Michael

A hard puzzle, except for one clue: 51 Across. As it happens, I worked with Claire Smith at the Philadelphia Inquirer. I was delighted to see her included in the puzzle. It was the first time I've ever personally known someone who was the answer to a NYT clue. Claire is a marvelous baseball writer and an even better person.

A great puzzle for anyone who has spent much time in the newspaper business. I remember many a discussion with the copy desk in nearly 40 years as a reporter and assigning editor. I thought in those days there were too many copy editors, but now, when my reading of several newspapers gives evidence of far less copy editing than I recall, I lament what appears to be a serious decline in the copy editor ranks. By the way, the puzzle was a lot of fun.

I'm not sure what this says about me, but I thought 46D, "Lose the threads?" meant to STRIP the threads on a bolt, not to take off one's clothes. I did the puzzle late Thursday night, so my imagination might have gone to sleep early, Otherwise, a fun puzzle.

Very sad, Deb. No parent could hope for more than to inspire the kind of feeling that your father did. Peace.

In a newspaper career of nearly 40 years, as reporter and editor, I never, ever saw or heard STET used as a verb in the English language. It is, of course, a Latin verb: the third person singular present tense subjunctive of "stare" (to stand, to remain standing). The literal translation of the Latin verb "stet" is "Let it stand." I got the answer; I just didn't like it.

There's nothing like the crossword gods giving you only clues you can handle. That doesn't usually happen on a Saturday, but it did today -- 50:11 and no lookups (but one lucky guess). Thank you, crossword gods. Please do that again soon.

Pretty easy once you got the color wheel clue, but I have to agree with all the folks who complained about not being able to see the cursor very well. It was especially difficult on the small screen of a cell phone. Also, I originally started it late last night, which was not such a good idea. It was much easier to do on a PC in the daylight.

I guess I'm showing my age. I assumed that "I can't see" as the response to a poke was a reference to Moe's eye gouging antics in the old Three Stooges films.

I knew Dies Irae right off because I heard it often enough at funeral Masses when I was an altar boy back in the late '50s, before Catholic liturgy went into the vernacular. It's a pretty somber vision of the Last Judgment, clearly meant to terrify the faithful into mending their ways. You can listen to the Gregorian version, with English translation, here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEUaT24B2U8" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEUaT24B2U8</a> Enjoy (if that's the right word.)

I got CIRCULAR REASONING pretty early on and thought this puzzle was going to be a cinch. IZZATSO? Then, the NW and NE corners slowed me way down and I ended up seven minutes over my Sunday average, with no lookups. I was truly amazed to see POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC as an answer. Nowhere but the NYT. (Well, maybe the New Yorker on a Monday.)

I got the trick pretty early. In fact, it was a great help in solving, which still took me longer than my average -- just the opposite of those folks who say they finished quickly without getting the theme.

TIL that the Greek letter mu is pronounced "mew," not "moo." Messed me up for the longest time, undercutting what was otherwise a pretty decent solve for me.

Major challenge for me. I shattered my Thursday average, taking about 50 percent longer than usual to finish. I got FOLLOWDIRECTIONS pretty quickly, but I thought for the longest time that the puzzle maker just wanted the first two letters of each direction. I couldn't imagine they wanted us to squeeze four letters into a rebus. Live and (hopefully) learn.

Tough puzzle! No lookups, but I did get a hint when I inadvertently opened the Wordplay column and saw the picture, which speaks for itself. I didn't notice the cutline, which contains the answer, until I read the column after finishing.

Looks like the arrow in the photograph has a rubber tip. Good thing! Smoking may be hazardous to your health, but that's ridiculous.

Nice relief after Saturday's very hard puzzle. The rebus was pretty obvious, especially considering that the title was a quote from the Kitkat advertising jingle: "Gimme a break, gimme a break. Break me off a piece of that Kitkat bar." As far as filling in the rebus, all you had to do was type in "kit." You didn't have to type in all six letters, although the program did that for you when you were finished solving.

Too easy. Not far from my personal best, but I'm a slow solver. I imagine someone with a younger, more nimble brain than mine (which has been around for almost 77 years) could have knocked this one out in 5-10 minutes.