Wednesday August 22nd 2018, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 12:06
Average Wednesday: 17:53
Best Wednesday: 7:24

Sometimes I wonder if the frequent crossword appearances of Enos Slaughter are just subtle jabs at Boston Red Sox fans coming from New York. But, as usual, it's probably just the letters.

I felt like I struggled with this one even though my time fell about where it usually does on a Wednesday. Perhaps it was the number of apparently complete unknowns to me that ended up being fairly inferrable. Omnia vincit amor, which is "love conquers all" as it turns out, drew a blank because I just don't really Latin at all, but hey, I recognize amor as a thing. Likewise "Hi and Lois," which is a comic strip I've never read because I don't think it was in the Boston Globe when I was growing up, features a pooch named, again inferrably enough, dawg. STK? Stocks, I guess. OK.

Meanwhile, Gallo (I don't really Wine so much either) and alar (Daminozide, which is the stuff that makes apples red and, ya know, cause cancer) just needed every single cross for me.

I loved "plunked down," even if it took me forever to see.

The theme seems to be a straightforward "replace B's with P's and hilarity ensues." There's no revealer, but I wonder if Inner Peace was originally meant to phonetically serve as one, like Inner P's? It doesn't really work so I can imagine that the editor decided we could manage without a nonsense revealer. Or maybe that's just speculation on my part.

I'm going to file my struggles this morning under Hangover Brain, which unlike normal Morning Brain, is not Crossword Brain. But I can hardly be blamed because we have an off day today as India is celebrating Eid al-Adha or Kurban Bayram, as we called it in Bulgaria. I'm settling into my Mumbai hotel for a solid 3 straight nights, but I'm not seeing much reason to venture out into the monsoon until this afternoon, so I'll just keep nursing this cheap Indian whiskey hangover.


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