Way to go on completing this one! As far as your other question goes, I wish there was a concrete answer to that one, but with experience doing puzzles and getting a feeling of what letters usually work in spots you have to make guesses to try and start a section and see what works. If crosses start falling around that area, you know you're on the right track. If not, there's always restarting with the other choice. There's been clues in some puzzles I've had to do that 5 or 6 times on.

​@@GlennCrossBlog2 Thanks. If anything I guess too much, or at least I need to erase those guesses sooner when they don't help. I had COMMON instead of NORMAL, and it matched with EDM, and that was one reason I finished that corner last. It took me almost 2 hours btw, but I put it down a couple times and it was fine.

@@dugong369 Indeed. I'll say there's a certain amount of "education" you can put behind your guesses, and I think I've picked up a lot of that over time in doing puzzles.

@@GlennCrossBlog2 Yes. I'm 65, and when I was young I wasn't good at crossword puzzles, and until a few months ago I didn't do any. Then I found that I was pretty good (though slow) because of all the knowledge I absorbed through the decades. But the lack of crossword experience makes a big difference. Anyway I enjoy doing them, for now at least. But I'll never be fast, that's just not me.

@@dugong369 You never know. I started in this about 8 years ago. A lot of it is outlook and keeping at it. You learn how to do things better with time. I know I've surprised myself from where I was when I started. It was definitely a lot longer time than that before I could do Saturday puzzles at all!

That would have helped tremendously. Like I keep noticing doing these syndicated versions, it seems like some of them are presented radically different in the New York Times itself before the rest of us see them five weeks later.

"Phonetic clue" = "Let's Go Yank E's" So in the starred clues, the E's need to be removed to make sense.

@@GlennCrossBlog2 Wow! Okay, that makes sense, thank you!