Tuesday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: November 13, 2018

My time: 6:34.

--

John Ciolfi moves mountains to get this pun-rich puzzle together.  Playing off the mountain chain the ANDES, he includes six phrases, and ES at the end.

So the phrase house pet becomes HOUSE PETES --- that's "representatives Sessions (R-TX) and Aguilar (D-CA), for instance?"  Which is, praise the Lord, outdated.  Pete Sessions is out, amigos!  We took out the trash!  Pete Aguilar I hadn't heard of.

The other themed answers follow suit, like for the win becoming FOR THE WINES ("why many people visit Napa?").  Guess not becomes GUESS NOTES ("play 'Name That Tune'?"), and so on.

As always, study your capitals!  I know the world flags but not the capitals.  YAREN is clued as the  capital of Nauru in this puzzle.  But know-it-all Wikipedia interjects, "Yaren (and sometimes Aiwo) is usually listed as the capital of Nauru; however, the republic does not have cities [Yaren is nominally a "district"] or an official capital. Yaren is accepted by the United Nations as the main district."

GUIDO di Pietro is the birth name of the 15th century painter we know as Fra Angelico.

"Bygone court org. --- or current court org." is ABA.  This came up on September 16.

Sault STE. Marie, the Michigan town and bridge, came up on January 7.

The Jaguar model XK-E, aka the E-Type, keeps popping up on this blog and I keep not caring about it enough to remember.

Clever clues: "Handy thing to know, for short?" is ASL.  "Went after, in a way" is SUED.

And now, as Lady Macbeth says, TO BED.