Wednesday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: August 1, 2018

My time: 6:09, very speedy!

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In this very clever puzzle, Sande Milton and Jeff Chen make a few phrases EYELESS.  That is, they remove the I's from a few phrases or names, and clue the result literally.

"Campus area for amorous students" is RANDY QUAD (from Quaid), "flutterer around Orange County and LA?" is SO-CAL BUTTERFLY (from social), "put-down to someone from Manhattan or the Bronx" is NEW YORK SLANDER (from Islander, the NHL team), and "marathons, way back when" is GREEK RUNS (from ruins).  I half-hoped, half-wished that this last clue would be a diarrhea joke ("what you get after eating bad souvlaki?").

I didn't know that the ruler of Norway is Harald V, who is married to Queen Sonja, who lives in OSLO.  She is not this Queen Sonja.

A BLOOP is apparently a "short fly ball."  Isn't language fun? It's like racquetball! For your mouth!

"SEC school near Atlanta" is UGA, or the University of Georgia.  Their sports mascot is the Hairy Dawg, ha ha.  The SEC is the Southeastern Conference.

Did you know EMUS lay green eggs?  One emu egg weighs two pounds, the equivalent of a dozen chicken eggs.

The puzzle has taught me that the term APRON is the front of a stage in a play; today we learn that it's also the edge of a golfing green.  It is cut slightly higher than the grass of the green, but lower than on the fairway.

I have never heard the work SOAK as a noun and synonym for "boozehound."  You old soak!

AVA Gardner played Maria Vargas, the titular character in the 1954 film The Barefoot Contessa, with Humphrey Bogart as the washed-up director who makes her a star.

Ballet dancer ANNA Pavlova appeared on December 23, 2017 as the namesake for a berry meringue desert.

And that's all I know about what I didn't know.  I enjoyed this puzzle's fun wordplay, and that's no LYE.  And now, I gotta RON.