Wednesday November 21st 2018, NY Times Crossword

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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." Highly recommended.

It's probably not surprising that my biggest challenge on this puzzle was "Old Chrysler," which turned out to be LE BARON. I suppose that sounds vaguely familiar. Well, I also didn't know the "Ninth month of the Hebrew calendar," KISLEV.

I also briefly wanted "The Smartest Guys in the Room" to be about The Onion when I had -n-on, but of course it's about ENRON and I knew that.

"No food need for me" for I ATE? Well, that's wickedly out of place in Thanksgiving week.

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