Wendy

@Eric Carlile Yeah, I'm starting to flinch when I see the suggestion that those agencies are still carrying out their intended missions. :-( Sad times...

@Laura Stratton From the NYT article, "How to Solve the New York Times Crossword": It’s Not Cheating, It’s Learning Tip: Don’t be afraid to look up answers. You’ll become a better solver for it. Let me say something that may be controversial, but it needs to be said: It’s OK to look something up when solving a crossword. Crosswords are ultimately learning tools, whether you’re learning some trivia or an interesting new word or phrase. When you look something up, you’re learning so you’ll know it for next time. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/how-to-solve-a-crossword-puzzle.html" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/article/how-to-solve-a-crossword-puzzle.html</a>

@The X-Phile Oh, this was an easy one for those of us who read Alexander McCall Smith's "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" books! Precious Ramotswe often mentions that "pula" means both the type of currency in Botswana and "rain."

@John Steed "May God bless and keep the Tsar...far away from us."

@Janine Do give it a try; it's a delightful show! And I've been very happy to see Simu Liu getting more prominent roles, from Shang-Chi in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to one of the main Kens in "Barbie."

@Anita Very impressive work indeed! Kelly Richardson, thank you for this delightful puzzle. I'm so glad that IWD fell on a Sunday this year so you could give us this expansive tribute to so many women who have made our world better.

@M I get that this one would have been more difficult for non-Americans. Maybe for next July you can come up with a Canada Day puzzle that includes the abbreviations for all the provinces. And if you get really determined, also the territories!

@Avi Wow, nice catch! I hadn't noticed that, so I appreciate your pointing it out. Although I'm old enough to have seen the original movie when it first came out (in George's own county, no less!), I haven't kept up with a lot of the newer offerings. (Other than the nine main movies.) But I'm currently watching season 2 (which will be the final season) of "Andor," which is a very good series. Check it out if you haven't already.

@Dan Although I'm not sure that it was ever abbreviated to "SETI" before the organization of that name was formed, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been around as a subject of scientific study for decades longer than the organization.

@Astro prof I've so given up on anyone using "supernovae," "aurorae," etc. that I actually put "SUPERNOVAS" as my answer here, then was delighted when I went back to my previously unfilled 50A and realized that I could change the "S" to an "E". Yay NYT!

@Pax Ahimsa Gethen He was one of the main Kens in "Barbie," so probably lots of people here have seen him even if they didn't know his name. Very fun today to see "Kim's Convenience" show up in a NYT puzzle.

@The X-Phile I've never even read Ayn Rand and even I got @Ro's joke. Maybe I'm dating myself! But I haven't seen that bumper sticker in decades, so I guess it isn't surprising that many people here thought that Ro was actually asking who John Galt is.

@Xword Junkie Yeah, I stumbled on "WOOSH," too. I'm going to grumble a bit about that one. Hands up from anyone who remembers the classic Macintosh email program named after Eudora Welty, an homage to her short story, "Why I Live at the P.O." I hung onto Eudora for a long time until finally switching to Apple Mail. I sent myself one last message with some mildly "hot" language so it would trigger a "chili warning" from Eudora. :-)

@Ciebe As Sam noted, many people incorrectly use "jive" to mean "agree," so maybe you've heard that? Drives me crazy how often someone will say, "Yeah, that jives with what I read" or a similar misuse. I hope that today's puzzle will alert some people to their mistake and they'll use "jibe" in the future! Of course, the canonical proper use of "jive" was demonstrated in "Airplane": <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0j2dVuhr6s&t=59s" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0j2dVuhr6s&t=59s</a>

@Renegator I know about Canadian loonies (one-dollar coins) and had heard of the two-dollar version but assumed they were called "twonies." So I, too, glitched on that one briefly, until I figured out "EON" and realized that "toonie" must be spelled with two "oo"s like "loonie."

