Thursday's New York Times puzzle solved: April 12, 2018

My time: 11:53, pretty good!

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Jules Markey offers premium service with this tribute to the CABLE BOX.  Four squares are rebus squares with three-letter cable channel names in them.  We have DRE[AMC]ATCHER crossed with TE[AM C]REST ("image on a soccer jersey").  Then there's "UGLY [BET]TY" ("TV dramedy based on a Colombian telenovela") crossed with GLO[BE T]HEATER ("setting for Shakespeare's Julius Caesar," which is pretty clever).  The USA network is represented in SA[USA]GE PARTY (the movie) crossed with GENI[US A]T WORK.  Finally, WIS[HBO]NES ("some gridiron formations" --- looks more like a T-bone to me) is crossed with DAS[HBO]ARD.

CATALINA is an ISLE off of California.  I thought it might be this one, in the Dominican Republic, and put *ISLA.  But that would mean we have *BARG for the down cross, and while a *BARG (unit of pressure above or below atmospheric pressure) might conceivably be a "danger for a submarine," the real danger is of course a BERG.

"Shelter for a Minuteman" is SILO, because a Minuteman is not only a colonial militia member, but also an ICBM.

Flash Gordon was apparently a YALE graduate and polo player before he became a space hero.

Did you know Verizon acquired AOL in 2015?  That's about 15 years longer than I thought AOL existed.

"Dyne-centimeters" is not the way I think of ERGS, not being a science guy, but it's the exact definition.  An erg is the amount of work done by a force of one dyne (the force required to accelerate a mass of one gram at a rate of one centimeter per second squared) exerted for a distance of one centimeter.  Seems a mite redundant.

OSAMA is a 2003 Golden Globe-winning film about a girl forced to masquerade as a boy so she can find work and avoid the Taliban.

"Writes the first time, every time" was (and is) the slogan for the original BIC PEN, the Cristal.

I could have sworn I'd posted about this one before, but I can't find it.  Rum cakes are sometimes referred to as BABAS, as in baba au rhum. 

BPOE was an answer on March 28, but today it's part of the clue for ELKS.

Clever clues: "Cancer locator?" is STAR MAP.  "Ring... or sphere" is ARENA.  "The inn crowd?" is GUESTS.

I'm happy with this one!  I wouldn't say I exactly ACED it, but ILE posit, and YULE agree, that it didn't give me much trouble.   I do like a good rebus.  It's nearly always a fun surprise.