Friday, March 15, 2024, Daniel Grinberg

After hunting down a FWOE, I finished the puzzle with a pleasing time of 23:24, which made up slightly for the delay and the CARELESSMISTAKE. The problem turned out to be that I had spelled PHILLISWHEATLEY with an initial Y. My brain didn't put up a fight against SHyLOH for some reason. Too soon?

Under 25 with a FWOE is not bad for this solver. I luckily remembered PECOS from a recent (2/16) puzzle (and enjoyed the clever clue "Bill originating in Texas"), plus I immediately got two of the five grid-spanning entries (ESPRESSOMARTINI and HALFTIMEREPORTS) which helped speed me along. EXTRAEXTRAEXTRA was fun and fell into place pretty quickly once I filled in the first 'extra'.

Clue/Answer pairs ran the gamut today from really top drawer to less likeABLE. In the non-QMC category, I enjoyed "Raise" for EXALT, "Got taken for a ride, in a way" for UBERED, and my favorite today, "Nobody else can take it" for SELFIE. In the QMC department, I liked "Ground rule?" (NOTV),  "Decks and floors, informally?" (KOS), and, in light of my new job, I especially enjoyed "Bit of deductive reasoning" (TAXTIP) - ha! As for ROIs, it was interesting to learn that the "Source of the words 'plaid' and 'trousers'" is ERSE.

OTH, there were a number of clue/answer pairs that either I didn't get or where I felt the aptness was out of SYNC. 

"Put on blast" (BASH) - is that bash as in a party, or something else?

"More trifling" (MERER) - I did a search in Google, "use merer in a sentence" and it said, "did you mean meter?" 

"Foul smell" (REEK) - seems odd used as a noun. 

"Catchy tunes" (BOPS) - EWW. 

"'My goodness!'" (MAN) - different registers, if you see what I mean.

Still, overall, the HITRATE was good. And we got some fine fill like ROSTRA, WREST, CUSS, and METIER to boot.

~Frannie.