Ed H.

@Nora If a male graduate is an "alumnus", and a female graduate is an "alumna", would a nonbinary graduate be an "alumnum"?

@The X-Phile And of course the joke was on them because it's not "French fries", it's "french fries", referring to the way the potatoes are cut into strips: frenching, lower-case F.

@Vaer And twenty rods to the furlong, and eight furlongs to the mile. I liked that there was also DYNE, another little-used unit!

@Mike Sub-tracking: squeezing more houses into a specific piece of land!

@Francis "Easy" = "I know it"; "hard" = "I don’t know it". Example clue: "Famous contrived Scrabble play that scores over 1700 points". Answer: OXYPHENBUTAZONE. Nobody but long-time tournament Scrabble players would know that bit of folklore, but those who do would remember it instantly.

@Michael "I don’t know. Let’s find out!" [Stands up in the middle of the classroom and unzips]

@Andrzej Former DJ here. FADERS is a bit of a reach. A DJ mixer has a single "crossfader", usually a horizontal slider, used to blend two inputs while mixing from one to the other. The vertical sliders used to adjust the levels of individual inputs aren't called "faders", at least not by DJs.

@Steve L Possibly. Also, if dorm roommates get an apartment together after graduation, would that be an aluminium?

@Peter it doesn’t play in Scrabble, though. :(

@Suzanne Is that what that's called? I filled in the ICEs as rebuses and had to have the puzzle checked before I knew that they were simply omitted. Really fun puzzle though!

@Cat Lady Margaret Just like KIMONO

@Cathy Parrish I had RENFAIRES until the crosser needed an F where the A was.

@Cat Lady Margaret Even the oddest of J.S. Bach's 23-odd sons never constrained himself the way many modern composers do: all chords must be dissonant, and the top number in the time signature, if there even is one, must be a prime number greater than three! Now I must get back to constructing my pianofort.

@Ms. Billie M. Spaight Because a well-constructed Connections puzzle has intentional red herrings like that. If I didn’t do The NY Times puzzles in bed, helping me to ARISE (Wordle starter) and face the day, I’d copy Connections onto a sheet of paper, solve all four, and have better chance of entering the purple line first! I do love a funny top line: SMASH THAT LIKE BUTTON is my all-time fave!

@Andrzej As a former Catholic, I think what they'd answer is that the vow of poverty is taken by individuals, i.e., that aside from a few personal possessions (they don’t share toothbrushes!), everything necessary for daily life is owned in common. OTOH, the Church as an institution is fabulously wealthy.

@Andrzej "In Soviet Union we have two channels. On channel one is propaganda. On channel two is KGB man saying go to channel one!" -Yakov Smirnoff

@SP Too true. After seeing Hadestown on Broadway and on tour, I was surprised to learn how many variations of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice there are. (Hadestown fans: wouldn’t "Doubt Comes In" be a great puzzle theme?)

@Mark Dolan was the last name of one of my kids' babysitters back in the day. When I learned about this Dolan, I was sad that my Dolans (we're still good friends with the whole family) were no relation, and thus not zillionaires who hid it well!

@Horsefeathers POWERTIE was a flashback, too. Along with BMWs and MBAs, power ties were Yuppie staples back in the 80s! (And until today, I can’t think of when I’ve seen that term in the wild after 1990!)

@Francis Imagine if we'd had to buy our own computers back in the 80s! On one of my developer jobs, my first assignment was to build my desk!

@Andrzej Chateau Thames Embankment!

@M Was XKCD a debut?