Wednesday September 26th 2018, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 20:08
Average Wednesday: 17:45
Best Wednesday: 7:24

We have a celebrity crossword today with Melinda Gates co-constructing with Joel Fagliano. I'm actually impressed with this stealth tricky Wednesday theme of doubling stand-alone letters in phrases to produce wackiness.

  • XX FACTOR: "Part played by women and girls?"
  • CC SECTION: "Area below 'To:' in an email?"
  • BB COMPLEX: "Group of buildings housing a King?"
  • EE READER: "Lover of Cummings's poetry"
These are some of the driest ? type clues that I've seen and I think that's what I enjoy about them. Overall, this entire puzzle has an old school liberal arts feel to it,with the assumption that you'll know Audre LORDE, JM BARRIE, and what a BLUE ROAN is. I'm vaguely familiar with horse colorings, but would never be able to name that particular one. I also just Googled CYCLADES and now I want to go check out the ruins on these islands just from seeing the pictures. Birthplace of Apollo? OK FINE, I'm in!

I wasted the most time in the NW where I immediately wrote in bARack for "U.S. President with a Novel Peace Prize" and then confirmed it with kooky for "Eccentric" and then proceeded to stare blankly at the rest of that section for about 3 minutes. It cleared quickly once I swapped in CARTER and OUTRE, which I confess I've seen only in crosswords.

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