Wednesday November 14th 2018, NY Times Crossword

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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 clues gradually becoming the word "beard." I don't think it requires any more explaining than that.

I'm a big fan of hearing theories about PLANET X, especially because it makes me think of "The Tenth Planet" (now a misnomer, I suppose), the Doctor Who series featuring the first appearance of The Cybermen and the first resurrection of the Doctor, transforming from William Hartnell to Patrick Troughton.

I also enjoyed some of the longer downs like THAT GUY and RIBBITS. I'm skeptical of I MEAN NO, because I don't think that's really a phrase. And we won't talk too much about some of the shorter junky fill or the fact that we have both MIB and MAB or I-RAIL and T-NUT in a single puzzle. 

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