Unmoored

So very timely - Yes ! BEAM ME UP! It has become a daily plea, I'm afraid.

Had to pause for a while to wonder what GOUP was. Until I realized it was a DOOK. Unfortunately, references to the ROSE GARDEN just make me sad. Then angry.

For a while I wondered what kind of meat a mAMALE might have.

Gave me painful Lisp programming flashbacks but still, I admire the clever theme!

Twice my average time, but I have never felt so proud to have finished it without lookups! But most of all, welcome back, Will!!!

Can cane-concocted COCA-COLA conserve CLASSIC credentials?

Ha ha - that marching band benefit finally kicks in after 60 years LOL.

I don’t know why I knew the Bond gun, but glad I did because it was the only gimme here for me!

My favorite puzzle so far this year - more puzzles from history nerds, please!! Had never heard of the the last headline - had fun looking it up and refreshing my memory about the others. And TWIGS and LAYS AN EGG give me the opportunity to remark that Cornell's Red-tailed Hawks webcam is back online! We are hoping for some eggs later this month. Right now you will mostly just see the nest (affectionately named "Mount Stickmore") but fingers crossed! <a href="https://www.allaboutbirds.org/cams/red-tailed-hawks" target="_blank">https://www.allaboutbirds.org/cams/red-tailed-hawks</a>/#

Nice one - this is the way Saturdays should roll!

This was one that I did not think I would finish until I did. Appreciated the civil rights entries, having just recently watched several episodes of the PBS documentary “Eyes on the Prize”.

I thought this was a really cute and clever puzzle - thank you for some laugh-out-loud fills!

This is the one I have been waiting for all week - great clueing in this Saturday challenge! Took me twice my average, but I was so pleased that I was able to finish without lookups. Thank you!

Once I got CanCan replaced by CHACHA I started to swing! Duped by the recent TOUCAN I suppose😉

Loved the challenge of this puzzle - At my age my mental apparatus really benefits from the twists and turns puzzles like these require!

Enjoyed reading the constructor notes. When I got to the word “chonkiness” I was reminded of my daughter’s dismay at the whole grape tomatoes in her salad: “C’mon Mom, I need forkiness!”

In addition to having many laugh-out-loud moments, I had a spark of pleasant memory at 87D with its clue "Cloisonné technique". It reminded me of the discovery of the so-called Staffordshire Hoard, and how thrilled I was to be able to see up close some of the finds at the NatGeo museum in Washington, DC. I remember being amazed at the smoothness of the garnets that were embedded in the gold casings. The technique was described as cloisonné, which was my first exposure to that word. Below is a link that includes some pics of articles from the find that were crafted with what they call "Garnet cloisonné": <a href="https://www.stokemuseums.org.uk/pmag/exhibitions/cafting-the-staffordshire-hoard" target="_blank">https://www.stokemuseums.org.uk/pmag/exhibitions/cafting-the-staffordshire-hoard</a>/

So what if I’m BEHIND THE TIMES? I loved learning the phrase WEIRD FLEX!

Remember when hot dog buns always came in octets and hot dogs themselves could only be found in decets?

So *that* is what a NUDIE suit is! (I had imagined something rather different.) Enjoyed the puzzle! But the commentary is not helping me get rid of my latest ear worm (Paper Moon - "A melody played in a penny ARCADE..."

Really enjoyed the clueing - A wonderful Saturday puzzle!

Enjoyed this puzzle. My fave clue was “place to retire”. I an getting closer and closer to remembering what a cryptid is. And I always enjoy a little Ogden Nash. Do they teach old songs like The Erie Canal any more in schools? Thanks for a pleasant Wednesday puzzle!

This is my kind of puzzle - very few gimmes (except for BLUE MARLIN because of all the Hemingway photos with him standing next to a big one, not that I remembered the story itself). Loved learning that some imperfections in car paint are called FISHEYES and also learning about KIVA. For 34 across I had LETiNOn for far TOO long, wondering who the heck was HANi? I liked the crossing and clues for LOAVES and LUCIA as they both relate to a provision of food.

As i was attempting to finish up my main thought was, "NowayICAN imagine that NUYORICAN is correct!" Surprise!!

Fun puzzle! I felt compelled to go to the source for "UNTO the breach" and was rewarded by learning that the same speech is the origin of the phrase "the game's afoot"! <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56972/speech-once-more-unto-the-breach-dear-friends-once-more" target="_blank">https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56972/speech-once-more-unto-the-breach-dear-friends-once-more</a>

Thank you, Deb - your column never fails to make me laugh out loud! I am wondering if the 5-letter Crete will ever appear in a grid clued as the site of a Herculean labor (isn't that where he caught the bull?) I loved learning that EPEE and spatula have an etymological commonality!

Another Stevens fan here. I made a special visit to Hartford, CT some years back to walk the Stevens memorial path ("Wallace Stevens Walk"). Along the way you pass 13 granite stones, each engraved with one of the stanzas to this poem. Hope I am still alive when Mr. Williams gets to the "bawds of euphony"!

Enjoyed the final challenge to find the key! I wonder now: what is the average number of Cs in a Sunday puzzle grid?

Great puzzle! My first thought after finishing was “Wow, did the French really name a cigarette after a mathematician?” And then I discovered I was not remembering the correct spelling of the cigarette. My next thought was “Man, I am going to have to look up more about that BLOB thing!” This was the Saturday challenge I was hoping for. Thank you!

