Friday September 14th 2018, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 20:19
Average Friday: 28:58
Best Friday: 10:21

Friday puzzles are probably my favorite, as they're fairly consistently just challenging enough to give me a scare. Usually I'm able to nail a long answer or two to start out a Friday and that gets me going, but this one really worried me when I only had four answers entered on my first run-through. Fortunately, I was able to get Sarah KOENIG of "Serial" right off the bat and I very much doubt I was alone in that in crossword-land. That said, even though I love "Serial," I always get a bit irked because far too often when I say that I listen to podcasts, I get the response, "Oh, podcasts! Have you listened to Serial?" Yes, I've listened to the most famous podcast. IMAGINE THAT.

The answer that finally got me going was SWISS CHARD for "leafy vegetable related to a beet." With that string of first letters, I was able to march across the puzzle west to east. HUNT AND PECK is a fantastic answer and one that's been running through my head quite a bit. I work with a lot of high schoolers these days and I've been shocked to see how many of them can't touch type. I suppose they didn't grow up chatting with all their friends on a desktop and suddenly I feel so old.

The east was the toughest for me, as for some reason I expected someone more obscure than BEAVIS for "MTV toon teen" and I found ABOVE IT ALL (for "supercilious," a word I always struggle to define in my head) just impossible to parse until I had all the letters filled in. ROTISSERIE and PASS THE BAR also eluded me right up until the end.

I only know DAX Shepard from being married to Kristen Bell, but I don't any other Shepards anyway. The X was still the last letter to fall because, as I mention constantly, I don't know cars, even "Classic Jaguars" XKES. 

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