Monday, February 27, 2023, David Rockow

I hope our dear Readers can BEARWITHME and my frequent late reviews this week. To slightly misquote my doppelganger Jessica Rabbit, "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn away." Enough about ME, back to a topic with more bearing on the puzzle: BEARS. Each theme answer has two groups of shaded letters. In one group, we find a type of bear hibernating while in the other group, the letters ME. Get it? :) I was familiar with all the bear types except the MOMENTINTHESUN bear. According to the Wikipedia, it is "named so for its characteristic orange to cream coloured, crescent-like chest patch." The chest seems to draw a lot of attention no matter who you are. :) As interested as I was to learn about this new-to-me type of bear, this theme really reminded me of the character Tilly in the show Miranda. She was famous for breaking off mid-conversation with others to look at her phone while she just keep saying, "bear with." 

Back to ME again. I encountered no trouble spots to speak of, although I don't know what PKS stands for ("Tie-breaking soccer shots: Abbr.") -  probably because I'm TOO ARTSY - but fortunately, the Across answers LOANCAP and MENINBLACK didn't leave much room for doubt. There were many fun ROIs today including PBS, SIENA, BMOVIEs, SILENT phones, LEMONLIME flavoring, and the book EMMA, all leading to a pretty fast finish, if not quite enough GAS to break the five minute barrier (5:23). 

~Frannie.