Jon

That bottom right corner was brutal. I finished the whole puzzle except for that in about 10-15 minutes and was stuck for another half hour before giving up. I guess just bad luck that I had no clue about ADESTE, DAMSEL, and BINET and they were all stuck together.

The trivia was ok, but this was possibly the most thoroughly unsatisfying theme I’ve seen in a Thursday puzzle.

Very fun. However I didn’t really know RENNET (I knew the rough sound of the word). Quickly put ALF for the pointy-eared being which resulted in RANNET (which sounded right to me). Took as long to find that mistake as it took to do the whole rest of the puzzle!