Tuesday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: July 31, 2018

My time: 7:03.  I may be a bit rusty.

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It's Tuesday, and this puzzle by David Woolf might initially give you trouble.  Ha!  That's a joke, son.  "Indication of more to come" is DOT DOT DOT, and the themed answers contain this in their proper form, because all three start with three initials.   W.E.B. DUBOIS, J.R.R. TOLKIEN, F.A.O. SCHWARZ are the people in question.

Clever!  I liked it.

As a whole I thought the puzzle was somewhat hard for a Tuesday, with unusual words like JIBE, BOSH, DAUB, LOOPY, NEO-NOIR, JAZZ HOP, ERSATZ ("like Splenda vis-à-vis sugar"), and EMBOSS.

"Black Sea port, to natives" is ODESA.  This is a terrible clue and answer, because the natives don't in fact spell Odessa like that.  Ukrainians spell it Оде́са.  Very poor show, David Woolf.  Interestingly, in Russian it's spelled with two /s/ characters, Оде́сса.

"Molten tar, e.g." is OOZE?  That's not the best clue either. 

"Dog unlikely to have a solid coat" is worded in such a way as to imply they're looking for a breed, but actually the answer is a typical name, SPOT.

ANYA Seton was an author of historical novels, active from the 1940s to the '70s.

I wasn't totally sure what a "doubleheader" was but I guess it's two games in a day because of a previous RAINOUT.

Did you know PANTONE has a "color of the year" award?  This year it's 18-3838 Ultra Violet.  This is apparently "a dramatically provocative and thoughtful purple shade" that "communicates originality, ingenuity, and visionary thinking that points us toward the future."  All that from a pale purple!

Apparently "dolce" is an adverb, because it's a clue for SWEETLY.

The U in UHF is ULTRA, as in ULTRA High Frequency.

The SINE function has come up a few times in the crossword, but here it's said to be "associated with oscillation," as in a SINE wave.  I'm over my head here.

I don't recognize the name of actor TYE Sheridan, but I saw him as a young Cyclops in X-Men Apocalypse, and he starred in Ready Player One.

Lift up the ski slopes T-BAR last appeared on May 1. 

Olympian Apolo Anton OHNO was an answer on April 20. 

I remembered the UNICORN was the creature on Scot;and's coat of arms from the mammoth slog that was December 24's solve.

WHO DAT guy who didn't solve today's puzzle quickly?  Me dat!  SO SORRY.