Tuesday, November 7, 2023, Kevin Curry and Daniel Bodily

Today's puzzle was slightly easier for me than yesterday's, by 4 seconds. And that's with seeing what the theme was during the solve.

There's some grid art, right in the middle of the lower half of the puzzle, where a T made of black squares stares out at us. It sits right above the revealer at 53D, which is to be interpreted as [T]TOPS, which finally inspired me to look up exactly what this common crossword answer is talking about. Turns out some cars had removable panels over the driver and passenger sides, leaving a metal rod over the middle of the passenger cabin. This, along with the top of the windshield, created a T, thus the name.

In the puzzle, however, it refers to how each of the five theme answers, which are in the columns rather than the rows, start with T, thus literally are T-tops. 

I am more than happy with four of the five theme answers. TBONESTEAK, TSTRAPSANDAL, TBARLIFT, and TSHIRTCANNON are all well situated in the vernacular. However... a TBALLGLOVE is simply a baseball glove. They are smaller because individuals who play T-ball are typically tiny humans. 

In any case, I love the oddities created by all of those T-consonant starts to answers. Particularly TSTR at 21D. Fun!

I enjoyed both GRAMPA and NANA (and so near to each other). Also, "Little" STEVIE Wonder was his early recording name, when he started at the age of 11. Did you know that his given name was Stevland Hardaway Judkins? He then changed it to Stevland Hardaway Morris, before being given his stage name by Berry Gordy.

- Colum