Thursday November 1st 2018, NY Times Crossword

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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 word followed by another word with only one letter changed. So, you have:
  • "*Sound of little feet:" PITTER PATTER (but there's only space for one of those words). For the down answer, either SLIT or SLAT could be a "Louver feature."
  • "*Tycho Brahe contemporary:" GALILEO GALILEI and "Admitted" can be LET IN or LET ON. 
  • "*Mr. Moneybags:" FAT CAT and "Scratch, say" could be FLAW or CLAW.
  • "*Branded candy with multicolored beans:" JELLY BELLY and "Take a flier" can be JET or BET.
  • "*Woman's young lover, in slang:" BOY TOY and "Ink stain, e.g." can be BLOT or BLOB.
  • "*Small talk:" CHITTER CHATTER and "Prefix with economics" can be MACRO or MICRO.
  • "*Idiom meaning 'guaranteed:'" AS GOOD AS GOLD and "Sticky stuff" can be GOOP or GLOP. This last one was the trickiest for me to see.
Despite some obtuse fill, I have to say that I love this type of trick in a puzzle. I'm always curious about crosswords with multiple possible answers and this one pretty much nailed it for me. Plus, there is some great longer fill like HECTORED and PILLAGER.

All right. I have to wake up at 3:30am for my drive to Tirana, so TA TA for now!

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