Friday January 11th 2019, NY Times Crossword

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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-assed, so I'm not a huge fan.

Overall, however, this is everything you want from a Friday themeless, with fun answers like TALES OF WOE, IN NAME ONLY, HOMESPUN, and ARCHIMEDES, which more or less make up for yawners like OPED COLUMN and MBA STUDENT.

I'm also happy to singing to myself, "I want the bomb, I want the P-FUNK, I want my funk uncut..."

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