I Know How It Sounds (Meta)

If you were wondering about the seed entry, here's the story. A guy named Matt was going to be giving the sermon. The person running the service said, "Has Matt...?" but didn't complete the sentence. My brain did, and this puzzle was a direct result!

I loved uggs gave me a run for the money. I figured it might be Isle of ... Ducks? Dougs? But I said it slowly and went the the entries one by one and... well I enjoyed remembering that movie.

Big Wes Anderson fan, so of course "Isle of Dogs" was the first one I found. I'd already been cycling through the list of films in my mind to fit in RUSHMORE so it was on my mind. Loved the clue for THE!

Mark 4:23 ... Thanks, Ben. :D

As an avid birder, I found albatross first, but struggled with Isle of Dogs. Thanks for the nice puzzle!

Fun one. Got ALBATROSS and HAZMAT SUIT fairly quickly, but was stumped for a while on ISLE OF DOGS. So, started looking for generic type clues and the Wes Anderson one kinda jumped out. Thanks for the puzzle, Ben!

Very cool. Isle of Dogs had me a little stumped - I thought that was I Love Dogs - but I had a feeling the third letter was R, so that pared my options down pretty nicely and I got to Isle of Dogs pretty quickly from there.

Hear Hear! Fun Tuesday puzzle. I figured the "Cockney..." was a sort of Easter Egg since we tend to associate "Did yer ear what me china said to me trouble!" with a Cockney. I got the word albatross quickly but went searching for a Coleridge poem. I did not know that was a golf term, so a net gain! I Loved Uggs was also my stumbling block but when I finally parsed it correctly I said, "Hmmm, sounds like a movie!" Now I will also admit searching for a clue that was "Make fee invisible to audience again" = Mask so I might use Re Hide Rate and "How a Bride to be might get to the altar" = Walked, so I could have Aisle and Hop. and perhaps two more so I could end up with EARWORM. Trying to overcomplicate....Moi?

Thanks Ben

Isle of Dogs was my entry point as well (still on my to-watch list). I only got 34A by doing all of the down crosses, and when I went to figure out how it worked, I couldn't help but read it the alternate way first, it took a few seconds to parse it for the original clue.

As a quasi-Cockney, I’m used to ‘earing words with a dropped consonant or two! (It also helped me figure out 58ac.. - although I’m more familiar with the actual ‘isle’ on the north side of the Greenwich foot tunnel than I am the film!). Fun one, thanks Ben!

Another fun one, Ben!

Yup, also a tad stymied for a bit on the last sound-alike -- but had an inkling that there weren't too many olive colored dogs in the world. Thanks for the puzzle, Ben!

I got the EAR right away, and struggled to find a way to turn that into a 4-letter verb. Looked at other homonyms in the title, elsewhere in the grid, etc., but could not get there. Finally just decided to try HEAR and it worked. Did I miss another step? Or was it that HEAR was conceptually related to EAR, not to mention a flat-out homonym in certain parts of the world?

Sound-alikes are my least favorite thing (mostly because I suck at them ), but I got albatross and haz-mat suit pretty quickly. I had "I love dogs" for a while, then "isle of dogs" and briefly considered "aisle of goods" to match supermarket lanes. Eventually spotted the Wes Anderson clue and googled to see if it was a match. I then spent like 20 min trying to backsolve for the H that I expected I needed (looked at ways, in-nay, high ten, bearing, etc.). I guess I still don't get how we were supposed to infer the H? I'm gathering that we're supposed to be using Cockney? But was that just because of the 39A Easter egg, or did I miss something?

Thanks Ben!

It was fun. It took a minute to find the Wes Anderson movie.

HasMattsUte came first, then ILoveDuggs almost immediately after, but I struggled with IllBatRoss! Googled like crazy to see if anyone calls the albatross a New Zealand parrot, since they are indigenous to NZ… yeah, no. I was completely unaware of this as a golf term, although I was an avid golfer for years! Finally just googled the word for meanings. ALSO - since I wasn’t finding a letter to make a word (?AR) — I thought maybe we were supposed to MadGab the whole grid entry… something like (grid left to right) ApronOntoRushmore… a pronoun to rush more? What would that be?

First benchen solve ever. Feeling good.

‘Ear ‘Ear for a good puzzle!