Friday, November 19, 2021

 Friday: 13:40


I love triple-stacks, and this one's a pangram too. That's always a nice touch, and the fill doesn't suffer for it at all. Lovely work, and I think even Rex Parker might approve. (EDIT: No, he didn't. Haters gonna hate. Yeah, ENORM is dated, HARKS, IFA, HOTTO are all a little weak, but I actually think all the stack answers are good enough to wince a tiny bit on the crosses. I've seen worse words for less payoff. It's not as if the answers didn't work with their clues.) A touch on the easy side for me at least, as I plunked down 1-Across with no crosses, and 16-Across was a total gimme, the way it was clued "It's 'on a dark desert highway,' in song." An NBA MVP might trip me up at times, but even I know who Steph Curry is. 

Saturday, November 13, 2021

 Saturday: 28:46


This doesn't LOOK like a Saturday grid, but my time indicates it played like one. You usually get a little more whitespace in a late week grid. This has more than it might seem, but only 4 clues longer than 9 letters. Nice job shoving Reykjavik in there. Re: 6-Down I've never seem the spelling "durag," I always thought it was do-rag (i.e. a rag that protects your do). Spellcheck also doesn't like it, but we've discussed what a P.O.S. that is. Wikipedia actually says both are acceptable (though the main entry is do-rag), and also offers dew rag and doo rag, with or without hyphen or space. Even among rappers who have sung about the headgear differ on the spelling. Of course, you could have just made the answer be DORAG by making the cross ORAL instead of URAL.

Edit: More about durag. The clue for this, was:

 "Anyone who has ever worn a ___ spells it '___,'" per a 2018 New York Times article.

Rex Parker (sometimes a little high on his "woke" horse) really really liked this clue because apparently, the Times using "do-rag" is somehow an affront, and this clue calls them out. Uh, sure. I mean, it's kinda funny if the Times Style specifies do-rag, yet they also published an article specifically on the spelling, and still don't use it. I wonder if Rex would have been enraged if they used the ORAL cross.