Thursday February 14th 2019, NY Times Crossword

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Time:28:58
Thursday Average: 25:29
Best Thursday: 10:18

Perhaps it's just that I'm in a country where the street signs are already unreadable to me that caused my slowness on the uptake today. I understood immediately that we were dealing with anagrams again and even got the OUT OF ORDER SIGNS revealer fairly early on, but my over-tired mind just ignored the "signs" part and was trying for arbitrary anagrams instead. Eventually, however, I remembered enough signs and just had to spent several minutes figuring out OYSTERS Rockefeller.

  • "NOTED TENOR:" DO NOT ENTER.
  • "SIMPLE DIET:" SPEED LIMIT.
  • "GET SPEARED:" STEEP GRADE. This is probably the most random of the signs and definitely the last one I could piece together. 
  • "DOOR DECALS:" ROAD CLOSED.
Are anagrams fun? Maybe, but I just couldn't get excited about these ones. The revealer is good but the rest seems a bit slapdash. 

Clued as "Opera that famously ends with the line 'La commedia e finita,'" I PAGLIACCI is an absolutely brutal long answer for us non-opera heads. It also seems to be far more commonly known as simply "Pagliacci." After reading the plot synopsis, I have to ask... is this the first killer clown story? This answer also crosses CANOE for "'Can you___?' (classic cologne catchphrase), which I suppose will become the only cologne catchphrase I know. The commercial came out a year before I was born, so I don't feel bad for not knowing it, but I'll certainly remember now that I've seen it. 

And with that, I'll conclude my INCOHERENT entry from Lahore. BYE NOW!


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