Monday August 20th 2018, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 6:25
Monday Average: 8:54
Best Monday: 4:51

Hey, it's a Peter Gordon joint! If you told me a year ago that I'd have a top 5 list of crossword constructors, I probably would have laughed at you. Usually, Peter Gordon is crushing my crossword dreams on a near weekly basis over at Fireball Crosswords. So, it's nice to have him bringing his talents to a Monday crossword. If this wasn't a NY Times Crossword, I'm sure he would have clued phat a bit more playfully than "Excellent, informally." Maybe he'd mention that nobody has said that word in that way without irony in, oh say, 20 years? Unless I'm not up on my revived slang (very likely).

The theme is straightforward enough; I suppose you could say something like Capital Dishes. Not much more to say on that, other than that London Broil calls to mind only school cafeterias. Is there a more enjoyable version out there? I don't think I'll ever order it.

Happy to see infield fly in the grid, even if it seemed to lead an ugly southeast corner. Any random baseball rule will always be welcome to me. Christine Lahti was entirely unfamiliar to me, but looks like she's worked recently on The Good Wife, which I hear is great.

It was a long day of school visits and, as it turns out, carpool karaoke with my Jaipur vamily so I don't have much energy for this entry. I'll just congratulate myself on completing my first week of autobiographical crossword blogging and call it a night from this hotel in Indore. Tomorrow on to Mumbai!

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