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@Dc 8 minutes in I was happy to have entered two words with some probability of being correct.

@Peter Don't forget to calibrate. "Easy for a Saturday" in no way means easy. First gold-star Saturday is huge!

@Peter Vocal runs, in this context ala Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, etc. The fancy word for it is melisma (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melisma" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melisma</a>)

@Alex M NW corner for me too, took some time to wrangle that one into submission. What was interesting is that I was missing the top parts off the downs --- something-BOARD, something-OWNER, something-ENCOUNTER, and those upper crosses were not falling!

@Petrol --- I think you're referring to the conjunction fallacy (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy</a>), and I bet a lot of people here would enjoy (or have enjoyed!) "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, where that and other such things are entertainingly explained. That said, I think the clue is fine. It only asks for "one" kind of person that should avoid thin ice --- but I do get your point that, logically speaking, SKATERs are not special in that regard!

@Once a Marine I recommend the opposite! Go to the archives and go on a Thursday binge. For a while you'll be questioning your life choices but they'll get easier (though not to say "easy") I promise and, much more importantly, more and more fun.

@Petrol That's a great list. I would only add "acai", which we probably eat after all those reps and sets. Less common and not as tasty: roe, ghee, oleo

@Emilie Confidently filling in NERDCRED gives you NERDCRED in my book. I had (unconfidently filled in) woRDCRED and hung on to it for the longest time, doing me no favors trying to get a toe hold in what was for me an extremely difficult middle section!

@Eric Hougland it took me forever to give up on a very lonely "tollS" in that spot

@kkseattle Well that's embarrassing. I literally missed the trees for the forest

@Prithwiraj --- okay, but "read the room" implies someone might be put off or offended in some way. In any case, that taqueria could be anywhere, in Mexico e.g., especially on Saturday.

@Mgood --- [cuatro menos uno] would be "tres", but the answer is TREY, which I don't understand either. Can someone explain? Is trey synonymous with three? I thought it was just for playing cards and basketball slang.

@Barb Prillaman --- I'm amazed that anyone can fill in a grid with clueable strings of letters at all, let alone this delightful offering. Seriously, every puzzle seems like a minor miracle to me.

@Caitríona Shanahan another definition of TREED: "force (a hunted animal) to take refuge in a tree. 'their dogs crossed over on to private property and treed a raccoon'"

@Lewis Thank you for your service. I love stuff like this.

@Rees --- You are not wrong! But like a bunch of us you didn't see that the clue is asking "Who's asked ...".

@Anthony I also stared at TNII for aeons sure that something (or many things) had to be wrong in there somehwere. Even when I had the notion to change the I to an E, I was thinking it wouldn't make it much better without also addressing that "TN..." situation. Was very suprised and relieved to hear the music! (I also love that ENNEAD for a group of nine Bradys is not considered a tricky clue. Y'all are beyond literate.)

@Evan --- right or wrong, the setters are following the New York Times style guide: As noted at <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/faqs-on-style" target="_blank">https://archive.nytimes.com/afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/faqs-on-style</a>/ : Here’s the relevant portion of The Times’s stylebook entry: Use apostrophes for plurals of abbreviations that have capital letters and periods: M.D.’s, C.P.A.’s. Also use apostrophes for plurals formed from single letters: He received A’s and B’s on his report card. Mind your p’s and q’s.

@Matt --- I hereby nominate "tisderpio" as the general term for an answer that tells you something somewhere has gone horribly wrong. Eg, "I had a real tisderpio there in the upper-right but, dang, all the crossed seemed correct!"

@Jay Right or wrong, coming up with a10-letter word from nothing that perfectly matches the clue is clever indeed. I was the opposite --- with eight of the ten letters I was still scratching my head.

@Andrzej Yes! I've learned to be on the look out for that one. According to m-w.com SNARF dates from the sixties and is "perhaps blend of snack and scarf", which I love.

