QuillxWords

Time: 19:01 Thursday Average: 25:30 Best Thursday: 10:18 I managed to misspell EGRET yet again and I also didn't understand the "Old plume source" clue, which led me down a fun wiki wormhole. I wasn't really familiar with the notion of plume hunting, apparently the practice of hunting wild birds for their feathers, many of which were used for women's hats. Apparently, this was a major industry and was leading to near extinction of some species of exotic birds, causing an early environmentalist movement in the late 19th century. As far as the egret goes, "osprey" plumes were actually egret plumes and were part of British army uniforms until they were discontinued in 1889. I didn't know Elton John's song NIKITA and I now feel greatly enriched by this music video, which I recommend to you. As far as the theme goes, it's a 212 theme, tricky in that it's rare to put numbers in a crossword puzzle and it took me too long to conside...

Time: 29:39 Wednesday Average: 17:13 Best Wednesday: 7:09 Sometimes a Wednesday will just hit me wrong and I'll end up staring for 10s of minutes at a corner and that was the case for the isolated NW today. Mostly, I just kept thinking, "Isn't the "Aladdin" prince...Aladdin?" I could think a lot of three-letter words for "Scoundrel" and just wasn't coming up with I DID NOT for "Emphatic denial." Tough cluing for ATOM with "Something divided in W.W.II" and "Body image, briefly" for TAT was weird for me. Once I eventually wrapped that up, I had to search the puzzle for a typo and I also didn't understand BANC for "Judge's seat." Apparently an En Banc Session is a case heard by the entire bench of judges. Other than that, I can't be the only one who put bEaNIE Babies instead of whatever TEENIE Babies are. I assume it's a bygone knock-off. Also the theme is actually quite clever. ...

Time: 9:45 Tuesday Average: 13:16 Best Tuesday: 5:05 Wait, QUINOA is trendy? Well, I guess I'm with the times since I had quinoa last night and will probably have leftovers for lunch too. Is the PALEO diet no longer trendy then? Damn, now I'm hungry for PAELLA . Since I just finished reading "Becoming," I really should never miss SASHA or Malia in crosswords, not that I ever had an excuse before. It's another one of those clue situations where you can place a couple letters and then just wait for the crosses. Like MiCRO or MACRO Economics. I was thrilled to see the COLBERT BUMP make an appearance. Of course, the last recipient of that particular boost was Herman Caine, as I recall, but it's nice to see crossword clues aimed squarely at my generation. That was one of the VOLLEYBALL theme answers along with LIP SERVICE , TELEVISION SET , and GOLDEN SPIKE . Actually, the theme helped me a tiny bit in the end since I didn't know the "Symbol of ...

Time: 5:29 Monday Average: 8:27 Best Monday: 4:10 Well, I got confused by "Coin with Lincoln on it" because I was pretty sure that it was a penny, but that didn't fit, so I thought, "Dime, I guess?" Nope, it's CENT , which I would argue is not a coin or am I being being obtuse? Today's theme falls in the barely noticeable category, since it's KICKSTARTER so the first words of each themer could precede the word "kick." I actually just got an email from a co-worker who's leaving for another job that she said she was FREECYCLING her stuff, so I guess people do actually use that word. Meanwhile, I'm sitting and thinking about how this blog could legitimately become a SIDE HUSTLE without me putting too much more work into it. And, um, DROP THE MIC . Nope, I'm not up on my classic typewriters, so OLIVETTI was a tough long answer for me on a Monday. Latin is also not great, so IN ESSE is guessable but I basically relied on...

