QuillxWords

Time: 12:03 Friday Average: 27:52 Best Friday: 10:21 I was relieved to have a relatively smooth Friday this morning because it's been a rough week of crosswords making me worried that Thanksgiving made me dumber, somehow. But I was ONTO this one right from the start with the nice easy 1-across of "'You Don't Mess Around With Jim' singer, 1972," which is of course Jim CROCE . I followed that up with the wonderful phrase HOLD MY BEER ("Modern phrase said before doing something foolish") hilariously right on top of EPIC POETRY . I actually enjoyed all of the medium/long answers with TONE IT DOWN and, of course, CANINE UNIT in the Southeast. It did make me think of the drug/explosive sniffing dogs outside of the hotels that I've been staying in, which I am quite confident are part of pure security theater. But they're very good boys. I only just this second understood SYNS for "Warm and toasty, e.g.: Abbr." Yes, those are s...

Time: 36:48 Thursday Average: 26:20 Best Thursday: 10:18 WELL NOW , sometimes a crossword will just THRASH you and this was one of those Thursdays. The theme was relatively tricky, with the answers to be entered, as the puzzle eventually reveals, IN A ROUND ABOUT WAY . So, essentially you follow the arrows and the answers continue around the center structure and onward. I think the fact that the revealer is formed by those answers makes the whole thing particularly tricky. If you have trouble grokking the theme, you'll have trouble finding purchase elsewhere. That said, I figured out the theme after not too long, but really struggled with a good deal of the fill. I'm terrible with actors and actresses, so TYE Sheridan and NATASHA Lyonne evaded me for a long time. I've never heard the word SCHNOOK for a "Patsy," but it sounds correct, I suppose. And I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't know BRACERO as a term for a "Seasonal migrant worker from...

Time: 23:41 Wednesday Average: 17:23 Best Wednesday: 7:24 It was a tough Wednesday for me due mostly to an extremely unfamiliar Southwest and a lot of difficult seeing USER ID ("Surfing moniker;" nice clue) and also not knowing how to say female bear in Spanish. It turns out it's OSA . I suppose I remember Hernando DE SOTO , but he really blends in with the hoards of terrible people descending on Central and South America at that time. Maybe I knew about ESTERS back in Chemistry class some 20 odd years ago, but I certainly had nothing for that chemical compound, but I'm interested in the etymology from Wikipedia, which tells us that the word 'ester' was coined in 1848 by a German chemist Leopold Gmelin, probably as a contraction of the German Essigäther, "acetic ether." Throw in a clue about DR . T & the Women, a 2000 film starring Richard Gere, and yeah, you lost me. Sometimes you just have to run through the letters and, I'll adm...

Time: 13:16 I'd be fine with every crossword being coffee-themed, especially on a Tuesday when I especially need it. Although Liz Gorski wished us all a restful start to the week, I've been entirely coffee dependent so far. Perhaps it's inter-holiday ENNUI .  As you can see, the four theme clues each have a first word that is a common coffee descriptor, so you have TURKISH BATH , INSTANT FAMILY , BLACK RUSSIANS , and IRISH SETTER . I've been getting my share of black coffee, but altogether not enough Turkish coffee and definitely lacking Irish coffee. Instant coffee I'll live without. I've never heard of "Single-named sex symbol of old TV" DAGMAR , but apparently she was a regular panelist on the NBC game show, 'Who Said That?' That's an amazing name for a show. I told myself I'd remember Thomas Edison's middle name, ALVA , but I forgot again. I'd rather NAN got a Game of Thrones clue instead of Bobbsey twin, because ...

Time: 9:08 Tuesday Average: 13:37 Best Tuesday: 6:10 I think you know that you're too tired when you're staring at "Grammy-winning Goldberg" and have _HOO_I and think... "I got nothing." The "Pop flies?" clue got me first with SWAT and that starting W was finally enough for me to remember WHOOPI , but yikes. I probably enjoyed this puzzle entirely because I want a FRIED EGG right now, but that's a long way from me here at work. That was one of the themers along with CANDIDATE , COMPUTER PROGRAM , and EDITORIAL , all of which GOTTA RUN . Get it? Honestly, I kinda love it. But really, I am getting a bit TESTY without eggs for breakfast. I might even be starting to miss HOTEL breakfast buffets. Does Netflix keep recommending "Money HEIST " to everyone else? I'm sorry but I just can't get past how terrible that title is. I'm sure it's fine. But I feel that same way about that title as I do about the word OATY , ...

