D'oh!

Well, last night I was just plain slower than usual. Tonight, I had one of those NYT applet typos that I was blind to for about a minute and a half (ERMA instead of IRMA, and of course MUSECIAN is not a word, so why didn't I catch that sooner?).

Who is this constructing duo of Kurt Mengel and Jan-Michele Gianette? I don't recognize the names. If it's their debut, then huzzah!

Yesterday, I did tomorrow's NYS, so I may as well talk about it now. It's by David Levinson Wilk, whose book is on my coffee table. You'd think working a bunch of puzzles in his book recently would have sent me flying through his NYS puzzle, but au contraire. Last night was slow-but-typo-free night, and it took me 5:51 to finish. Anyway, the grid was a tad ugly (those blocks of squares that looked like Utah), but the puzzle was great. The "Take a Penny, Leave a Penny" theme was innovative and unexpected. Some great consonant-packed entries: XSANDOS, RCRUMB, MMMBOP. A question, though: APIECE is clued simply as "up." Huh? Is that a sports score thing?

NYT 5:08 officially, but 3:38 not counting that one square
NYS 5:51