Wednesday January 30th 2019, NY Times Crossword

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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. It's FRUITLESS, which may suggest that the fruits in the answers are absent, but in fact it's common phrases in which the first word is a fruit and the second word is verb that is synonym for departing. So we have GRAPE LEAVES, ORANGE PEELS, BANANA SPLITS, and LEMON DROPS. That's a solid theme right there. Also, is 11am too early for an Old-Fashioned?

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