Michael
Montreal
Brilliant puzzle, one of the most enjoyable Sunday crosswords in a long time. Proud to say I solved in 26:06 (with one pause of a few hours to watch the Euros final) and no lookups!
Nope, sorry, hated this one.
Great visual gimmick but some really inventive clues as well!
My first answer for 17A was BROWNCOW :)
UPDATE: My wife, whose first language is French and who also grew up near Montreal, knows of the Marco Polo game. So not a matter of geography after all; I had just never been exposed to it.
I had begun to despair as well, until 21A and 23A (never met an original Star Wars trilogy clue I didn't like). The rest unfolded fairly easily and for once I had no recourse to Google. That said, I did find it a good challenge. 17:42 to solve.
A particularly enjoyable puzzle. I found 20 across thanks to filled squares from down clues, but didn't make the connection to the clue. The theme only clicked when I saw that the second part of 56 across was going to be GUITARIST. I spent every day of every summer in my early teen years at the swimming pool but have never heard of the game Marco Polo. Must not be a Canadian thing. Typographical minutiae dept.: the 48 across clue is indeed a dash (more precisely, an en-dash). Had it been a hyphen, I would have seen that as a nit to pick. Well done, Daniel Raymon!
Also, "to hang" is used these days sans the "out"; e.g., "I'm hanging with my crew tonight."
My first thought was BLAZERS.
Loved this one; northwest and southeast were so daunting at first and stayed mostly blank for ages. In fact, at one point my solved squares were perfectly symmetrical! I wish the original 13-Down clue had stayed.:)
(Except it does contain milk. D'oh!)
@HeathieJ Funny--INDIE ANNA was the first one I got, and it opened the floodgates for me. ORE AGAIN was the only one I didn't like, as it's not a perfect pun (I've tried saying it out loud in several accents but can't get the last syllable to sound like "gone"). Then again, WHISK ON, SON is borderline as well. A really fun puzzle!
@RozzieGrandma I had thought of LYFT as well, then realized the hyphen after "Uber" meant that it had to be read as an adjective.
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