Tuesday November 6th 2018, NY Times Crossword

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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 to see DUKE OF KENT for, really, 6 minutes. POOR ME.

Today I learned that PASEOS would be Spanish for "Leisurely strolls," which is fine but I can't say I'm loving the plural there. Also, "Yankees' division, in brief" for AL EAST? I'm pretty sure it belongs to World Series Champion Boston Red Sox, thank you very much NY Times.

OK, I obviously loved this puzzle, even if I didn't handle it with as much ELAN as I would have liked. 

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