Thursday October 25th 2018, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 53:08
Thursday Average: 26:27
Best Thursday: 10:18

Well, this one was just awful for me. I was able to methodically work my way through the fill, even if I SCREAMED inside more than a few times. My mind stubbornly refused to grok THE theme today and this is one of those themes that is vital to completing the puzzle. But I put in a BRAVE face and hacked my way through and somehow found that, strictly speaking, you don't NEED to understand the theme. It will just take you forever.

The trick of the theme, of course, was to take the clues that told you "See 17-Across" and, rather than use the 17-across clue, you would add the letters S-E-E to the front, so in this case you get seePAGE, which is a way of saying LOST LIQUID. The others are:

  • "See 29-Across" becomes seeTHE, a clue for DO A SLOW BURN.
  • "See  45-Across" becomes see SAW, a clue for GO UP AND DOWN.
  • "See 61-Across" becomes seeKING, a clue for IN SEARCH OF.
Something about the blandness of the answers, especially those first two, meant that despite filling them in using down answers, I couldn't really figure out what was happening. Perhaps all the travel has finally caught up with me or, more likely, this one just hit me wrong.

Some rather tricky fill exacerbated matters. I'm a big fan of 80s and 90s hip hop, but I absolutely could not have told you that PEPA, of  Salt-N-Pepa, was the "Stage name of rapper Sandra Denton." That's a deep cut. Also, I definitely never knew that "Pat who played filmdom's Mr. Miyagi" was MORITA and I'd say that's not the most inferable name. WEENIE is "Dog, slangily," apparently? I guess I just don't know many wiener type dogs. I'll concede that it makes some sense.   

Anyhow, I'll call this puzzle one that proves my main point, which is that if you put in the time, you can solve most puzzles. I'm somewhat proud of my tenacity on this one, which I completed over a long period of time in a cold van on the streets of Ulaanbaatar.

There were a couple clues that I loved! "Tears for Fears, e.g." is a nice clue for TYPO and so is "Looks beneath the surface, in a way," for SNORKELS. In the end, this puzzle made me pretty happy. I mostly blame myself for staring blankly at the theme for so long. 

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