Sunday, January 28, 2024 - WHACAMOLE, the perfect game to play while eating GUACAMOLE 🙄

Today's crossword was a SMASHINGSUCCESS, and although we don't want to overly HEROIZE the author, Nathan Hasegawa was clearly ATTHETOP of his game when he put this together. The vocabulary level was definitely trending upward -- see for example 13A, Like "t", "k", and "p", in phonetics, PLOSIVE, to 49A, Tremble, PALPITATE (wasn't that a Star Wars emperor?) -- but it was the theme that truly sealed the deal. Deets inside! Remember, solving the NYTimes Crossword is a great way to exercis...