Saturday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: October 13, 2018

My time: 15:10, ten minutes faster than average.

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Kevin G. Der is responsible for this themeless Saturday.  It has a lot of interesting fill, a variety of letters, and solid cluing.  I give it an A+, would solve again.

I think I saw Rogue One (although frankly all the Star Wars movies are kind of blurring together for me now), but had no guesses as to the "film whose climax is on the planet Scarif."  Scarif is a tropical planet that was created for the film.  The heroes try to find the Death Star plans hidden in a vault on the planet.

Soccer star ALI Krieger is a right back who played with the US National team as well as lots of league teams.  And she's a great role model!

I saw The Big Sick, a clever and cute film, but I needed crossfill help to write out the lead actress' name, ZOE KAZAN.

Composer Arcangelo CORELLI was a 17th century Italian violinist.  He is best known for his concerti grossi.  Here he is clued as having "inspired a set of Rachmaninoff variations."  This refers to Variations on a Theme of Corelli, based on "La Folia," which was not in fact composed by Corelli, but was used by him in 1700 as the basis for 23 variations in his Sonata for violin and continuo.

I had a hard time remembering the word ISOPOD, an order in which the pill bug and wood louse belong.  The largest one is the Bathynomus.

The Nissan MURANO is a crossover SUV.  It is named after Murano, a lagoon city near Venice, famous for its glass making.

Did you know that a volleyball team is six people?  A SEXTET, if you will?

"Title for Princess Anne beginning in 1982" is AUNT.  The children of Queen Elizabeth II are Anne, Charles, Andrew, and Edward.  In 1982, Prince William was born to Charles and Lady Di, making Anne and AUNT for the first time.  Elizabeth's first two grandchildren were born to Anne herself, making all the other uncles first.

"Big Four workers, for short" is CPAS.  I thought the Big Four were the giant American car companies, but it turns out they're accounting firms: Ernst & Young, Deloitte & Touche, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

I forgot that OMEGA in the lowercase resembles a w.

PIMAS are members of a Native American tribe originally active around Arizona and Sonora.  The Pima tribe were a friendly, peaceful people who were organized into two social groups called the Red Ants and the White Ants. The Pimas were highly competent farmers who used using irrigation methods to cultivate crops of corn, squash, pumpkins, kidney beans, tobacco, and cotton. Unlike in other Native Indian tribes, the men did the farming and wove cotton on looms.

"Global currency market with a portmanteau name" is FOREX.  A blend of foreign and exchange, it is the market in which currencies are traded. The forex market is the largest, most liquid market in the world, with average traded values that can be trillions of dollars per day. It includes all of the currencies in the world.

Remember ENOS, Adam's grandson, from September 17, 2018?  Here he's clued as "ancestor of Methuselah."

Clever clues: "They might be made to reconcile" is AMENDS.  "Means of drawing up solutions" is PIPETS, though I would have preferred the more common spelling.  "Not quite blow" is SEETHE.  "leaning column?" is OP-ED PIECE.  "Leaves work?" is TEA TASTER.  "Cartoonist's indicator of nodding" is ZEES.  "Diet in the Mideast" is KNESSET, which a bilingual pun!

Great puzzle!  I didn't solve it ALL AT ONCE, but handled everything it DISHED OUT.