Slumbrewster

@Andrzej it’s a pronunciation thing, particularly in American English: we often pronounce the D sound like a T and use schwas instead of stronger vowel sounds. So “Crossed a bear” sounds like “crost uh bare”, and “Cross to bear” sounds like “cross tuh bare”. BTW, I always love seeing your comments and am super impressed that you can do our very idiosyncratic American puzzles! <a href="https://punchng.com/when-you-have-to-pronounce-d-as-t/?amp" target="_blank">https://punchng.com/when-you-have-to-pronounce-d-as-t/?amp</a>

@Grant So, better to clue based on an athlete whose high point came in the 1998 Olympics, rather than a legendary basketball coach whose retirement announcement was an ESPN headline yesterday? Part of the fun of doing crosswords is learning new things (even, horrors, a second woman named TARA). I didn’t know this coach either, but I could get her name from the crosses and picked up a little basketball trivia.

@Nom De Plume my issue was 28A dAG instead of TAG

@PhilO I finally let my streak go after 1000 days. Heading out to a remote lake with no cell signal helped. Now I do the puzzle when I feel like it, sometimes a couple of days after it drops.

@Ben V Adding more Star Trek clues would have made the puzzle a little easier for me. Too bad we had PHASE rather than PHASER.

@Eric Hougland OMG, me too with MMA!

@Janet I'll add that in the original film, Beetlejuice is unable to say his own name, forcing Winona Ryder (Lydia) to pay supernatural charades to pronounce it correctly and summon him.