Note the phrasing of these two entries: They’re in first person. This is where I took note of the puzzle’s title, and it dawned on me that the puzzle’s entries were interpreting the clues and affably solving itself.
I don’t know if this actually helped me solve the rest of the set, but I fell for the anthropomorphic quality that emerged and found the interplay very endearing, especially in contrast to the taciturnity of the clue set.
Several of the examples are quite challenging. Who had a guess for 32-Across, [“What”]? I certainly did not, but its answer is apt: I TELL YOU WHAT. (This is a slangy way to emphasize a statement, like “I tell you what, that’s the best cake I ever had.” It has a Southern origin, and I mainly recognize it from pop culture.) At 114-Across, [Taib? Tbia?], I parsed both parts as words with missing letters (what does “Talib” have to do with “tibia”?) before realizing that they were nonsense anagrams of each other: The entry is I’M A BIT CONFUSED. That’s “A-B-I-T,” which are the same letters mixed up as “Taib” and “Tbia.”
86-Across, [See 88-Across], and 88-Across, [Here], make an interesting couple. 88-Across solves to ON EARTH, which works for all of us who aren’t solving this puzzle from a space station; 86-Across is I’M OVER HERE. Over where? Well, the clue at 86-Across is right above, or “over,” the clue for 88-Across, which is literally [Here]. In addition, these entries are on different rows of the puzzle, so I’M OVER HERE is “over” ON EARTH. (This combination of entries breaks the symmetry of the theme set in the grid. I’M OVER HERE mirrors I MISSED YOU, but ON EARTH mirrors 44-Across, [View spoiler] or EYESORE. The fact that EYESORE starts with a homophone for “I” is intriguing.)
Tricky Clues
25A/31A. Neither of these name trivia clues rang a bell for me. At 25A, [Journalist Michele with two Peabody Awards] refers to Michele NORRIS, whose voice you might recognize, as she was an NPR host for over a decade. 31A, [Bob ___, alter ego of Mr. Incredible], solves to Bob PARR, who is a character in a cartoon franchise called “The Incredibles,” which is about two light-years away from my realm of knowledge, anyway.
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