Monday September 10th 2018, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 7:35
Average Monday: 8:50
Best Monday: 4:51

Although I finished with a decent time in the end, this one played as more difficult than an average Monday for me. Maybe just having pLOd instead of SLOG for a solid minute was the main thing slowing me down.

I'm pleased to have BURL IVES' name in my head now. When "'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' actor" was not Paul Newman, I was pretty sure that I would need every cross to get the old man who delivers the word "Mendacity" with such aplomb in that film. It may be one of my favorite Tennessee Williams devices to have your actors repeat a random word with conviction over and over again, like Marlon Brando saying "Napoleonic Code" maybe 10,000 times in Streetcar.

I had no idea that AL ROKER was the "Guinness world record holder for longest live weather report," but I also know him only from his brief appearance on My Brother, My Brother, and Me (one of the best podcasts) in which,as I recall, Griffin McElroy was not remotely prepared to "have [his] ass melted by Al Roker.

This puzzle was another "oh, there's a theme" type. CHEESE SPREAD was the theme and, as you'll find, there are names of cheeses that spread across long answers and appear in the circles. Feta, Edam, Brie, and Bleu. All cheeses of MERIT.

Anyway, my BOSSES may want me to stop blogging and GET BUSY. 

Comments

  1. TheresaSeptember 11, 2018 at 11:58 AM

    I watched Cat on a Hot Tin(-tin) Roof on the plane coming back from Tanzania!

    ReplyDelete

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