Sunday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: August 23, 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My time: 23:32, about five minutes faster than average.

Theme: "Musical interlude," by Barbara Lin.  Seven common phrases have a musical note placed inside, changing the meaning, and clued with the changed meaning.  So for example, Amazing grace is the source for AMAZING DOG RACE, after do is inserted.  It's then clued as "Iditarod, for one?"  The note re is placed in foster parent to get FORESTER PARENT, "one driving kids around in a Suburu?"

There's an addition musical pun in "letting out all the stops to drown out the other instruments" — think the stops on an organ.  And you get ORGAN DOMINATION.  I think the funniest one is PARASOL MILITARY, but it's a little odd that they went with the three-letter spelling.  For consistency's sake they should have gone with so.

And so on.  Now, the rest of the fill.

I've never heard of the Beatles song "Yes It Is," and I'm an old fogey who listens to classic rock!  The B-side to the 1965 hit "Ticket to Ride," it was only ever included on compilations.

A basketball player, in old slang, is CAGER?  I could see that being a baseball player because of a batting cage, I guess?  But apparently basketball used to be played in cages. Cages were installed around basketball courts to protect the fans from the players and vice-versa from the brawls that would break out in the scrimmage to get the ball after it went out of bounds.

I couldn't get New York's iconic SEAGRAM Building.  It doesn't look that visually interesting to me.  It was designed in 1958 by by German-American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.  It has 1,500 tons of bronze.

I haven't heard of Canadian poet ANNE Carson, but it looks like she's a pretty big deal in poetry circles.

Another woman of letters I don't know, MAEVE Binchy, is an Irish writer of popular novels, usually about small town Irish life.

"Excel function that uses a calendar" stumped me.  It's EDATE.   I'm not an Excel wizard.

A TOE hook is a move in rock climbing in which, well, the climber puts pressure on the toe to push upwards.  Now I'm not a rock climber, but.. It seems like that doesn't really need a specific name?  It seems like it's just how you climb?  But there's a lot of chatter on the Climbing Internet about how to use it, so never mind my opinion.

I was unsurprised to find that the rapper behind "One Mic" is NAS, as he is the single most common rapper in the Times puzzle.

The character Aunt ELLER from "Oklahoma!" is a visitor from the past.

Clever clues: "Show stoppers?" is REMOTES.  "Bronze that's not winning any awards?" is FAKE TAN. I liked COASTER being the answer for "bar freebie," especially since *BEER NUT would fit.

And thus, another Sunday puzzle ENDS.  I quite enjoyed this theme!  My criterion for a really good theme is that it provides a challenge, and may even confuse the solver, but once it clicks, it helps with the solution.  All of that applies here — once I discovered the theme, writing the musical notes in the circled squares helped with the solving.