Geoff

@Patrick or it would have been too easy. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

@Neil REO(S), TBAR, ATRA and OSTER are all fairly common crossword fill. Just something you need to know to successfully complete crosswords like you need to know various French, Spanish and Italian phrases that pop up.

@StephieM I got a gold star but didn't understand sawred until sawread you comment. Thanks!

@Eric i expected the italicized clue answers to be weird. Once the crosses gave POTATO I suspected a link to Idaho and saw the trick. Except the unexpected on Thursday and they start to jump off the page.

@Nora I'm still in AKRON so that was one I got right away. Nice to know the 'obscure' answers every so often.

Glad it wasn't just me. From an unsolved Friday to a Saturday PR here. Someone jiggled the difficulty dial.

@CCNY I ended up at the same spot. Once I got MAIN, MAD became clear and finished up the unknown crosses. I thought this one was ok as SANAI is common crossword fill. I enjoy learning from the crosses and only complain in my head when there was never going to be a way for me to solve the puzzle due to 2 unknown trivia terms crossing.

@Jamie Well said. Friday and Saturday are my favorite puzzles because they don't suffer from having to brute force a theme into the grid.

@Heidi I have never heard of Al HIRT. Once you start going down into a specific genre of music it is going to be hit or miss. I got it from the crosses since REO is standard crossword fill.