Saturday, September 23, 2023, Robert Charlton

A beautiful, open grid today. I don't always love triple-stacks, but today they are part of such a pleasing pattern that one barely notices them. Well ... I guess one always notices. But let's move on.

As usual, when facing grid-spanners, I take a quick look at the clues, then work the Downs. ETAS (GPS guesses), BAN (Deodorant brand), and OPTSOUT (Declines to participate) gave me a decent chunk, but it took TRIS (Races that require a swimsuit and bike, for short) and KEYLESS (Like some ignition systems) before INDIANTERRITORY (Designation on old U.S. maps) came in. And after that the top fell quickly. I hadn't ever heard the term APELET (Small simian ... that's one letter away from a small computer program), and RERATES (Upgrades or downgrades) is junk, but the rest is pretty solid. I especially liked "Weather" for RIDEOUT.

CARACAS (Simón Bolívar's birthplace) is good trivia. ROBERTI (Father of William the Conqueror) is also trivia, but it feels like it'll be less useful to me somehow. And BIGBEND national park reminds me that there are many, many places in this country that I have not visited. Someday, maybe.

"Beat the buzzer?" is cute for SWAT, but "Sole mate?" for SOCK? That's a stretch. And ONETON (What a pickup might pick up?) feels a little uninspired, but it does bring to mind this idiotic sketch from SNL of yore:

OK, when I resort to a second image, it's time to go

Happy puzzling, All!

- Horace