Thursday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: October 11, 2018

My time: 10:59.

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Johanna Fenimore and Jeff Chen support breast cancer awareness with this puzzle by celebrating NO BRA DAY (which is October 13, as we learned on September 6 of this year, so this puzzle is a little early).

Six answers contain the letter string B-R-A, which must be mentally removed in order to make sense of the clue. For example we have BRAIDING, which is clued as "picking out of a lineup, e.g."  Or BRAVERY, which is clued as "extremely."  The clue that finally made the theme clear to me was, pretty much in conjunction with the capper, LAB RATS for "upper body muscles, for short."

The IONIAN Sea lies between Greece and Sicily.

I had forgotten that "Lamb of literature" (Charles Lamb) used the pen name ELIA.

ETTA James sings "At last, my love has come along" in her song "At Last."

"I'm Down" is SIDE B of the Beatles single "Help!"  I'm not sure if I've ever heard that song.

"Letters for college applicants" is ETS.  This is an independent testing service that administers the SAT, AP exams, and other programs.

Console Wars is a 2014 book that follows a new CEO of video game company SEGA of America, and details the history of the fierce business competition between Sega and Nintendo throughout the 1990s as well as the internal conflicts that took place between Sega of America and Sega of Japan.

Know those state flowers!  VIOLETS are the state flowers of Rhode Island, Illinois, and New Jersey.
Wisconsin's is the wood violet.

Author James AGEE and his autobiographical novel A Death in the Family came up on November 13, 2017.

The Camaro IROC has appeared a few times, but on September 7, 2017, I noted that it is named after the International Race of Champions. 

Clever cues: "Ones making passing judgments, for short?" is QBS.  "Home pages?" is LEASE.  "Result of imperfect service" is LET.  "Application for Mr. Universe contest?" is OIL.

Well, CREDIT where it's due: this was a fine puzzle, with an amusing and well-executed theme, if not very timely.