Argh! I excitedly hit the thing too early, and the finish screen went away! But I finished a Saturday, and it said I’m on a one-day streak, despite it actually being a six-day streak. See, it’s 10pm here in LA, so it’s tomorrow already in New York. For streak purposes, it’s still Saturday in LA, so tomorrow should show a seven-day streak if I solve the Sunday puzzle. I got a more generic image, but at least it shows that it’s a six-day streak.

I pulled out 32A Fragrant rice: BASMATI because it’s pretty much the only rice I buy. Do I sometimes want short grain rice? Maybe. Do I find Basmati rice to be fragrant? Not really. Do I wash Basmati rice three times like it says to? Oh absolutely not. I just know it’s fragrant rice because it says so on the bag.

I was really hoping for a theme in this one, but it doesn’t have one. I had thought that 6A Stick around on July 4?: SPARKLER would be FCRACKER or something fun like that so I’d know that letters were missing. IRE is a word. But no such luck.

Finished this one in 37:43. That’s actually my only Saturday score. I used to do the Saturday crossword with friends Tuesday nights. We just started doing board games in person again after more than a year online for covid safety, but we haven’t done the Saturday crossword together in a while. When we do it together it takes like six minutes. Alone is slower.

OK now off to the Spelling Bee!