5:37 – record time for my current 106 day streak, and 13 seconds over my fastest Monday. Also, my 500th puzzle solved!
I love a nice and breezy easy Monday solve. I got up extraordinarily early to embark on a work trek to the mountains, only to find it was canceled due to weather just as I was about to walk out of the elevator at my apartment.
So, instead of packing, like I should have, I went back to sleep, dealt with some annoying Erbil Apartment issues, and dashed this off. Proud of myself for getting the first themer right off the bat, and over half the puzzle on the first across pass. I still don’t really know who Tyler Perry is, so will never remember MADEA, but lots of other little nuggets that I was able to fish out of my pre-holiday mind…
I’m sure “extraordinarily early” is still a few hours after I got up!
The themers were all first passers for me, making my solving also lightning fast! ENVISAGE, AILEY, and GLARE were all hard to parse at 4:30 am, though, so my time suffered. 9:35
What a lot of great music in today’s puzzle!
1. REBA (a talented artist and one of the best Phish jams):
2. Joan BAEZ
3. OTIS
4. I’m not sure if the JOSIE and the Pussycats exist IRL?
5. 38D (ROCKSTAR) should have been clued as “64A, for example” (REED).
6. And SLY should have been clued as “____and the Family Stone”.
7. NOVA should have been clued as “Champagne Super_____ (Oasis Hit)”.
8. HILL should have also been clued as “Lauryn _______”.
Quick! Someone make a playlist! You can end it with this OBOE etude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuSxg3yfsJM