Robert Wolfe's Themeless Thursday in the Sun seemed straightforwardly challenging, but now I see that it's a pangram, which always adds a little extra oomph. There were a number of entries I wasn't familiar with, but they were all ultimately gettable with the help of the crossings. Anyone ever seen MELANITES (black garnets) in person? Are they really black, or just very dark red?

This evening, I tackled Eric Berlin's Friday Sun puzzle, "Going Too Far." If you haven't gotten to it yet, word to the wise: Print it out after setting Across Lite to print the black squares in gray, even if you usually prefer to solve on screen. If you can't figure out how the hell you're supposed to approach the puzzle, the message in the notepad will help.

I hadn't even left the NW corner of Kevan Choset's Thursday NYT before figuring out a card-suit rebus was involved, so the rest of it was straightforward. I did keep forgetting that the corner letters were words, though—tried to think of what 5-letter singer dueted with Streisand before I remembered that letter 5 was DIAMOND and not D.

YOU GO GIRL! Yes, Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke did include that phrase in their Thursday LAT puzzle.

Updated:

Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy featured a set of four 14-letter anagrammed phrases. The anagrams themselves may not have been terribly clever, but the puzzle title was "Turning State's Evidence," and Hartman did indeed "turn" STATE'S EVIDENCE into four other phrases. Isn't that one of the NEATEST DEVICES (that's 33 Across)?

Fri NYS 14:32
Thurs NYS 6:16
NYT 5:00
LAT 3:54
CS 3:50