Friday's New York Times puzzle solved: January 12, 2018

My time: 11:58, pretty close to my record!  Not bad!

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Erik Agard constructed this themeless with seven answers that span the grid east to west.  And THAT'S A TALL ORDER!  He really SPARED NO EXPENSE.

I had no idea that the phrase "EACH ONE TEACH ONE" had its roots in American slaves teaching each other to read on the sly.

I've heard of MEL Tillis, but MEL McDaniel is a new one to me.  He had several mostly positive, fun hits, the most notable being "Baby's Got Her Blue Jeans On."  He died of cancer at 68, sadly.

Pluralizing the meditation utterance into OMS is weak.

Did you know a llama was a CAMELID?  Me neither.

"Big brand of kitchenware" is OXO.  It was founded in 1990 as a line that was more helpful to grip for those with arthritic or otherwise weak hands.

We've seen golfer ISAO Aoki way back on November 17, 2017, but I had forgotten his name.

INDEPENDENCE AVE. is a major Washington DC street that runs east to west.  In addition to the National Air and Space Museum, it runs adjacent to far too many landmarks to list here.  The western terminus is the Lincoln Memorial.

PayPal was co-founded by Peter THIEL and three others.  They later merged with an online payment service called X.com which Elon Musk founded.  Thiel has three citizenships: German, New Zealand, and the US.  He's worth over two billion dollars.

I am pretty sure that the spelling ENURE for "accustom" is wrong.  Inure is the current word.  An argument could be made that enure is an older form, but then the clue should indicate that they want the archaic form.

I thought the NFL Hall-of-Famer was Michael *IRWIN, but it's Michael IRVIN.  He played for the Cowboys and his nickname was "The Playmaker" for his big plays.  He helped take them 'Boys to three Super Bowl wins.

New Brunswick is an eastern province of Canada and borders MAINE.

I would not have said that the OTTER is related to the weasel, but they are both mustelids.

Clever clues: "Big Apple?' is IMAC.  "Where people may order push-ups" isn't the military, but VICTORIA'S SECRET.

And I'll ALEVE it at that.