Tuesday's puzzle solved: December 26, 2017

Today's time: 9:39.

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Peter Gordon made a puzzle honoring A.J. JACOBS (an author whose books I have enjoyed, but his best is The Know-It-All).  Some of the themed clues read "see blurb" and on the app you can't see the entire blurb, but it turns out it's a quip by him, something like how he loved appearing in the puzzle, but he's:
STILL A FIVE-LETTER / WORD STARTING WITH / LOS- AND ENDING IN -ER.
Ha ha!

So anyhow.  Lots of unusual and kind of tough fill in this one, like ABSCESS, BAY AREA, RESONATE, CAPITAL W, SCOUT CAR and so on.

I've never heard of the Ja Rule hit "I CRY."  I'm not sure I've heard of Ja Rule.  The video for "I Cry" is unintentionally amusing.

I got TORERO because of its appearance on December 9.

ASANAS are yoga positions.  There are apparently 84 classic asanas.  In the crossword I have seen two: Vrikshasana, the tree position, appeared October 8.  Virasana, the kneeling "hero pose," appeared November 24.  And, of course, hatha yoga appeared November 26, but that's not a position.  The NYT crossword puzzle loves yoga!

Clever clue: "Mark never seen in an online crossword" is ERASURE.

There was nothing else that was new to me.  The clues were straightforward as well.  I don't know why this took me so long!