Well, here we are at the start of the "turn", where the crosswords become themeless and consequently, somewhat harder to blog (and to solve). My approach becomes, instead of riffing away on the theme, more of a narrative on how the solve went, snags and pleasant discoveries along the way.
To wit: I got a great start to today's puzzle with TORTELLINI, the pasta whose shapes are reminiscent of little cakes. (My wife's half Italian, so this was a gimme. It's her birthday today! Happy birthday, dear wife of mine!) The NE corner yielded quite readily after that, even though I had BTEAM not CTEAM for "J.V. benchwarmers" and, with the 'L' in place, wrongly guessed ELIOT as the playwright of "Three Tall Women". (It's ALBEE, as I quickly discovered. When it comes to my knowledge base, the play is not the thing 🙁 ) EARLYBIRDS (recipients of dinner "specials") set the whole thing straight...
And so it went. I liked THELITERALWORST ("Awful, awful, awful"). BOO for "Scare quote?" was kinda weird. The FIC "Skip it!" (ROPE) got a smile. But the best was at the very end - "X, as in Ximenes?" (BESO) - brilliant! Took me a while to clue in, and I had RAWSTORY instead of RAWSCORE in the crossing clue "Figure that's not weighted" - duh! - which led to a whole two minutes poring over the SE corner and a very unremarkable 8:31 solve time.
Also liked the misleading "You might take one to a new friend" (SHINE), and I didn't immediately see "One-a-day, for Dunaway" as the SPOONERISM it was. Never heard of an "al pastor" TACO or JET magazine, or the hormonal IUD MIRENA for that matter. Live and learn!
Overall a fun challenging solve. See y'all tomorrow! Ordinarily I blog these crosswords when they come out, the previous night, but Saturday's will be posted later because Friday evening I will be celebrating a certain somebody's birthday!
Ciao for now!
-philbo
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