The Jets are uncharacteristically decent this year. When I can’t get back to sleep I often resort to all-night sports-talk radio to bore me back to unconsciousness, and one of the hosts, Sal Licata, can be funny. He was recognizing the hesitancy of Jet fans to be hopeful, after decades of awfulness. He compared it to when you were dating, and it was one bad date after another, on and on and on, and then one girl seems a little okay, and you start wondering about her a bit, but you’ve had such a bad history, you’re afraid to hope for too much. He paused for about ten seconds, and then he screamed at us — LET THE LOVE IN!! OPEN YOUR HEARTS, JET FANS!! IT’S REAL — SHE’S THE ONE!

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Today’s Merriam-Webster Word of the Day is “nugatory,” which means “of little or no consequence.” And it brought me back over 50 years. William F. Buckley visited Brandeis and there was a good turnout for the event. You may recall he was famed for having (and using) an extraordinary vocabulary, and he didn’t hesitate to throw some big words at us during his presentation. In the Q&A that followed, most of the questions were on the politics of the day, but one student got a big laugh for asking him what “exiguous” means (a word he had used). Buckley smiled appreciatively. When the laughter ebbed, he leaned over and said into the mic: “nugatory.”

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Today’s puzzle was fun, and right up the alley of us introverts. The theme was “LEAVE ME OUT OF IT,” and there were a whole bunch of starred clues the answers to which only made sense if you removed the letters ME. For example, my favorite was 37A. The clue was “Grammy-winning Jones.” And the answer was MENORAH. Take away the ME and you get NORAH (Jones). (The word with the ME (menorah) was unclued.)

Similarly, at 10D, the clue was “Courier and Papyrus, for two.” These are fonts, so the answer was foMEnts, which is “fonts” once you remove the ME. To top it off, the last across clue/answer was “Award that sounds like two letters,” and it was EMMY, which, of course, is a phonetic ME.

The clue at 49A was “Shade” and the answer was TINT, which prompted this comment. (I think I discussed this once before, but I know I’ve already forgotten it.)

“A ‘tint’ results when you mix a pure color with white, a ‘shade’ when you mix with black, and a ‘tone’ when you mix with grey (equal amounts white and black). The NYTXW uses these terms interchangeably to the chagrin of the artistically nit-picky among us.”

Do you know FOMO? It’s “fear of missing out,” or, as the clue reads: “Anxiety about not being included.” It’s the other side of the coin from “leave me out of it,” one commenter noticed.

Here’s what LMS had to say on FOMO:

“On Monday I had to leave school unexpectedly because of a toothache that was staggering in its intensity. (Turns out I need a root canal.) Anyhoo… when I miss school, I don’t have FOMO but rather FOBFOFTITIAABF. Fear Of Being Found Out For The Imposter That I Am And Being Fired. Like my emergency sub plans are crappy or my bulletin board isn’t spiffy enough or the standards for all three classes that we’re required to have posted every day are not up to date.

“So Monday afternoon I get a call from one of the security guys who leaves the message ‘Call me please.’  Don’t do this to a worrier! What I actually heard was James Earl Jones’s voice telling me, You are about to be fired. Turns out it was just that one of my famous apples had a rotten spot, and ants were showing up. He just wanted me to know to bring more apples. Could you not have included this in your message??“

SERRA de Estrela made an appearance: the highest mountain range in Portugal.

A legend associated with the mountain is mentioned in Chapter 41 of Moby-Dick:“… the prodigies related in old times of the inland Strello mountain in Portugal (near whose top there was said to be a lake in which the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface)…”

Though the region has a very small local Jewish population, it has emerged as a center for kosher food with local producers launching kosher versions of their olive oil and wine, and with cheesemakers obtaining kosher certification for some products. And the Estrela Mountain Dog takes its name from this region. Hi Puppy!

Mount VESUVIUS popped in too, clued as the mountain that inspired the song “Funiculi, Funicula.”

Enough with the mountains already. I’m exhausted. Where’s the trail back down?