Time: 5:56 Monday Average: 8:35 Best Monday: 4:10 Perhaps it's because my nerd lives on the outside, but I'm not really familiar with the term INNER NERD , which makes up this Monday theme. Still, it holds up well enough with themers that all have the word "nerd" in the middle with WIE NER D OG , SCREE NER D VDS , and DESIG NER D RUG . Also, BAN NER D AYS is making its second nerdy appearance in recent days, last time with a clue related to the Hulk. Nerd stuff truly has hit the mainstream. Gosh, there's an awful lot of crossword standard abbreviations in here (some of them in plurals of various likelihood) with PLO , EMTS , GMOS , ATMS , SSN , and ETA . Throw in a couple short or shortened standards like BIO , MET , LEI , I DO , ROE , and ARIA and you're off to the boring boring races. I think I'm more annoyed with myself than with the constructor as I mindlessly write these in. It's good that People Magazine finally came to its senses and...

Time: 51:55 Sunday Average: 49:24 Best Sunday: 21:55 I started this puzzle at midnight as a passenger on the drive back from Dollywood to Bloomington. I think it’s the first time while writing this blog that I’ve completed a solve the night before, although I believe most professional crossword bloggers choose this method to be sure their write-up appears in a timely fashion, something I’ve yet to achieve, except sometimes when I enjoyed a time difference advantage. With the crossword title of “Silent Finales” and a NW corner that I handled with BRIO , I thought I was in good shape to crush this puzzle. As it turns out, that was the BEST CASE scenario and the puzzle was a TAD more difficult than I anticipated. The theme was straightforward, as it involves adding silent letters to common phrases to generate some wackily clued new answers. One of the main hang-ups I had was that I put in UNspokEnFORE for “Warning not given on a golf course” instead of UNCALLED FORE , which h...

 Time: 39:53 Saturday Average: 38:48 Best Saturday: 10:34 I can’t be the only one who has never watched Dora the Explorer and has no idea what her catchphrase is. I needed every single cross and I still didn’t understand what SWIPER NO SWIPING could possibly mean. Apparently there’s a character named Swiper who sometimes swipes things but Dora tells him not to and then he doesn’t... that was following some cursory internet searching, so please tell me if I’m missing something. To add insult to injury, “Dora the Explorer, e.g.: Abbr” is the clue for SRTA (ugh), one of the last clues that I managed. Even though I struggled mightily with this crossword, I really enjoyed a great deal of the themeless answers and clueing. HIGH MAINTENANCE and IDLE SPECULATION are both lovely long answers. RETICENCE clued as “Taciturnity” is just a double whammy of fantastic words and actually one of the first clues that I got. I may not be great at cars, sports, or abbreviations, but I’m p...

Time: 14:46 Friday Average: 28:04 Best Friday: 10:21 I emerged from a turkey coma this morning and decided to just tackle this Friday crossword immediately. Once again, half asleep brain comes through with one of my better Friday performances. I was glad to be able to plop in ANIMANIACS ,  but mostly just because it’s one of my all-time favorite cartoons. It took me a moment to figure out what needed to be added to BBC for “Airer of ‘Orphan Black’ and ‘Almost Royal,’” but of course it’s BBC AMERICA . I know my dad would always respond to the question “Who’s the best tennis player of all time?” without hesitation with Rod LAVER “Tennis’s only two-time Grand Slam winner.” I should ask if he thinks Federer has taken over that title or if it’s at least a discussion now. SPURS and SABER are nice mini stack. And now that I know about it, I’d like to visit KEW Gardens to see the most diverse botanical and mycological collection in the world. That must be SQUILLIONS (never...

