Sunday August 19th 2018, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 36:03
Average Sunday: 51:38
Best Sunday: 21:55

There are several realms of trivia that regularly appear in crosswords that I simply pass on and hope that I can eventually piece together from overheard conversations or just general crossword familiarity. One of those realms is college sports. When I see "the Bears of the Big 12 Conference," I just skip right to the next clue and hope I can eventually make sense of something. In this case, it took only BAY to get me to say, "Baylor! That's a college!" That's about as well as that could have gone.

There's a lot of 3-letter garbage in here that makes for a rather lifeless outing. Ast crossing asp right by ape in one corner and a three-stack of pep, esl, and nee... it's not exactly scintillating crossword fare. But I don't want to be a bitter crossword blogger. I'm still new enough that finishing a Sunday on my own gives me a little thrill. I don't assume I'll grasp themes either, so when I understood that passive resistance let me know that we're dealing with familiar phrases being switched from passive to active voice, I might have credited myself with a somber nod. That said, I took little pleasure in carving out the long acrosses of "No one has rated this film" and "We included no batteries." Those are boring phrases rendered awkward and still boring.

I suppose I'm happy to now have passing crossword familiarity with Pasquale Amato, a baritone known for singing for the Met from 1908-1921. Esa Tikkanen, Finnish hockey player, is sure to come up in crossword land again with those letters in his first name. The fact that he was crossing Mt. Ossa, which has a whopping three-sentence write-up in Wikipedia, meant that last A was the last tile to fall for me. Well, that's slim pickings for the fun learning portion of crossword blogging.

Fortunately, my setting was more interesting, as I completed this crossword entirely on a bus in Jaipur as we made our way from the Maharaja Museum to Amer Fort. I may have been tired and mildly hungover, but I remain determined to make something of these occasional off days.

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