Constructor: Evan Mahnken
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: Culinary phrases — ...Yeah that was the best I could do for describing the theme. Theme answers begin by describing what stage food is in the done-ness process.
Theme answers:
RAW FOOTAGE (17A: Unedited film)HALF BAKED IDEAS (29A: Off-the-wall concepts)COOKED THE BOOKS (45A: Committed accounting fraud)BURNT UMBER (59A: Shade of brown)Word of the Day: CIS (13A: Opposite of trans, in gender studies) — referring or relating to people whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex. (Oxford Dictionary)• • • You were expecting an Annabel Monday, huh? Well, sorry. Last month was the last Annabel Monday. Because I'm not Annabel anymore. My name's August now. I'm not
CIS. Turns out, you can learn a lot about yourself when you're stuck inside all the time! Don't worry, I'm still the same graduate student you've been following since high school. Do worry that I'm still tired. Graduate school plus work equals some late nights. Ooh, work has been so awesome though! I work in a bookstore, and we've been moving to a new location, and I spent all of yesterday just unpacking books. It was amazing. Oh yeah there was a puzzle too.
GEE I really enjoyed this one! Fun fill that you don't always see on a Monday like
TRUSS and
PISAN and the lovely
PRIG. I also liked that we got "friend in France" for
AMI rather than the tired "___ doing okay?" type clues. (Wish I could say the same for
ESE; I'm growing very sick of cardinal-direction clues.) Oh, and I'd never heard of the koh-i-
NOOR diamond before; I would've made that my word of the day if there wasn't another word that was more relevant. Did you know it weighs 105.6 carats? That'd make a heck of an engagement ring. The theme honestly didn't do a whole lot for me this week, other than making me crave Ben and Jerry's Half-Baked ice cream. I didn't really get it until I read the writeup.
BURNT UMBER is great fill, though. I think we should have crayon colors every week! Gimme the CERULEAN and GOLDENROD and CORNFLOWER! Bullets:
REN (60D: Kylo ____, Jedi-in-training seduced to the dark side) — Okay, I'll bite. What's the deal with this guy? Why do so many people think he's so cute? I mean, I kinda get it, I used to be the world's biggest Benedict Cumberbatch fan, but Adam Driver just doesn't have a weird enough face for me to get it. Also I think a bunch of people want him to kiss Rey but I thought he was the bad guy? I dunno. I guess people like bad boys, huh. TIT (6D: Relative of a chickadee) — No comment. 
DICE (51A: Equipment in Monopoly and Yahtzee) — Okay, I finally broke down and bought my first set of Dungeons and Dragons dice. I've been playing the darn game for years, but I usually just bum dice off my friends or, in dire circumstances, Google "roll 1d20". But I got a really pretty set and I'm super excited for them to come in! Oh, you want to know more about my D&D character? Well his name is Tad, he's a third-level barbarian, and he has a pet mouse and he's really scary-looking but he has a big heart. Are there any D&D crossword-doers out there? What are your characters like? IKE (25D: "I like ___"[1950s political slogan]) — So does everybody! Signed, August Thompson, tired--but happier--graduate student.
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