Thursday, August 10, 2017

My time: 17:11.  (My Thursday record is 16:10, so not bad!)

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I loved, loved this sweet visual theme.  BY HOOK OR BY CROOK, with a LAMB at the crook formed by black squares and the FISH at the hook.  Brilliant.

SCOTT Kelly is not a name that I know, but I have read about him before, as he is the only twin to go to space, which is fascinating for the study of how long space sojourns affect the body.

SPIRO might have been the second VP to resign, but who was the first?  John C. Calhoun, who disagreed with Andrew Jackson.

I did not understand why "big rolls" was SIXES for the longest time.  Like hours after I completed the puzzle.  I just kept thinking about big dinner rolls.  It's about dice rolls!  Jeez.

Now, I am aware that an UTE is a southwestern Native American tribe, but I didn't know it is also a "Pac-12 athlete."  The Utah Utes. Wow.

PITHY threw me for a while.  One reason is that I have never heard of the Roman emperor OTHO, who apparently held that title for only three months, yay.

Sticking it to myself department:  I had *CLANG for "sound of metallic impact" rather than (the much less apropos, IMO) CLONK, which means I stubbornly stuck with *AMINA GROUP and overlooked the nonsense *ASG.   And for CITY desk ("newspaper post"), I initially had *COPY, which also made PITHY hard to get.