Time: 44:49 Sunday Average: 48:21 Best Sunday: 21:55 I'd never realized that the three is skipped in the "Media inits. before One, Two or Four" for BBC and now I'm wondering if that's a Monty Python reference, but I guess they'd have to skip to five after two for that to really work. Today's puzzle is titled "Unemployment Lines" and features some wordplay about losing certain positions and I guess it's either appropriate or inappropriate as the government temporarily reopens tomorrow and lots of people return to work at least for the moment. "Unemployed salon worker?" DISTRESSED HAIRDRESSER . Right, because tresses are hair things. I second guess myself on that word frequently.  "Unemployed nail polisher?" DEFILED MANICURIST . It's hard not to read this answer as pretty gross. "Unemployed men's clothier?" DISPATCHED TAILOR . I had "Destitched" for a long time and I know that's n...

Time: 27:27 Saturday Average: 37:27 Best Saturday 10:34 First of all, I loved the shape this puzzle, even if I got stuck for a while after completing the South since the two halves barely connected. But I was happy to understand why "#1 song at the end of October in 1962" would have to be the MONSTER MASH , which is a perfectly sensible song no matter what they say on Punch Up the Jam. I also finally remembered crossword-standard TAPIR , which was fairly critical for getting through this puzzle. I've never had ALABAMA SLAMMERS before and initially imagined that ALABAMA Sunrises might be a thing, but sadly it's not so. Hilariously, my first thought for "Classic video game hero's catchphrase" was IT'S A ME, MARIO ! but I assumed that was nonsense. Lucky me! The turning point for me was realizing that I'd misspelled Giovanni RIBISI (with an A instead of the first I). I've never seen Avatar before, but I also couldn't think of a...

Time: 16:43 Friday Average: 27:37 Best Friday: 10:21 ICESCRAPER is an appropriate answer for today as I’m attending a conference in Wisconsin, which, as it turns out, is much colder than Indiana a lot of the time. PARADERS , in addition to being an awkward word, is less appropriate. I just looked up MALAPROP , which has a synonym of Dogberryism, so that’s sending me down a rabbit hole. Clearly I need to reread or see Much Ado About Nothing.  I’ll have to add cookware to my areas of weakness. CALPHALON ? I guess that’s another brand. As long as we’re talking about things I don’t know, there’s also stocks, so NO-PAR  is stock issued with no face value. Noted. “Stern competitor” for IMUS was a tough one for me, but eventually remembered the mornings of radio INANE chatter from my youth. I misspelled AUGUR at first, so that was the last clue to hit for me.  Anyone else can’t wait for the next SENATE RACE ? If only we could do it today. Today will ...

Time: 11:01 Thursday Average: 25:35 Best Thursday: 10:18 Despite a fairly slow start while I tried to figure out what kind of Thursday trickiness was happening, I ended up crushing this puzzle in near record time. Considering the time that rebus squares inevitably add, I'd feel comfortable calling this my strongest Thursday performance. I loved the GOO GOO EYES theme, in which double O's represent those eyes ten times in the puzzle. Fortunately, the placement was fairly standard. Also, is this a stealth Goo Goo Dolls themed puzzle if you look at the last and first theme entries? I think so! My initial thoughts about the theme involved the "Work whose title character is buried alive" as I tried to figure out how on earth The Cask of Amontillado would fit in four spaces. Also, it's Fortunato who gets buried in that story (Spoiler alert?). I had no idea that Verdi's opera AIDA involves getting buried alive as well. TOO RICH FOR MY BLOOD is an outstan...

Time: 15:24 Wednesday Average: 15:24 Best Wednesday: 7:09 OK, this theme took me a long time to parse, but now that I've figured it out, I kind of love the oddness. As the revealer clue wordily explains, the theme answers are GENDER NEUTRAL "vis-a-vis the female-sounding phrases they're based on?" Of course, I'm just reading through that thinking, "female sounding?" By this, they mean that the common phrases normally end with "-ess," which is a feminine ending for words like sorceress or seamstress, and then this ending is replaced by "-er" for the wacky answers. "Maternity ward worker who counts each day's births?" DELIVERY ADDER . (Delivery address) "Dairy item thrown in a food fight?" FLYING BUTTER . (Flying buttress). "Dynamite?" BLOW UP MATTER . (Blow-up mattress). The KREWE / ELKS cross was the killer for me and cost me about 4 minutes of random guessing. I should have known the l...

