jennie
milwaukee
@Mike - I am thankful for the puns from Mike of Munster. I am thankful for Barry Ancona keeping us on the straight and narrow. I am thankful for the Polish perspective from Andrej. I am thankful for the commenters - regulars and occasionals alike. I am thankful for HeathieJ my erstwhile East Troy neighbor. And I am thankful for easy rebuses.
@Mike - Wow, Mike - you have outdone yourself! And not by a tiny bit. You had me dancing along.
People - if you want a harder Thursday puzzle, please submit one. The NYT can only work with what they are given. I enjoyed this puzzle.
Link to wordplay column from puzzle still not fixed. "Look, I made an app link that works" not consistently said at the NYT.
@R - It's a Monday puzzle. It's supposed to be easy for experienced puzzlers, and a nice break from the end-of-the-week tortures.
@Sebastian - The press agents (irons) have handles, so using the adjective form, they are "handled". Your question has a handled answer.
Wow! Puzzle of the year for Trekkies! I loved it. Took awhile, but very satisfying on so many levels. (If you haven't watched Star Trek, hopefully next week will be in your area of nerddom.)
Champion crossword constructer! Calendar-commencing creativity!
@Mango - Admission receipts from a fair or event will be collected at the door or the gate, and can be called "the gate".
HOSTS at 1A is a word often used in the Bible to describe armies.
@D Hie thee to a Shakespeare play.
@Steve L - Oh please, normally your youngest child IS the last child to leave home.
@Cary Coutant "Near mint" is near mint condition of a coin or other collectible. I didn't get it either, until it came to me as I was starting to type the phrase into Google. That was a near miss!
I read the column. Don't understand it. Some words in the puzzle relate to pigs, but I don't see how the circled words relate to each other or to pearls before swine. And I don't recall what pearls before swine have to do with wasting time. Also, I never ever heard of a loud out. Don't believe Bob Uecker used that term. Winter has come. Lots of snow.
@Francis - Woodbury forecast (have family there) is 37 for Thursday. Should help. (As an aside, we feel for Minnesota today.)
I loved the theme. My dad worked for WI Department of Transportation Division of Highways and helped design the Interstate system here. This was right up my alley, or freeway lane.
Never heard of the Peter Pan Bus Company. I looked it up and saw it was in the Northeast only. I used to ride the Badger Bus quite a bit. Guess where that is located.
RNA as a translator is deep into medical chemical knowledge and concepts I do not have. I'm just glad it works against Covid.
@KT - Please think about grade inflation, as discussed in the Wordplay column.
@LadyB Maybe it means we had to power through it.
I enjoyed the theme. Now I need an ice cream cone.
@Hi hi - I've never heard it called Baja Mexico. It's usually just Baja colloquially. Everyone knows it's in Mexico. Formally, it's Baja California and Baja California del Sur.
@RJ - Rowdy as a noun makes it a good misdirect. Misdirection always adds time and fun. Rowdy as a noun is in the dictionary.
@Edward Rice - As I understand it, Bostonians just call it "Mass Ave", and the rest of us call it Massachusetts Ave., pronounced Avenue.
Had no, no, no idea what the dashes meant. And since the dashed entries weren't shaded (indicating they go together) I didn't know they were supposed to go together. Luckily I eventually filled in the squares going the other direction. I have no idea what the pairs are, since the author of this article didn't list them (in word form). Dumb and annoying to send out an incomplete list of clues.
Wow - I just noticed that the grid could be seen as a butterfly, with the wings on either side of LUCHADORA. (Una mariposa monarca de México.)
Oat bars don't translate to crunchy. Just sayin'. They are rated as chewy. Solver (or un-solver in my case) stays mad at puzzle. Not adept today. (Mother-in-law's name was Effie. I put that in first.) I gotta take off the e-brake and learn some driving from Fast and Furious.
"Let's go fly a kite" was my entrée into the puzzle. Helps that we did a dance to it in a ballet recital as a teen. Had kite props, of course.
@heironymous - A billion means a million million in many parts of the world. This is called the long scale. Not 1,000 million on the US short scale.
"Foundation for a proposal?" on the day Taylor and Travis revealed Travis got down on his knee to propose. Perfect synchronicity! And made the answer a gimme.
@jennie - Thanks Isabeau and HeathieJ.
Fun puzzle. I pulled out pen and paper to work out some of the theme entries, after I saw what was going on.
@Leontion - Same here. As I think tastes "oatey" is something someone would actually say, describing a biscuit. Not "oaten".
I see all the brilliant people have chimed in, so I will represent for those of us who were not so smart with this one. I went through the clues twice, used Google, then "checked puzzle" for wrong letters, and slept on it. I had most of the puzzle done, but I still had a fairly blank NW corner. I revealed 13A. Didn't help enough to get me to finish. Had to reveal 17A, then 19A. Oh well. On to Sunday.
@Barry Ancona I just can't imagine putting oil in a drink. Professor Google told me about this mixed result.
I finally got the hot El train reference!
Google had trouble making LATENS a real English word. And so did I.
To answer the constructors's question - I never heard of Millionaire Matchmaker and Patty Stanger. And it's not something I would ever watch, if I had run across it. Tiger Woods, on the other hand, I have heard of, and have watched in person twice. So he was my clue into the puzzle theme. I also know some master gardeners. Jackie Robinson's number is retired by every MLB team, and was another easy answer. I enjoyed the puzzle.
@Heidi Wordlebot is ridiculous. It can instantly recall all the five-letter words in the English language. I, on the other hand, have human intelligence with all its quirks. After a trial period, I decided that I didn't need a know-it-all in my life. I ignore Wordlebot.
@jbesen They are generally refered to in the US as the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Perhaps the emphasis is on the encounters in the 1600s.
@Manhattan - Do you mean 70A ? TIL lemma. Tenure in 48D is a well-known word.
@jennie - The SIN rebus had to work six times. That is impressive to me.
Fun puzzle! I've read all the books featured.
@Ken Burk Yes, as a Green Bay Packers owner, I resented this clue.
I didn't know what Calculus BC was, unless it was Fred Flinstone calculus. AP College Board classes weren't offered at my high school, back in the day. I was surprised to see that the company started in the 1950's, not the 1990's. Actually, calculus was not offered at my highschool until, as an experiment, they offered it to eight of us. (Our small group experiment had us skipping 8th grade math, then taking algebra, geometry and trig a year early, allowing us to take adv. algebra and calculus in 12th grade.)
@M "Sleeve" is singular. "Contents" is often used to describe what is inside something, whether the content is plural or singular. Contents and content used interchangeably.
@Steve L Green Day solving to St Partricks emphasizes the green, and was the revealer for me. Carolina reaper I had to get on crosses, as I am not familiar with it.
@RoseAnn Mulford I didn't know KIRBY and decided to try and get it from crosses, instead of looking it up. That slowed me down. But it was a fun puzzle. Suited me to a T.
@polymath - Technically, it was.
I enjoyed this puzzle. Thanks for explaining antecedent. The only thing I could think of is aunt-something.