My time: 19:57. six minutes faster than average.
I had answered very few answers before I cottoned on to the theme. The clue "Quit snickering, Damon!" was pretty obviously NO LAUGHING, MATT, and of course this was clearly a riff on no laughing matter. Checking with the puzzle's title — Final Offer — I instantly realized that the final er of a phrase would be left off: final off "er."
Not that all this quick connecting helped me much. I still struggled over the wording of things like HAPPILY EVER AFT ("always glad to be seated in the back of the boat?") and BRAIN TEAS ("afternoon gatherings of Mensa?").
My favorite one is "soup served at the church social:" AMEN BROTH.
I didn't know that Laos was the LAO People's Democratic Republic. A child born in the LPDR has a 47% chance of dying before five years of age. Not good, Lao People.
Apparently "behind the line of scrimmage" means ONSIDE. So many sports terms.
I have never heard of writer Walter Lord or his 1955 nonfiction history of the TITANIC, "A Night to Remember." It has never been out of print since its publication!
"California in San Fransisco, e.g." refers to a STREET! ha! Wasn't that confusing?? California STREET is one of the longest streets in San Francisco, and includes a number of important landmarks, including Chiantown, Nob Hill, and Grace cathedral.
We've all heard of DANTE, but we didn't know that he is one-third of the "three crowns of Florence," along with Petrarch and Boccaccio. My research indicates that this is not at all a widely-used epithet, and possibly just the title of a book.
I'm not familiar with the FENESTRA, an anatomical cavity, but it's easy to fill in if you're familiar with terms like fenestration.
Did you know ARAB-American Heritage Month is in April? Did you know there was an ARAB-American Heritage Month?
NAGOYA is the Japanese city where Lexus is headquartered. It is Japan's third most populous urban area. Located on the Pacific coast on central Honshu, it is the capital of Aichi Prefecture and is one of Japan's major ports along with those of Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Yokohama, and Chiba. It also boasts the oldest TV tower in Japan.
I didn't know that FERMIS were units of length in physics. A unit of length used to measure nuclear distances, equal to 10−15 meter, or one quadrillionth. Now replaced by the femtometer. The radius of a gold nucleus is approximately 8.45 fermis or femtometers. That's pretty small!
I was displeased to see a spoiler for "Game of Thrones" in the puzzle. I know it's been ten years since it aired but dammit, I just got into it and am only on season six.
The PIPIT is a ground-dwelling songbird that nests in both Arctic tundra and alpine meadows.
"State you'll never get to" is UTOPIA. Now that's just needlessly pessimistic, NYT puzzle.
Clever clues: "Foul rulers" is REFS. "Order by the border" is TACO.
This was a great puzzle, with a fun theme, though I would have liked a capper, like "where nurses work, or what the themed answers are missing." Something like that. I'm a little disappointed that my time wasn't faster, because there really wasn't too much new for a Sunday. I'm on a slow streak lately.
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