CityDad

@Expat in Canada - and here I've never heard of 'sea grass', but I am very fond of the popular smooth, colorful 'rocks' known as sea glass. :)

@Helen Wright thank you for sharing that! My seven-year old also has dyslexia and writes every letter from right to left unless he's really focused on not doing so. But even then, many individual letters and numbers are reversed. I found your anecdote and your son's journey quite G N I T F I L

@Puzzlemucker agreed - this was an excellent variation and misdirect. Once I had '__A', my first two ideas were TSA and AAA. :)

I, too thought a "double albatross" surely had to refer to scoring OVER par by some particularly embarrassing amount. I'm surprised to learn that it's actually a good thing! 😆

@Suzanne for real? Thanks, despite doing these for the past few months, I didn't realize that particular daily quirk! Hopefully I'll be more prepared next time something feels off about a Thursday puzzle.

@SS I also had "ENDWAR" in there forever... I only finally changed it to the correct answer by solving 13D. I still like "ENDWAR" better. 😂

@David Goldfarb I guess I just can't picture how a rebus and/or numeral in the first square of those hypen clues would have made any sense at all, given that the numbers still had to be spelled out in the down direction

Exactly my thought. Yesterday was a joyless slog for me, which isn't my normal experience on a Friday. This morning I steadied myself for an hour-long Saturday grind, but after 10 minutes said out loud to my partner "this is going to be my fastest Saturday solve ever." Indeed it was—in fact it ended up being far less than half my average for a Saturday. I'll take it, but today's was much more of a Thursday/Friday difficulty. Cheers to the constructors for clever yet fair clues throughout, and some very entertaining ones as well. "Saturday difficulty" gripes aside (that part's on Will) this was a great puzzle.

@Steve L nailed it.

@SP - same. I appreciated that the theme reveal was (for me at least) both necessary and motivating. It was a really rewarding puzzle overall, even if I may have felt the cluing on a few entries was substandard.

@Turing - yeah I definitely cocked my head at that pairing, trying to understand if it was intentionally risqué or if I was just juvenile 😂

Yes. This puzzle as a whole was so much fun, and I found all the puns so delightful, that I am willing to let this be the one and only time I complain about joggle in the comments.

@Puzzlemucker - whenever someone's comment tickles me just as much as the puzzle, I feel like half the time it's got your name on it. ☺️

@Lewis - I, too, had solved the entire puzzle without realizing the numbers appeared in order from 10 down to 1, not just occurring on the "down" clues. Once it was pointed out on Wordplay, my mind was blown! Any quibbles I had about one answer or another were forgiven, once I realized how complex of a task the constructor had set for himself!

@Puzzlemucker - I agree! "Still I Rise" instantly became my favorite Monday puzzle ever.

@Hugh - same here. I only recognized the name "Berle" after a lookup, and since I'd had "HIP" since very early on, I had no clue why my puzzle was still saying something was wrong. I checked every single across clue against my answers and thought "all of these are right!" I followed that with a thorough but non exhaustive check of most down clues and I was once again totally flummoxed as to what might be incorrect. I probably spent 8-10 minutes methodically checking every answer again before finally realizing 14D was the only one I even had a shred of doubt about. Still a very fun and satisfying puzzle!

@Sam exactly! I got the clothing sizes thing very early on, and knew the answer to every individual clue, but I just couldn't figure out what the puzzle "wanted" me to do as far as entering the letters. Solving was decently fun along the way, but having to spend 5 solid minutes trying different permutations of letters in the grid until suddenly the puzzle acknowledged the completion was frustrating and took away the satisfaction for me. The feeling reminded me a bit of solving a "tricky" Connections without fully understanding why certain words were grouped, or failing to solve a Connections because the category/group was really awkward or esoteric.