Run! It's the April 21 crossword!

[Thomps2525]

Chase Dittrich studied at Columbia Business School and served as a Captain in the United States Marine Corps. In 2018 he began creating crosswords. His first published puzzle appeared in July 2019. His puzzle today includes three theme answers with circled letters:

Stretched wall hangings: CANVASPRINTS
Major blood vessel in the neck: CAROTIDARTERY
Semi-casual garment named for an Atlantic island: BERMUDASHORTS

"Waste one's time" – and what those answers contain – is RUNINCIRCLES. Sprint, dart and dash. Clever. Chase could have put his own name in the grid somewhere. After all, CHASE is another form of running.

Several overused words appear in this puzzle: ADES, EGAD, ELMS, END, EPEE, ILL, IPAD, OREOS, RARE and TIARAS. "Cub or Brave, briefly" is NLER. That, and ALER, appear quite frequently in crosswords. I have never seen or heard "NL'er" or "AL'er" anywhere else. "The 'T' in DPT" is TETANUS. The clue refers to the DTP3 vaccine that inoculates against diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus. Those diseases were pretty much eradicated by the 1980s but in the past few years the World Health Organization has diagnosed several thousand cases of diphtheria in southeast Asia. The majority of cases involve children in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.

"Fiddling emperor" is NERO. Wrong. When the Great Fire of Rome broke out on July 18, 64 AD, Nero was 35 miles away at his villa at Antium. When he learned of the fire, he returned to Rome and assisted with firefighting efforts. (The fire burned for six days.) Nero did not "fiddle while Rome burned." The fiddle (or violin) was invented by Andrea Amati in Cremona, Italy – in the year 1520. Nero has also been falsely accused of starting the fire so he could rebuild Rome's civic center. If any of Nero's descendants are still alive, they should sue for slander. Here are the facts about Nero:

https://www.livescience.com/40277-emperor-nero-facts.html

And if anyone tells you Nero started the COVID-19 virus, don't believe that, either!

[DarlaFanbridge]

Truthfully, Nero being claimed as a fiddling emperor is more like mythology and never was reality.

[Mumphi]

Truthfully, Nero being claimed as a fiddling emperor is more like mythology and never was reality.

But I quite like this illusion.
Fun Games

[gularpasa]

geometry dash breeze
Truthfully, Nero being claimed as a fiddling emperor is more like mythology and never was reality.

But I quite like this illusion.

Why do you like that?