions.) Finally finished (18 minutes over average), and found the “I was framed.” Great fun.

Entered the missing letters as rebuses and it obviously wasn’t working, so I waited for enlightenment. How could the letters be inside the lines? Started taking the extra letters out and finally twigged that the deleted “y” in “gyrate” was followed by a missing “e”—-and the line was yellow. Delightfully clever and worth the frustration.

Difficult, but lots of fun. I loved “pensive ex.”

I could not make the connection between the puzzle and the poem, even though I love “Thirteen Ways.” I reread it just now, and that didn’t help. However, I enjoyed the puzzle and liked going back to the poem.

Such a fun puzzle, but I was sure the SSE answer required for 39A was wrong. Surprise, surprise! San Diego really IS west of Fresno by 2.63 degrees.