[.puz][PDF][Solution]

Jessie and I recently did a tighter-than-usual couple weeks of quarantine (and got a clean bill of COVID health) in advance of a tiny house trip to the Catskills with another couple. It was… devastatingly pleasant to share a space with other humans.

And in fact, the couple we travelled with were people we’d never spent any time with before quarantine! Keely and Parker are crossword Twitter (where else?) acquaintances who have become improbably close friends over the last few months, via texting and Zoom double dates.

Now, it wasn’t incredibly convenient to take the necessary precautions to make doubling our little pod for a few days viable, but boy HOWDY was it worth. Jessie and I both feel rejuvenated in some essential way that I don’t as yet have the words to describe appropriately. I’ll wait on the novelists to capture it on my behalf, though I think the photos below are worth a thousand words.

Spoilers and “Bed Head” discussion after the jump…

This one felt appropriate to post this week. To share a one-room bespoke cabin with folks you just met means relaxing into the curtain being drawn on, well, whatever your recently-arisen face looks like. I WOKE UP LIKE THIS is a social media photo caption that, in my experience, is largely apocryphal. I’m reminded of the hilarious Bridesmaids scene where Kristen Wiig slips from bed and painstakingly applies a full face of makeup before waking her hunky bedmate.

As a revealer, I WOKE UP LIKE THIS serves as a hint for SLEEPY TOWN, YAWNING GAP, and TIRED HUMOR. Honestly, I *love* this type of theme. “Huh! A whole theme set of sleepy-adjectives that have secondary meanings!” If your brain makes note of such patterns in daily life and you’re not a crossword constructor… well, you’re just not a crossword constructor *yet*.

I was also pleased that the northwest and northeast segments of the grid had fun and clean fill options without dropping a black square somewhere along 1-Down and 13-Down. Wiiiide open spaaaaces!

Happy solving, everyone.

-Ross

Among real/fictional people in this puzz: