SS Startup

Third submission is correct. I kept trying S S Minnow. Good thing I get more than one try. Nice start to my Sunday morning. Thanks, Rick!

If you have any more puzzles, let minnow!

Thanks, Cap'n Rick - very nice!

I knew something about this puzzle was a little fishy! :-) Thanks, Cap'n!

My wife thought that it must be SS something with 6 letters and Minnow was the first thing she thought of.

Mary Ann... sigh.

Nice one Rick. Had to backsolve for the I, but otherwise pretty, ahem, smooth sailing. Thanks for the Sunday fun!

Fun way to spend some time on a Sunday. Thanks Cap'n

Nice one! I suspected this answer from the start but decided to take the three-hour tour to make sure ;)

Fun one - thanks Rick!

lol this was the first thing I thought of before I even attempted the puzzle (as I'm sure it was for others). Needed all the nudges (well, really just 3 and 4). Tried looking for entries that would be clued by the SS words, but never thought to do the reverse. Also tried looking above the starting letters of SS (Start Up), but obviously 20D put the kibosh on that pretty quickly. Once I knew from nudge 3 which alternates to look for I got a bit muddled. ICING and ONION were clear, bit I initially had WOOD for secluded place, and BLTS for the waiter's offering. Also wasn't 100% on WRAP. And since I was very unsure of my old comic knowledge, NANCY might have been FRAN/DEREK/SAUL, etc. Nudge 4 got me out of BLTs, but then I thought maybe the coffee urn was implicated. Then I somehow forgot (!) that there were six letters, and managed to find UNION in the rest. Apparently the USS Union was a thing, so tried that, even though I think I knew it was wrong. Finally, I decided that WRAP was solid, which meant presumably NOOK had to be the secluded place, and if NANCY was right that gave me ?INNOW and then MINT jumped out. Phew (I did submit SS Minnow, so thanks to those that paved the way there). Fun idea, and great start to the reboot! Thanks.

Loved it, thanks!

No nudges necessary. Fun one.

I had a hard time seeing alternate clue answers (which was one of the mechanisms I tried), so needed the nudges to tell me that I had to look harder. I did need to backsolve for the M after determining how to order the letters. Well done - though a bit choppy

fun puzzle thank you!! i had MNOW and had to backsolve for the I and N... my IN to the puzzle was noticing how very vague the clues to your themers were... why would the cap'n clue it that way if he didn't have to?! central across is a very nice touch to the rebranding!

Like Alan, I struggled with getting the precise match-ups. For a while I had SHRUG rather than WRAP, and I considered (Little) Dot as the cartoon character. (As an aside, DEREK and ONION are the bullies in the current "Curtis" comic strip.) Finally had everything but the M but was so self-confused at that point, I headed for bed. Sometime during the night, I woke enough to "know" I would come back this AM and find MENU somewhere in the top of the grid even though I didn't recall filling that in as a computer-related entry. OK, MINT, please Garcon for my julep. (And that's a reminder to constructors to start working on your Derby theme puzzles! :-)) Thanks for keeping me busy, Cap'n! (Much better than swabbing the decks!)

That's where I thought it was going to be going, but I needed some nudges to get me there.

Funny because the moment I saw it, and knowing your fondness for GI. I almost entered SS Minnow without solving. Then I got caught up in matching up all the S's from words NOT of the SS (there are 15) with their entries. I should have KNOWN from the cluing for SHESHED that it was too generic since I was expecting "Momma's domain" or "Where Surfside Sally keeps her seashells". But, coulda, shoulda, woulda...another tight grid with fun clues. Thanks Rick.

Thanks, Cap'n! Beautiful and thoughtful as always. BTW, the wikipedia page for GI contains some wild factoids. Among them: The final day of filming the pilot was Friday, November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.[12] The cast and crew learned of the assassination late that morning, Hawaii time.[12] Between the filming of scenes, they crowded around a radio listening to news bulletins.[12] A reminder of the tragedy appears in the opening sequence of the show's first season, when the theme song is played. As the Minnow is leaving the harbor and heading out to sea, an American flag flying at half staff can be seen in the background.[12][13]

Oops. I hadn't realized that the new, improved SSS was up and running till someone mentioned it on the Tuesday Zoom. Perhaps like others here, my first try was letters up from the S and S starts. That led to gibberish, and besides, one of themers was a Down. I saw a couple of the alternates. ONION and NANCY, and when I saw NOOK, I knew it was Cap'n Rick meta history repeating itself, and I backsolved my way from stern to bow.

Had to let this one simmer for a few days...and looked at the first 3 nudges to confirm what I had done so far...was finally able to avoid being stranded on the isle! Thanks Capn Rick!