Ombeady

This brought back a memory from college. Someone in the lab was studying grunion and wanted eggs stained for electron microscopy. My professor stressed that the osmium tetroxide I would be using was highly toxic so I had to use the fume hood. By the time we got back from the beach, after the grunion run, it was after midnight. Everyone left and I preserved and stained the eggs, very carefully! After all that, I never got to see the results. I was just a lab technician. This experience didn’t help me solve the puzzle, though, as I never heard it called OSMIC acid.

I started playing the crossword as I was approaching retirement, but I only played Monday, Tuesday, and sometimes Wednesday. The other days were too hard and I didn’t have time. Once I retired and discovered the columns, I took on the whole week. Now crosswords are part of my daily routine. This is by way of saying thank you to Deb (and the other columnists) for teaching me how to play the game!

Since I retired and started solving every day, this is the first one that took longer than my averages. It was definitely a Wednesday or even a Thursday level for me! But I enjoyed the word play. Very clever!

I liked it! The reimagining was clever and the clues were not too hard. Good puzzle.

Very clever! My brain only saw UPsides. I had to read the article to get the DOWNsides. I guess I really am an optimist.

I enjoyed this puzzle and got the rebuses and revealer fairly quickly. I smiled, though, at PALM being included in the list of trees. While they are commonly called trees, they are not actually trees, botanically. Here in Los Angeles this has caused much debate over whether to count them as street trees for the urban canopy. Purists complain whenever palms are planted in new developments. Only one species is native, another cause for complaints. Personally I like seeing a row of stately palms along our streets. They are an iconic symbol of LA. But they aren’t trees.

I enjoyed this one a lot. I came here to point out that TOMATO blossoms are buzz pollinated by bees (watch a video) and here in Southern California one of our iconic spring wildflowers, which makes excellent honey, is black SAGE.

I think this is my all time favorite puzzle, for the cleverness of the NE and NW corners ALONE.

38 Down?? I’ve never seen a recipe for horchata that includes tiger nut. Never even heard of it. It was a good puzzle but I had to ignore that odd clue and get it from crossings.

If it’s possible to comment on a mini puzzle, I’m here to say that a difficult college chemistry class is OCHEM. It is never ORGC.