Saturday, June 10, 2023, John Hawksley

Hello everyone! Colum here, standing in for Frannie. My thoughts are with you guys. 

I remember when I first started solving the NYT puzzle on a regular basis again, about 10 years ago. This particular grid style, along with many others that have vast swaths of chunky fill, intimidated me. How to get started? And all of those 11-letter answers... it seemed like an impossibility. 

Turns out that doing some challenging thing over and over again leads to improvement in performance. So for any new solvers who are advancing to the more challenging crosswords of the week, take courage. You too can become much more skilled at this particular type of niche talent!

Today started more easily than expected. 1A: Curved bedframe style (SLEIGH) was a gimme for me. A brief snag in this corner was getting gAIA and MAIA confused, but that was fixed quickly. I liked the terse clue 13A: Roast roost (HOTSEAT). ACHILLES was the first of several "eponymous" clues today. Similarly, 27A: From overseas? (DES) heralds other clever foreign language clues in the grid.

I got HALOGENBULB from the letters in this corner, but nothing else in the center, so I shifted to the NE. Once again, nothing particularly difficult about this area. ARAM Khachaturian is another gimme for this solver. 26A: Not from Scotland (NAE) and 30D: Summers in Monaco (ETES) are the other two language clues. I like that both of these avoided the question marks.

Emily BRONTE

I think I got HESTARTEDIT from here, but no other long answers. I put in HIREe at this point for 28D: Headhunter's correspondent (HIRER), which stopped me from completing POWERLIFTER (I had the second part of the answer in place). On to the SW!

Here, SAWYER and RYE confirmed each other, and once I had MOMCAVE and CAWCAWED in place, the center came into view. CINCINNATUS and TELESCOPIUM are the other eponymous answers. I loved the pair of answers for the clues "Find time for" and "Finds a time for, in a way:" the straightforward GETTO, and the extremely clever CARBONDATES. 

21D: That's an order! (STANDATEASE) is one of these clever clues where the pronoun in the clue is directly referring to the answer. My last clue of note is 39A: Van trailer? (BUREN). Hah!

Nice quick Saturday puzzle (6:42).

Tomorrow, Philbo takes over! Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

- Colum