Gael

Really liked most of this puzzle! Flowed nice and smoothly throughout, but I ended up being hard locked out of the NW corner due to an unfortunate confluence of unknowable variants and unknown cultural references. Every time I’ve seen the rare blood type clue it’s been ONEG (which I believe is also the rarest), so I had that instead of ANEG. I’ve also rarely (ever?) encountered the spelling INEZ before, so I had INES there (that one might be because I’m Canadian - I assume Inez is more common in Spanish speaking areas). I happen not to know Count Basie or Charlie Parker, and I couldn’t guess the genre from my incorrect _O__. I know the name ZZTOP but none of their songs, and I couldn’t guess the band from an incorrect _STOP. I’m not familiar with ZENO, nor am I strong on sailing terms - though I’m tickled to learn where the expression “I like the cut of your jib” comes from! While it felt like a preventable impasse (even “rarer blood type” would have given me a chance), and discovering that there was no path through which I could have solved it on my own was frustrating, I also recognise that it resulted from an incredibly specific set of misdirections and lack of knowledge that would have been tremendously difficult to envisage by anyone who didn’t happen to share them. It’s hard to know what you don’t know, but the inverse is also true. Happy Wednesday my dudes!