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Facial feature also known as a "nasolabial fold" / FRI 7-3-26 / Former Medicare IDs / N.A.A.C.P. member?: Abbr. / Bank of China Tower architect / Many a classic Steinbeck character
Friday, July 3, 2026
Constructor: BARBARA LIN
Relative difficulty: EASY (For a Friday)
THEME: NONE— Happy Friday!
Word of the Day: ELIA (9D: Essayist who wrote "Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door") —
Essays of Elia is a collection of essays written by Charles Lamb; it was first published in book form in 1823, with a second volume, Last Essays of Elia, issued in 1833 by the publisher Edward Moxon.
The essays in the collection first began appearing in The London Magazine in 1820 and continued to 1825. Lamb's essays were very popular and were printed in many subsequent editions throughout the nineteenth century. The personal and conversational tone of the essays has charmed many readers; the essays "established Lamb in the title he now holds, that of the most delightful of English essayists."[1] Lamb himself is the Elia of the collection, and his sister Mary is "Cousin Bridget." Charles first used the pseudonym Elia for an essay on the South Sea House, where he had worked decades earlier; Elia was the last name of an Italian man who worked there at the same time as Charles, and after that essay the name stuck.
As a theatre major (as if you couldn't tell from yesterday), I also appreciated seeing SET DESIGNS (33D: Play pieces?), not to mention the fun cluing angle for ELLE (23D:Woods seen on Broadway). Naturally, that also put me in mind of the following from reading BIG EASY at 39A (Saints' setting, with "the"):
Stray Thoughts:
- 47A: Best Actress Oscar Winner between Chastain and Stone (YEOH)— I'm not going to look it up, I'm just assuming she won for Supercop 2.
- 57A: Prominent feature of Jafar and the Genie in "Aladdin" (GOATEE) — Sure, Aladdin is great, but there's only one true GOAT of entertainment goatees:
- 60D: Villanelle, e.g. (POEM) - Not Jodie Comer? No love for Killing Eve?
- 18D: Like a nonstarter, for short (DOA) — I've been watching a ton of noir films lately, and I really enjoyed DOA, a movie where the protagonist has to solve his own murder. You just have to get past the strange cartoon sound effects that get used early in the movie.
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73 comments:
Mostly easy for a Friday, except I didn't know NETIPOT (weird name for a drug) and didn't know "villanelle" was a POEM. So, two cheats...not unusual at the end of the week. Otherwise, I enjoyed it.
Easy-medium for me.
I did not know SMILE LINE, ALLIES and POEM (as clued), and TEMPERA.
Costly erasure. - HIRE before LADE.
Solid grid, not much junk, more than a smattering of sparkle, liked it or what @Eli said.
Top half Easy, bottom half Medium. Easy-Medium over all.
* * * _ _
Overwrites:
My non-reputable word was SEedY before it was SEAMY (10D).
At 22A, I was thinking of "bring on board" in terms of hire rather than LADE.
natS before YEAS for the 28D Washington pros.
WOEs:
Needed crosses for the last two letters of Michelle YEOH (47A). I can never remember how to spell that name.
At 60a, I didn't know the POEM Villanelle.
¿Estás dormido?
Okay kids, get your "wow this was kid's placemat easy" ready. I know you're rarin' to get the woe-is-mes on the books, so here's the vituperation level ya gotta beat today:
MONDAY-LY EASY Hall of Fame © @Beezer
absurdly, actually, appropriately, awfully, boringly, certainly, childishly, definitely, delightfully, despairingly, disappointingly, disconcertingly, embarrassingly, equally, eventually, extremely, fairly, frifly (?@kitshef), hilariously, incredibly, insultingly, laughably, mind-numbingly, mostly, normally, overly, painfully, preposterously, probably, psychotically (lol@Liveprof), really, relatively, remarkably, ridiculously, satisfactorily (@Roo enters on little cat feet), shockingly, significantly, stunningly, stupidly, supercalifragilisticexpialidociously (!@egs of course), surprisingly, terribly, trivially, undeservedly, unfairly, unusually, and whooshingly EASY.
When TEMPERA is the only hiccup, I figure this puzzle was written for me. God's advocate was on my side. Lovely smooth flow with a pleasant landing and so many great long entries. Enjoyable romp expertly made.
