Saturday March 30th 2019, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 25:41
Saturday Average: 36:12
Best Saturday: 10:34

I suppose I really should have understood why Gregor MENDEL was clued as "Pea brain?" But he's known as the "father of modern genetics" because of his experiments with peas in the early 19th century. Get it?

Many cities are known as The City of Trees and BOISE is not even the only US capital, since I remember Sacramento being called the same thing back when I lived there. Are there more cities of trees or cities of lights?

Even though I was staring at my dog and his pile of chewable DOG TOYS, the "They're chewable but not meant to be eaten" clue was still the penultimate that I got. OK THEN, that's a bit embarrassing.

I believe I went through all of the across clues in today's puzzles without writing in a single answer, with the only one I wondered about being the alternate spelling of PANGEA. Somehow I managed to cobble this one together and even finished cleanly with a decent time, so I suppose that's the old lesson of not getting too discouraged early on. I believe I built everything out from the Oracle of DELPHI, the first answer I wrote with any confidence. I will not GRIPE about this puzzle; it's almost a perfect Saturday. Now, it's time that my thirst was SLAKED. Cheers!

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