@Anita It is indeed an amazing coincidence! We are so fortunate. In fact, sci-fi writer Connie Willis wrote a short story after the 1979 total eclipse about some "visitors" who came a very, very long distance to see this unique event. The story is called "And Come from Miles Around" and it's charming. It will be 600 million year before total eclipses stop happening here: <a href="https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/total-solar-eclipse/en" target="_blank">https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/total-solar-eclipse/en</a>/

@John Yeah, it's UTC now, but saying GMT reminds me of my fascinating visit to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and straddling the 0° longitude line to stand in two hemispheres at once! :-) WWV is very soothing to listen to. For those without shortwave radios, there are free web-based software-defined radio (SDR) receivers that you can listen to it on, such as this one near the SF Bay Area: <a href="http://kfs.wsprdaemon.org:8077" target="_blank">http://kfs.wsprdaemon.org:8077</a>/ 10MHz (10000) is usually a solid frequency to hear WWV on a West Coast radio.

@Thomas I came here to see whether anyone else had commented on that. Yep, Google.com is just a domain name. I realize that today, if you just type the domain name, today's web browsers will fill in the necessary information (https://) to locate that site, but the fact remains that the domain name itself is not a URL.

@Mr Dave I think a lot of people have still missed that, even though the hint says that it applies to "each half" of the answers.

@Kathy That threw me, too. I'm not from the South, but I know that okra is a main ingredient. So I didn't know what to do with five blank spaces. I finally had to bite the bullet and put "OKRAS" when that turned out to be the only word that would fit after I started filling out the down answers. Thanks for confirming that it's a kludgy answer.

@Vaer I was just about to mention that movie in this thread when I saw that you already had...Yes, corn can be deadly!

@SBK in TO Please courier a Beaver Tail to me from Ottawa ASAP so I can celebrate appropriately! :-) Happy Canada Day, SBK and other Canadian crossword fans! This was a very fun puzzle. And yes, the cat photo is wonderful. Let's hear it for couch potatoes!

@Heidi Agreed about giving the editors grace. I, too, had heard about the name change a day or two ago and came to the comments to see what others were saying about it. The clue could have been revised to, "Former name of the island that's the world's third-smallest country..." if the NYT puzzle staff or the constructor had heard about the name change in time, but no shade on them that they didn't. BTW, years ago I saw a TV news segment (maybe on "60 Minutes"?) about the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which occupies a couple of buildings in Rome and is thus even smaller than the Vatican. Guess it depends how you define a country.

@Steve L Speaking of Latin, I put "VIDI" at first for 21A. This being the NYT, I was a little disappointed to find out that the correct answer was in English rather than Latin... Also, FWIW, I figured out "OSRIC" when I had a few crossing letters, then looked at the 10D clue to confirm my guess. Yeah, I'm a big "Hamlet" fan. :-)

@Gregg I had the same trouble with the northeast corner. An image of Guernica was the first thing I ever downloaded from the World Wide Web (from WebLouvre in 1995), so that one came easily. But the other words in that area you mentioned were tough.

@JayTee Yes, I noticed that coincidence, too! But why a photo of a WNBA player instead of Stanford??

@Gary K Thinking that the word is "ARTIC" would definitely cause problems guessing that puzzle answer! I hear people say "artic" and "antartic" all the time. Drives me crazy!

@Jannicut Thank you for that explanation. I thought the actual answer was BURLAP and was confused because if I changed it to a rebus the "LA" wouldn't work with the down word. And I didn't see any other missing "LA" combinations on the grid. So until I saw your posting, I couldn't figure out how BURLAP fit in with the rest of the puzzle.

@Brian Like Caitlin said, that one was a gimme for us "West Wing" fans!

@Steve L "Sam does unsure solvers a disservice by calling this a rebus; they will try to cram letters into one square." I started to do that when I realized the theme, but the extra letters didn't seem to be working so I took them out and eventually got the happy-solve music. I came here to the comments to see whether anyone had solved the puzzle with extra letters. Sometimes in these trick puzzles the NYT software accepts either single or multiple letters in a given square, but this one, as has been pointed out, was not an actual rebus in the way NYT readers have come to expect.