Tali
Florida
Add me to the "bit easy for a Friday, no?" crew - wound up with a faster time than even any Wednesday or Thursday puzzle this year (it would have been my third-fastest Tuesday solve of 2025!) And also - one more vote for SPIDEy over SPIDER.
@Dave - yeah, figuring out BEAUT (not BEAST) and SOURS ON was responsible for like a third of my overall time...
@Kevin D The single largest purchaser of kale in the US used to be, of all places, Pizza Hut - not to eat, but to serve as decoration around the bowls in the salad bars.
@Joe no, because the colloquial name of the institution is Caltech, not Cal Tech.
@Steve L Which led to a great clue a couple years ago - something like "Best part of mayo?" solving to CINCO. And as with this one, there was some griping from solvers who didn't know that Spanish capitalization rules differ from English.
Procrastinated a bit today, didn't open the puzzle until about 10:15 pm... then proceeded to have a bit fo panic at the prospects of continuing my 250+ day streak! Wasn't too bad overall, though. (Weirdly, I've heard "loosey goosey" plenty of times, but never expressed as the simile in this puzzle.)
@Catherine I was really hoping we were going to get a Schrodinger puzzle there. Alas.
18A has me thinking of NOFX's "Franco Un-American": I never looked around, never second-guessed Then I read some Howard ZINN, now I'm always depressed
@Fritz I had CAT SCAN at first, as i'm sure many others did - but upon reflection, surely a CAT SCAN is a subtype of PET SCAN?
@N.E. Body It's like solving the purple set in Connections - you could just submit the last four and finish the puzzle, but doesn't it feel better to pause for a bit to work out the link?
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