Relative Difficulty: Hard
Theme: The first night of Hanukkah? A couple of themed words snuck in on the day the holiday started. Although I might argue that since the puzzle comes out the evening before - and since Jewish holidays start the evening - it may have been more appropriate to publish this puzzle on Wednesday. Anyway I digress.
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Word of the day: Liger (6A: Hybrid of two big cat species):
The offspring of a male lion and a female tiger.
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One of the most difficult minis I've faced in the last ~two weeks, and on a Tuesday no less! This puzzle had more than a few vague cluings, including RILE (5A: Agitate) and SLEEK (3D: Stylishly smooth) - I put "Suave" at first. That plus my mispelling of both LATKE (8A: Hanukkah snack) and TERRE (4D: ___ Haute, Indiana) led me to the abysmal time of 1:28. If it's not one thing, it's, well, an OTHER.
Regular mini-solvers will notice the grid is one of the roughly 1/3 that doesn't have any symmetry - filled mostly with expansive 5 letter words besides a few four letter acrosses and one diminutive three-letter down. To me the form of the mini puzzle permits a bit of creativity with the grid so I'm always glad to see one that looks a bit different, though not as unusual (and fun!) as some of the ones that feature two-letter answers towards the bottom.
The theme is of Hanukkah words is convincing - LATKE is solid and EIGHT (2D: Number of nights of Hanukkah) is related enough. I might have even liked to see one more Hanukkah word shoehorned in, but having only two didn't RILE me too much.
And I can't complain too much when the rest of the fill is pretty good on its own. While words like LOL (6D: Response to a funny meme) - or its compatriots IMHO and LMAO - may one day be identified as annoying crosswordese, I haven't grown tired of them yet. BRITA and OTHER are both fine, and LIGER (6A: Hybrid of two big cat species) is also a nice treat, I'm curious to know if most folks were familiar with this hybrid species.
Happy Hanukkah to those of my readers that observe the Jewish holidays. I'll leave you with a clip from my personal favorite Hanukkah-themed episode of any show:
Signed,
Sam Austin, King of Mini CrossWorld
[Follow Sam Austin on Bandcamp]
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