Is This Thing On?

Lol. Good one, Mark! I went down a rabbit hole with all those occurrences of "on" in the grid, so it took me a minute to see the "thing".... Nice "Aha" moment. Thanks.

My first MMM as an official retiree! And it did not disappoint! Fun one! Thanks.

Love it! I also chased the ONs first... then noticed the MICs. Quick solve from there!

Did the same thing as Darth -- got distracted by all the "on"s in the grid. Then I saw the "mic"s and it was pretty straightforward from there. Thanks for the puzzle, Mark!

Needed a nudge because I too chased the ONs. Had to submit here a couple of times to get the correct phrasing. Very clever puzzle. Thank you.

Very clever and subtle. Took three tries after "Drop the mic" and "drop mic" to get "mic drop" though.

Had fun chasing the ONs though. Thought that --ESELF could be an alternate for "persona" and --AGERS for .... something but that frizzled. As id thing PERS(ON)A could become PERS(I)A and (ON)AGERS become PAGERS? LAGERS?

Saw the "mic"s right away and it only took a second to combine with "drop".. Nice one.

The title put me on the true path, and I quickly found what I knew to look for. Nice that themers were dropping down. Thanks for a pleasant start to the week.

very very nice. Didn't see it immediately, went and did some other stuff and then looked at the title again (or maybe for the first time). Fell quickly after that (no pun intended). Ironically never heard of 9D. The 13D and 47D clues struck me as odd during the fill, but didn't really jump out. Some very good clues (46A, 56A, 25D). All in all good stuff, thanks.

Great puzzle, even if the submission hog-tied me a bit. I did DROP THE MIC, DROP THE MIKE, DROP MIC, DROP MIKE until it finally hit me that MIC DROP was also a term I have heard used. I was ON to you early but GEPESIGO is not a bold display (it might well be a bold sauce of Eastern Europe, I don't know) of confidence. Then I thought about the title, "Is This Thing On" and Drop The Mic came to mind (and stuck, unfortunately). When I saw the MICs initially I thought, "Wow Mark has faith in us that we will go through and see that the words with MIC in them have an alternate answer..." but when I was looking for the alternate to ROBE and saw that it WAS Robe it became clear what you were doing. Nice mechanism and nice clues (several of which I am entering in my clue database to steal, er appropriate in your honor.

Enjoyed it a bunch and felt like a rock star when I solved.

MICROBE tipped off the mic part… and until I did the rest and worked the mechanism I was sure this was going to be KARAOKE! great puzzle.. thanks! Loved the cluing, esp revolutionary for INORBIT.

Fantastic aha moment!

Enjoyed it, thanks Mark!

Yup, ONs sent me OFF down the wrong bunny trail but I regrouped! Really nice, Mark! Some great clues with whiskers too!

Super cool and so expertly constructed. Love the symmetry.

Good one, Mark! When I saw the title, I thought of a mic. Somehow I didn't think of the answer until I'd actually gone through all the intended steps.

Unlike everyone else, I found lots of AM's in the grid, especially clustered around the middle. Hey! Must be an "add-a-word" mechanism, like "A.M. OUTFIT" with the robe and slippers ... but that went nowhere. When I saw the MIC's I had that wonderful AHA moment. Thanks so much, Mark!

SET/SAT, IMAM/CRAM, URAL/ARAL, lots of “ON”s - all distractions before seeing the first “MIC”… thanks Mark!

Until nudged, I didn't see a mechanism and I was far down the CHUTZPAH rabbit hole, led there by the many muggle comments about the number of tries it took to get Crosshare to accept their answer.

Really good one! Thanks.

In a bold display of confidence, a late Wednesday nudgeless solve... Cool looking grid - thanks for dropping this one on us, Mark!

Had the right idea to start with but got sidetracked... just got back to this. Very nice!