Time: 22:25 Thursday Average: 26:12 Best Thursday: 10:18 The crossword tricked me today by having nothing at all to do with Thanksgiving. Even so, it was a pleasant Thanksgiving morning solve with coffee and cider-mosas, both AT A TIME , of course. However, I hated both crosswords and myself when I saw the clue “K-12” and immediately wrote in ELHI , which I maintain does not exist outside of crosswords. IT’S A LIE ! (Speaking of which, must we have the clue ‘Fake news!’?” I dug the theme today, which featured missing letters at the beginning and ending of words to evoke certain phrases: “OWARD” is ‘coward’ (took me a while to see) without the first letter and so becomes HEADLESS CHICKEN . I was looking really hard for Headless Horseman, because I think that ‘headless chicken’ is not a phrase; it’s a chicken with its head cut off. “QUARR” is quarry without the y, so that’s a BOTTOMLESS PIT . “SEASO” is, of course, ENDLESS SUMMER . “IKINI” yields TOPLESS SWIMSUIT . I j...

Time: 13:45 Wednesday Average: 17:19 Best Wednesday: 7:24 I'm always happy to see an unexpected bit of trickiness on a Wednesday. As you can see from the FLIP FLOPS revealer, the theme answers are all clued a certain way, but when you flip the first and second words, you still end up with a common phrase. Thus Fair Trade becomes TRADE FAIR , Rat Pack becomes PACK RAT , etc. I imagine these were all pretty fun to think of and there's not really a dud in the bunch. Maybe Outtakes becoming TAKES OUT is a bit boring, because it's just another phrasal verb.That said, I'll still cover the theme somewhat TERSELY because it's straightforward and, really, that's quite a few theme answers to cram into one grid. Impressively, the fill didn't suffer much from all the theme. I'm happy to see NEKO Case again and I'm not even going to complain about Fred DURST , because he makes me think of the amazing Punch Up the Jam Episode about "Nookie." H...

Time: 7:35 Tuesday Average: 13:40 Best Tuesday: 6:10 How many holiday-themed puzzles are submitted the NY Times? Enough, I suppose, for each day of the week leading up the holiday. Today, we have a Turkey Day, with four longish answers clued the same way, "Turkey's place." That yields POULTRY FARM , RAZZIE AWARDS (are Turkeys and Razzies the same?), BOWLING ALLEY , and, of course, WESTERN ASIA . I'd be shocked if this theme hasn't appeared before ("Turkey" means so many things!), but it's the first one for me, so I'll take it. POOR ROSS really is the worst "Friend," right? I actually enjoyed the long downs more than the themers, with CLEAR AS MUD (a fine phrase that took me a long time to parse) and LEMON WEDGE , clued as "Garnish for a vodka tonic." Well, I'm ready for a Gin & Tonic, anyway, to start this holiday week. Still, I have just today left in the office, so let's attack it with GUSTO before I ...

Time: 11:30 We'll be following Liz Gorski's advice this Thanksgiving and bringing a lot of printed out New Yorker crosswords with us for all those times that we need quiet in the midst of family. Today's Thanksgiving Break themed puzzle features circled letters that spell out common holiday dishes that are broken up in the grid. HOT STUFF and FITTING ! And I suppose you could say that you ATE A TON after this meal. I'm embarrassed to say that it took me a while to remember Weird Al's film UHF . Rather, I remember the film, just couldn't recall the letters that make up the title. I was also thrown off by the section that featured "'Swedish Nightingale' Jenny" LIND , Composer NED Rorem, LADDERED investments (shrug), and ONE LANE ("Like many rural roads"). That last one was just hard for me to see, but also the only one that I could get cleanly. Of course, I'm always thrilled to see BIG PAPI . I learned today that a B...

Time: 8:54 Monday Average: 8:37 Best Monday: 4:10 I suppose today's theme is light wordplay cluing films. I can't say it really gave us much to GNAW on but something closer to that "huh, FINE " type feeling. The first themer, "'Green' 1986 film" for THE COLOR OF MONEY , is probably the strongest because you could say that yes, green is arguably the color of money. I put off watching that particular sequel to my actual favorite film, The Hustler, because I'd heard how disappointing it was. Once I'd lowered the bar enough, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's not so much terrible as just not all that good. I suppose you can equally argue that "'Fluid' 2017 film" for THE SHAPE OF WATER (which I need to re-watch not on a plane) works about equally well in that respect, but "'Noted' 1965" film THE SOUND OF MUSIC breaks the theme in my mind. So, we're theme-light,  but I don't mind s...

