It's About Time

It has been a while, hasn't it? New freestyle for youse today because why not? Be careful with this one...

Freestyle #39
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XTR, XTR! BRKNG NWS

A few news items and a new vowelless puzzle today:

1. My boy Evan Birnholz made his auspicious Washington Post debut yesterday: solve it here. Evan's new WP venture is the most exciting thing to happen in crosswords this year, imo. Show him some love.
2. The Indie 500 is happening again on June 4, 2016. If you're not too established, we want your puzzle for it. And no matter what, we want to hang with you in June. Seriously, I don't even care if you sign up for the tourney or not; just come to DC and drink cocktails with us.
3. Here's a new vowelless puzzle. It's like a regular crossword, except you only enter the consonants of a given answer. So if the clue were [Cute young cat] you would write KTTN, not KITTEN. Just so there's no confusion, the letter Y is not used at all. Also there are two versions: an easier one in which the enumerations (i.e.number of letters) of the full words are given, and a harder one in which they are not. An enumeration of (11) means that the full answer is a single 11-letter word, and an enumeration of (5, 6) means that the full answer is a two-word phrase where the words are 5 and 6 letters long, in that order (such as HEARS NOISES - but of course you would just enter HRS NSS). Got it? Good.

Easier version (with enumerations)
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Harder version (no enumerations)
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Solution (full answer list)
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Freely Styled

Whipped up this grid a few weeks ago just for yuks and finally got around to cluing it. Enjoy!

Freestyle #38
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