This is the hardest puzzle I’ve done since I started blogging. I had to put it down three times and come back before I was able to finish it, and I think I may still have some wrong squares. I found the NW the hardest area, followed by the SW, and then the NE. There were a lot of well-clued phrases in the puzzle, which is hard to get right, but this puzzle did.
In the NW, “Flight passengers often work on them” was a very difficult clue for LAPTOPS. I could make sense of what was meant by “Flight passengers” until I worked out what the answer had to be. If it had said “Air travellers”, perhaps it would have been more penetrable. “Oscar show airer?” for PBS took me a bit too. I initially had BABE instead of OBOE for “One found in the woods”.
In the NE, I was thinking cultures instead of associations for “Socs.”. “Exchange for something very valuable was a great hard clue for EYETEETH, as was “Product with a rotating ball” for ROLLON. I still don’t get why ORE is a bank deposit, but that didn’t stop me from getting ADIT for “Passage to get 8-Down”. I had the NEEDLE part of “Tool for sewing canvas” long before I had the SAIL part. No idea what NRADIATION is (“Certain atomic X-ray emission”).
In the center, DIESNON for “Day when courts are not in session” was a killer. I’d never heard it before and the letter combo kept making me think I had something wrong.
In the SW, SILENT for “Clammy?” was another great hard clue. MEDDLESOME for “Curious to a fault”, ditto. THREETON adult hippos took me a while. I’m rather unsure about POSTMOSAIC for “After the Pentateuch period”, and PITO for “First Earl of Chatham”. PITO especially just sound completely wrong, but I can’t figure out what crossings might be wrong, except maybe OILED for “Like many a backsplash” and the previously mentioned POSTMOSAIC.
In the NW, the hardest clues were “Retaining instructions” for STETS and “Spread statistic” for ACREAGE. And HAIRDO for “Top arrangement?”. Those, in combination with Olympic skier TONI Sailer killed me on time.
Edit: D’oh! I see from Orange’s post that the Earl of Chatham is (so painfully obvious in retrospect) PITT, and that “Like many a backsplash” is (again, obviously) TILED. A thousand times d’oh!