Time: 41:16 Sunday Average: 49:22 Best Sunday: 21:55 I love portmanteau words basically every since I learned the word 'portmanteau,' which was probably from Elliott Kalan of Flophouse and MST3K fame. So today's puzzle, titled "Portmanfaux," was obviously a complete joy to me, even if I'm not sure I have the SMARTS to concisely describe what exactly the theme is doing. Essentially, the last word of each theme answer is a well-known portmanteau word and it is proceeded by two words whose beginning and ending, respectively, could be used to create that portmanteau word. "Satchel for a homicide detective?:" MURDER CASE MURSE "Unseasonal wear on a winter vacation?:" SKI RESORT SKORT "Late morning meal for a TV family?:" BRADY BUNCH BRUNCH "One way to buy mustard cheaply?:" GREY POUPON GROUPON "Emails such as 'Click this link to become an Apollo astronaut?:" SPACE PROGRAM SPAM "Collection o...

Time: 32:53 Saturday Average: 38:46 Best Saturday: 10:34 Even though it was one of the last answers for me to figure out, I loved the abstract cluing of "'It has one syllable' and 'its fourth letter is T'" for HINTS . I'm sure more experienced crossword folk have seen their share of clues like that, but it was fresh to me. I actually took a quick TEST RUN at this crossword from the bar last night where the drinks were not on the WEAKER side. As a result, I psyched myself out, because my drunken brain could make nothing of this Saturday puzzle and I wasted a few minutes against my final time. HOW ODD that alcohol would adversely affect crossword solving ability.  Saturday morning brain is always stronger crossword brain, but I still struggled quite a bit this morning, not filling in a single answer until 34-across ABDUL , "Singer of the 1989 #1 hit 'Opposites Attract.'" I threw in BAA BAA above it and slowly built f...

Time: 15:47 Friday Average: 28:15 Best Friday: 10:21 I'm having trouble not reading this particular Friday puzzle as satire directed at some of the SEEDIER elements of the current political situation in the US. Starting with 1-across we have SHOUTING (clued "What all capital letters may indicate") sitting right above NEW MEDIA . The eye might be drawn to the opposite corner and see TWEET not far from ALIGN , clued as "What a politician's promises and actions should do" which could be to say, maybe, not support policy exclusively in the interest of the FAT CATS . But maybe that's what we get when we elect a CELEB that could perhaps be described as something of a SLIME MOLD . Will the newly elected representatives be our WHITE BLOOD CELLS that will REIN IN this administration or am I giving our system too much CREDIT ? Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it does seem rather ON THE DOT (wanted 'on the nose' there). But anyway, NO ...

Time: 22:00 Thursday Average: 26:15 Best Thursday: 10:18 I should probably watch "Frozen" one of these days because it sure seems to have provided an awful lot of crossword fodder, as it did today with reindeer SVEN . Also, I hear it's pretty good and Kristen Bell is in it, so what am I waiting for? I may, however, skip the live action ALADDIN remake, which apparently is coming in 2019. Today's tricky Thursday comes courtesy of rebus squares that could be anywhere, which is a daunting proposition on the face of it. However, the puzzle falls into place once you realize that it's always going to be the letters IOU in the squares, which was given away fairly early with the gimme (for me, anyway) of NOTOR ( IOU ) S B.I.G.  ("Noted artist on Bad Boy records, with "the"). The theme, of course, is MICRO LOANS , so the IOU's are made small by cramming them into single squares, and we're also helpfully informed that there will be five of th...

Time: 7:55 Wednesday Average: 17:21 Best Wednesday: 7:24 I almost cruised to a Wednesday record time on this one despite listening to a podcast while solving. Actually, one of my big breakthroughs in terms of crossword solving was putting an end to that habit. It's amazing how much someone saying lots of words in your ears will distract you from thinking about other words. All that is to say that the way I SNARFED (why is it never ScARFED) this one down means that this was probably too easy for a Wednesday, but maybe I was just lucky to know a fair amount of the names. JANELLE  Monáe, if you don't know already, is basically the best artist around these days, someone whose music I could listen to forever and yet I'm equally happy to see her on screen. Definitely not a FALSE IDOL . Today's GROW A BEARD theme also has my full support. As far as themes go, this one could probably be counted as old-fashioned, with the circled letters at the beginning of the theme c...

