Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Theme: No theme
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Word of the day: Tern (8A: Fork-tailed seabird):
Any of numerous aquatic birds of the subfamily Sterninae of the family Laridae, related to the gulls but usually having a more slender body and bill, smaller feet, a long, deeply forked tail, and a more graceful flight, especially those of the genus Sterna, as S. hirundo (common tern) of Eurasia and America, having white, black, and gray plumage.
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Well this is one of the most forgettable puzzles of all time - with 80% typical mini crosswordese (ASEA, LAGER, URBAN, SPY). The mediocre fill was somewhat salvaged by sharp cluing, which is always a major PLUS for me. TERN (8A: Fork-tailed seabird) and URBAN (3D: Keith of country music) were both in particular better-clued than usual ("opposite of rural" always gets my goat). That said this was likely the least-inspired hint for SPY (4D: Secret agent) that I've ever seen.
A couple features of this puzzle are giving me deja vu. Besides having the same grid as yesterday, it also featured its best fill front and center with RUGBY (6A: National sport of New Zealand). Did everyone else know this piece of trivia? I had to use the downs to fill this one in but Sarah (my girlfriend) filled it in no problem.
On the whole this was fairly average in terms of difficulty. It took me 0:39 (longer than usual for a Thursday), but I would have done it a lot faster if I had looked at the downs first. Interestingly enough it took Sarah a bit longer, she filled in RAM for RAT (6D: Chinese Zodiac symbol). Curious to know if any of my other readers fell into that trap. Let me know in the comments!
Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow.
Signed,
Sam Austin, King of Mini CrossWorld
[Follow Sam Austin on Bandcamp]
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