Wednesday December 5th 2018, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 23:12
Wednesday Average: 17:26
Best Wednesday: 7:24

I had a hard time activating my brain this morning and this Wednesday felt like more of a battle than usual. Being from Massachusetts, I went ahead and wrote in Mass Millions (ignoring the "multi-state" part of the clue) instead of MEGA. I also chose the wrong four letter title woman's name off of Bob Dylan's 1976 album "Desire" and went with Sara instead of ISIS because I actually much prefer that song:

Sleepin' in the woods by a fire in the night,
Drinkin' white rum in a Portugal bar,
Them playin' leapfrog and hearin' about Snow White,
You in the marketplace in Savanna-la-Mar.

I struggled with a few proper names like ST MARK ("Venetian basilica eponym), ALAN KING, CLEO Lane, and ELIZA ("Slave in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'"). I also couldn't have named the shoulder bone, but SCAPULA eventually sounded familiar enough.

As a result, I actually ended up leaning pretty hard on the UNITED NATIONS theme, because I sure know how to mash country names together into nonsense phrases.


  • "You can't bring in a crazed antelope, Mr. Glass!:" IRA, NO MANIC ELAND. That would be Iran, Oman, Iceland and is insanely hard to parse, even including crossword faves Ira and eland. 
  • "Wrigley Field's beer boycott goes into effect:" CUB ALE BAN ON: Cuba Lebanon. That one was easier to see, I suppose.
  • "Mother isn't straight with actress Vardalos:" MA LIES TO NIA: Mali Estonia. This one causes me physical pain.
  • "Suffering caused by reader prejudice:" PERUSER BIAS PAIN: I like this one mostly because I like the word "peruse". It's another one I usually hear in Rod Serling's voice.
I'll accept these wacky answers just because I like the names of countries showing up in crosswords. We even got UGANDA as a bonus! 

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