Time: 11:11 For some reason, my brain just couldn't parse LONDONER , perhaps because my eyes saw Soho in the clue and my mind wouldn't leave New York. Anyway, that was the final bit to fall for, since I don't know DINAS Merrill and Meyer by name. I would count this puzzle's among those that I stare blankly at for some time after completing the puzzle. I finally grokked the alternate title, THREE POINT TURN , when I saw that the three theme answers begin with the letters P-O-I-N-T in different patterns. In terms of the main title, Crazy Quintet, I suppose the 5 letters are the quintet and they're crazy because they're mixed up. Or I'm missing something. If you're interested in the AFI , I highly recommend the podcast "Unspooled," which is going through the AFI Top 100 List one movie at a time and is hosted by the delightful Amy Nicholson and Paul Scheer. Enjoy!

Time: 12:14 Tuesday Average: 13:43 Best Tuesday: 6:10 It's my first crossword back in the office and I'll have to admit that this one was quite a slog for me. I was highly discouraged right from the start because I consider world capitals to be one of my few crossword strengths, but there was "Nauru's capital" and nothing was coming to mind. However, it turns out that was exactly right because, officially, Nauru has no capital! As Google so concisely puts it, " YAREN is often assumed to be the capital city of Nauru, but that is not the case." So, I'm starting out this entry somewhat angry about that. However, the theme was fun. The revealer is ANDES , which suggests that our theme answers will have an extra "es" (and es) added to the end of a familiar phrase and, as always, wackiness will ensue: "Representatives Sessions (R-TX) and Aguilar (D-CA), for instance?" HOUSE PETES . And maybe the driest ? theme clue of all ti...

Time: 9:11 Monday Average: 8:37 Best Monday: 4:10 I'm back to work in Indiana but fortunately am starting out with working from home, which goes down easy like a Monday crossword. Actually, as you can see by my time, this one came out a little tricky for a Monday. I think I struggled to really get in a groove with those narrow corridors connecting the sections of the puzzle. There's a nice table-setting theme here with STICK A FORK IN IT , GAG ME WITH A SPOON ("Expression of disgust in Valley Girl-speak;" I'll take your word for it), GO UNDER THE KNIFE , and COME TO THE TABLE . I'm also fond of the medium length acrosses with KEELS OVER and PUT ON AIRS , both great phrases. I didn't know that CANTS is another word for "Leans" or inclines and since it crossed Bandleader ARTIE Shaw, with whom I'm not really familiar, I got stuck for a while. I was also slowed down by a typo, writing LoGO instead of LAGO for "Italian body of wat...

Time: 55:13 Sunday Average: 49:29 Best Sunday: 21:55 I'm finally back to Sunday mornings at home with coffee and crossword and I'm as happy about that as I am to see NEKO CASE making an appearance. However, as you can see from my time, this one was an absolute slog for me, mostly because of fill that I didn't know more than a somewhat tricky theme, although that was definitely a factor in one case. Also, arbitrary theme instructions making up the long acrosses doesn't make things any easier.  NICAD batteries (short for nickel–cadmium) rarely come up in my everyday life, nor does 20s gangster slang SIMOLEONS for dollars, which, by the way, has an alternate spelling with an 'a' as the sixth letter, which is crossing "Algerian port" ORAN . I didn't love all that. Even worse for me was the NE corner where we have OATER , which apparently is an informal way to refer to a western movie or television show. No idea here. A little below that we hav...

Time: 32:24 Saturday Average: 38:53 Best Saturday: 10:34 As usual, I was  TIMID going into a Saturday puzzle following a late night of wandering a foreign city and having a  HOT DATE with a morning  AIRLINER . The longer across answers actually fell easily with  STRIPPERS (“Pole stars”) and  YOGA PANTS (“Flexible attire”) feeling like some simple cleverness in the NW and  OPERETTAS (“‘The Mikado’ and ‘The Merry Widow’”) and  ZAPATISTA (“Rebel fighter during the Mexican Revolution” being surprisingly straightforward. For “Mutant villain of Marvel Comics,” I had to fight my instincts to run through every mutant villain I knew and wishing it would be Mesmero, but of course it’s the most obvious with  MAGNETO . Sometimes clues get more difficult when you know too much.  COSPLAY , of course, fits right in here.  The west, however, was a complete disaster for me. I managed to enter in  OCTILE for “One-eighth of a data set”...