Time: 10:19 Tuesday Average: 13:18 Best Tuesday: 5:05 Aren't there more ways to clue MLK or MLK JR than "Jan. honoree?" I'm confused about why that is so consistently the go-to clue. I haven't thought about corned beef in a long time, but suddenly I want a REUBEN , even if it's the sauerkraut and Swiss cheese that sound just right. I guess a TIE BAR is the same as a tie clip? That was the last square to fall for me because I'd also never heard of a TWIBE , referring to a group on Twitter that mostly tweets to each other. I'm always a little embarrassed when the NY Times Crossword knows slang that I don't, but I also suspect that it's not that common. The other difficult cross was CYD Charisse (who played a dancer in Singin' in the Rain and also appeared in Frasier, apparently) with DURA mater, "the tough outermost membrane enveloping the brain and spinal cord." I can't be the only one who struggled with that one. ...

Time:7:26 Monday Average: 8:28 Best Monday: 4:10 Today's puzzle is holiday-themed for MLK day with CIVIL RIGHTS as the revealer clued "Cause championed by the figures at the ends of 16-, 22-, and 47-Across. It's fairly light in terms of theme material with FIT FOR A KING , NATIONAL PARKS , and THE WHOLE TRUTH   making up the entries. I lost some time by misspelling ROD LAVER and not being familiar with ODELL Beckham Jr., apparently a three time Pro Bowler. I'm not so strong on football player names, as I've mentioned numerous times, but I expect better from myself when it comes to very famous tennis players. Why is ICED always clued in terms of cakes? It seems Smirnoff Ice is missing a real opportunity here. Of course, I guess when the premise of getting iced is that Smirnoff is terrible, maybe it's not the best advertising. Still, lean in, right?

Time: 52:52 Sunday Average: 48:44 Best Sunday 21:55 Today's puzzle has the title of "Question of Responsibility" and, as the name suggests, describes various occupations (somewhat) wittily using (occasionally) common phrases. Once the theme was apparent to me, I was able to patch together the theme answers without too much difficulty and those tricky answers ended up being considerably easier than a good deal of the fill. " Copy editor: " IS THAT A FACT ? I've always been more aware of the grammar and spelling aspects of the copy editor job, but fact-checking is part of it too. " Political strategist: " WHERE'S THE PARTY ? I assume that members of the Republican party are asking themselves this. Or, I hope so, anyway. " Museum curator: " HOW'S IT HANGING ? Seems a bit reductive. " Football line judge: " WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON ? Does football have line judges? Probably. I don't know anything about football...

Time: 12:03 Saturday Average: 37:36 Best Saturday: 10:34 I'm embarrassed to say that my initial thought when I had LE-- for "King of the stage" was "of Leon?" Fortunately that doesn't work or make sense at all and obviously it's King LEAR . I was surprised at how easily I cruised through this puzzle without any coffee. I may have been fortunate that since I'm already about 10% of the way into her book, MICHELLE OBAMA for "'Becoming' someone?" was an automatic long across. That always helps along with fairly easily dropping MESOPOTAMIA , which I can only hear in the voice of The Tick yelling "The Cradle of Civilization!" There's really no reason that "Suits and such" would have to be MENS WEAR . Suit is a pretty vague term as it is, but even if you assume the typical suit, anyone can wear that. Apparently the root word for  KAVA KAVA  is from the Tongan and Marquesan words for "bitter....

Time: 35:08 Friday Average: 27:45 Best Friday: 10:21 I always know that I'm in for a treat and a challenge when I see a Friday crosswords that's an Andrew Ries joint. This was certainly the case today as I was under 50% about 20 minutes in to solving this one and seriously questioning whether I would be able to finish it. However, the great thing about Andrew Ries is that he generally gives you enough so that, if you keep tugging away at it, the puzzle will fall into place. I probably filled the last 50% of the grid in just a minute or two, after I finally recognized SUNSET STRIP and BLOOD VESSEL running through the middle. Is "Stay" by LISA LOEB a timeless classic or do I only think so as a child of the 90s? Wow, did I not understand "Hack's modern-day rival" as a clue for UBER DRIVER!  But, of course, "hack" is slang for a taxi driver coming from "hackney," a description of a horse that could potentially pull a cab. ...

