Amy

What's Irish and stays out all night? Pati O'Furniture! ☘️☘️☘️ My work here is done! Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Enjoying the puns in the comments as much as the puzzle! Thanks, everyone. I'd try to come up with my own, but I don't want to ham it up.

How many people had "doh" instend of "duh" initially? I really enjoy this kind of thinking. But now...I am out of exuses to avoid working.

My comment got emu'd T'was politically skewed How rude! I haiku-ed.

I knew there would be a lot of opinions today! I'm throwing in with the happy people. Put that in your pocket. 😊

I, like many, had SPIDEySENSE....But, oy vey, I had to change it to an R. TGIF - hope no one here was too affected by yesterday's storms. Here in NL CT, not much rain. BUT wow - a lovely walk this morning at 63 deg.

After learning ARO, I would say I have met several people in my life who might fit that description, though none of them carried a flag. A side note - I'm not ARO, but it's been a long time since I've had a RO! LOL

Good work for a Friday. Was amused to find DIALSOAP was correct - I stuck it in there on first pass. On the other hand, flash point was not "red carpet". Misread "prognosticator" as "procrastinator", so that took a hot minute. Did we all take a second to appreciate that the E was back at the end of BOCCE? TGIF, everyone!

I think I am allowed to day-drink in honor of this puzzle!

Per the column...let's start with the obvious: I wasn't paying attention! LOL I had to be told that all the clues started with C. Nice Monday puzzle. Stay cool, fellow puzzlers.

Finished in under a half hour, happily got the painting theme early on from crosses into American Gothic. I am a museum lover, so it was up my alley. Here's a picture I love - the first Webb telescope image laid over Starry Night. <a href="https://i.redd.it/3va3tddsflb91.jpg" target="_blank">https://i.redd.it/3va3tddsflb91.jpg</a>

I do feel badly that Bob Benson's nice debut is being overshadowed by everyone's (mine included) dissatisfaction with the website glitch. Nice debut, Bob!

Good morning! Liked the theme. Kept thinking there was going to be a Thursday gimmick. Ha! I'm a PATSY! Quite enjoyed Gala throwaway next to theater throwaway. And it was refreshing to see JOISTS instead of (what seems to me) the ubiquitous "ibeams". I hope one or more of our resident experts will weigh in with stats on this. (Hey - I love you guys!) I'd better post before this is TOOLONGDIDNTREAD.

I had "fly" for the bug. Took me a little while to find that error, even though I knew "YSS" made absolutely no sense. Sometimes you just go puzzle-blind.

Just weighing in late on Saturday's puzzle. That was a tough one for me. Way above average time. I'm proud of my gold star today!

I had fun! Never heard of a BLOWDRYBAR, BOARDIES, and even GOATBUTTER came as a surprise, but the crosses were doable. Read the clue for 14D and immediately thought HEYANYBODY - and by gosh it was right! Love when that happens. Happy Saturday!

Just finished. I know I'm really late weighing in. Glad I wasn't the only one who struggled today. Waaay over average time. Thanks for a real work out, @sam ezersky. Hard earned gold star.

Yes, I ran the alphabet at Ensor/Tabouret. Just glad that was the only one.

Sooo...I had "tuneups" instead of FUNRUNS, "atra" instead of AFTA, flipped back and forth between "guise" and GUEST, and had "shet" instead of HIGHLANDCOW. I was lost, but I managed to ACTNORMAL and pray to STANTHONY. Anyway for some reason TECUMSEH popped into my head, and it all came around. Nice mental exercise after my 5 mile walk. Time to clean the house.

Yes, it's hard to ignore the author's politics now, but I sure did enjoy the Potterverse in its heyday. It was exciting waiting in line to buy the new books, and to go to see the first midnight showing of the movies.

Sending condolences to Deb. I, too, inherited my love of the crosswords from my parents. I can picture both my dad's and my mom's handwriting as they filled them in. I solve online, but once in a while I catch a whiff of instant coffee mixed with cigarettes - the smell of childhood Sunday mornings. (That sounds gross, but I'm in my 60s and I suspect many of you know what I mean.)

