Persephone

@John oh! I solved it in the puzzle but I'd didn't *get* it until your comment. THX!

@StevenR Fellow Minnesotan, and I had OJIBW(e) early on (as well as MISSE(d) instead of MISSES), and spent some time trying to shoehorn a logical answer into "_ ELTED." Eventually I came to the same reluctant conclusion as you.

ESAU is (by my observation) the most common four-letter Biblical name to show up in a crossword, presumably due to the usefulness of the plethora of vowels. But I'm familiar with the story of Jacob and ESAU entirely from having read "Jacob Have I Loved" (an allegorical novel featuring two sisters, set in the 1940s) in middle school.

@Janine 59D had me stumped for a while because I, too, grew up mucking stalls yet have never heard stable hands referred to as MUCKERs!

@G I had ICECAP before backing it out when I started filling in the downs.

@Brad of all the theme clues, IMO Elle's was the most apt - she was president of her sorority. 😉

@Jim same! The doubling of letters felt frustratingly random right up until the reveal after solving.

@Times Rita the puzzle reveals the answer if you fail to guess it.

@Suzie M yes! Thank you. I'm surprised no one else pointed this out earlier.

@Francis I input MIL (for "million") on my first pass and there it stayed until the very end when I couldn't make the crosses fit and *then* realized my place counting was wildly off.

@Nick hoe-er, as in someone who wields a (garden) hoe.

@Steve L interesting stats! I wonder what the distribution over time is; I'm a relative newbie and as I've been working backwards through the archives (into June 2022 currently), I feel like I've seen Mauna KEA a lot more often then LOA, and never the "New Zealand bird" clue.

@Marshall Walthew "can you [task] for me? I'm trapped under a cat" is a common refrain in my house.

@Captain Quahog it is, and yet I almost never think of it; I nearly always find myself backing out "pct" when a cross doesnt fit.

@Jeb if I recall correctly, the cutoff is the drop time for the second puzzle after the current one - so you have until the Tuesday puzzle drops to complete Sunday and still get a gold star. But *do not* open Monday until Sunday is complete, because doing the puzzles out of order will also break a streak.