In Need of Repairs

Wanna guess how many times I read through the clues? Whew. Very clever, Alan.

Nice idea, Alan. I wasn't familiar with the Cincinnati athlete (until I Googled), so I originally had "bad roommate material" but SEUNION didn't make sense.... So, I needed a repair. ;)

Pretty cute. I had a really hard time as I had never heard of the cincinati bearcats but google made it clear.

Is the final N meant to be missing? (I got REUNIO(N)... was that missing final letter supposed to be part of the joke).

Fun puzzle and really cute to play with.

Alan, this is impressive!!

I backsolved one of the Ns but had to come here to see what the other one was.

Very nice, and probably not an easy construction. Twenty-one dedicated entries doesn't leave a lot of flexibility for the fill. I confess I had to backsolve for the R (don't tell Joe).

BEARCAT was my entry point. The rest fell pretty quickly. Clever idea.

Very cool. I got to REUNIO_ and solved at that point. I'm assuming the last N has to be from NARCO, but in backsolving, I'm still not sure which clues need to combine for that one. Awesome puzzle, though.

Had me going for a while. Was assigning “Aston” to “bearcat” in the world of automobiles. Dawned on me that that didn’t fit the pattern exactly. Good workout this morning (for me, anyway). Thanks!

The combos are really natural. I can see why it might have been necessary to make the repetition in the clues more prominent.

I had four letters and entered RENO as the answer (as in a renovation...which often leads to repairs). I had to go back to the clues after than to get the real answer - thanks for the puzzle, Alan - very clever

Very clever and not what I was expecting!

Very, very nice. I was wondering, is this just stylish cluing, or is it a thing? Pulled out a blank sheet of paper to write out some answer pairs and concluded it was a thing. It took a bit longer to find all the pairs.

Nice one! Like others, found myself rereading the clues many times to finally get a result that made sense. Very fun puzzle!

Very clever Alan! But boy, the search for that last N was tough -- leaving off the comma in those 2 Golf clues was tricksy. Also, finding the right entry for BARRACK was tough, because I kept looking for something to do with OBAMA. Thanks for the workout!

Excellent! CART ELS took me a long time, I think because it was missing the telltale comma. I knew the answer by that point but I'm a completionist :-)

I, too, had to google BEARCAT and didn't notice CARTELS. But figured it out eventually.

BEARCAT actually helped me get started (Joe would be proud.) And CARTELS was an after the fact for me, but sooo good! What was really funny was me, once I understood what was going on, repeating BRA (with a short A) VEST several times in a row before I saw the light! As Meg says, I'm a rascal that applied force -- IMP-PRESSED!

Wow! Very cool construction. Which meta inspired this?

Beautifully done! I had Reno at first and thought renovate but no. I couu you la not see the others for a long time and actually had to backsolve to get the N and even then it took forever. HUM DRUM was my in along with CRIB BED, and I looked for a President FOREVER until I went back and looked at the spelling. Great puzzle

Fun one, Alan....thanks! Had some trouble finding the last N, but when I finally got it, your use of crossword fave Ernie "Els" made me smile.

Well, that was awesome.

It would be interesting to poll to see which pair was the entry point, and which the last to fall. For me, hum-drum being beside each other was found early, but I didn’t even notice their clue similarity… just thought we were looking for other pairs in same lines (then I found LOW DOWN and happened to notice their clues and the jig was up). Took me forever to backsolve for the middle N! (Maybe because the second Torso clue was right below another used clue that I had pretty sloppily circled.). This was a brilliant puzzle!

Very clever. No nudges needed and I didn't get the final N, even after knowing that it must be "Drug source".

Nice puzzle, thanks