Thursday, October 13, 2022, Lewis Rothlein

In today's puzzle, the urge to SKIPTOWN does not mean to escape from an unpleasant situation, but is instead instructions on how to make the answers to the theme clues correspond to their actual clues! The state in which the town is found is given with each clue with its postal abbreviation. Taken in order, we get:

17A: Sunset shade (MT) - REBUTTED, or "red" + "Butte."

21A: Start of an objection (TX) - BLAREDOUT, or "but" + "Laredo."

34A: Booty spot? (PA) - CHEERIEST, or "chest" (as in pirate's chest) and "Erie."

44A: They're the pits (AZ) - HOMESALES, or "holes" and "Mesa."

53A: Sole (UT) - PROVOLONE, or "lone" and "Provo."

Nicely done! I particularly like 21A and 44A because the town name is split across two words in the answer. It's also nice that no state is represented more than once.

ELAINE Thompson-Herah

I always like seeing musical references, and we get several. First is 1A: Extended feature of "Hey Jude" ad "Layla" (CODA). Trivia for you: which one is a longer coda? There's also BASSO (I'd never heard of "Sixteen Tons," but I enjoyed listening to it just now) and Holst's SUITE, The Planets, an old favorite of mine.

Other clues I enjoyed include:

5A: Heat setting, in brief (NBA) - the Miami Heat, that is.

15A: Meaningful work, in short? (OED) - way to make a 3-letter abbrev. fun!

49A: Evidence provider for some citations (RADAR) - not in a bibliography, but on the highway, sadly.

I very much enjoyed this Thursday offering. 6:54.

- Colum