Saturday December 1st 2018, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 48:34
Saturday Average: 38:57
Best Saturday: 10:34

I'm impressed at the inclusion of "___Fett, 'Star Wars' bounty hunter" not Boba, but JANGO. I was prepared to write in the far more famous, far more crossword-friendly younger Fett, but upon seeing it, I had the unenviable task of having to think about the Star Wars prequels. On the other hand, I just read CIRCE by Madeline Miller, so I was all over "Sorceress exiled on Aeaea."

I was solving between tasks on a Saturday at work, so I imagine that negatively affected my solving time today, but there was also a fair amount of trickiness and, I would say, some imprecise cluing. I get the "Fitting place to order craft beer?" for AIRPORT BAR, because, yeah, there are aircrafts around, but I don't think it quite works. I need someone to explain to me why an OCEAN LINER is a "Carnival transport,"  but I bet there's something I'm missing there. I would say that STAYS SANE means more to keep it together than "doesn't do anything rash" and had STAYS SAfE for a while, although I don't love that either. CELEB for "One may make Us money" (as in Us Magazine, I suppose) was pretty painful as well.

That said, I loved BROGRAMMER, whether or not that portmanteau is in common usage. It's definitely apt.

I'm also not up on my works of Roman poet HORACE and the only POSADA I know was the Yankee catcher, who would have matched up well with Joe TORRE in the corner there. Maybe Will Shortz nixed two Yankees clues in one puzzle.

We had two clever "head shot" related clues that led to SOCCER STARS and BOTOX INJECTIONS. Of course, I could think only of my Bulgarian students playing Counterstrike yelling "Head shot! Head shot!" That was a fun English class when they asked me what it meant.

Now, it's time to officially begin my weekend and, hey, I could do the Sunday crossword in 2 hours if I want!

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