And I thought yesterday's puzzle was difficult! I doubled yesterday's time today (45:23). I had the most trouble in the northwest. The northeast fell pretty easily because I happen to know a bit about "The Pirates of Penzance," "Good Times" and LADOLCEVITA. At that point, you could say I was on a ROLLE.
Moving on to the southeast, I felt like a DAB hand when I was able to enter ESPERANTO off the clue and drop in KOLA, a nut I am now familiar with thanks to "Spelling Bee." I did struggle a bit with PUTONS ("Gags"), though, even when I had __TONS. It just looked like NONSense to me.
There were some fun QMCs in the MIDDLES. I enjoyed "Reached the point of no return?" (BROKEEVEN) and "Things that generate a lot of cookie dough?" (BAKESALES). "Offer sheet?" (HITLIST) is also amusing. I enjoyed LURID, BULWARK, and WORDSFAILME as fill - less so GMAC, RETD, and NAW.
Had I been wearing any MOODRINGS, they would have glowed black for the 10-15 minutes it took me to solve the northwest. Even though I got SETTHEORY off the clue, the rest of that section was a bear. While the solution did reveal ITSELF INDUETIME, I had to REDRAFT my answer to 17A: ("Is resolute") seeeveral times first. I tried 'holdsfast', 'staysfirm', and I don't know what all else. It wasn't until I focused on 1D: "Sight in a produce aisle" and guessed MIST that I got STANDSPAT and was finally DUN.
~Frannie.
Tough for me, too, at 39:07. I never heard of LAURANYRO or the star NFL receiver ODELL Beckham Jr., and there's no way I could have gotten Esther ROLLE without all of the crosses. SETTHEORY was great, though, and I liked OLDSMOKEY and its clue.
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