My time: 16:53, only two and a half minutes short of the record!
Theme: "Playing with Food." Four Across answers have circled squares that contain, in some way, the name of a food, and four corresponding clues ask questions about that food.
For example. The first one I got was the clue "1985 thriller with the tagline: A federal agent is dead. A killer is on the loose. And the City of Angels is about to explode." I've never seen this movie. And frankly, it sounds dreadful. But with a few of the letters in, I managed to interpolate the die in LA part. Therefore the circled letter had to contain olive, which I realized because I read the puzzle title. So it's T[O LIVE] OR DIE IN LA. And then the corresponding clue asks how this food is "depicted cryptically." It's STUFFED OLIVE.
Since the other clues had more than one circled square, I knew they couldn't all be rebuses, and in fact, there were no other rebuses. This theme helped a lot with the solving, because first, I knew the circled squares would have food items spelled out in them, and second the corresponding clues always ended with those food names at the end of the answer. So when I got BANANA SPLIT, I knew banana was depicted "split" in the joke clue, so I got BANK OF GUYANA easily that way. Otherwise I would not have been able to fill in "South American financial institution since 1965" quite so quickly.
Similarly, BASEBALL CARD contains the word salad, so I knew the corresponding clue about its depiction would end in salad, and so it does — CHOPPED SALAD.
The currency of Laos is the KIP. The term derives from a Lao word meaning "ingot." Currently one Laotian Kip equals 0.00011 United States Dollar.
I had to use crosses to ascertain if Nancy Reagan's book was called I Love You, *RONALD or I Love You, RONNIE.
I'm sure that AMY Sherman-Palladino is a household word in the Sherman-Palladino household, but I know very few television show creators. She made "Gilmore Girls" and another show I quite like, "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." She seems to wear a top hat a lot?
Herbert ZEPPO Marx was the youngest Marx brother and the last one to die, in 1979.
"Love, in Lucca" is AMORE. I would have known that if I had known that Lucca is a city in Tuscany. It is famous for its intact Renaissance-era city walls.
Kirsten Gillibrand, current New York Senator, was once Hillary Clinton's PROTEGE in that she worked on Clinton's 2000 U.S. Senate campaign. Sort of a DINO, she called for Al Franken's resignation and became the first high-profile Democrat to say that Bill Clinton should have resigned when his affair with Monica Lewinsky was revealed.
I have never heard of ANNA LEE, a British actress mainly active from the 1930s to 1960s. She's clued as having the nickname "The British Bombshell."
Omar EPPS has come up before in the puzzle, but today it's a different EPPS — stand-up comedian and actor Mike EPPS. Never heard of him.
"Many musical chords" are TRIADS. All triads are chords, but not all chords are triads. A triad is a chord with only three notes, and is built on thirds. To make a triad, we take a note, add the note a third higher, and then add another note a third higher again. A chord contains at least two notes; it can have three or more.
"Bony projection found just behind the ear" is MASTOID.
ILOILO City is a port city in the Philippines. It's the capital of ILOILO Province.
The Orlando Magic's home arena is AMWAY Center! But do the Orlando Solar Bears get any love? It's their home too.
Anne Frank's father was OTTO Frank. He was the sole member of his family to survive the Holocaust. He inherited Anne's manuscripts after her death and arranged for the publication of her diary, and oversaw its adaptation to both theater and film. He died in 1980.
"QB's stat" is ATT, for attempted passes, as revealed on April 25, 2018.
California's Point REYES Peninsula was last explored on November 30, 2018.
I don't know why I can't remember this stupid nail polish brand, OPI. It was in the puzzle last week!
Connective tissue running along the outer thigh is IT BAND, short for iliotibial band, as discussed February 13, 2019.
Caffeinated aspirin brand ANACIN came up way back on December 9, 2017.
Clever clues: "Org. with both left- and right-wingers" is THE NFL. (Although it seems from my quick search that these terms apply to soccer and Australian football, whereas THE NFL calls them receivers?) "Part of a return address?" is IRS. "Parlor pics" is TATS. "Layer of farmland?" is HEN.
This was a particularly fun and admirably executed puzzle. I love it when the theme is tricky, but helps you with the solve when it clicks. I was not all in a FUDDLE. I S'POSE they can't all be gems, but this was one of the best Sundays in a while.
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