Acrostic - January 20th

Maybe this will be the start of something.  Something I finish, 2-3 times monthly.  And something that never quite finishes, because the Acrostic is such a fixture in the variety puzzle section.  But at least this is a start.  I'm going to borrow from Rex Parker by having an image of the completed puzzle and a word of the day and the theme(s).  In the acrostic, there's often a thematic reference or two so I'll call those out.  I know that there's already somebody who does a write-up but I think they're paid by the NYT.  I am decidedly not.  This is last week's puzzle.  I seldom get to the puzzle the day of print but will try to when there is an Acrostic.  The Diagramless used to be my favorite but it's been supplanted.  Sunday is a sometimes boring puzzle, frequently too easy and often Wednesday-like.

Constance Hale - Sin and Syntax
"The exquisite cutouts of Matisse and elegant line drawings of Picasso came late in long careers of painstaking work and wild experimentation. ...in writing, as in painting simplicity often follows considerable torment" - excerpted by Cox/Rathvon 20.01.19

Difficulty: Medium/Challenging

Theme:
Liquids: Tranq, Nicotine, Lukewarm, All wet, (Organics)
Text: (see "syntax") - Couplet, Edition, Epistles, X-rated (sin + syntax, hah), artifice (literary sense)

Word/Phrase-of-the-Day:
ARTIFICE

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/artifice

Clever or cunning devices or expedients, especially as used to trick or deceive others.

‘an industry dominated by artifice’

For those new to Acrostics, there are some simple tricks (pun intended) that will serve as aids to solving.  One is to recognize short letter words and back input those into the answers to the clues to see if they work.  My usual method is to start with a preliminary "pass" through each clue and see if any just jump out.  Before writing them in, I check for letter placement 'validity' (e.g. my first indicator that "Connick" was not the correct answer to R. "Harry _, singer of..." was that this would leave 132 as a C in the second position of a two-letter word - unlikely unless PC, which is reasonable (if not rare) and timely so I lightly inked this in, knowing it was likely wrong.  

Gimmes:

Year-round -  Y position ended a word an this is a good position for a y: "-ly" word ending is fairly common, right, as is "-ity".  This marks the second of strategies that work in acrostics, cryptoquotes and cryptoquips - recognize and utilize common word part prefixes and suffixes.

Niacin - Placement of C was relatively inconspicuous and the placement of the I in 120 a good position in a two-letter word (in, it, if, is)

Near miss - I guess this isn't a hyphenated word.  that was my only doubt.

Hoodwink - see below.  Early entry and fixed my problem with Nicotine

False Starts:

Nicotine (was Morphine) - I think the "small tubes" thing threw me off (artifice, anyone?) and made me think 'drip', so... Morphine.  and the chemical '-ine' suffix resonated, furthering my false cause.  This made 1 "H" instead of "T" and kept "The" out of it.  But Hoodwink was definitely right so HH wouldn't work...

All wet (was Way off) - Way off seemed better and 29 would have W as a first position in a three letter (was, typically)

Organism (Lifeform)

Nilsson (Connick)

Fast followers:

Lukewarm.  Sniffles.  Step off.  Epistles.  The stronger the ink, the more likely this came later in my solve and at a time of certainty.  

A fun puzzle, with an artistic reveal