Time: 10:47 Tuesday Average: 25:45 Best Tuesday: 10:18 I cruised through the Western half of this grid while wondering why I was having so much more trouble with the East. After dropping THE LOOKING GLASS for "What Alice goes through to find 'Jabberwocky' printed backward," I took a quick breather, thought about the nonsensical KU--- beginning for "Brexit land," and thought, "Oh, of course, mirror image puzzle." It's Thursday trickiness, which is to be expected, but the clues are generally Monday level difficulty. So, I came close to a Thursday record, slowed mostly by the fact that the crossword app does not cooperate with trying to enter a clue backward. I like the cleverness of the palindromic REVIVER in the middle. One answer that was unfamiliar to me forward or backward was ISOBAR , which turns out to be a "line on a map connecting points having the same atmospheric pressure at a given time or on average over a given period....

Time: 9:46 Wednesday Average: 17:07 Best Wednesday: 7:09 OPAH ! This is one silly Wednesday puzzle. I'd also never heard of the opah or moonfish, which is apparently a big old colorful fish. I just know that sound as a general Bulgarian exclamation, so I'll just keep using it like that. I'm not sure how much sense the cluing makes for these theme answers, but I'm moderately impressed that both words in each phrase are replaced by homonyms. "____, do these jeans make me look fat?" BUTT WEIGHT .  "_____! The flight attendant just swatted a bug!" AISLE BEE .  ______, would you like to purchase some religious music?" BUY CHANTS. "______ and those crazy sheep costumes!" EWE GUISE . This one is by far the best.  "______! Petr, I'm begging you again to let me get this!" CZECH PLEAS . So, the second, third, and fourth themers seem to work better, because the original phrases would make some amount of sense befo...

Time: 8:47 Tuesday Average: 13:20 Best Tuesday: 5:05 So if I can track down crossword constructor Samuel A. Donaldson, I guess I'll be hitting him up for all these drinks he's offering to buy me with theme answers IT'S MY TREAT , DRINKS ON ME , I'LL GET THE BILL , and the two-parter YOUR MONEY'S NO GOOD HERE . I love that last phrase, but I can always hear Moe's follow-up line, "Wait a minute... this is real money!" Have I mentioned that clothing lines are also points of weakness for me? I had to guess in order to get CHICO'S , especially with that crossing with Norwegian figure skater and film star Sonja HENIE . Judging by her Wikipedia entry, she was pretty damn dominant in the former. I think I was similarly charmed by the word NOODGE in a previous entry and, according to Dictionary.com, it comes from Yiddish or Russian like all the best words do. Let's never forget that Nicholas Cage named his son KAL-EL , which I learned only f...

Time: 6:19 Monday Average: 8:28 Best Monday: 4:10 What's not to enjoy about a DISGUSTING puzzle? As you can see, the circled letters in DOU BLE CH IN , MAG IC K INGDOM , J UGH EAD , and SAY A F EW W ORDS all have classic grossed out sounds like blech, which makes me think only of Mad Magazine, and ick, which of course calls up Calvin & Hobbes. The theme was perfectly fine, even if there wasn't much in the way of exciting cluing to pair with our disgust. Somehow I remembered PECTIN from the few times that I've made marmalade or jam. But it's KINDA important, as I recall. ULEE 's Gold is another film that seems to have a lot of traction in crosswords. Should I watch that one too? Honestly, I started reading the plot description and I was immediately won over when I learned that the title character is a beekeeper. I assume he runs around yelling "I'm covered in bees!" but maybe that's something else. RAMADA ? I opted for that less ex...