I hated MORTAR FIRE as it always feels PANTS AFIRE adjacent, but this is the world we're living in I suppose. Even still I don't need it in my puzzles.
Pretty sure the non-ETS are more often the villains, but you know how Hollywood makes everything Earthling-centric. I'm an ALIEN ALLY. You kinda hafta be in New Mexico as this is where they tend to land their spacecrafts and buy meth.
CHAIRS also support LGBTQ+ people.
Oh, and disco sucks along with the Brothers GIBB.
❤️ IMPULSE BUY. The YIPS. MEWLS.
People: 7
Places: 1
Products: 1
Partials: 8
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 19 of 72 (26%)
Funny Factor: 3 😐
Tee-Hee: Nasolabial fold. SPEW SEAMY BICULTURE.
Uniclues:
1 Architect genuflects.
2 Sky high guy swipes a hair tie.
3 NOLA nose declogger.
4 Anyway, auntie said she's not wasting money on something else, so she wants to put Nana in a coffee can, a Folgers coffee can, and put that in the mausoleum.
5 My life as a reverse Sisyphus ... I pull up, and then I push down. And then I do it again and again ... until the chain breaks.
1 IM PEI TAKES A BOW
2 IM PEI TAKES A BOW
3 BIG EASY NETI POT
4 URN SNIT CANARD
5 DOOR OPENER ONUS (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Eagle's aerie. LARGE BALD SPOT.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s not a drug, NETI POTs are basically little teapots one uses to irrigate/flush the nasal canal.
Medium-Challenging, actually.
This puzzle played much harder for me than @Eli. laughLINES before SMILELINES and forgetful of ELIA as Charles Lamb's pseudonym (which I should remember by now), and unsure about the grid spanner up there, made that NE corner take a while. And then the entire South was tough for me.... thought maybe the Genie had fancy BOOTEEs for a while, GIBB as clued was a WOE, and then had NFCEAST for the Saints' setting and with EAS shared with the right answer.... even when I got BIG I thought maybe BIGEAST was some conference I didn't know much about.... Took my forever to see that Y. I knew tIPS was wrong but couldn't remember the YIPS. So this was hard for me for a Friday. But I did finish sans cheats, so that's good. I agree, Barbara, this was a smooth, clean, awesome Friday grid. All the grid spanners and long answers were colorful. Thanks!!! : )
Eli nailed it - beautiful grid layout and well filled all around. It’s difficult to find any dreck here. The four intersecting spanners are fantastic as are the corresponding nine stacks. I’m sure as a proud father Rex will like SET DESIGNS - I do too but IMPULSE BUY is the star here.
The Dixie Cups
Not a NETI POT guy and had a side eye to SRSLY and POEM. E FILES clue was outstanding - the misdirects abound and are all nuanced and elegant.
Zydeco Gris Gris
Needed crosses for ROSEN and YEOH. I guess some of the shorts were clunky - SSNS, IN HD, ASSN but few and far between. MOLTS, MEWLS, CANARD etc reflect the effort of the build.
I Don’t Like Monday’s
Combined with yesterdays gem - one of the top back to backs we’ve seen. Highly enjoyable Friday morning solve.
Have you seen my wife, Mr. Jones?
Oh, gorgeous grid design, never used before in the Times.
And it's so clear that Barbara spends time with each clue. I love the misdirects and fuzziness – little things like [Choking cause, with "the"], and big things like [Makes a return that hits the net?].
Gorgeous answers, such as TAKES A BOW, PRESIDENTIAL RUN, CANARD, THROE, I KNOW THE FEELING, IMPULSE BUY, and MEWLS.
Barbara, you are one of the handful of constructors whose skillfully-made creations shimmer with quality, with a high level of art that makes me shake my head in wonder. You do it every time, and I so look forward to what you come out with. Thank you for another splendid, splendid outing.
Finished in exactly my average Friday time, so I'd have to say it was a medium, skewing to harder than most Fridays of late. Nice puzzle.
Was confused by the fact that the clue for 8D ("Nurse's tote") contains the answer to 20A.
The clock tells me this one was easy but it felt harder than the clock points out. I think because the last 10% took me 80% of the time to finish up. For example, I just wasn’t clocking that Oil alternative was looking for a paint. I was thinking of motor oil or olive oil but not paints. Also was fixating on Mode being a style or way not a math term or STAT. I enjoyed the puzzle as a whole. I liked the long fills. Don’t remember seeing CANARD in the puzzle and haven’t seen THROE in a long time.
