JD

I've traveled to Thailand. I live a few blocks from Thai town in LA. I've eaten at dozens of Thai restaurants. I can't say that I've ever encountered ant eggs. I'm not saying they're not a thing. I'm just saying that "popular tidbit" might be a slight overreach.

Such a crazy coincidence, just yesterday I got overhot putting up my trampoline-like net.

Generational pop culture frustration seems to be the Comments theme of the day but I've found that you can oftentimes in-fur the answer from a well-worded clue.

I'm sure "idle chat" is a technically correct expression but just to quell my nagging uneasy feeling I found a Sharpie and added "t-e-r" beneath the answer on my monitor.

I feel like LIFESTYLECREEP could also be used to describe most social media influencers.

So, I completed this puzzle, then realized I forgot to do the Monday puzzle so went ahead and started on that -- only to realize it also had "split decision" and "go bananas" as answers. I thought I was losing my mind and had accidentally started playing the Friday again. I bounced back and forth between the two before slowly reclaiming my (relative) sanity. I mean, we're not talking "oreo" and "epee" here, these are two reasonably novel expressions to have twice in the same puzzle four days apart. I guess NYT was hoping nobody was on a Friday-back-to-Monday solving schedule.

Obviously I've been spelling the word "narkotics" wrong this entire time.

The way it appears, there are now one of two equal-but-opposite mental head spaces that long-time NYT crossword solvers must adopt: Option #1) The Lord Tennyson Model = "Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" or Option #2) The Simon & Garfunkel Model = "If I never loved I never would have cried"

Who else thought 11-down was "Stan Thony" until googling his name afterward and feeling like a complete fool? No one. Very well then, carry on.

After seeing 3 down I immediately knew what the theme was and my stomach completely sank. I stared at my screen in total disbelief -- this is literally the theme of the of the crossword puzzle I've been creating for the past 3 months and was just about ready to submit to the NYT. Well, time to find a new hobby.

Even though I've sat in many left aisle seats in my lifetime I was still able to convince myself that they didn't exist.