@Mary For me it was GREat ANACONDA I had to let go of to get the ⭐

@Lisa I don't know, but I'm pretty sure I eat more Oreos than I would if the puzzle didn't insist on tempting me so often. This is a fun deep dive into the topic: <a href="https://pudding.cool/2021/01/oreo" target="_blank">https://pudding.cool/2021/01/oreo</a>/ Fun facts like "In the iconic New York Times puzzle, OREO wasn’t used to reference the cookie until 1993, despite its invention in 1912. Its first appearance coincided with the start of the Shortz era. Until then, it was exclusively clued as the Greek prefix for mountain."

@Wayno --- I agree, although commenters below are quiblling with the same quibble. I think the issue comes from seeing dictionary definitions that say that vamp can mean to improvise, or extemporize. But the examples that of I've seen for that sense of vamp are not musical, they're like when a speaker suddenly has to fill time waiting for a technical issue, they may have to wing it or "vamp". As far as I know, vamp in the musical context is the other thing and not improvising (maybe some experienced musicians can enlighten us more).

@Doug it may be a stretch but my best attempt at understanding the clue in a way that fits the answer is that it's asking "what are two things of/from a clock", thus HANDS. Curious what others think!

@OldNewbie ABES is the plural of ABE, as in Abraham Lincoln, whose portrait graces the five dollar bill. So not exactly nonsense, but "crossword-ese" perhaps. 52A, [So, is that ___?] ANO is two words, as in "a no".

@Gerry Wachovsky I think it's a soccer penalty we're talking about here. It's a big disappointment when they miss one of those.

@Andrzej during the draft days, the military used the designation "1-A" to mean "Available for military service." See here for other codes (the most common that we might see in another puzzle would be "4-F") <a href="https://www.sss.gov/about/return-to-draft/#s2" target="_blank">https://www.sss.gov/about/return-to-draft/#s2</a>

@CaptainQuahog To be fair, Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit were part of a lot of kids lives up through the 1960s thanks to Disney, which was certainly my source for that little fact. Disney left it aside by the time younger solvers came of age, so for them it's a literary/historical refereence much more than the breezy pop culture reference it is for me. It all depends on one's wheelhouse, of course, but I do have sympathy!

@Marty Yep, fellow members of team sqUIrrel 🐿️ unite!

@Lucas Walker For the longest time I was trying to figure out what single word could possibly end with _HAMOMENT. Chamoment? Shamoment? The crosses looked good, I was stumped. Finally the aha moment that it could be two words.

@Chris G It's a fair point, I wondered the same. But I think it works either way since the (capital S) Stooges were presumably theselves (small s) stooges. In other words, the small s adds an extra level of indirection (stooge -> Stooge -> Moe) which also seems fair. Am I over analyzing? Maybe!

@Pani Korunova Stevie Wonder was my first thought as well, but as @Adubs points out it wasn't a debut apparently. Here's the complete list from the Billboard site: <a href="https://www.billboard.com/photos/billboard-hot-100-number-1-song-debuts-426225" target="_blank">https://www.billboard.com/photos/billboard-hot-100-number-1-song-debuts-426225</a>/

@Steve Fora is the plural of Forum (though I think "forums" is more common)

@Caitríona Shanahan I both misread the clue _and_ mixed up the characters, so I was fine.

@Bill in Yokohama --- Nice work. From my stats I can see that on average, for me at least, yes, the puzzles get progressively harder through the week, but those are averages! It says nothing about the deviation. No one should be surprised not to get exactly five Heads every time they flip ten coins. I would argue that the fact that my averages stair-step so clearly means the editors are doing a great job vis-a-vis the daily difficulty factor.

@Francis --- same! I really started to question whether I knew how much a gigawatt was. In part because early on I thought maybe "gracenotes" for the music thing and I couldn't shake that G. I really struggled in that whole upper right section.

@Vislander In the sad --- but all to common for me --- event of an alphabet run it starts to feel pretty hopeless after around the "t" mark. Must have been a kick when it popped on that Z!

@Bill in Yokohama I oscillated between "axel", "loop", and "lutz" 🤦‍♂️ needles to say, NW was the last to fall.

@HeathieJ Ha! I also was completely lost on my crosses-only solution to [Thunder shower] --- thanks for continuing to put your comment after it dawned on you. Now I get it and I love it. I also feel for "tower" whichever day that was. No more... I'm on to you "ow" words!