Time: 14:31 Friday Average: 28:24 Best Friday: 10:21 I confidently wrote in “‘This one’s” minE’ and started singing “Helpless” for, well, up to this point in time. Of course, it turns out to be ON ME , which makes just as much sense and probably actually comes up more often in my life, outside of Hamilton, anyway. I enjoyed today’s themeless with its mini-theme of making the distinction between TAUNT (mean names) and TEASES (funny names). The bottom stack seemed particularly directed at me, since I meet so many TEENAGERS who may end up WAITLISTED , although frankly that’s not a very likely outcome at my place of employment. At the same time, I do count myself among the INSOMNIACS of the world, especially with my thoroughly broken internal clock, which probably still thinks I’m in INDIA . In term of what I learned today, I knew that “Pioneer mover” should be some kind of covered wagon, but I’d completely forgotten (if I ever knew) that it’s called a CONESTOGA , so that o...

Time: 19:54 Thursday Average: 26:18 Best Thursday: 10:18 I'm beginning to suspect that the term "at sea" to mean confused is propped up entirely by the crossword industry. I was sure that 1-across "Put at sea" was something along these lines, but I still couldn't see ADDLE until I closed out this puzzle. The theme, on the other hand, came to me quickly, even though I'd never heard of Horace Greeley, who apparently uttered  the words GO WEST YOUNG MAN , words that I certainly LIVE BY , or did at some point. As you can see, the theme answers would end with L-A-D, but instead those have been shifted to the left, so the lad (young man) is going west, yielding - LAD POWER BAL -, - LAD ARMOR C -, - LAD TACO SA -, and - L AD SUPER BOW -. Fun stuff. And once you get it, you can plug those three letters in at the beginning of the theme answers and save yourself some time. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying a FIESTA of higher education, of sorts, a venue at whic...

Time: 12:02 Wednesday Average: 17:27 Best Wednesday: 7:24 I might have found my new favorite setting for a crossword and that's the train from Ljubljana to Vienna. Throw in some espresso and an apple börek to go along with the mountains and castles and I'm just saying  YES YES all the way. Even ROYALS never had it so good. ALAS , I don't think I'll manage to pull this situation off too often in my life, no matter how I might ANGLE FOR it. Today's puzzle also hit my literary references just right, so I'm certain to get TILT AT WINDMILLS for "*Fight imaginary enemies" without needing any crosses. Obviously, we have WHALER for "Captain Ahad, e.g." and I immediately wrote but tragically misspelled Coleridge's "The EOLIAN Harp," starting with an A because I'm more familiar with the Aeolian spelling. That actually cost me about 4 minutes of searching, since it was crossing crosswordy EWER , which one day I'll rememb...

Time: 8:03 There wasn't any doubt in my mind that Liz Gorski would give us an election day themed puzzle with today's delightful CROSS PARTY LINES . As you can see, the circled squares arranged in crosses each have "Dem" crossing "Rep" to follow through on that theme. I cruised through this one, except for inexplicably writing in fROOF instead of PROOF (ah, typos) and taking probably 20 seconds to track it down. There were definitely a few funny plurals in this one with STADIA (oof) and ANATHEMAS , which I suppose is fine but I've certainly never seen it plural before and the other option, anathemata (according to wiktionary), would be downright cruel. But I won't complain too much and unfortunately I can't TARRY long since today I'm off to my last full day of visits. It'll be seven weeks or so by the time I fly home on Saturday and I'll consider that a FEAT . 

Time: 12:08 Tuesday Average: 13:44 Best Tuesday: 6:10 I was well on my way to record Tuesday time this morning especially since I immediately understood the theme from "Iron Man without any clothes?" for STARK NAKED . A superhero ALTER EGO pun crossword? Yeah, I got that. BANNER YEAR for "When the Hulk was born?" was also automatic while NOSY PARKER ("Spider-Man not minding his own business?") took me a few crosses since I'm only passingly familiar with that phrase. I'll confess that I only recently became aware of FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE ("Batman's water springs?") because "My Brother, My Brother, and Me" did a bit about " Stacy's mom " a couple months ago, but the answer was literal enough to be easy too. So, where did I go astray? Well, I put in DEnY instead of DEFY for "Go against" and DUKE On KENT made sense to me as maybe some famous neighborhood I'd never heard of and I was just too dumb ...

