Friday August 31st 2018; NY Times Crossword

Time: 36:29

Average Friday: 29:14

Best Friday: 10:21

Last night was another late one for me, but only for the best reasons. On Thursdays on Delhi, you can travel to the outskirts of the city (I had no idea where I was and nor did my taxi driver) and play late night Ultimate until 11:30pm, which meant that I wasn’t back to my hotel until around 1am. But I’ll traverse all of Delhi to play Ultimate every day of week. 

However, it was another rude awakening of a Friday crossword, although that may not have been a result of tiredness. Despite the relatively easy long acrosses, I struggled mightily to manage a great deal of the fill. Mainly the NW was rife with complete unknowns, so I probably spent about 20 minutes in that region just tugging away. One of my main goals for this blog is not to make claims about what it’s reasonable for a crossworder to know, but I’ll just admit that I simply didn’t know some of these things. HART CRANE, modernist American poet influenced by T.S. Eliot, is the one that I feel most embarrassed about not knowing. I don’t mind confessing to not knowing multi-colored fabrics well, so CHINTZES was massive struggle and probably will be next time it arises as well. KT OSLIN sounded a little familiar, but I still felt like I was guessing. I plan to listen to her most famous song, “80’s Ladies” when I get back to WiFi. Likewise, I was at a complete loss for OYEZ, which is the traditional opening to proceedings in a court of law. I’ve heard it but have never thought about the spelling or really registered it at all. Anyway, you never know what you don’t know, but that was a lot of learning crammed into one crossword corner and it definitely gave me a scare that this would be the puzzle I wouldn’t finish. I think that’s an inevitability, but I’d like to put it off as long as I can. 

By the way, also muddying the water in the NW was my absolute least favorite type of crossword clue, “Can opener?” HARD C. Because the word “can” opens with a hard C sound. That is cleverness of the least welcome sort. 

I was not aware of a slightly larger OBOE called Oboe d’amore. I’m sure I’ll be seeing that again. 

Here’s a crossword tip. If the word “pilot,” is in the clue, it probably has something to do with a GAS STOVE. That’s true for at least the past couple days.

There’s something just far too bland about WAR MOVIE as an answer, especially with the “Source of many box office bombs?” Clue not really working for me. 

I was thrilled to see TA-NEHISI COATES making up one of those long acrosses and, of course, to be able to write it in without hesitation. I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone to check out his Black Panther run in addition to “Between the World and Me” as clued. I had a hard time getting excited about any other answers in this puzzle. But at least I learned a lot in the Northwest. 

Tomorrow morning I’m off for something resembling a weekend in Mussoorie. I expect I won’t be able to avoid posting some pretty pictures.