Tuesday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: September 25, 2018

My time: 6:19.

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Ross Trudeau sits back and gives us all good look at his puzzle, which MANSPREADS all over the place (especially the SUBWAY and the TRAINS --- it needs to MOVE / OVER!).   Four themed answers illustrate this in the grid, as the letters M, A, and N get father away from each other: OMANI, MCMAHON, MAMMALIAN, and Pulitzer-prize winning playwright MAXWELL ANDERSON.

Maxwell Anderson won for "Both Your Houses," a 1933 political drama.  I've never heard of him.

Which only underscores my opinion that, although the theme is very clever, and I always appreciate visual themes, some of this fill is pretty obscure for a Tuesday.  VERTEXES, EVERMORE, SLEEP APNEA... dang!

Case in point: Ronan TYNAN, one of the Irish Tenors.

I've heard of Amanda BYNES, barely, but I didn't know she had a show called "The Amanda Show" on Nickelodeon.  It also had Drake Bell in it!  ...I'm not the target audience.

For "courage" I put *VERVE but it's NERVE.

"Hit a four-bagger" is obviously "hit a home run," but I was hesitant to accept HOMER as a verb.

I'm not familiar with the animal ROE DEER.  It's a small, grey-brown deer with a very wide range, from Ireland to Iraq, from Norway to Turkey.

Hoover competitor ORECK makes vacuum cleaners and air purifiers.

MANU Ginóbili is a four-time NBA champion as well as an Olympic gold medal winner.  The name is short for Emanuel.  He was a shooting guard for the San Antonio Spurs.

Mount ELBERT, known as the "gentle giant" due to its easy climb to the summit, is the highest peak in the Rockies, at 14,440 feet.

In other mountain news, something that appears a lot is Mauna LOA, lower than its neighbor Mauna Kea.  It's a volcano!  I never know whether to fill in Kea or LOA.

Joe Biden was the senator from DEL from 1973 to 2009.  It's a scandal that I didn't know that.

We've had tarsus before, but not TARSALS, which is another way of saying the bones of the foot.

Selma director AVA DuVernay last appeared June 30.  She's in this puzzle an awful lot.

Clever clues: "Something common that's not really so common" is SENSE.  "Wet blanket?" is DEW.

Well, it's time I VAMOOSED.  UNTIL next time!