Up to Their Old Tricks

Constructor: chandi

Another day, another themeless. I had a great time with about 90% of this puzzle, with that final 10% leaving me a little frustrated. There's one corner in particular that I think needed an extra edit pass (LAO-SAO, anyone?). I appreciate the longitudinal shape of today's grid, but it does come at the expense of some bad fill.

The more crosswords I solve, the more I appreciate my ability to guess random trivia. For example, take "City where you say 'takk' in thanks". I don't know any Norwegian (though I have been to Norway, so maybe there's a subconscious element here) but seeing that the answer occupies 4 squares, the language "sounds" Scandinavian, and knowing that OSLO is exceedingly common fill, I slotted it straight away. Half of the game of solving harder crosswords is recognizing common words so you're nearly immune to clue variations.

Then again, I floundered on TLC so have I really learned anything? "'Waterfalls' trio" was giving me no hints, so in my desperation I looked at the TL_ and assumed the C. That C proved critical since MEATSAUCE followed, then USUALSUSPECTS, and now we're cooking with gasoline.

I found nearly every corner in this grid to be fairly easy, at least compared to some of the longer acrosses like PHOTOOP and MIDDLEC. One corner in particular absolutely kicked my butt, with the LAO-SAO combo in the middle-right. I started off with HUTS, grew into MIDDLEH (I don't know notes, sounds plausible?), and got stuck on "Squares on diamonds". And boy, it took me a loooong time to finally fill BASES. Maybe part of my problem is that "diamonds" is plural for seemingly no reason. Is it weird that the clue isn't "Squares on a diamond" or is it just me?

Overall the clues in this grid are interesting and unique, even if they don't always agree with my taste. There are a lot of clever misdirects and interesting compositions (e.g. "Occasion for a round of shots?" PHOTOOP) that are super solid.

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