Friday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: August 17, 2018

My time: 18:26.

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Jeff Chen whipped up this Friday's puzzle, a themeless with some mighty modern fill.  I liked ROCKED IT ("wore an outfit with panache, informally"), SHROOMS, SECRET SAUCE, AU NATUREL for "bare," and I DUNNO ("verbal shrug").

I honestly don't know why this took so long.  There was very little new information in the answers, unlike yesterday's puzzle, but perhaps it was the vague clues and unusual fill.  For example, USES ON from "applies to."

The constellation between Cygnus and Aquila is SAGITTA, which kind of sounds like a disease old people get.  It actually means "arrow."  Although it is an ancient constellation, it has no star brighter than 3rd magnitude and has the third-smallest area of all constellations (only Equuleus and Crux are smaller).

"Process by neutrinos are produced" is BETA DECAY.  And I don't think I can say any more about that without getting in way over my head.

DINA Merrill was a philanthropist and actress in many films, including The Courtship of Eddie's Father and The Player.

Old friend Terri GARR appears in this puzzle, but they also ask about another namesake of hers, country singer TERRI Clark.  She's from Canada!  And she's been putting out albums since 1995!

I think it's fairly well known fact about JFK that he attended Connecticut boarding prep school CHOATE, but I'd forgotten what it was called.

I'm also not up on my Supreme Court justices.  HARLAN Stone was on the court from 1925 to 1946, and was Chief Justice the last five years.  He was appointed by Calvin Coolidge.  He is known for the quote "Courts are not the only agency of government that must be assumed to have capacity to govern," but I'm not exactly sure what that means.

Clever clues: "Primer finish" is Z IS FOR ZEBRA --- good pun and skillful fill.  "One who crosses the line" is SCAB.  "They're often blitzed" is SOTS.  "Grueling grillings" is ORAL EXAMS.  "Big cheese wheels?" is an almost unfair clue.  STATE CAR is the wheels for a government official, or big cheese.  "Spinner?" is PR MAN.

Well, this one had some of the SLIEST clues I've seen in a while!  It had me saying, "CAN'T I figure any of these out?"  I GUESS NOT.