Time: 31:42 Sunday Average: 48:41 Best Sunday: 21:55 Apparently a T-NOTE is short for treasury note, which is a "marketable U.S. government debt security with a fixed interest rate and a maturity between one and 10 years." I had stations abbreviated as STaS instead of STNS , so that was the boring place that my puzzle finished up. I'm mostly surprised that despite doing the majority of this puzzle around 1am after several whiskeys, I still managed a decent time. I should try to avoid learning any lessons from this. The crossword's title was "Parlor Tricks," which means we have some wordplay surrounding various ice cream parlor orders: "At the ice cream parlor, the grand marshal ordered a..." PARADE FLOAT . "The confirmed bachelor ordered a..." SINGLE MALT . Yum.  "The crossing guard ordered a..." TRAFFIC CONE . How responsible.  "The amateur singer ordered a..." KARAOKE BAR . Insofar as we are all amate...

Time: 31:51 Saturday Average: 37:59 Best Saturday: 10:34 Am I the only one who wrote in BRitCHES instead of BREECHES ? After some haphazard Googling, I've determined that they're basically the same thing, but maybe not quite. That was the last part I had to fix in my grid since I didn't know ARIE for a "Nickname for Adrianus" and HOME CARt sounded somewhat plausible although obviously I needed HOMECARE . The other tricky part was the crossing of LICTORS (officers attending the consul or other magistrate), Fort ORD (an old fort in Monterey Bay), and ELMIRA , New York. That and the spelling of Cubic ZIRCONIA crossing MIRACLE ON ICE , which just took me some many letters to be able to parse. Of course, I was too busy trying to figure out how the Red Sox 2004 World Series win could fit there for the #1 Greatest Moment in Sports History. After a brief perusal of IMBD, I think the only things I've seen Greta SCACCHI in are The Red Violin and probably t...

Time: 16:56 Friday Average: 27:40 Best Friday: 10:21 APOSTROPHE for "Character in 'All's Well That Ends Well' and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'" is some serious crossword play. I'd been skipping past that clue as clearly a character I'd forgotten about and only noticed the silly fun after completing the puzzle. I'll call that some quality themeless cluing, even if I rolled my eyes a bit too. I started out with PURPLE rAin instead of PURPLE HAZE for "#2 on Rolling Stone's '100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time,'" which comes partly from not reading the clue closely and partly from having Prince on the brain more often. There's an odd symmetry or lack thereof with the two "Something you shouldn't do around Christmas" clues yielding PEEK and POUT . One, of course, is a reference to "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," but the other is just random gift etiquette. It seems a little half-ass...

Time: 16:31 Thursday Average: 25:55 Best Thursday: 10:18 Is a POLO really a "Spiffy top?" I suppose if you're using the word "spiffy," maybe it would be. I remain WARY. If you took the time to reread the revealer clue, TORAH , which is meant to be read as "Tor! Ah!" I suppose, you might have just turned that "ah" into more of an "aaaargggghhhh." Essentially, you're adding the letters T-O-R to well known phrases in order to fit the wacky clues. "Kidnapper who gets arrested?" CAPTOR IN HAND , from the phrase "Cap in hand."  "Win a one-on-one game against a Toronto hoops player?" BEAT THE RAPTOR . Nothing tortured about that clue. "'I don't want this house after all?'" KEEP IT, REALTOR . OK, this is weirdly my favorite of the four. "Synagogue singer with hokey humor?" CANTOR OF CORN . I might like this one more if I understood the phrase "Can of corn....

