Wednesday March 27th 2019, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 7:12
Wednesday Average: 16:54
Best Wednesday 6:52

I actually drew a complete blank on the first 7 clues and was vaguely worried about this Wednesday until I finally got PATTY MELT. From there, we had a couple gimmes with HBO and AMY  Poehler, followed by a quartet of extremely famous figures with ISAAC Newton, MONA Lisa (seriously?), Catherine PARR, and EWAN McGregor (the man everyone thinks of when they hear Obi Wan Kenobi). Based on that, I was able to cruise to a near PR for Wednesday with the only costly moment being when I wrote SnUbs for "Gives the cold shoulder" and needed some time before being able to expel that incorrect answer in favor of SHUNS. It takes more than a NUDGE to get rid of a perfectly reasonable guess and come up something new. I think that might have been the most difficult hurdle for me in terms of getting half decent at crosswords.

Regarding the theme, we have several FINANCIAL MYTHS, in the sense of mythical creatures that go along with business-related words. I'm only vaguely familiar with the terms UNICORN START-UP, ZOMBIE BANKS, and PATENT TROLL, but I know that they're real and more business-minded folks are probably all over them. The first one came up when I was reading Bad Blood, which is an incredible book about the Theranos scandal, and just recently watching the HBO documentary, which is an adequate stand-in for the book. Seriously, read Bad Blood by John Carreyrou.

I guess technically SEARCHER is a "Role in hide-and-seek," but I doubt anyone has ever used it thusly. Wouldn't it just be "it?" Or does that only apply to tag?

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