Thursday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: January 31, 2019

My time: 11:54.

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Peter A. Collins got this puzzle published on the wrong day!  (That seems to happen a lot.)  It defines the numerical Down answer 212 three ways: NEW YORK'S AREA CODE, LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY, and H20'S BOILING POINT.

The other two answers that cross 212 are A-1 STEAK SAUCE and W-2S ("some IRS forms").

For "homing in on" I put *ZOOMING but it's ZEROING.

The answer ANI has come up a few times, but never before as the black carnivorous New World bird of the cuckoo family.

"Number between cinque and sette" is SEI.  That's six.  I don't parlo italiano!

Apparently there's a Democratic Socialists of America, and they have a logo.  It features two clasped hands under a ROSE.  In November 2018, two DSA members, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, were elected to the United States House of Representatives, and 11 were elected to state legislatures.

"Capital on the Dnieper" is KIEV.  The Dnieper is the largest river in the Ukraine.

ELY is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, England.  The city and abbey were founded in 673, later destroyed by Danish invaders.  It was gradually rebuilt over the centuries.

I've never heard of the Elton John song "NIKITA," from his 1985 album Ice on Fire.  I'm not sure I've missed much.

BRANDI Chastain is a Wold Cup- and Olympic-winning women's soccer player, probably best known for celebrating her 1999 Wold Cup victory by whipping off her jersey.  Oh, the scandal!  I may faint.

Summation symbol SIGMA was first investigated on March 15, 2018.

Clever clues: "Leaves after dinner?" is TEA.  "Commercial lead-in to film" is LUCAS --- that's not a pun, but an admirably oblique clue.  "Development sites" is WOMBS.

This was a fun puzzle.  The welcome surprise of the digits and the long theme answers made this one an unusual challenge.  I really dislike the spelling TE-HEE for tee-hee, but other than that, this was a well-made, COHERENT Thursday.