Time: 10:49 Wednesday Average: 17:11 Best Wednesday: 7:09 At first I thought this was an unofficial INS theme for this puzzle? Generally, it solves like any other low difficulty Wednesday puzzle, but the longer I looked at it, the more I saw the I-N letter combo IN IT , especially that diagonal swath across the middle. In fact, I suppose the theme is more specifically I’s, since that is the only vowel in the puzzle. I guess that’s fun but I wouldn’t have thought enough to notice if I weren’t writing about the puzzle. Would the Swedes or Russians agree that FINNS are the “Original sauna users?” Again we have a vague answer for a specific Lord of the Rings clue with “What Gollum calls ‘my precious.’” I would argue that that has to be The One Ring, not just RING . I don’t really get the clueing of “Bit of bunny slope gear” for MINISKI . That is definitely a piece of equipment, but are we supposed to see the word “bunny” and have that call up mini-skirt in our imaginations? ...

Time: 7:16 Tuesday Average: 13:22 Best Tuesday: 5:05 I doubt I’ll be the only one complaining about the answer GOLD RING clued as “Powerful object in ‘The Hobbit.’” If you ever played the Middle Earth card game, you’d know that more often than not, a ring is just a ring. Of course, when I read that clue I’m thinking The One Ring, or maybe generic rings of power, or maybe even a palantir. Meanwhile, I love the goofiness of clueing ENNUI as a “Ho hum feeling.” It’s not wrong, I suppose, but it still makes me laugh in a good way. For the theme, it seems that ABTRACT ART could be created using a BLANK CANVAS , a BLACK BOX , GRAY AREAS , a TAN LINE , a RED SQUARE , and a GOLD RING . I suppose that’s true. I can’t remember coming across ARARAT before crosswords, but I imagine it’s quite a boon to constructors. 

Time: 7:43 Monday Average: 8:29 Best Monday: 4:10 I'm assuming that TEEN BEAT has been replaced by Teen Google at this point. Also, would CURED HAM be considered charcuterie? I hadn't heard of RUGER firearms so I guess I'm surprised to learn that it's "America's largest firearm manufacturer," but I'm also unsurprised because I don't care at all. ELSTON Howard seems like a good name to know as he was the first African American player on the Yankees and became the first African American player to win the AL MVP in 1963. It doesn't take much, but now I'm humming Santa ANA Winds from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend to myself. As you can see, I'm tired and disjointed so this entry is coming out as a bunch of random thoughts. I don't have much to NITPICK in this puzzle, but if there was a theme, I'm missing it. I keep wishing 8-across was Da Brat instead of LABRAT , but maybe that's just because I think she's due for a co...

Time: 54:14 Sunday Average: 48:53 Best Sunday: 21:55 I’ll admit to being a bit overwhelmed by this one while car solving once again, but my time was looking decent until I just couldn’t figure out what I had wrong and spent about 20 minutes testing out squares. As it turns out, I was sitting on ARCTIC FROsT instead of ARCTIC FRONT and just couldn’t see anything wrong. So, that’s about 25 minutes in the car, second guessing CLIOS (“Pitchers’ awards?”) and EEC (“Continental trade grp., once), which is the European Economic Community, a Cold War Era pact that was subsumed in 1993 by the EU.  I couldn’t make anything out of the theme of DEAR JOHN LETTERS and I confess that I ended up checking on CrosswordFiend before writing this explanation. So, you have HOLLYWOOD ENDING. The ending of “Hollywood” is a D, so there’s the first letter of “Dear John.” Continue through the rest of the theme clues (so, JUMP START, the start of jump is J, etc.) and you’ll end up spelling out t...

Time:  22:43 Saturday Average: 38:05 Best Saturday:  10:34 The 16-hour drive from Massachusetts to Indiana begs for a meaty crossword to pass some of the time, so a Saturday is perfectly ideal. I get nervous when the first clue involves ballet shoes and sure enough  POINTE  was one of the last clues to fall. I managed the P on my own. I nearly wrote in “I AM a rock” instead of  I AM WOMAN  but since I know the lyrics to the former song, I eventually heard alternate Homer Simpson singing the correct song in my head.  I had to repeat  I CAN SEE THAT  to myself with various inflections before deciding that it works well enough for “Obviously!” I haven’t heard of a  TRAIN MASTER  but that one was easy enough to infer.  My dad’s Boston Terrrier has spent the last ten days with my giant labrador and has been engaged in walks a bit longer than usual, which led to a limp that fortunately turned out not to be an...

