CJ

Fun puzzle! I knew the theme right away when I saw 18A, and even knew the film off the top of my head--I had bought Ebert's collection "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie" at a train station back in the 2000s. My only criticism is that it would have been nice to celebrate both Siskel and Ebert, since I believe this week marks the 50th anniversary of their debut as a reviewer team on television.

FCC, EPA, GULFOFMEXICO--"the President's lawyers" at DOJ are about to sue the NYT for publishing this crossword.

Woke up, made my coffee, saw it was Ezersky, was prepared to hate it, and it far exceeded my expectations. Realizing 1A was VAPEJUICE was like a revolting cherry on top.

Certainly my fastest ever Ezersky, by a margin of several hours.

Was 100% sure that 57A was CHICKENFAT. My mouth started watering as I filled it in. I think every letter was wrong.

I thought this wasn't impossible and mostly an appropriate difficulty, but by the time I got to the SW, I had to give up and look some things up. KITES was a really rough crossing: * Lots of things have strings * If you didn't know the sports team (or, like me, had the misleading idea of "Arizona Wildcats"), half the letters of the alphabet could substitute for K * The abbreviation could be many different letters, with "PC" having multiple meanings also * If you didn't know the British actress, it could reasonably be ELLIE or aLLIE (or oLLIE?) * The herbarium item seemed like SEEDS but could maybe also be rEEDS, with 46D being a collective noun or weird plural

Haven't commented here in a while, but this was a great one! Just the right mix of new and old, straightforward and misdirection, trivia with crosses that you can grind out. A perfect example would be LEETIDE. It's a term I'd never heard before, but the starting L got me the LEE part, since I knew there were Windward and Leeward Islands. Had LEEward and LEEsIDE before finally getting the last cross.

Very nice puzzle! Was sad I had to look at the answer key, but I had FLIES (i.e., fly balls) instead of SKIES, and FEWER (i.e., coming in *under* the bottom *line*) instead of SEWER. I knew AWALENS couldn't possibly be right, but I had a couple other uncertainties in the grid, and I wasn't up for spending half an hour checking this morning. Totally on me though!

Got the scrabble reference as I was solving, and enjoyed it. Agree that there were too many proper nouns and crosses thereof. I happened to know most of them, or could make an educated guess (DOLAN / RENATO). Still, I was stuck with one mistake for a couple minutes. Finally, decided to look at the answer, figuring it must have been one of the name crosses. Turns out I had AXeS instead of AXIS, and wasn't even checking there. Had been trying to figure out how a ROsé would pair with KORMA--seems tasty enough.

Figured out the twist right away, got most of the puzzle in 10 min, and then spent 30 min on the SE corner trying various words with AbOve and ALOFT before finally giving up and doing some lookups. I think I might have gotten DECOR if I stared at it for another 30 min. The clues are still seem a bit clangy to me, to be honest. Will have to remember arch = OGEE and mustang = TTOP from now on, the same way pasta = PENNE and hockey player = ORR.

126-Across was definitely what inspired this puzzle. Truly saving the best for last. Great puzzle! Or in the spirit of many of the clues, un puzzle merveilleux!

Breathing heavily, but no lookups, even in the (long) checking process.

For people who like having their MTWRFSS in order from slowest to fastest: remember when that unusually easy Saturday came around on July 1, 2023? I never thought I'd beat my time there on a Friday puzzle. Until today. Now I just have to figure out how to do a Thursday even faster than this.

Tricky! Interesting grid, the middle section effectively made it almost like four separate puzzles blocked off from each other. Started off in the NE and went clockwise, with each quadrant getting a little harder than the last.

Fun, but really a weird puzzle! Filled in ATP immediately, but was not expecting it to be the right answer, if you know what I mean.

If you haven't heard of an OSMIC acid stain, don't despair--I'm not an expert in the field by any means, but I've spent dozens of hours taking pictures on an electron microscope, and it was new to me as well! Fun but tough, tough but fair. Glad that seems to be the consensus! Usually with a grid like this, there's one corner that gives me trouble--this time it was all of them.

Great theme!

Somehow ended up with Jane hAYER, Jacques TATo, and a derelict house that is a hONEYPoT (??). I guess it made sense to me at the time. Had to do a quick Google for the first time in a while. I'll need to check out one of Mssr. Tati's films. Fun gimmick, not too tough.

Nick and I must be on the same wavelength, because this was my fastest Saturday ever, and within 5 seconds of my fastest Friday! I think I beat my previous time by something like 20-30 seconds. I guess it was helpful that I happened to know most of the trivia items for the long answers right away, and they were well-connected to the rest of the puzzle.

I did this one 4% faster than my Friday average, too easy, I'm canceling my subscription. (just kidding! although that college application article from last night had me strongly considering)