Two rough spots for me today. My only real exposure to art was finger-painting in kindergarten, so I was stymied by TEMPERA (I thought perhaps there was a culinary substitute like butter or lard, or perhaps an automotive angle - paint never occurred to me, and even if it did, I didn’t know what TEMPERA meant until post-solve).
Additionally, HIT OUT AT is not a phrase I can recall encountering in the wild (although it is so nondescript that I may have glossed right over it), and of course I don’t know the actress even though she is apparently world-famous and at the pinnacle of her profession.
So a pretty characteristic solve with the usual stumbling blocks - pretty much what I hope for on a Friday. Wishing a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend to all.
Solid Friday with a base/bass obsession. A bit ugly in that D.O.A. ASSN. E.T.A.S SPEC STAT area.
I've never seen a difference between standard definition, HD, 4k UHD. Of course, our bedroom TV is a CRT, so maybe that has something to do with it.
Well, put me in the camp of those who found this one medium-challenging. Lots of white spaces I had to skip over and come back to. More of a Saturday vibe for me—the good kind, with clever clues and colorful answers, but not really on my wavelength. Thought for a moment that the musical group might be the Brothers Four, which tells you I’m an antediluvian relic of the urban folk revival. Well done, Barbara Lin!
I’m not going to let Eli bust my “ balloon “by saying this puzzle was easy. It was medium to hard and was on my wave length to solve. A fabulous and fun workout.🎈🎈🎊🎊
Was anyone else bothered that "tote" was in a clue (8D) and an answer (20A) or are dupes now perfectly acceptable?
Hey All !
Toughie for me today. The East-Center section last to go. Surprised I got everything correct!
Short and sweet today.
Hope y'all have a great Friday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
My education has been sadly neglected—no recollection of NETIPOTS anywhere in the gray matter. Found the top of this puzzle easy, the bottom tough. Thought all the long answers were great, but for some reason could not parse IKNOWTHEFEELING. Started out wanting IMprov to be the opening in one down, but adapted after getting BUY as the second word.
Welcome back, @Lewis! Hope your mission was accomplished.
For reference, Friday I can usually get with ~2 hints. This one I just gave up. Totally different set of life experiences, I guess.
After 30 minutes I did a reveal all, and I had *maybe* 10% correct.
It played challenging for me, but it’s hard to figure out why. I had the top and the bottom two rows filled out rather early and still couldn’t get any momentum for a long time. But I agree that the fill was strong, so I think the clueing just wasn’t on my wavelength. I appreciated the challenge though.
I thought it was easy, too, until I didn't get the happy music and couldn't find my mistake. Turns out BIGEASY crossing YIPS did me in. I had Big East and Tips. Never heard of the yips; tips sounded just as logical.
The villanelle is such a neat poem structure. Very hard to write a good one. Many have tried!
Eli, MIchelle Yeoh won her Oscar for "Everything Everywhere All at Once."
I recommend Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” and Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,” if you’re not already familiar.
I suggest reading “One Art,” then reading the story behind it, then reading by poem again—just heartbreaking.
A villanelle is a poem with a certain structure. It's a French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas. These two refrain lines form the final couplet in the quatrain. A good example is “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas.
I've never heard the phrase HIT OUT AT. That one baffled me.
Was easy for me because I'm a pharmacist. But that's all that was easy
I think cross-duplicating like that has generally been OK, at least from my observations here. Just no "in-the-puzzle" duplicating beyond little connector words, like as or so or to, and no use of the same word in a clue and an answer
"The yips" is primarily a golf term, referring to players who miss easy putts on account of nervousness.
Right on your wavelength.... That was the exact same spot I spent 15 minutes looking for.... but finally remembered YIPS, what happens to baseball pitchers when they just forget how to get the ball over the plate.... I remembered TWISTIES right away (a la Simone Biles rough patch), but took me forever to remember YIPS and spot BIG EASY.... : )
Caesar: I came, I saw, I conquered. ETTU?
Me: At my age? ISIT.
How the great architect introduced himself: IMPEI
Precedes dokey in the South: OKIE.
What did you do with the ball to cause your arm so much pain? THROE
Is the burden ours? Yes, it's ONUS.
