New York Times, Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Some nixed clues for 19-Across:

• Noted fly catcher in the news?
• Politician who was bugged during his debate?
• Politician who was recently in a fly-over state?
• Politician who clearly doesn't believe in no-fly zones?
• A popular Halloween costume this year is a wig of his hair with a fly in it
• Politician with a fly open for all to see

Quote puzzles take so much heat from so many solvers. I constantly hear complaints about them: they're boring, tedious, annoying. The genre may be overdone — "step quotes" go way back to Eugene Maleska — but as with most every genre, there's room for examples that are well done.

Since the quote makes up all of the theme material, it has to generate a big smile or laugh — it's an all or nothing proposition. Today's was too insidery for me, sort of the NYT patting itself on the back for being a pop culture reference, but I can see the amusement factor for others. And it was nice to get the throwback to "Sex and the City" — I shamelessly admit that I watched every single episode. Go Harry!

As with all quote puzzles, I struggled for traction since you can effectively only solve using the Down answers. However, if you make the Down answers and their clues interesting, that makes up for a lot. Some standouts:

• Campbell's first soup was … TOMATO! Nice bit of trivia that I guessed with no letters in place.
• That ODD clue felt odd at first. Two-thirds of all Fibonacci numbers? Why should that be? I sat down and wrote them out — 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 — realizing that an even, odd, odd pattern emerged. How is it that this math nerd never knew this?
• Jon AGEE, the palindromist, clued with such a fun title. One of my daughter's friends is named Otis, and I'm going to go tell him to sit on a potato pan. How does he come up with such great material? (Jon, not snot-nosed Otis.)
• "The War of the Currents," what a title! Took me a while to determine it had to be TESLA vs. Edison.

It's not a perfect grid — right off the bat, REMORA, IMARET, KVELLED are tough words, and to cross them is borderline unfair — but there was enough to enjoy: SUN DEVIL, BOATYARD, the curious FOGBOW.

I have low expectations for quote puzzles, and this one exceeded through its strong cluing, holding my attention.

My proof that the two-thirds of the Fibonacci numbers must be odd:

The sequence starts 1, 1. Each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two.

We will never see two even numbers in a row. The only way there could be consecutive even numbers is if we started with two even numbers, and then all numbers in the sequence would be even. That's not the case.

Now, look at any even number in the sequence. I'll use 8 in this example, but any even number will do. The number before it (5) must be odd because there are no consecutive evens, so the next number, the sum of those two, the sum of an even and an odd (5+8), must also be odd (13.) Continue to the number after that. It must be odd too because it's the sum of the previous odd number (13) plus the one before that (which must be even, in this example, 8.)

After that, we have the sum of two odd numbers, which is even, and the odd-odd-even cycle repeats.