Wednesday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: October 17, 2018

My time: 6:28, so close to the record!

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Patrick Blindauer and Tony Orbach serves up a delicious (albeit repetitive) breakfast in this puzzle.  At the top is a PAT of butter, and every three rows going down to the bottom there is another themed clue.  These are PANCAKE ("kind of makeup"), PANCAKE ("flatten"), and PANCAKE ("breakfast food item"), and finally under this stack is a PLATE.

It's a nice idea, but in execution it's rather boring.  I think that PAT and PLATE should have been clued as things unrelated to food (for example, "___ Morita" and "tectonic _____").

On the sides, running down, are AUNT JEMIMA and HUNGRY JACK.

For "welds" I misread "wields" for far too long and so had a hard time getting JOINS.

The Enemy Below is a 1957 film.  Set in the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II, two equally able captains on opposing sides square off in a life-and-death game of tactical maneuvering. American Capt. Murrell (Robert Mitchum) helms the destroyer USS Haynes, while his Nazi counterpart, Von Stolberg (Curt Jurgens), commands a German U-BOAT.

A mama lobster is called a HEN, eh?  And a male is called a cock!

UCLA has come up a lot in this puzzle, but this is the first time we've heard that its colors are gold and "True Blue."  Interestingly, there is an academics and administrative color, UCLA Blue (and UCLA Gold), that is not used by the athletic department.

"She's a Lady" is a 1971 Tom Jones song that I'm not familiar with.

The UTE are a Native American people who live around the Great Basin.  The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Oregon and Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, and Wyoming.

Here's a totally new word to me, Mister Vocabulary himself: SNELL, which has many meanings but the one germane here is "a short length of line used to attack a hook to a fishing line."  So there is a SNELL knot, by extension.

Broccoli RABE was examined on October 12, 2017.

"Carrier to Oslo" SAS was explored on May 30.

In other transport news, the ACELA, a train from Boston to Washington, came up on January 17.
The AAA baseball league rears its cute little head again, this time naming the Durham Bulls (showcased on September 2) and the Buffalo Bisons.  They missed a chance to call themselves the Buffalo Buffaloes.

Clever clue: "kitchen shortening?" is TSP.

Rather flat (heh) theme, no particularly clever clues, not very interesting fill.  I have to SAY IT: I give this puzzle a C+ maybe.