Goes on and on about choking: YAPS YIPS.
Loved the puzzle and writeup. Thanks!
Agree, I hear "lash out at" but I have never heard hit out at. I wasn't a huge fan of this one. Yips, yaps, snit, stat, it was just too much and the longer ones didn't justify them
I needed to lookup ROSEN to finish. Some good stuff (EFILES, BICULTURE, IMPULSEBUY), but too many clunkers (RIM, HITOUT, ALLIES, SETDESIGN).
For me, ELIA is pure crosswordese. I learned it from my early days of solving and have never seen it in any other context. It's been absent for a long time.
I get the YIPS often when watching Jeopardy. I know the "question" and want to scream it out, but it won't come to my lips.
Medium with sticking points here. Nearly stymied myself on the whole left coast by going with PLEADSINNOCENCE, which of course I had to change. Identical experience to @Andy Freude with the Brothers FOUR, which I put in without really thinking about it. Pays to read the whole clue I'm thinking. Had never heard of Ms. YEOH, apologies there and am unfamiliar with Sen. ROSEN so crosses needed. Took Acrostic experience to finally see BIRDSOFPARADISE, but then there it was. Like seeing that happen.
A nit with MOLTS. I think losing hair is usually expressed by SHEDS and I think of MOLTS with feathers. Don't think I've ever heard of a cat of dog MOLTing.
Felt just about right for a Friday for me, BL. Beautiful Long answers and some nice tricky cluing. Thanks for all the fun.
This felt on the easy side even though my time was average Saturday. Average times feeling easy has been common for me this year as we've had some outstandingly difficult late week puzzles.
With it's big white corners and interlocked grid spanners this is something of a stunt puzzle (a big reason for the easiness) but what a stunt! As amazing as it is to have these strong long answers packed around those spanners it was the stacking of NETIPOT over CANARD on top of THROE. That stood out the most. I think this puzzle is being g run on the 4th weekend because it was like watching fireworks go off. The boiler plate crosswordese in the 4s was no more than what should be expected and did nothing to reduce the dazzle.
TEMPERA is my word of the day too. It's the Japanese food you can paint with. SRSLY! I googled it. The word reminds me of when we had MASTIC a number of years ago in that its a word a number of experienced solvers are likely not to be familiar with. Believe it or not I was an art major many years ago so it's quite familiar.
Is it just me or does the term "nasolabial fold" make any one else think of Joan Rivers face lift jokes. She had one about naval lint on her chin so maybe the labia would have eventually made it up there too.
This solve was about 14 minutes faster than yesterday's. Difficulty progression inconsistency is so much the norm it's hardly worth mentioning (along with the dupe rule being broken) but I just wanted to bring it up as yesterday was such a great solve but my day was too busy to comment.
Oh, did this play easy for you? It felt about Friday average for me. (Well, average for recent Fridays. My walk through the archives is slower.) I guess if you plopped in the grid-spanners quickly, that could have really opened things up in a hurry, so the potential was there.
Some nice FriPuz feistiness, here & there. Fairly smoooth fillins, but ...
SRSLY? Villanelle? NETIPOT? M&A PLEADSIGNORANCE, once again.
some fave stuff: IMPULSEBUY. IKNOWTHEFEELING. FILES clue. AMNESTY clue.
Thanx for the themeless rodeo, Ms. Lin darlin. Nice #-shaped set of grid-spanners. TAKE(S)ABOW.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
p.s.
Runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
Great Friday, Barbara! Thank you so much. I could tell immediately from the 'flow' it was constructed by a
well-respected, seasoned (I mean that in a good way! (lol) constructor. LOVED 26A = YES, 34A = EFILED.
To think, I almost gave up on the NYT!
Welcome back, Barbara, from a too-long hiatus :)
"Yips" is primarily a golf term. If a player misses easy putts because of nervousness, they say "He/she has the yips."
Michelle Yeoh won her Oscar for “Everything Everywhere All At Once”, a movie even my husband loved.
Medium to medium challenging here. Trouble all over, but especially down by POEM. Ugh. Had HIRE instead of LADE for 22A for a long time, causing nothing in the NW to connect up. 63A I had IKNOWTH... ...ING and there was too much ambiguity to figure out the rest. I still don't understand how WOOFER is a Bass player... wait I just got it. It's a subwoofer, which plays the low notes of music. Okay. But missing SMOG and POEM kept that hidden.
