Saturday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: October 31, 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My time: a spooooky 10:50, just over half my average Saturday time.

This puzzle has nothing to do with Halloween at all.  Timely themes is one of the areas in which I think Will Shortz has let us, the crossword-solving public, down.  Incidentally, this was a puzzle in which a knowledge of French was more help than even usual (ALOUETTE! ACCENT AIGU!).  Just OODLES of French.  That may be unfair to non-Francophones, but c'est la vie.

"Onetime trade org" is EEC, which stands for European Economic Community.  It was created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957.   Upon the formation of the European Union (EU) in 1993, the EEC was incorporated and renamed the European Community (EC). In 2009, the EC's institutions were absorbed into the EU's wider framework and the community ceased to exist.

Here is an example of a "too-clever-by-half" clue: "Product that becomes an item to which it's applied after shifting the last letter one spot down in the alphabet."  PAM, for a pan.  Ugh.

I don't think I've heard the phrase "A LA minute," meaning cooked to order.  Apparently it's applied mainly to sauces, often cooked in the same pan as the corresponding entrée.

"Form of graffiti" is AEROSOL.  I'm not sure if "form" implies that AEROSOL is a type of graffiti or a medium which graffiti is written in.  

I liked that "A to B, say" was a clue for both VOL. and STEP.  I initially guessed *RTE for the first one.

"Cheese from Wales, not southeastern Pennsylvania" is CAERPHILLY.  It is a hard, crumbly white cheese that originated in the area around the town of Caerphilly.  It is thought to have been created to provide food for the local coal miners. 

I've heard of ST. LO, capital of the Manche, but not the Battle of the Hedgerows, which took place there in 1944 between American and German forces.

The Hector Berlioz work "Les Nuits d'ETE" is an 1841 song cycle.

"Things on the small slide?" for AMOEBAS sounds like it's a pun, but just isn't.

I really wanted "dweller in the Himalayas" to be *BIGFOOT but it's BHUTANI.

"European city where the first carbonated beverage was invented" is LEEDS.  In 1767, Joseph Priestly discovered a method of infusing water with carbon dioxide when he suspended a bowl of water above a beer vat at a local brewery in Leeds.  Coca-Cola produced a fizzy lemonade drink called Leed from 1967-84.

Man, I continue to misspell RAMI Malek's name as *REMI despite his many appearances in the puzzle.

Clever clue: "Something fit for a king or queen" is MATTRESS.

I got pretty close to my record on this one!  To me this was a pretty easy Saturday.