khajiit has wares, if you have coin

by nijah

• Play it ↗
• Difficulty: medium-hard

Came into this crossword with high expectations thanks to the title, unfortunately the crossword is a bit mid all-around. My main problem is the application of the theme: ELDERSCROLL and SKYRIM, great, but RESTORATION? Why that particular school of magic, and what does that have to do with Khajiits? I would've preferred to see something like LOCKPICKING or SKOOMA, personally, based on the title. It doesn't help that the theme-length, non-theme answer TAKESITEASY takes some of the wind out of the RESTORATION sails.

The corners were pretty tough for me in this puzzle, particularly the top-right and bottom-left. I spent a little too much time second-guessing my knowledge of dwarf planets because I had filled DEFER instead of DELAY in the top-right corner. Are there even any other dwarf planets? The astronomical number 134340 isn't giving me any hints. (It turns out that there is "general agreement" among astronomers that there are at least eight, thanks Wikipedia).

The bottom-left corner is victim to some bad fill: MYA crossed with MRT and adjacent to YEA, all of which are lacking in the clue department. No question that this corner was the last one I completed.

I enjoyed that there were some gaming-themed clues thrown in there, outside of the greater Skyrim topic. CHEATS, AGGRO, and ALPH all felt like they were good fits for this puzzle (although I regretfully have never played a Pikmin title). Some of the standout clues for me were "Roll with hole" (BAGEL) and "First name in bookstores?" (BARNES).

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