Thursday December 27th 2018, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 35:54
Thursday Average: 26:04
Best Thursday: 10:18

After opting to recover from my jet lag by sleeping for about 12 hours, I’ll have to confess that I really struggled with the Thursday trickiness, as my time indicates. I’d always known the game as simply “billiards” and not CAROM billiards, so that 1-across was a rough start. After that, I mostly just messed around, made a few guesses, and really had confidence only in ITALO Calvino. Eventually, I got CONTROL/TELECON and remembered that the vapor trail coming off planes is called a CONTRAIL and... is that a shape in the middle of the crossword vaguely plane-like? Why, YES IT IS. Once I was able to drop in the “con” rebus squares following that plane, the rest mostly fell into place.

I had sAW instead of JAW for “something with teeth” until I had all the other letters in place for JET STREAM.

The Southwest was the last to fall, since I’ve never heard of football coach Amos Alonzo STAGG nor did I know the constellation ARA, even if I should know the altar where the gods first made offerings and formed an alliance before defeating the Titans in Greek Mythology. Crossing those two was GEAR OIL, which could have been any number of types of _ea_ oil in my mind. I mostly just ran the alphabet until I got there.

Finally, I had no idea how to spell ALOHA OE for”Song sung by Elvis in ‘Blue Hawaii.’”

Despite my struggles, I must say that I enjoyed this meaty crossword over a damn fine cup of coffee or three in a Portuguese villa. This might again be the ideal solve locale. 

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