Friday, March 24, 2023, Blake Slonecker

My first glance at today's grid formation, looking especially DENSE with no fewer than seven grid-spanning entries, made me a little nervous - unnecessarily so, as it turned out. All-in-all, it played relatively easy for a Friday for this solver and I finished it in EMIR 15:21. I had, in fact, completed all but two squares a minute or so earlier. The two blanks were filled with real potential for FWOEs, both being Naticks for this solver. I have not heard of ARLO Parks, British singer/songwriter or "Kurosawa film based on 'King Lear.'" In this case, I RAN the alphabet and luckily settled on R as a likely option. In the southern section, I drew a blank where "___ saltado, a stir-fried dish with sliced beef" crossed "Would ____?" Happily, I chose the acceptable-but-hardly (I think) -quintessentially definitive question, "Would ILIE?" which produced LOMO saltado, an answer I had to take on faith as nothing about the word 'lomo' says stir fry, sliced, or beef to me.

I had an easier time in the east than the west. I entered the ends of most of the long Across answers before the beginnings. For example, I had AVENUE long before I could find AMSTERDAM. Same with ARTIST, DANCERS, and PRESSURE. The one grid-spanner I dropped right in was MOISTTOWELETTES. My favorite, as I'm sure our dear Readers have guessed, was BOOLEANOPERATOR. Unfortch, I didn't read the clue carefully and I thought the 'or' in the clue was an 'and' which lead to an illogical initial guess ending with an OPERATORs error. 

C/APs I enjoyed include "Delicacy" (TACT), "Proceeding without thinking" (ONAUTO), and "Went nowhere, say" (SATHOME). My favorite, though, was "What could represent you in a rebus puzzle?" (EWE) - ha! Fill-wise I liked SELTZER, VENOM, and POPO. 

NOTHINGPERSONAL, but my final ASSESSMENTS indicate that the long answers at the bottom caused some buildup of SILTS like LBS, OOP, TLC, RPM, EEE, and SRA. Still, you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, am I right? 

~Frannie.