Tuesday housekeeping

I got back late last night and did the Tuesday NYT a couple hours after the nightly race to the finish. Nicely done puzzle by Beth Hinshaw—though I don't recall seeing BRADPITTSPITS in the movie, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith." Put me in the camp of those who rather liked the inclusion of AEIOU and MTWTF in the fill; there was some rapidly rebutted criticism of those entries over in the Today's Puzzle forum.

This morning I finally got back to my daily challenge of seeing how long it takes me to do the LAT, CS, and NYS trio. Given the holiday, I half thought it was Monday and gave myself 9:30 to do the three puzzles, but of course it's Tuesday and it took me 11:42 (ouch). Either today's puzzles are a little harder than last Tuesday's, or my Across Lite entry skills waned over the weekend.

Moving on to Raymond Hamel's Wed. NYT: I loved the crossing of BBGUN with OBGYN, adjacent to the crossing of ULYSSES with its dyslexic near-twin USELESS. I am willing to forgive the inclusion of one theme entry I've never heard of (PRESSGANG) since two others (CAPNCRUNCH and CHEESECURLS) are so tasty. I suspect I'm not the only one who immediately thought of the iPod for the 4-letter "modern music holder"; turns out to be DISC, which is so totally, like, '80s!