Fri., 5/1 Max Carpenter

[magus]

THEME:   the letter W written with two U's
   
GOOD ONES:    
Letter that hints how 18 answers…   DOUBLE U   
Conference, informally   POUUUUOUU [powwow]   
Duo   TUUO [two, and I always thought it should be "tuo" rather than duo]   
One way to get a hand   ANTE [I thought applause]   
Modern crime head?   CYBER ["head" meaning "lead-in"]   
Bolt with great speed   USAIN [the great runner]   
   
BTW:   
It must've taken me an hour to complete this --- half of which before I got to the last entry.   
   
Suit at a shoot   BIKINI [I was sure I was right with ARMANI, especially since I thought I was right with PATHS rather than PIERS]   
   
Leather craftperson's beltful   AUULS [for AWLS, but leather workers work at benches so don't wear belts --- and I love the non-sexist person rather than man --- of course person is also sexist because it ends in son, not daughter: solution is to change person to "perone"]   
   
Neither SUPE nor TROU is a word, and while I see that the difficulty of construction may qualify these letter combination, I feel it weakens the puzzle a bit.   
   
   
RATING:    
Three grins = Loved it; Two grins = Enjoyed it; One grin = A bit bland for my taste; One teardrop = Not much fun   

[Thomps2525]

I started solving the lower-left corner first and when I saw that the six-letter word beginning with CLO was "Slpastick performer," I quickly realized that the "letter that hints at how 18 answers should be filled out" is literally a "double U" so CLOWN is spelled CLOUUN. And I doubt we will ever again see POUUUUOUU in a crossword!

W is the only English letter pronounced with more than one syllable...and we pronounce it as "double-U" even though it's written as a double V. Go figure!

And we abbreviate World Wide Web as "www." A three-syllable name is "abbreviated" with nine syllables. Go figure!

The Glendale News-Press crossword is only 13x13 and seldom has words of more than seven letters. Thus, there are always a large number of those notorious over-used three- and four-letter words. Today's includes ADE, APT, DEE, EPEE, ERIE, ETA, EWE, INCA, LEI, ORB and TOT.