Thursday October 4th 2018, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 15:44
Average Tuesday: 26:14
Best Tuesday: 10:18

OK, SEATAC is Seattle-Tacoma mashed up. Got it! It has been a long day of school visits, a drive to the Wagah Border of Pakistan and India for some mind-blowing military theatrics, back for a networking dinner and puppet show, and now just blogging and waiting for that end of day beer that I've been craving for the last 8 hours or so. Or, really, after this crossword, I should be going for some mixed drink with soda, which would be just fine too.


The theme took me a minute to parse, especially since I found the key revealer second word to be a bit redundant in SODA MIXER. But the second word of each theme is an anagram of a soda brand, so you have BUBBLE GUM (Mug Root Beer), JUDAS PRIEST (Sprite!), GAS PIPES (Pepsi, that one took me comically long to see), MARC ECKO (Coke; also, whoever that is!) and BASEBALL BAT (Tab, easier to see). So, I don't think anyone would ever say that an ingredient in a cocktail is a "soda mixer" and would just say "soda," but overall this works for me. It might be a little easy for a Thursday, which generally should have more fun tricks up its sleeve, but I'll take it.

I was a bit irked by AMAIN, a word I'd never heard before meaning "At full speed." But then I looked it up and found the Emerson quote "the soul strives amain to live and work." Now I'm all turned around on the subject. 

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