My time: 7:06, only 25 seconds faster than average. OMAN, this one was tricky!
Theme: famous people's first names plus a preposition (or in one case, a pronoun) to form a common phrase in which the name becomes a verb. For example, "author Grafron has arrived for dinner" is SUES OVER, as in files a lawsuit.
"Actress Wells has just entered the scene" is DAWNS ON. And so forth. I wasn't particularly enamored with today's theme; I have a few minor carps. CHUCK'S IT (or CHUCKS IT), clued as "actor Norris got tagged," is fine, but as I say, it's the only one that ends in a pronoun and so it stands out. WARD'S OFF, or WARDS OFF depending on the reading ("TV father Cleaver has just left the starting line") is the only one with a fictional name.
And "actor Nicholson will bat next" is maybe the easiest one to get, because he's incredibly famous and being "up" in baseball is very well known even to a sports know-nothing like me... but JACKS UP? What does that mean? Jacks up a car? It is related to the slang jacked up, meaning messed up? I hesitated to put this obvious answer in because it isn't really a standalone phrase.
Well, minor carping over.
I had a slow start right off when I put *IN ON for "aware of, as a scheme." They want ONTO, which I think is a worse answer. Likewise, I stuck with *HEM for "tailor's concern" but it's FIT.
It's not the kind of thing people generally know, but it makes sense that IKEA would be the first to feature a gay couple in a TV ad in the United States, in 1994. Of course, bigots being what they are, their phone lines were jammed with angry calls, conservatives called for boycotts, and the Ikea store in (the aptly named?) Hicksville, NY, was evacuated because of a bomb threat.
I like that "stop by" is END AT but is trying to make the solver put visit.
For "protected body parts for goalies and baseball catchers," *FACES comes to mind immediately, doesn't it? But it's SHINS, which is pretty devious.
The channel CNBC has been in the puzzle here and there. Today it's clued as the home of the show "Fast Money."
"Locale of both the highest and lowest points on the earth's surface" is ASIA. The former is, of course, Everest. The lowest is the Dead Sea. Sometimes people (like me) forget that Israel and Jordan are also Asia.
The wide, tapered ANCHO pepper was last in the blog on February 14, 2019.
Clever clues: "Head of England?" is LOO. "Big do" is AFRO. They got me again! I could not figure out a four letter word for bash that started with A.
Well, I just wasn't on this one's wavelength. They can't all be record-breakers.
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