A nice solid Friday themeless today, with an interesting layout (more long Down answers than Across), great cluing - and, a mere Q and a V away from pangram-dom, which would have been two NYT puzzles in a row. I assume Ms. Zhang was aware how close she was, and I imagine it might have been tough to resist the temptation to force those two missing letters in there..
With no theme to describe today, I'll go scattershot around the grid, highlighting the points of special interest - starting with the beautiful IRIDESCE at 35D ("Shimmer colorfully"). Not that it's the clue of the year or anything - I just find the word so evocative. Two great C/APs side by side on the right - CONFABULATE ("Shoot the breeze") and OCCAMSRAZOR ("Philosophy of 'Keep things simple', in a sense"). Occam's Razor is a great tool to have in one's philosophical belt, I think - if we all embraced it, about a million conspiracy theories would vanish overnight.
AYCARAMBA carries the indelible whiff of The Simpsons, and right below it, BREAKUPSEX is about as lascivious as these crosswords ever get. Speaking of Simpson, IMEANCOMEON was a phrase often used when discussing the guilt/innocence of O.J. back in the mid '90s. I liked the brisk imperative "Scratch that!" (ITCH), and "Guard for some time?" is a clever QMC for RENTACOP.
"Huddling, as teammates" (INCLOSE) and "Good places for a deep dive into research?" (SEALABS) seemed a bit contrived to me. And is THATSMYJAM a generational thing?
Well, that concludes my "drunkard's walk" (look it up! It's related to how stars shine, amazingly) around the Friday grid. Hope you enjoyed the solve as much as I did!
-philbo
Interesting about the drunkard's walk. One of the Wikipedia pages was way too mathy for me, but the search also led to some beautiful patchwork quilts. And yes, I did eventually find something about photons escaping from a star... :)
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