I found this to be a difficult Friday puzzle. It was themeless, with five horizontal 15-wides and two vertical 15-deep answers (most impressive, by the way). Working with only what knowledge is in my head I don't believe I would have completed it had I not had some luck guessing at the long answers. In fact, I was unable to actually complete the puzzle because there was one letter I did not write down because I did not know it. I guessed it to be 'P' and that turned out to be correct, but I did not write it down. This was at the intersection of 25D and 34A.
Looking to get started I went for anything that looked like a gimme:
- 51D End of ___: AnEra
- 29A Fortune 500 company whose toll-free number ends with 23522: AFLAC
- 33D Chlorure de sodium: SEL
- 42A Wall St. Deal: LBO (either IPO or LBO and SEL gave me the 'L')
- 40D Duty for a docent: TOUR
- 60D Field divs.: YDS
- 47A Considered groovy: DUG (with the 'U' from TOUR)
- 56A Nitwit: ASS
- 8A Zeroes: RESETS (could have been "losers" but for 8D)
- 8D Split: RanOff (which confirmed my guess for 16A)
- 16A Saint whose name means "good": AGATHA (with 8A this gave me 13D)
- 13D Flip: SASSY
- 5D Wall Street Deal: IPO (LBO already in use in 42A; this gave me 5A)
- 5A Return addressee?: IRS (this confirmed my guess at 7D)
- 7D Psalm ender: SELAH
- 9D Graded item: EGG (obvious from having 8A and 16A)
- 10D Posed: SAT (obvious from having 8A and 16A)
Let me explain why 29A was a gimme. I looked at the letters on the phone for the numbers given and AFLAC was so obvious I wrote it down without even thinking about it.
So now I looked at 17A [Mean crossword clue writer's challenge to solvers?] and here is what I had: _____O_L_NGTH_S. With the 'NG' I tossed in an 'I', which looked like the end of a word, so I tossed in another 'I' to make _____O_LING THIS. I was thinking TRY SOLVING THIS but had one too many blanks. Decided 6D must be RIGHTARM [Very desirous person's sacrifice] and with that 'G' I completed 17A with TRY GOOGLING THIS (blanks added for clarity). Show time!
Next correctly guessed 11D with only 'ETH' as ETHNIC CLEANSING [Heinous war crime]. After getting NARD in 24D [Olden ointment] and MOTIF/FAA for 15D [Interior designer's creation] and 28A [Flight data recorder?] (lame) I was able to guess RUNS IN THE FAMILY for 22A [Gets passed down, perhaps]. I then polished-off the top of the puzzle with some delay after writing in "stat" for 1A's clue [R.B.I. or E.R.A] but recovered with ABBR after getting BRR for 2D's [Cold Evidence?] (nice one).
But though I shortly guessed YOU HAD ME AT HELLO for the third 15-wide at 37A [Movie line spoken by Renee Zellweger after "Just shut up" I was greatly slowed down in the middle-east area with (to me) unfathomable clues like:
- 25D Fictional River of verse
- 26D Three-time skiing world champion
- 35D ___ acid (no, not boric and not malic but yes it ends with a 'C')
- 36D Best Actor nominee of 1991
- 34A Molly of early stage and screen
- 43A What you might wind up with (crank, handle, key... nothing else came to me)
- 49A Land in the Thames (this one felt familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it)
So this area is basically kaput for me. I saved it for later.
Okay, another flyer--this time at 3D where I got BEYOND SUSPICION for [Unimpeachable] and then again on the last 15-wide at 57 A with only _EI______Y__I__ I guessed BEIJING OLYMPICS for [Event starting on 08/08/08 at 08:08:08 p.m.].
After that I slogged around the bottom of the puzzle and cleaned it up a bit at a time, then the middle-west. I found that I once again forgot that dang mayor's name in 52D (CUOMO) and discovered yet another new and obscure geography name with ESPOO in 53D for [Neighbor of Helsinki]. Dig this: Wikipedia says of it: "Espoo shares its eastern border with Helsinki and Vantaa, while enclosing Kauniainen". What do you know about that?
I have a beef with the clue for 22D (REDDYE) because it is worded [Turn red, maybe]. Well, that would be "dye", wouldn't it? I think the clue should have been worded, "Turned red again, maybe". By the way, while I was looking at that clue I was thinking that a good answer to it as clued would be "Lear At".
I also personally think it a stretch to use the clue [Inspire] for AROUSE (as seen in 63A).
Okay, now to deadman's gulch in the mid-east area.
I finally decided with _O__E that 36D must be NOLTE [Best actor nominee in...]; as above.
Then that 43A must be REEL [What you might wind up with].
Finally my brain yielded OLEIC for 35D [___ acid].
So now I had AIT for [Land in the Thames] on 49A. I later googled this... check it out:
The Ait (island) is one of London Wildlife Trust's reserves and it is rarely visited by the public.
The 25D [Fictional river of verse] is AL_H. This is where the 'P' goes that I didn't write down until I looked it up (hey, with an Island like AIT that missing letter in the fictional river could have been any number of letters).
26D is MA_ER (the skier clue) and because 34A is __CON and they cross at 34A's second letter I decided that it must be MAIER (which proved to be correct).
Okay, now done and later on I went off to google. Do you know what? If you type in the 34A clue exactly as it is shown [Molly of early stage and screen] you get back PICON as the very first hit.
Now, about that mythical river of verse... it is the river in In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan". This also could have been clued as a river in Antarctica.
This was a great though hard Friday NYT but I must say that the middle-east area was going nowhere if you did not already know these things or have access to google while working it.
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