Thursday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: February 11, 2021

My time: 8:26, six minutes faster than average.

Today's theme plays with irregular plurals.  The four themed Across answers are created by starting with a two-word phrase that happens to contain a letter string that spells out an irregular plural.  To appear in the grid, the answers have that letter string taken out, and replaced with a doubled singular of the plural.  The doubled singular is then shown in grey squares.

So, for example, "what a pratfall may be done for" is comedic effect.  But the irregular plural hidden in that phrase, dice, is replaced with its singular twice: COMEDIE DIEFFECT.  Mentally replacing the "die"s with dice you get COME[dic e]FFECT.

Similarly, "where magazines may be laid out" is coffee table.  It's entered in the grid with the feet part replaced with two "foot"s: COFFOOT FOOTABLE.  Read that as COF[fee t]ABLE.

It's a very clever piece of construction, but I do wish there were a sort of explanatory clue or capper to bring it all together.

Actress Anne MEARA was in the puzzle on November 20, 2018, but today she is clued as having four Emmy nominations.  Two of those were Supporting Actress for "Archie Bunker's Place," one for a guest role on "Homicide," and one is for her starring role in the drama "Kate McShane."

The Hindu honorific MAHARISHI derives from Sanskrit for "great sage."

For "what a swish misses" I put *NET but it's RIM.

I had no idea the Super Bowl was held in TAMPA.  That's nice.

RHYME PAYS is the 1987 debut album by Ice-T, one of the first in the West Coast gangsta rap genre.

I know LLCS are Limited Liability Corporations, but "pass-through taxation" is new to me.  All of the profits and losses of the LLC "pass through" the business to the LLC owners (called members), who report this information on their personal tax returns. The LLC itself does not pay federal income taxes, although some states impose an annual tax on LLCs.

I know NEVIL Shute's book On the Beach, but I don't think I knew he wrote A Town Like Alice.  It's about a young Englishwoman who becomes romantically interested in a fellow prisoner of World War II in Malaya, and after liberation emigrates to Australia to be with him.

"BETCHA By Golly, Wow" is a 1972 hit by the Stylistics. 

I know the statue outside Rockefeller Center is ATLAS mainly because of the intro to "30 Rock."

Calabria, a region of Italy, is located in the TOE of Italy.

Sour fruit SLOE was in the blog on November 24, 2020.

We learned that the CDC is headquartered in Atlanta on January 21.

Movie mogul Marcus LOEW was spotlighted on September 12, 2020.

Clever clues: "Oak, in a nutshell?" is ACORN.  "Change in the Middle East, say" is DINAR.  "Razor handle?" is OCCAM.  "Got into the swing?" is SAT.

This one flummoxed me at first with its weird letter rearrangement, but outside of the theme, there wasn't much difficulty.  In fact, based on my time I'd say it was easy for a Thursday.