Tuesday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: January 29, 2019

My time: 6:43.

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Benjamin Kramer serves us up an ace of a puzzle with this VOLLEYBALL-loving grid.  The themed answers LIP SERVICE, the COLBERT BUMP, TELEVISION SET, and GOLDEN SPIKE all showcase volleyball terms in their final word.  Also, perhaps coincidentally, the words A NET appear directly under SPIKE and over the word VOLLEYBALL.

I don't like the answer MEOWS for "sounds from a pet owner's lap."  It seems much more realistic for the sounds to be *PURRS.

Alfred ADLER was one of my least favorite psychiatrists when I was taking pfreshman psychology.  He was last seen on this blog on February 22, 2018.

Pulitzer prize-winning author James AGEE was showcased on November 13, 2017.  He is known for writing the autobiographical novel A Death in the Family.  Today he is clued as the screenwriter of The African Queen.  Agee's career as a movie scriptwriter was curtailed by his alcoholism. Nevertheless, he wrote both that classic and The Night of the Hunter (1955).

HIGH-LOW is the answer today for a poker variant in which the worst and best hands split the pot.  On November 18, 2018, this appeared as hi-lo.

Nothing truly new this time around, but there were some long answers and a couple of things I needed reminding of.  Nothing particularly clever in the cluing, but a well-executed theme.

Well, BYE.