I found this one to be a worthy challenge! One of those I wasn’t sure I would finish until I did. Thank you! Related to 3D, I have a question for those who have read LOTR (after 5 decades I am finally now reading it): will I miss anything important if I skip over all the terrain and scenery descriptions? It feels overdone but maybe it’s just me.

This was a wonderful solving experience! Got started (finally!) with ARCHY and DDAY and SCALENE but only after a couple of passes with nothing! My very last fill was the “S” in the middle of SENSORS when it finally dawned on me that mocap was short for motion capture. Thanks Bryan, for giving us this chance to work our puzzle muscles!

So funny: Loading additional replies in the comments is failing today, and when I look at the browser's javascript console to debug this problem you see (along with the error messages) a javascript comment with an ASCII image of the NYT logo and a message that says: NYTimes.com: All the code that's fit to window.print() We're hiring: <a href="https://boards.greenhouse.io/thenewyorktimes" target="_blank">https://boards.greenhouse.io/thenewyorktimes</a>

Nice puzzle! My knowledge of painting titles was a big help. Enjoyed seeing FAGIN, as the name always reminds me of Ron Moody in the musical version singing “Reviewing the Situation”. It’s a melody that sometimes pops into my head when I am flyspecking!

My first entry was KOREA since I had heard about Hangul, but in the end, the NW corner was the last to fall. For UX all that came to mind was “unexploded” after that great decades-old British WWII TV series called “Danger:UXB”. And where THESEUS was supposed to be, I had the T and an E and I so I put TrirEme but of course that IS not an eponym. Nevertheless I patted myself on the back for remembering it was an old ship. Isn’t it great to be able to feel smart even when we are wrong LOL.

I loved this puzzle - it was fun *and* educational! But what I love even more is seeing in these comments how many people learned about logical fallacies from watching TV or participating in forums!

Loved the puzzle and the column today - Deb, your first fills were pretty much mine as well. I do enjoy seeing another solver’s progress reports and getting tips (especially if they involve chocolate). My fave today was ISPEPSIOK. And like others here, I spent too long trying to figure out how pOTHERE could mean “In your face!”

This one was a challenge and took more focus than usual, but I enjoyed it. And I loved learning about splooting! It took me 16% over my average Friday time. There are few things that make me more nervous than when someone tells me to ACT NORMAL!

My favorite puzzle of the last several months at least! And I love the today's column photo. A big thank you to both constructor and columnist. I never would have guessed the spelling of 32D.

Enjoyed the IT alerts today! I was a devoted user of the website STACKOVERFLOW during my coding years. They say that traffic to the website has plummeted with the adoption of AI coding tools.

Any puzzle that takes me longer than my average for that day of the week is a great puzzle in my book - so thank you!! I felt lucky to know 2D right off, having looked it up only yesterday in a failed attempt to prove an author* wrong for not using Abigail as the name of John Adams’s wife (middle name omission threw me). *in the book “The Rebel Romanov: Julie of Saxe-Coburg, The Empress Russia Never Had”, by Helen Rappaport - a fascinating read for a Russian history NOOB such as I.

Enjoyed this challenging puzzle! Needed one lookup to finish the NE corner. I had never heard MYSHARONA and for a while was struggling to make MYSHAnaNA work. So of course later I had to go on youtube for a listen, and I am not sure I am a better person for it. But happily and coincidentally, today I also came across its parody (My Bologna) as a result of listening to a Wait Wait Don't Tell Me episode from last year (with Weird Al). Now *that* one did uplift me! The links to both: MY SHARONA: <a href="https://youtu.be/bbr60I0u2Ng?si=plVF-GZoujl-Anfc" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/bbr60I0u2Ng?si=plVF-GZoujl-Anfc</a> My Bologna: <a href="https://youtu.be/C4_G7HHJ0GE?si=Z3y4iFjDtugo9vhb" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/C4_G7HHJ0GE?si=Z3y4iFjDtugo9vhb</a> Thank you for a fun puzzle - loved seeing SUNKCOSTFALLACY!!

Enjoyed being introduced to Arcimboldo and perusing some of his works online. Fascinating and surreal! The GAWP reminded me of Whitman’s barbaric yawp. And I was curious to see what a TOELOOP jump looked like so I watched a tutorial on youtube. Seems to me one of the most wonderful skills one could have is to be able to dance on skates! (Maybe in my next life, LOL!) In short, there was a lot in this puzzle to keep me entertained! Thank you!

SE corner was my downfall - I never knew there were other NATTYs in the beer world besides NATTY boh (National Bohemian, "brewed on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay" ("the land of pleasant living...").

Ha ha, SOLDIEROFFORTUNE reminded me of the time I bought a subscription to a magazine by that name as a birthday surprise for my husband (now my ex-). He was furious, saying I had ruined his security clearance for the rest of his life. But I really came here to learn where I can find comprehensive country-based stats on innies and OUTTIEs, LOL.

Deb, In answer to your question - I like the themeless better if I am solving with my daughter, because she just gives me eyerolls when I have to explain a theme. (Yes, she is one of those.) But when I am solving by myself, I prefer the ones with themes because I am so often in awe of their creativity. The only other problem with themed puzzles (apart from familial participation) is that it takes longer to peruse the comments - the themed ones seem to bring out the haters. In the past I have thought I would love to have a filter for this. But of course then I would have missed some of the hilarity of yesterday's comments!