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Jill Denny notes:

Well, would you LOOK AT THAT — challenging Friday puzzle to start the weekend.

The partitions make this feel like three separate mini-puzzles, with only YOU'RE TOO MUCH and THIS OLD THING to help you squeeze through the door into the corners. I started off (over)confidently, dropping in LOOKIE HERE before backtracking to just LOOK. Even with that misstep, the NW corner unfolded first, perhaps because I had just ROCKED a baby to sleep before attempting the puzzle.

The SE corner came next, courtesy of Mao, a Magic 8 Ball, and excellent high school history and French teachers (thanks, Messrs. Kivela and Satterlee!). The DOOR in the middle of IT'S DO OR DIE briefly gave me pause, but the best MISREAD entry in that section was parsing HI THERE as HIT HERE, which would of course be clued as "Sign on nerd's back?"

My momentum stalled in the river flowing from NE to SW, with only a few tiny stones to step on. THE CAT and ORGANA were likely gimmes for some, but not for me. As Jeff will attest, my knowledge of all things Star Wars/Trek is shamefully scant (Jeff: "Who said, 'Live long and prosper?' " Me: "Benjamin Franklin?"), and my knowledge of 1960s TV series is even scanter. The Nora EPHRON clue about Deep Throat was a fun factoid, and I particularly liked TAIGA crossing with PANGAEA — two geography terms with uncommon vowel patterns.

The number of colloquialisms was on the high side for my taste. I'd put LOOK AT THAT, YOU'RE TOO MUCH, THIS OLD THING, IT'S DO OR DIE, and EASY DOES IT into this category. The zestiest of those was THIS OLD THING, though I tend to think of it as false modesty, in a Blanche Devereaux sort of way.

My favorite answer: 46A. Without FLECHE, there would be no "Fletch", (and definitely no Fletch F. Fletch), and I'm not sure that's a world I want to live in. He is actually six-five, with the Afro, six-nine.

– puzzle by Kyle Mahowald

Jill Denny notes:

Patrick Berry crosswords are like gossamer, and one doesn't dissect gossamer. I have just a few thoughts about this deliciously smooth puzzle.

Such a lascivious NW corner, with TAKE A LOOK as the meat in an EXECRABLE STUD FARM sandwich. Thankfully, there's WISK to clean up the corner. TAKE A LOOK can also go G-rated, as in TAKE A LOOK... it's in a book... A Reading Rainbow. Children of the '80s, was there anything better than that butterfly in the sky? LeVar Burton had a hand in encouraging the creation of one of 2014's most moving books, the graphic novel "Harlem Hellfighters", by Max Brooks. It's a lightly fictionalized account of an African-American infantry regiment during WWI.

I'm not familiar with the sun god Inti, so INCAN didn't come easily to me. I'd like to think that someday it might be clued as "Flight beverage option?"

– puzzle by Patrick Berry

Jill Denny notes:

Lots of gems in this challenging puzzle. My first pass gave me SALTI, CIA, EMMY, AUDI, INDY, and STEELE, followed by a tentative PAPYRI on my next pass. And then ... nothing. Not my best start. I finally clawed my way into the NW corner with CLOCK and CLASSTRIP, but the rest of the puzzle involved false starts, lucky guesses, mental time-outs, and a Google search or two. An admirable grid with thorny cluing — just what I like on a Saturday.

I tumbled down several rabbit-holes, chasing proper nouns and quotes through wikipedia and the like. Some of my favorite discoveries:

- HELLO KITTY is so much taller than I realized. At five apples high, she towers over the Smurfs, who are only three apples high. Using an average-appearing Honeycrisp as standard, I am just shy of 19.8 apples high. RALPH NADER is almost 21.5 apples high.

- Welcome to the database, Anastasia STEELE. I was surprised to find myself pleased by this reference for its lack of snobbishness. I've been guilty of rolling my eyes at 50 Shades mania, but if it gets people reading, then I'm all for it. If it helps women communicate their desires, even better.

- This was the first time that DEV was clued with a reference to HUD. As much as I enjoy the Cabinet departments, I'll always prefer a nod to Dev Patel, one of the more charming actors on the planet. Jai ho!

- Un crime de LESE-humanité was new to me. Lèse-majesté refers to high treason (literally, injury to the king), which makes un crime de lèse-humanité the crime of injuring humanity, or rather, a crime against humanity. I love learning this kind of thing from a crossword, even when the phrase is as somber as this one.

– puzzle by Doug Peterson and Brad Wilber

Jill Denny notes:

Barry's mellifluous last name usually lulls me into anticipating a smooth solve. How could someone named Silk create a puzzle that's so rough on my brain? Perhaps my PONS is the problem.

I was surprised to see PANAMA HAT and PAN-AM in the same grid. I mistakenly assumed that PANAMA derived from Pan-America-something, but it actually has indigenous roots, referring to the land's abundance of fish, trees, and/or butterflies.

The PHOTOBOMB/BLURAY crossing introduces two debut words and conjures one of the intertubes' happiest memes. (Fine, yes, a BLURAY is different from a stingray, but there's enough blue in the photo to make it work.)

I am neither sailor nor rear admiral, so ABAFT was new to me. It sounds good and pirate-y, and there's plenty of time to practice using it before International Talk Like A Pirate Day (September 19th).

TITFER is good old Cockney rhyming slang, my absolute favorite linguistic WTF. Jerry Seinfeld's old AmEx commercial was the first time I encountered it, and it's used throughout the Ocean's Eleven franchise by Basher, played by Don Cheadle. It's also why Jeff and I both like to refer to Jim Horne as "Flam Borg."

– puzzle by Barry C. Silk