Rob

After doing Times crosswords for awhile now, I start to imagine a world where ETTA James, Brian ENO, and BTS all work together to create an avant-garde Kpop R&B masterpiece called "Letters you need" where they sing about the Swiss ALPs and salmon ROE.

Even more interesting that AMON-RA St. Brown's first name is his brother, Equanimious St. Brown's name. Both are excellent professional American football players who play the same position, and often compete against each other since they have played in the same conference. They have a younger brother, Osirus who also plays. More cool trivia, the father of Amon-Ra, Equanimious, and Osirus is John Brown, who is a body builder who won Mr. Universe and Mr. World competitions.

ROSAMUND and REEM walk into a bar…

SEAMUS, OSHEA, and SHEW were a bit of a natick for a Monday. But now, on with the SHEW!

In case you are unfamiliar with "Jesus, Etc." by Wilco, it's a beautiful, sad song off their watershed album, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot". It's truly a masterclass in songwriting by Jeff Tweedy. Here's a link if you'd like to listen: <a href="https://youtu.be/efq95Pfqt5U?si=jM728agDxjaxVvvV" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/efq95Pfqt5U?si=jM728agDxjaxVvvV</a>

Crossing MUKBANGS with IGA was a bit obscure for me - I had to take a few guesses. Also LUCA with LIANE, but I figured there was no Pixar film called “Duca”. The rest was Tuesday level easy. Thanks for not including every middle school boy’s favorite calculator word - 5138008.

Did anyone else think of NOID for 23A ? I was told for a number of years to "avoid the NOID" and was sad to see that my copious knowledge of discount pizza chain ads from the 90s was useless in this puzzle.

The theme was clever, but there were some "clunker" BADONES. Crossing NENE with GOREN, and AIX with MIXSET were guessable, but not normal knowledge. Also, if a DEBUGGER application actually fixed the code, many would be out of a job.

The theme seemed pretty easy and well-telegraphed with the shaded boxes and “product” and multiplication signs everywhere, and the softball clues were rather transparent. However the rest of the puzzle was kind of a mess of forced fits (EMEND, YENNED) and obscure trivia (HANIF, AMY ADAMS, SAMBAR). I solved it by putting in the theme answers first and then using them for crossings for the clunkier solves.

My favorite clue was including MII without mentioning any avatars in Japanese Mario-themed gaming systems.

Garrett I'm glad you're okay after your scare. I'm a fellow Maroon, and I love Hyde Park, but it can be scary sometimes! Stay safe, and raise a glass at Jimmy's for me!

All fans of ROTGUT will be glad to know that in West Virginia, private distillers can now legally produce and possess 5 gallons of hooch in their homes. The moon will shine on. Also, I can't have been the only solver who was trying to figure out how to phonetically spell the more infamous characteristic sounds of Yoko Ono.

104A got me - I answered JAM (up) and it wasn't until I started rotating the locks mentally that I realized it was DAM(up) to create LOA(D) for 103A. Clever puzzle - definitely worked well online

Any viewers of the Simpsons know that a BARKEEPER is a paging device, as evidenced by Bart’s many prank calls. “I’m looking for Amanda. Last name Huginkiss.”

One of those rare Fridays when the longer fills were more intuitive than the shorter ones. I think 33A is a clue of the year candidate... "Head of St. Paul's Cathedral". That got a belly laugh from me. Well played Ms. Goldstein, well played.

I enjoyed the puzzle and got it first time through, but I had entered the horizontal clue answers instead of the vertical ones, mentally switching for the vertical clues. It was just annoying to have to go back and reverse the letters to match the vertical clues and put the unclued horizontal words in. But I got my music and gold star, and really, that's all we're here for.

Alyssa Haikus. See, I used that as a verb? Is "upsa" a word? thanks emus (I think upsa is fine, even though absolutely no one says it that way.)

Some technical challenges for this grid. When accessing the puzzle in the NYT app on iPhone, it sent me directly to the Games app. At that point it told me I had completed the puzzle successfully in the games app but with a blue star (I hadn’t yet started it). Finally on my iPad in the NYT app I was able to complete it and get the gold star. It was a little difficult to see on smaller screens, but the theme was pretty clear so I was able to infer what I needed. I really appreciate the construction, but the execution by the Times tech team kind of dropped the ball.