Tuesday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: February 19, 2019

My time: 6:03, not great but two minutes faster than average.

--

A timeless question plagues today's constructor David Alfred Bywaters: TO BE / OR NOT / TO BE.  Or, to put it another way, two B or not two B.  This means that in the puzzle, the letter B is added or removed from one of four well-known phrases and then clued literally.

In the two B's department, "one who cheats on a weight-reduction plan" is DIETARY FIBBER.  And "one who's taking a polar vortex pretty hard?" is COLD SOBBER.   When one B is elimated, we get CHINESE CAN AGE ("heyday of taxis in Beijing?") and WE WAS ROBED ('defense against a charge of public nudity?"), both genuinely funny.

GOYA has come up a few times, but I don't think we've looked at his Maja Vestida yet.

I like YAWNS for "they might precede 'well, we must be going.'"

For "fix up, for a building" I put *REFAB at first, because I don't think of REHAB as being a construction term.

IMPECUNIOUS is a great word, but I don't think it belongs in a Tuesday grid.

"Province between Man. and Que." is ONT.  A good mnemonic for the southern provinces west to east is "British Albert Sasses Man On Queen."

The Rock-OLA corporation was founded in 1927 and manufactured jukeboxes and later other machines like shuffleboard.  Two astounding bits of trivia about this company: it still exists, and its name is not some wannabe-hip fauxmanteau but is the name of its founder, David Rockola.  That's too crazy, man.

Clever clue: "Producer of the Jacksons?" is ATM.

This was a fun puzzle.  Challenging and education.  Well, seeya LTR.