G. L. Dryfoos

@Daily-Solver Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! You have given me the UNDERSTING I needed. I was starting to feel MFED.

@George I suppose that large bells may PEAL, while smaller bells can only muster a ring, a dingaling, or perhaps a tinkle or ka-ching. But since my brains are still ringing, dingalinging, ka-chinging, and pealing from AESOPICA, right now I cannot be sure of anything. (I suggest that AESOPICA is the willingness to swallow non-food items as if they were cromulent words, as long as they contain talking animals.)

[Obscure Made Up Acronyms That No one Really Uses] (obviously)

@Juliette That puzzled me for awhile too. When the editors reference comic books, maybe they should check with a technical consultant in the field.

@jonhw I agree with you that ELK is the clear and obvious plural of ELK. Although Barry has to man the castle gates and explain and faithfully defend whatever choices end up in the puzzles, but you need not doubt your own sense of sanity over this one. If it makes you feel any better, the members of the fraternal society *do* refer to themselves as “Elks” in plural, so at 11pm, when the great heart of Elkdom swells and throbs, you can drink a toast to them, and to crosswords in general, I suppose.

@Byron I looked up gauge earring and saw some images, and now I’m sorry I did.

@SB According to the Hebrew calendar, the Feast of Saint Yeshua -- what their followers call "Christmas"-- is a movable feast, on a changing date in Kislev or Tevet. Where you're standing makes a difference.

@Workingmom123 What? Tou expect them to test the puzzle on a phone *before* publishing? Experience shows they’ll never do that. It just doesn’t matter that these gaffes happen so regularly.

@Nancy These puzzles happen. Marmoset there’d be days like this. There will be others. Courage!

@Manhattan 37D? I still don’t get it. But I guess I’m just one of those “words mean things” people.

@Ross That slowed me up for a minute, too.

@Jennifer You have go to each of those gray filled-in Ts and delete them. When they’re all blanked, you’ll hear the success song. I know, it’s hard to believe they’ve done something that stupid, but here we are. May 2nd 2024, a day that will live in WTFfamy.

@Dandelion When I did multipliaction tables in 3rd grade, they showed us where to put which each multiplicand, multiplier, and product. In this delightful multicar collision, working out the implicit counterclockwise bias was substantial less obvious than anything covered in my particular third grade classes. The thing I enjoyed most about this puzzle is The Editors right now reading all these comments, looking at the vast heaving sea of submissions for future puzzles spreading out to the horizon before them and saying to one another, "let's not do *that* again!" Just imagining that conversation brightens my morning.

@Nancy J. I have no response to that.

@John Carson. Me too. Still don’t get it.

@Charles Peterson The PTF could have been named CSB first. It’s just fate which one is the “fake” name. A rose by any other name could have been a “swamp skunkflower”.

I’ glad we have these funnyface dinguses available to us here. 😢😭😫😖