EEK! A Friday Crossword (New York Times 11/27/2020)

Try this puzzle here before you read the review! (NYT subscription required)

The day after Thanksgiving: that means waking up with a mercifully empty stomach... and an empty grid waiting to be filled in over morning coffee! Today's Friday puzzle was a tricky one. Not as difficult as they come for the day, but with some tough, trivia-heavy know-how, lots of pronouns and a few clues that really made me reach for the answers... which are at the bottom in case you're still stuck after reading this review!

 Just getting a good start was difficult. The run though the clues only yielded a few 100% positive answers. Notably: 9A "Shortly, for short" ... ASAP; 29A "Singer Grande" ... ARIANA; 31A "___Ren of 'Star Wars'" ... KYLO; 55A. "Little creatures recurring in Dali paintings" ANTS. 33D "Midwest colleague of Representative Ocasio-Cortez" offered another proper noun in OMAR and the south-west corner offered a clever pun for the season: 45D "Blanket that won't keep you warm? ... SNOW. 

 Thankfully none of that in my neck of the woods just yet!

A good bit of movie trivia came in at 5D "1984 comedy horror film that contributed to the creation of the PG-13 rating" ... GREMLINS. The clue at 9D "Spot removers" was a stretch for the answer it was looking for... ADBLOCKERS ... but thankfully the horizontal crossings around it made it manageable. They also filled in most of SUREWHYNOT at 10D clued as "Hmm... all right. I'm in." At 35D I found my crossword clue of the day for Instagram in "Structure near a bed?" Another stretch, looking for TOOLSHED, but with enough letters, perfectly logical.  

With most of the long down clues filled in, the horizontal answers became clearer. The east side of the crossword filled in quickly with TENAM (36A "1000 in the military") and CORONA (skirting the present pandemic with 39A "Heavenly Halo")

Of the longest horizontal clues, 40A ... BANANASFOSTER was delicious, if simple, clued as "Fruity dessert with rum flavored sauce." 24A was a phrase I had heard before but wasn't familiar with as it related to the clue: "Still has feelings (for)" Still, with enough letter filled in ... CARRIESATORCH ... completed the bulk of the grid.

 The hallmark of a well constructed difficult puzzle is in giving the solver just enough leeway to figure out the clues they absolutely don't know with more grounded clues all around. I had no idea who the Bloom County character referenced at 53A was, but with B?LLTH?C?T on the gird, there were only so many ways to go. Thankfully the vertical, crossings provided a confident solving.

 The same could be said of 19A "Pioneering reggae artist whose name is an exclamation." I've never heard of ... EEKAMOUSE ... before, but the northwestern block of answers provided me with a great start. 

On the other hand, there were two answers in this puzzle, top-middle and bottom-middle as it were, that unless you knew the answer before hand were impossible to solve without successfully filling in their vertical crossings. At the top 6A "Supermarket chain inits." produced ... IGA ... while 58A on the bottom "Underground org. in N.Y.C." was looking for ... MTA. 

 I'll be the first to admit that three letter acronyms and abbreviations are my Achilles heel when it comes to Friday and Saturday puzzles. The saving grace today was that the weren't in the middle... and they didn't cross!

I hope everyone had a happy (and safe!) Thanksgiving yesterday and that this challenging-but-still-accessible puzzle provides a great start to your day as we rocket toward the holidays!

 How long until you put your tree up now that Turkey Day is behind us? And more importantly, how long do you procrastinate taking it down after Christmas? Let me know in the comments and have a great day! 

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