Friday September 21st 2018, NY Times Crossword

Time: 44:52
Average Friday: 29:11
Best Friday: 10:21

I got brutally and embarrassingly stuck in the SW and that accounts largely for the 15 minutes beyond my average today. For the rest of the puzzle, I was hacking away at a decent pace, but the layout with the NE and SW essentially isolated from the rest of the puzzle really slowed me down. I finally broke the SW open when I grokked STRESS ATE, cleverly and deliciously clued as "Took courses under pressure." From there, I remembered that a CAPE is a thing that Elvis definitely wore. I eventually remembered about PISA as a place that Fibonacci could be from, which was slowed because I'd had cASsIS as the "French apertif" that I'd barely heard of, which had to replaced by PASTIS, which I've never heard of at all. I should have remembered TATAMI MAT sooner, but it escaped me right up to the end.

I'll put down COSSETS, a synonym for "coddle" or "mollycoddle," as the word that I'm happy to have learned today.

I knew Tim Roth was MR [some color] in "Reservoir Dogs," but it took me hilariously long to remember the color orange. I really should have gotten SILK ROAD for "Marco Polo was on it for 24 years" much faster, but the Central Asianist in me was just muttering, "well, was he really though?" Likewise, STALIN ERA should be nearly automatic for me from"1924 to 1953," but it was just so unexpected.

In short, I mostly felt like I underperformed on a puzzle that, objectively, was pretty damn enjoyable.