All four grid spanners took some work, but were solid and keys to getting through some of the rougher spots. And lots of other excellent long fill. Agree with previous commentary about two-day streak of outstanding fare.
Saints' setting (in the standings) is the NFC South, which didn't fit. Assume they still play in the Superdome, ravaged by a hurricane a few years ago, which is in New Orleans, a city with (at least) two nicknames, NOLA and the BIG EASY (the latter shared with once golfing star Ernie Els. All of those are XW standards.
Hesitated at SRSLY (the "ly" bit being in the clue) when our original answer, "RUFKM" wouldn't work. Our answer might have gotten points from both @Gary and @Roo.
We guessed at spelling of Michelle YEOH; "HIT OUT at" isn't a familiar phrase.
Eli's judgment of Leonard Nimoy/Mr. Spock as the GOAT goatee is pretty specific; my belief is that he was clean-shaven except for the one episode where, encountering a parallel universe, his doppelgänger was evil, so of course needing the distinguishing facial hair. But gotta say...the photo of Spock brings back fond memories, even to a non-hardcore Trekkie.
Wow I’m amazed that anyone could find this easy! A real struggle for me. Great work, solvers!
Oh, Gary. You're almost always entertaining, but today you've hit a new high with aliens. seeking a buzz in New Methico.
Kindergarten is just where tempers paints are used. But they don’t tell the users the name of the paints they are enjoying.
Loved this for all the reasons Eli and others pointed out, it played very tough for me but I had a great time. The spanners, along with all the other long stuff was absolutely top of the line. On top of that there was some great cluing, what more could you ask for??
I had to run the alphabet a couple of times, The SE from NETIPOT down was really thorny for me. The only thing that I had there for the longest time was the FEELING part from IKNOWTHEFEEING.
Things like DAPS, DEI, ROSEN, THROE and EWERS are just not front of brain for me (or anywhere *in* my brain for that matter😊) But that workout just made the good time last longer.
TAKEABOW, Barbara! This was truly a crossword work of art, thank you for the wonderful ride!
@Anonymous 7:48 AM
Happens quite regularly and has for years.
Some of us with sinus issues know neti pots well. They are a god send. Some people just use them when they have colds.
I'm with Mr. Jugert on this one. Perhaps a personal best Friday time. Couldn't recall the last letter of Ms. YEOH, but HITOUT fell into place from the crosses. I seldom KNOW THE FEELING of a BIG EASY Friday time, so my SMILE LINE is firmly visible and this guy, speaking of myself in person #3, TAKES A BOW.
Me too with Brothers Four! Guess we're old😄
Medium for me, and fun to solve. Getting nowhere in the NW with crosses for the initial I M P, I got my start with TSETSE x TAKES A BOW, and worked my way down the right side. At the bottom, I backed my way into I KNOW THE FEELING and then climbed up the right side via IGNORANCE. Enjoyed on the way: CANARD, TEMPERA, THROE, BIRDS OF PARADISE.
Do-overs: hire before LADE, SEedY, PrEtendsignora...nope. No idea: ROSEN.
Never jheard of a NETI POT, and I've had allergies and congestion all my life.
Larfed me arse off at SODS -- and I'm not even a Brit! Can't wait to see what our friends from "Jolly Olde" will have to say about that one!
ALLIES can actually be supporters of just about anyone or anything; I don't think that's necessarily an LGBTQ+ - specific term.
First 2/3 I finished in about 15 minutes. The last 1/3 took an additional 45 for me. I just could not see anything in the far right and bottom right. And a few errors cost me as well.
Also hard for me, in part because I'm a crap speller so "tempera," "lade," "canard," and "seamy" all caused me trouble in the sense of "I think this is right but I don't know because, e.g. 'canard' might have two 'n's." Throw in a bit of 'only in the Times crossword' stuff like Elia and Gibb and I had big chunks of this filled in fast but then lots of problems with the fine tuning.
Michell Yeoh won the Best Actress Oscar for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (not “Supercop 2”).
Easy? Surely you mean challenging. Solving last night, I just had too many partially wrong answers to get to the finish. 12 down comes to mind: had BIRDSO------ and all I could think of for ages was BIRD SONG something. And that gave me NOS at 38 across for "Opposite side".