Time: 40:19 Friday Average: 27:47 Best Friday: 10:21 Lisbon airport at 4am after staying up all night in order to make my flight to Frankfurt going the wrong way entirely en route to Boston made this Friday a particular challenge. However, I actually cruised through and enjoyed about 75% of this puzzle. APPLIANCE and BIKINI WAX in the NW weren’t all that interesting to me, but I was a big fan of  WARM FUZZIES for “‘Feel good’ sensations.” Even though I had Rotten instead of RAMONE for a while for “Last name in punk rock,” I’m also thrilled about that answer. I’d never heard TWIHARD for Twilight series fans, but I feel like a better person for knowing this now. But then there was the NE, which was an utter disaster for me. I really should know SABRA for a Jewish person born in Israeli territory and that was the answer that eventually sounded familiar enough for me to close out the corner. But I didn’t even know what “US Army E-7” was asking me. As it turns out, Serg...

Time: 23:27 Thursday Average: 26:02 Best Thursday: 10:18 I can’t be the only one wondering about the choice to include a wall-themed puzzle as the US government shutdown enters its 12th day over, ridiculously enough, a goddamn wall. But maybe we can read something into the fact that clues are breaking through the wall with ease and maybe a wall doesn’t make that much sense after all, so perhaps it’s time for DETENTE on this issue. Or maybe it’s just a crossword. Anyhow, there are three themed clues in which “wall” would be the middle word, as represented by that big wall down the middle of the puzzle: DESKTOP (Wall) PAPER , WOLF OF (Wall) STREET , and STONE (Wall) JACKSON . It absolutely works as a theme, but, again, I have to wonder about the timing. Perhaps it’s just my perspective from outside the US (but on my way back tomorrow). I loved “Author known for the intelligence of his writing?” for LE CARRE , but I also just adore John le Carré. Here’s hoping that you’re ...

Time: 18:11 Wednesday Average: 17:15 Best Wednesday: 7:09 I did just manage to EKE this one out with more trouble than I usually anticipate from a Wednesday. However, I quite enjoyed the Fork theme and it was actually fairly critical in helping me figure out a few corners in which I couldn’t find purchase for a while. As you can see, each of the theme clues is a type of “fork” in that after the first several letters, grey squares fork off to form an alternate answer. So you have SHARK /SHAd for “ Fish fork ” and MARGARITA /MARtini for “ Cocktail fork .” It’s fun stuff and, like I said, it was helpful when I got stuck. I did not know that former Vice President Walter MONDALE later became ambassador to Japan. In fact, I mostly just know him through the Simpsons referencing “Where’s the beef?” In the words of Homer, “No wonder he won Minnesota.” I’m glad to see BEDE , “The Father of English History,” making another appearance. Hopefully second time is the charm for me remembe...

Time: 9:55 Tuesday Average: 13:25 Best Tuesday: 5:05 Here’s hoping that 2019 will clear that low bar of merely  PASSABLE as per the theme of this first puzzle. HAT TRICK , TORCH SONG , TIME SIGNATURE , and BUCK TEETH make up the themers as the first words are all things that are able to be passed. Meanwhile, having celebrated New Years ABROAD for the last 2 years in a row (and hopefully many more) and, amazingly, still LIVE , we have made the plan to remain in the AirBnB in a perpetual state of brunch for the entire day. 2018’s EPILOG was wine and dinner on the river during which we were able to make the wine, cocktails, and champagne last through midnight. Perhaps it wasn’t our most SAVAGE New Year, but a fine one indeed. We happened upon a Speakeasy cocktail bar where I tried a Vesper Martini for the first time. Apparently it’s gin, vodka, and Kina Lillet, so you have to appreciate when the mixer is just another hard alcohol. It started the evening off right...