My time: 19:57.
Theme: TICK ALL THE BOXES, because we're British now and don't say check, I guess. The shaded squares are read as [box] when Across and [TICK] when down. So, for example, SOAP [box] crosses with S[TICK]Y SITUATION, and TOY [box] crosses with THAT'S THE [TICK]ET.
I knew there was something cutesy going on, but at first I thought it was leaving out the middle word of a phrase for some reason, so I had *CARROT STICK and *TICKLE IVORIES. Eventually, of course, the explanatory clue kicked in.
I had "Never meet your *HEROS" and shook my head at the apparent misspelling. It turns out to be "Never meet your IDOLS," which I think we can agree is not the usual way to say it. (See also REIMAGE and UNARMS.)
But then apparently HOT HAND, singular, is something people say? Odd.
"What Franklin famously asked for" is RESPECT. That baffled me and, I'm ashamed to say, I had to Duck Duck Go it. It's talking about Aretha! Duh!
I never heard of Ka LAE, southernmost point on Hawaii.
I got a chuckle out of "Elizabeth Warren, vis-a-vis former chief justice Earl Warren, e.g:" NO RELATION. That's so dumb it works.
SHE Would be King is a debut novel by Wayétu Moore, a fictional history of Liberia.
ISLAM follows the Hijri calendar, according to which it's the year 1441.
Roy CAMPANELLA was a catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the late 1940s and 1950s.
Jan HUS was a Czech church reformer in the 14th century (in the Western calendar, not the Hijri).
The Kaaba, in MECCA, appeared way back in 2017.
Clever clue: "Note-taking spot?" is ATM.
A pretty good Sunday edition. Sundays are long and sometimes a lot of work; a nice theme like this helps break up the monotony.
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