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I never even considered using a rebus to solve this one. When I saw the first F, I filled in the quip (which I had remembered hearing before, making that reveal extremely easy to uncover) and just assumed all the PH's had been replaced with F's, and that was meant to be the while point.

I was thrown off a little by the fact that the theme clues used the word 'and' but the answers were singular. I wanted plural answers to go with the plural clues.

> separated by a backslash no, no, NO! That is not what '/' is! That's a slash. A normal punctuation mark. '\' is a backslash, used primarily in specific computing contexts, but for some reason a LOT of people get this wrong.

I found this especially hard for a Thursday. I think it probably would have been easier on paper, where you can write in the margins. Because the missing letters were invisible to me, I kept forgetting where they were (since the answers in the grid were all still valid words) and couldn't see what they were spelling.

Yeah, the idea was clever, but the solving experience in the app ruined it and made it way too fussy and hard. Took nearly twice as long as my typical Sunday. Like others, I got the idea early, but just could not figure out how the puzzle wanted the theme crossings entered.

48d took me a while to figure out at the end. Why not just clue 60a as the old NYC subway and keep WHIP with the same clue at 48d? To me, WHAP is the sound of swatting someone with a rolled up newspaper, not actually beating them. And while the theme is fun, I don't think the revealer works, unless this is another regional thing? Do people say they heard the answer 'in Jeopardy!' or 'on Jeopardy!'? I would only ever say 'on'.

I think there are a couple of factual errors in this puzzle. Isn't BLINI already plural? Maybe the logic on BLINIS is that it's an Anglicized plural of a foreign word? But AUTOTUNER is flat out wrong. The product made by Antares Audio and used by Cher and T-Pain is called Auto-Tune, and even the generic name for the tool is pitch correction, not anything close to AUTOTUNER.

I get where the puzzle is going with the STANLEY CUP clue, but... it's factually wrong. The Cup crosses the border regularly, it just hasn't been awarded to a Canadian team since 1993.

I think the fact that 9A ended in TX, which could mean Texas on its own, confused me because I just couldn't understand how AES was supposed to represent a 'mess' that was with (as in next to) Texas. Took me until well after I was done to realize it was just a messy anagram.

I liked this, but it definitely played harder than he average Thursday. Or maybe just slower as I tried to work out how to apply the theme. The fact that the locations of the added or removed NEs differed in every answer made it especially challenging. Also, before I hit the revealer, I had the entire top third filled in, saw the NEs in, well, the NE, and started looking for NWs, etc. Oops.

I'll never understand why the puzzle keeps trying to make 'EKE by' a thing. EKE OUT is a thing. 'EKE by' is not. Scrape by, sure. But EKE on its own doesn't really make sense. It needs the 'out', and the verb phrase is transitive. No dictionary I've looked in reports use of 'EKE by', and some even insist that EKE can only be used followed by 'out'. I also don't get why they seem to think ASAP and STAT are synonymous. ASAP doesn't mean drop everything and do it right now. It's much more forgiving, as implied by what it actually stands for.

The only thing I had any trouble with in this puzzle was the key answer, because like others, I was sure 'END OF THE ROAD' implied a D, but I guess it should have been more obvious that it wasn't, since none of the other key answers were directly self-referential, but hinted at other parts of the puzzle. The rest I found extremely easy, and I assume that was by design since the theme was a little trickier than usual.

Not to be That Person, but ... moles aren't rodents.

Oof, after how easy yesterday's puzzle was, I should have expected something like this. No particular clue or section or even voice stood out to me as especially hard, but there was enough vagueness that things didn't come quickly. I actually had to puzzle things out for a change, and took about 50% longer than average. I especially liked the clues on SPEED CHESS and SIXTH SENSE, and I think the placement of ICONOCLAST as clued below a clue about Election Day led me directly down the wrong path that I was clearly meant to try before landing on the right interpretation of 'convention'.

I'm choosing to interpret the timing of running 10d as a response to yesterday's puzzle.

The problem with 'technically correct' answers, especially when it comes to well-known song lyrics, is they end up being confusing to solvers. Almost everybody thinks the song goes, "Lo-lo-lo-lo- Lola," so they're going to write in that way at first and be confused when that doesn't work with the crossings. But I guess the Times can't run a puzzle with unofficial lyrics, can they?

The editors made him change Obi-Wan because the 'Wan' doesn't sound enough like 'one', but BENIGNLY made the cut, despite its first syllable sounding even less like 'B'?

The theme answers were unhelpful (nearly impossible to see) in dark mode, so I just skipped them and solved the downs. I was very very easy that way, but I'm still not a fan of themes that rely so heavily on particular modes of solving.

Are 40d/49a dialectal? They aren't homophones when I say them.

I'm kind of indifferent to the trick, but I did spend time trying to figure out how it worked early on, and then tried to use it to solve the theme answers directly. If I hadn't and just focused on the crossings, I might have PR'ed this one. Instead I missed it by 15 seconds.

Am I the only one who has no idea what anyone is talking about? This looked like a completely normal puzzle to me, with nothing pre-filled.

I found this very easy and largely ignored the theme as I solved more or less top to bottom. I could tell something was up because the answers didn't match the clues, but I wasn't really held up by it, so it didn't matter. By the time I reached the revealer, I had already inferred most of the theme answers anyway.