Friday 51:38 (3 Google, numerous mistakes)
Saturday 14:28

Another brutal Friday? At least I was backed up by Rex Parker, who called the puzzle very challenging, Saturday challenging, like double-my-normal-Friday-time challenging. So it's not just me. (Rex Parker is semi-pro. His Friday time was over 10 minutes, and Saturday was just over 6. My ratio was...different). This one was co-authored by Rachel Maddow as part of their celebrity series, which is probably why it showed up on a weekday instead of Saturday, but they could have clued some things a little easier. ASNER got clued as seven-time primetime Emmy award winning actor. The problem is, more than one person has done that, and seven isn't even the record. I had to google quite deep to find that one (also used to find the 1928 Olympics site and a 1965 Michael Caine movie). But god damn, look at that Saturday time. Might be a PB for Saturday, though really, this should have been the Friday puzzle, and Maddow's today. You might say I used Google once. One clue was "Kid with a moving life story?" I had AN _YB_ _T, and immediately thought "oh, the Toy Story kid. What's his last name?" So I looked it up. And it was BOOT, which fit well. But I couldn't get the words around it to work. Eventually, I checked squares. The N was wrong (it was a guess, but seemed educated), and the answer was ARMY BRAT, which is, to be fair, a better answer (nice clue, too). So the Google may have actually hindered me. I had wanted the M for the cross, but that made ANMY, which isn't going anywhere. If I had rechecked and doubted the N, it would have been much easier to see ARMY and I would have saved time (that was the last clue to fall).

I did 3-0 FNM for the second week in a row, and didn't need a broken mythic rare to do it. In fact, my deck had zero synergy other than a good curve and decent (but not overwhelming) removal. Good old Black-Green tribeless. I looked over at the other 6-man draft and there was a guy with two Merfolk Mistbinder and the unblockable 1/1 Merfolk by turn 4. In the 6-man. No Merfolk drafters in my 8-man pod; no Mistbinders, I saw Shapers of Nature 7th pick, a last pick 2/1 that can fly if you have a Merfolk. So sad.