And I KNOW THE DETAILS for 63 across. That's the danger in those long phrases that could be so many different things! But once I saw the correct answers, they are all pretty good.
"Advocatus ___" = DEI? Never seen that, I'm pretty sure. My best guess was REX for quite a while.
I think he knew that.... : /
Yes, pleads innocence also. Works for a bunch of crosses too, major troubles there
Agree with you on Jodie Comer, Eli. Great villainess and beautiful. The pic you shared doesn't do her justice.
What does it say about a person when NETI POT is familiar (albeit never used) but DAPS is not?
I liked this one a lot. A bunch of nice grid spanners as well as some lovely short to medium entries like CANARD and THROE.
I’ve used a NETI POT. I have allergic reactions to certain forms of vegetation and I work among trees, shrubs, and grasses and weeds. So, a number of years ago, when I found breathing just too bothersome, I would drop my tools and head back to the house to prepare a NETI POT. It worked, but it was a pain in the ass. Now I just carry a small squeeze bottle of “nasal mist” in my pocket and keep working. This is weird for me because I am not a huge fan of Big Pharma but I am even less a fan of breaking up my workday to snort salt water. You do what you have to do.
TEMPERA. One of the paintings I wanted to see before I died was Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. You know the one. Lovely long haired woman arising out of the ocean on a scallop shell, one hand covering her breasts, the other covering her pubic area with a handful of her luxuriant red hair. Beautiful painting and yet it was so disappointing when I stood in front of it in the Uffizi in Florence. And it was likely due to the fact that it was a TEMPERA work. I had seen it so many times in Art History labs and it seemed vibrant. The colours jumped out. But here, in a museum in central Italy, it seemed exceedingly dull. I think now that it was the very nature of TEMPERA. It’s dull. It’s egg yolk and pigment and the pigment can’t overcome the yolk. And modern photographers, the ones who supplied the images to the AH lab, bumped up the colours to match the brilliance of the oils that we have become more accustomed to.
Oh, Sandro, if you’d only waited 30 or 40 years to paint this thing, it would have been so much more wonderful.
Thanks Barbara Lin for taking me back to the Uffizi. The Botticelli disappointed but the Giottos were kinda cool.
@Jeremy E 10:24 AM
I am so surprised so many found this more challenging than I did. I dread Friday and Saturday as I am almost always floundering for way longer than I'd wish. For me this played like a Tuesday.
Thank you, @Egs. The mission is still going on; I may miss another day or two. But I had to comment on Barbara's puzzle today -- she's one of the very special ones.
@Les, I visited the Uffizi 40 years ago and I must have seen that painting but I don't remember. There were just sooooo many great art museums in Europe: the Louvre, Amsterdam's Rijkmuseum, can't even remember them all. We had a few art courses in architecture school so I had a list of must-sees, eg Rembrandt's Night Watch. I do remember being quite disappointed in the Mona Lisa; so small and brownish (and such a huge noisy crowd around it). And then there's modern art!
This was not at all easy for me!
I struggled and eventually had to look up UTES and BIGEASY. Very clever clues, and lovely long answers.
Eli, thanks for the great write up - and muppets for me and the grandkids!
I think I've seen "Yips" used to describe a baseball pitcher who suddenly can't find the strike zone, also.
Am I really the only one with a buggy app all of a sudden (this week, since they reordered to put wordle at the top)? I get kicked out of the app, while solving, multiple times. All the way out of the app.
I found this one a little tougher than all you smart cookies who thought the solve was a BIG EASY. Managed to get it finished with a little help here and there. In the end thought it was a superb puzzle.
The grid fill did get some help when TAKE A BOW, ALLY, MOLT, BIRD OF PARADISE, ETA, SOD, SET DESIGN, EFILE, YAP, SSN, YIP, DAP, MEWL and EWER all came up short of filling their slots. POC to the rescue!
I thought that took a little shine off the puzzle but only a little. Still a top notch puzzle and a fun solve.
Worked and lived in Japan in the 80s and ate it often so tried TEMPURA at first for 45D "Oil alternative". Oh, TEMPERA, that kind of oil substitute. Mmmm, loved TEMPURA.
Breathing just too bothersome?
What?
Something new for you to try. Good luck!
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