Saturday September 29th 2018, NY Times Crossword

Time: 20:45
Average Saturday: 39:53
Best Saturday: 20:09

40 hours after walking out my door in Bloomington, IN, I checked into my hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan. Travel went about as smoothly as I could have expected, but two 6-hour layovers in a single itinerary is absolutely something to be avoided. Boy, did I BOTCH that travel planning! But I did watch quite a few episodes of The Americans on my IPAD PRO while in Bahrain.

Somehow, wildly sleep deprived, travel weary, and unshowered (i.e. a HOT MESS) seems to be my ideal crossword state because I once again came close to a personal Saturday record while sitting in the lobby of the Serena Hotel waiting for my room. I loved the layout of this crossword with a couple long downs breaking up four 6x5 squares (more or less in the case of the NE/SW).While my first runthrough produced maybe just three answers, this was a perfect puzzle for hacking away with lots of inferrable mid-length answers. It seemed like quite a few brand names with ODWALLA, RITE AID, and IHOP, all of which eluded me for a while. Am I the only person who will still write DEAR SIR OR MADAM when otherwise at a complete loss for a greeting? I mean, it beats "Hello," right?

So, a BALACLAVA is one of those knit ski masks, essentially? And it's definitely unrelated to baklava and balalaikas? OK, maybe my brain will eventually get that straight. I also could not have really told you what CHIANTI is or that it's from Tuscany.

I'll close with the answer I didn't care for, which is OTHER WOMAN clued as "Part of some love triangles." I suppose I'm not entirely opposed to the phrase, but it has to be acknowledged as somewhat regressive, right? Once again, cluing matters because it's a statement of common usage and I'm not entirely comfortable with OKing "the other woman" as a legitimate way to identify someone.