Welcome to the Friday themeless - no theme means I can't give it away in the first paragraph, per my usual MO. A nice challenging solve, with two pairs of adacent long clues both Across and Down, anchored by a grid-spanner in the middle.
Instead of griping about errors and false starts (like the plausible but wrong FACTOIDS instead of FUNFACTS for "Icebreaker tidbits") , today I'll focus on the positives, of which there were many. Clever highlights were "Primary directive" (VOTE) and "Petty person?" (ANIMALLOVER) - as a massive animal lover myself, this one struck a chord. USA for "July birthday celebrant" was great. My favourite though, I think, was "Assists on offense?" (ABETS)
I'd never heard the term METALUMLAUT before, as the gratuitous diacritics over the vowels in some heavy metal band names. Puts me in mind of Spinal Tap, one of whose uncountable nuggets of genius was to put an umlaut on a *consonant* (the 'N').
Have any of you ever responded SAMETOYOU when given birthday greetings? I did once, when I was 10. The embarrassment has endured through the decades...
This grid contained, for me, a greater than usual number of clues I had no idea about. "Indie pop duo Sylvan ____" is ESSO? (What happened to the old standby "Canadian petroleum distributor"?) I'd say Tommy IVAN in the Hockey Hall of Fame is a pretty deep cut, even for us hockey-mad Canadians. Never heard of Miss Universe 2000 winner LARA Dutta. AME are Black church initials? News to me. There were a few others. I felt like I was extra reliant on the crossers today.
And so it goes. Fun and satisfying! Bring on Saturday!
-philbo
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