I pulled out 13D _ vide (culinary technique): SOUS because Calah put together dinner tonight, and the entree is chicken that she’s cooking sous vide. We have an Anova pro cooker and a Coleman cooler whose top I had cut a hole in to fit the immersion cooker. Actually we have two Coleman coolers. Sometimes we’re cooking a lot, so we need the big one, and sometimes we cook a little, so we don’t need so much volume of water to warm up and keep at temperature.
I pulled out 16A Greek goddess who could turn water into wine: OENO because the word just means wine. Apparently Oeno was one of three daughters of Anius know was the Oenoetropae. Etymology: oeno (wine) tropae (turning). I really had hoped that story would be better, but I found it to be disappointing.
No theme for Friday, but the long answers were really simple to get.
17A Stargazer’s need: CLEARSKIES. Don’t fence me in. 25A What can follow “+/-“: MARGINOFERROR. So much for teaching tolerance. 41A “As long as we’re on the subject …”: BEFOREIFORGET. Rarely have I heard this used when something is on topic. Usually it’s something random that will go away for forever if not mentioned right then. 53A “Hmm … really?”: OHISTHATSO. Yes, it is.
This one required plenty of guessing. Sometimes I was right. Sometimes I was wrong. Ultimately, I was right, and that means I get to keep the streak going.
I pulled out 39D Israeli P.M. between Rabin and Netanyahu: PERES. I had been under the long impression that Shimon Peres was only ever president, but I guess he was PM, too!
No theme but long answers:
17A Olympics haul of fame?: GOLDMEDALS. 25A Skill for a good physician: BEDSIDEMANNER. 40A Accept things as they are: GOWITHTHEFLOW. 52A Crawl: SNAILSPACE. 27D “Keep on keepin’ on!”: DONTGIVEUP. 6D People-powered vehicles: PADDLEBOATS. 24D On menus, it’s often by the lobster: MARKETPRICE. 11D Choice made while thinking “ugh”: LESSEREVIL.
I finished the puzzle and set a new Friday personal record. This one felt way easier than a Friday normally would, and I made my way through without being told I was close but that I was completely done.
First PR I’ve set in a long while!
Unfortunately, this puzzle was marred by two related clues.
As it stands right now, we can put the ownership of both on Trump. We have a spike in Coronavirus cases right now, and I still haven’t given my family a hug since mid-March. That’s coming up on nine months without a hug from my family.
Now, it’s possible that Doral will be repossessed if Trump can’t pay back loans, right? Hot take: There will never be justice for the intentional mishandling of Coronavirus.
I don’t have a theme for this puzzle other than fast (for me), but there’s another clue I figured I’d pull out of this.
53A “Bloom County” character whose vocabulary consists mostly of “Thbbft!” and “Ack!”: BILLTHECAT. I had never heard of this before. I had filled out CATHY_ _ _ _ _, but that didn’t go. Cathy is the only comic strip I know of with ACK!
I just found out that the creator of Cathy is… Cathy.
Usually I cut off the puzzle at half an hour because I can’t spend forever on this stuff, but every time I was about to call it, I thought of one more thing that opened up answers to whole sections. I made guesses in some areas, too, and that helped me out. The theme of the puzzle was driving me crazy, too, but I got that.
For the 20A Part 1 of an instruction for solving this puzzle, I kept thinking REPLACETHE, but REPLACE didn’t fit. It was around minute 22 that I realized it was REMOVETHE. I had long figured out that 40A Part 2 of the instruction was LETTER_, but I wasn’t sure which letter it was (W) until maybe minute 21 when I realized there were no answers with the letter W. But 61A End of the instruction was FROMCLUES, so I went back and reread the clues to remove the extraneous W’s and rolled my eyes each time. I remember a puzzle from a long time ago that had answers that were spelled backwards. That was maddening until we figured that one out.
Finishing in 34:25 I went almost twice as long as I did for last week’s NYT Thursday puzzle which I finished in under 18 minutes. But I figured out the theme way earlier, so that’s that, I guess. I’m happy to have finished this one at all.
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