I think 56-Down is off - unless you're talking about different cities with the same name, Toronto is WSW of Montreal.

Oh wow, that was a brainfart on my part! Changing.

nice puzzle - i had plasma ray gun before cannon, but the crosses are fair which helped me fix that corner - i liked LIQUIDCOURAGE

Thanks! Liquid courage was definitely the seed entry for this theme.

Nice! Liked the theme, along with HDMIPORT and IRONLUNG

I loved it! I'm not very good (nor fast!), but I could answer it almost all by myself. Thanks for the nice puzzle.

Atoms and Molecules

Figure of Speech

I ended up pretty much guessing at EKA but that was cool to learn about!

I can't resist putting a little trivia in the puzzle ;)

I initially put ELVISH and BREANNA, and was looking at 3 Down thinking... "That... that can't be right."

Ha yeah, ELVISH/ELFISH is a bit ambiguous to be sure.

Happenings

Tricky one! I think DJMIX was probably the source of most of my woes 😂

Yeah, this one was probably a little too hard for its own good. Meh oh well.

5x5 3

Black OPS 2 has been a pandemic staple in this household 😂. Nice puzzle!

Aaaand I don’t know video games so I didn’t do to well at this one.. 😫

the ENYA clue is very good- I learned her nationality the same way

Re: 6A--at the end of the day, isn't Vodka just watered down ethanol?

Call of Duty

ONCD tripped me up but after revealing I love it! 😂 - Great puzzle!

the stacks are nice, liked the helpful nudge for the clue on pharaoh ants... unable to parse "on cd"... so ran the alphabet on the oncd/torrid crossing... i've never tried making long stacks before as it seems intimidating, but could be fun to try - thanks for the wordlist tip

Most people will say they much prefer more blocks and better fill. But I don't believe them --- I think they want less blocks and better fill. Still working on getting both at the same time :/

Cheap Stacks

Great puzzle - the long stacks were all very nice! Clue for SLYSTALLONE was so good.

Canals

Nice one Ben! I like the TOQUE/NIQAB mini theme 😊. And this puzzle has hopefully inspired me to finally commit to memory how both of those words are spelled 😂

You'll be pleased to know both have multiple spellings. :P

THAT'S what was confusing me.. lol. nice puzzle!

I always enjoy a mini theme: good one, Ben.

It tripped me up, though: having never heard of a TOQUE, I had HIJAB instead of NIQAB and was stuck for a minute! Nice...

Head Cover

Fun one Ben! Oh man I should've been able to get CROSSLY 😂😂

Haha! Man there's another good website name.

only one black square - mad impressive! not a clunker in sight either

One Block 2

NATTY and YOKED went totally over my head.

Heh same! I managed to get it down to the Y and took a stab

Interesting, might be more niche than I thought!

That was the LUCKIEST guess I've ever had with NATTY and TIDAL

I'm this context it's a lifter or bodybuilder who got where they are without using steroids.

Ben Zoon

@bzoon