Saturday NYT crossword reinkings

1 ACROSS: Oil-based paste mentioned in the lyrics to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." (10). I gave this one a mental sing-through and wrote in PLASTICENE. But it's PLASTICINE.

19 ACROSS: Thanksgiving dishes (5). I wrote in BOWLS after having BO filled in. BOATS, instead.

54 DOWN: 0, for 180^o (4). I wrote in MINS with the IN crossings, which looks kind of dumb now in a moment of quiet reflection. The answer was SINE. Math answers always fool me, because I assume no one knows math but me (usually accurate).

42 ACROSS: Small, narrow bays (7). I had LETS as the last four letters and tried to write in INLETS before noticing an extra blank square. Oops. ARMLETS, instead.

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Postscript: I'm getting a little disturbed that it's taking me less and less time to solve crossword puzzles. I don't want to be able to solve them quickly, because I depend on them to provide me entertainment at those points of the day when I have nothing better to do (dr appt, waiting for the car, on hold with a phone company, etc). I've already taken to carrying cryptics around, and on Monday and Tuesday (sometimes Wednesday!) I carefully mutilate the NYT puzzle, removing half the clues (ie all the Across, or all the Downs) by tearing the page up, prior to solving it. I really don't want to be one of those people who carry big books of puzzles around. Or Sudokus. One thing that stops me from progressing even more quickly is having a rule to *never* look up answers on the web (well, almost never), and I've never looked at a crossword solution either, at least as far as I can remember. In this way, I slow my progress, because if I don't know a common word for Sweetmeats this week, and couldn't figure it out, well, I won't be able to fill it in next week, either, unless I'm able to guess. To slow myself down, I use a pen and try to fill in the puzzle clue-by-clue, not jumping around the grid at all, like "water flowing down the page." This slows me down a bit. Also, knowing almost nothing about pop music, actors and actresses, and movies helps quite a bit too.