FLIPPHONE, CDSLOT....Whoa, errr I mean uh WOAH...I do feel old!.(Egads, maybe I AM old!) Thank you, Adrianne, for sharing your story, and for a lovely Friday puzzle.

Twigged to the "back" thing early on, and only thought "wow there are quite a few". Didn't appreciate how well crafted it was, until I finished. Bravo for a debut on a Thursday!

Happy to see The Bear classified as a drama, as it should be. Always glad to cheer on a debut constructor.

Ah the expected rebus uproar! Personally, I like when we mix things up a bit. Note: Ding Dong Ditch is a lot more dangerous these days.

Great amusement! And it was the theme that led me to fix my "so close" and get the gold star. I had "URAL"(sea) and "MADE A RUSH DECISION". And I saw that I had indeed made a rush decision when I should have made a RASH one. Which made sense of the dermatologist joke. Happy Sunday.

Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit! A nice, springy Wednesday, and close to my PB. Did anyone else confidently start out the Mini with MEH?

Good morning! I initially had LYRE for 47D...crossed with (She's so full of herself!) MARRYYOSELF. That gave me a good laugh. Ultimately SHKA at the end gave me MATRYOSHKA - a very nice clue. Off to the Saturday cleaning!

Good morning. Loving this theme-y week! Thank you for this lovely puzzle. Bright spot on a dark day. Re: the strike. I'm not boycotting because I pay yearly, and my subscription runs through next summer. The only person who would suffer if I stopped doing the puzzles is me. If the strike is going on when my renewal comes up, I'll re-think it.

Nicely done. Got the rebus idea early. Didn't want to give up on SAUcEPAN for a hot minute. Had preen before PRIMP, random before MOTLEY. But it all came together. Judging by the number of comments, there may be a kerfuffle!

Good morning! I raced through this one. Not a PB, but fast. Enjoyed ALPACAS and LLAMAS. EPA and FCC. NATS and PADRES. Came to see if we were having some fun with GULFOFMEXICO, and was not disappointed. Kudos to Will Shortz for not pulling it. Nice collaboration, fellas!

Love the theme and execution. Loved all the star references. Bonus - it was a nice coincidence that the astronauts came back last evening. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Enjoyed this one just as much as yesterday's. Great cluing, and ended up saying several times "Oh!! It's the simple answer." "Meowed" was really fun!

Joining the club. ENDUE was my last word. I had blithely filled in ENDOW without even considering the crosses, so after I got the "so close", I looked and said, "Duh OCLA and WKES definitely don't cut it." TIL: "ANDALE" from the puzzle, and from the comments here. TIwillapparentlyneverL: Which Spanish word I am going to need. Esos, esta, esas, and the list goes on. Always get them from the crosses.

Yaay, a proper Thursday rebus! HANDSUP if you enjoyed it. (No, I'm not robbing you!) Caught on fast and finished in about half my average time. Enjoy your day!

So clever and fun that I thought "Wait...is it Thursday? Did I forget to take out my trash?" And quickly checked the calendar. Bravo!

Annnnnd Monday's puzzles are done. Dagnabbit, the coffee is gone, too. Back to the salt mines!

I was away this weekend, and did the puzzle late, but I'm a big Star Wars fan, and I LOVED the theme! Genius that it was BOTH the fourth letter AND they spelt out Star Wars.. Thank you, Brandon.

Selling GS Cookies was not for the faint of heart, at least in the 80s! Once you took all the orders, with your cute little Brownie going door-to-door in Navy Housing, you had to take possession of the cookies and sign a paper that said you were FINANCIALLY RESPONSIBLE for all of them. She sold about $1500 worth of cookies - more than her E-6 dad made in a month. Then you had to deliver them and pray that these people would pony up. I don't mind saying I had to strong arm a few along the way!

Imagine my jouissance!! A day is not wasted when you can combine Brady Bunch knowledge with vocab. Kelly constructed this puzzle LIKEABOSS. Have a happy Friday!

Didn't I happily fill in "tasty" on first pass? You bet! TIL SAPID. It was nowhere in my tangled mental mess of vocab and trivia.

"Ring the bells that still can ring...." (Leonard Cohen) Happy New Year, and happy puzzling in 2024.