Friday, March 4, 2022, David Distenfeld

Whew! That NE corner nearly did me in! I didn't watch "The Wire," so CEDRIC Daniels needed a lot of crosses, RITA Wilson isn't really known to me, STARR Carter was a total unknown... URL (Surfer's destination, in brief) could have been "web," SEAT (Behind) could have been "late," and I couldn't decide if that was more or less likely given TARDY (Behind) just below... and while I understand that "What might get stuck in a window" can work (instead of stuck on...), it made DECAL much harder to get. But I suppose that's the point... Anyway, that corner took about half of my total time today, and if Saturday is harder than Friday this week, I'm in trouble!

The rest went relatively smoothly, and there were very few WARTS to be found. I thought ASKMELATER ("I'm too busy right now") was a good multi-word answer - see also GREASEFIRE next door, LEGALISSUE opposite, and LOSEFAITH and SADSONGS (Low numbers?) (nice!) in the SW. I suppose ONETERM and TREELINED are hyphenated, and OVERSELLS is probably one word, but in a crossword, we don't have to make these distinctions!

Speaking of - isn't it funny how MRSMAISEL and MRSANDMAN start with the same three letters? Maybe we should just move to a universal title. Nevermind mister, missus, his, her, their, ... what if we came up with one title and one pronoun set for everyone, and either just used that or the name itself. It would either be Horace, Horace's or Xe, Xen, or Xis (pronounced "ze, zen, or zizz"). No more stressing about what to use, no more having to post pronouns with your Zoom profile name. Is this true equality? or the rant of an old, white, cisgendered man?

SLANDER, SIMMERING, and SMELT are a satisfyingly alliterative set. I've been buying DATES (see "old man" above) lately and really, they're quite good. REEDITS (Tweaks further) is one of the weaker entries, I guess, but I kind of like how it looks.

In all, a solid, challenging Friday.

- Horace