Time: 4:57 Monday Average: 8:36 Best Monday: 4:10 I flew through the today’s crossword sipping coffee and looking over the square in Belgrade Center, which unfortunately is under construction so only the statue is currently IN SITU (am I using that correctly?). I’ve only recently left the land of Mother TERESA (where I also saw a cool CAROUSEL in the Tirana city center) and chose to buy a tiny statue of Tsar Simeon instead of her tiny statue at the airport to spend the last of my Albanian currency, so we’re just short of a proper coincidence. Today’s theme was SOUND BITES , as you can see from the longer theme answers including possible sounds of bites. It’s also just barely short of another theme with its snap, crunch (?), pop... so close. TOOTSIE POP , CAPN CRUNCH , and GINGER SNAP make up the theme answers and the fact that they already directly refer to food and to a lesser extent the sounds they make, it’s a little underwhelming. Wouldn’t it have been more interes...

Time: 30:29 Sunday Average: 49:24 Best Sunday: 21:55 It's another relaxed morning in Tirana solving a crossword over maybe too much coffee. Today's puzzle has a diagonal black line that cuts the grid almost into HALVES and I'll confess that I got almost zero answers on the eastern half on my first run through. Being in Eastern Europe, I really should have immediately known that "Soda brand with more than 90 flavors" would be FANTA , since this is the only place that I drink the stuff (usually after a night of drinking rakia). I loved the first two answers in the NW triple stack with the seasonally appropriate BOBS FOR APPLES and then ARE WE DONE HERE ?, a phrase I probably use daily. WIRED RECORDERS , on the other hand, is about as bland as it gets, but if that's what it takes to prop up the stack, so be it. Is "Give mouth-to-mouth to?" really a ? type clue for KISS ? It seems PRETTY straightforward. Sometimes I wish that the NY Times w...

Time: 41:34 Saturday Average: 39:00 Best Saturday: 10:34 Today started with coffee and crossword and no particular commitments for the day. TEE TIME , as always, was far from my mind.  There was some definite trickiness today, along with a couple proper nouns that I'm not really familiar with. I didn't know Paul Simon/Derek Walcott musical The CAPEMAN and I couldn't remember US soccer star Megan RAPINOE , because I just don't really follow soccer at all. Of course, that center 3 letter answer, DMX , that I know for sure. I was also glad that I was able to drop in SAINT PETERSBURG for "'Crime and Punishment' setting" without any crosses; that's a definite gimme for me. I'm actually not sure how I would have made it through the puzzle without that one. I only just now understand why DORA THE EXPLORER is clued as "Nick name." Her show is on Nick Jr. I'd written in the answer but couldn't quite figure out the clue. I ha...

Time: 35:26 Friday Average: 28:35 Best Friday: 10:21 After waking up at 3:30am for the drive from Skopje to Tirana, I sat in a cafe on the square and, as you can see, really struggled with this one. Early on, my nerves weakened by definite SLEEP DEBT , I considered giving up or even searching for AID . However, I'm not sure if there were any Albanians around who could tell me which ones were "Hershey toffee treats," but HEATH BARS came to me eventually and I CHOSE to carry on. After all, any puzzle with "Doughnut-loving toon" HOMER has to be up my alley. So, Friday puzzle, COME AT ME , BRO . There's some delicious cluing here like "Wasted vacation days?" for BOOZE CRUISE and "Game in which I is 1" for SCRABBLE . I'm also quite fond of answers like WET NOODLE , THRASH METAL , and TONE POET , which came completely out of left field for me. The only LOW BLOW that invoked my IRE was ELHI , which I think is short for Elementary ...

Time: 22:19 Thursday Average: 26:23 Best Thursday: 10:18 I stared at probably the first 6 clues blankly before this one started to click for me. There were definitely some tricky proper nouns like LECH for "Solidarity leader Walesa," which admittedly is someone I feel like I should know. After all, 1983 Nobel Peace Prize winner and the first president of Poland is definitely fair game for crosswords. I'll also confess that I didn't know Dr. Seuss' real last name of GEISEL and that crossing "Bond girl in 2006's 'Casino Royale,'" which I should know but eluded me until I had EV_GREEN .  I should have blogged this one when I finished it this morning, but I was having trouble seeing the theme and so I had to wait until I'd finished a quite full day of visits. But, as you can see, this is one of those clever puzzles in which actually multiple answers will work, in a sense. The across clues involve phrases that consist of a w...