Monday March 18th 2019, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 5:09
Monday Average: 8:19
Best Monday: 4:10

I just finished reading Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (I know I know, what have I been doing all this time?) after having to leave it at home during my travels, but she spends a fair amount of time on Joyce's Ulysses, particularly the YES passage, which is apparently the theme of today's puzzle. As you probably didn't notice, because I certainly wouldn't have if I hadn't tasked myself to notice these things now, the theme answers each have a last word that phonetically means "yes" in a non-English language: PLAIN TO SEE (Spanish and other languages too), LAH DI DAH (Russian), AIMS HIGH (Japanese), and THE ROYAL WE (French). I don't have that many other DEETS to share, but it works as well as a Monday ought to.

As I'm writing this, I can think only that my MOOD must be hungry since I keep fixating on HASH, TAMALE, and THAI food. It's an ACUTE hunger and I need all those things. Sounds like quite a PICNIC, I suppose, but CARPE DIEM when it comes to food, right?

I'd never heard of a LARCH tree before, but after googling them, I saw that they are prevalent in Siberia and when I checked the Russian word, sure enough I'd come across that. I might know birds and trees better in Russian than in English, randomly enough.

I didn't care for the "Unauthorized drawings of favorite characters" cluing for FAN ART, because something about the word "unauthorized" lends an insidious air to a largely joyous activity. MEH.

And do we really have to have MARA-Lago in our crossword? Can't we just agree to stick with Kate and live in this fantasy world while we're crosswording, at least? 

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