| SLEPTON | Pondered, in a way |
| ORB | Round object that's pondered in a meme |
| ASI | Walt Whitman poem "___ Pondered in Silence" |
| MUSED | Pondered in silence |
| QUAINT | "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, / Over many a ____ and curious volume" (Edgar Allan Poe) |
| ASSONANCE | Poetic repetition of sounds, as used in Poe's "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary" |
| WEARENOTAMUSED | Don, a shade upset, pondered Queen's comment? |
| POE | Creator of one who pondered "Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore" |
| AMI | Friend of Descartes ... or, in English, question pondered by Descartes? |
| MULLEDWINE | Pondered on peevish complaint, say, with a warm spiced drink (6,4) |
| THOUGHT | Pondered on it, in spite of being on the table-top (7) |
| PORED | Thought over, or pondered a bit being missing (5) |
| APIS | From the Latin for "bee", a genus of insects whose hexagonal honeycomb cells were pondered some 2,000 years ago by Roman scholar Varro (4) |
| LOVELACE | Married name of the 19th-century mathematician and computer pioneer Augusta Ada Byron who, in her writings about Charles Babbage's analytical engine, pondered the notion of AI-generated music (8) |
| DREARY | "Once upon a midnight ___, while I pondered, weak and weary..."(6) |
| USED | Pondered laying off millions no longer in prime condition (4) |
| COGITATED | I cited and got a response that needed to be pondered on |
| THERAVEN | 1845 poem by Edgar Allan Poe which begins: "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary" (3,5) |
| SEEN | Pondered |
| SAW | Pondered |
