Thursday

The marquee puzzle of the day is Brendan Emmett Quigley's juicy Themeless Thursday in the Sun. JETSKIS and QUIZNOS! VH-ONE and LANDSAT! JANE DOE and EXOTICA! SHIATSU and AVENUE Q! TRIX and LIMN! "Da and ja" cluing YESES. I will forgive the knot where INNESS crossed IER and KNAPP because the rest of the puzzle is just so tasty. I'm curious to know what Brendan built the puzzle around—nothing stands out to me as an obvious seed because so many entries stand out as possibilities. Your guesses?

Over in the NYT, we've got a Yogi Berra quip from Sam Bellotto Jr. (It's a somewhat amusing quip, but is it so great that it's worth sacrificing standard crossword symmetry for left-right symmetry?) I liked seeing GRANDPA with a "Munsters" clue (even more retro than BEQ's SIT ON IT from "Happy Days"), IT MAY BE, and Puzo's THE DON; struggled a little to come up with ALL AFLAME. How did a simple quip puzzle take me a smidgen longer than a BEQ themeless? I'm gonna have to go with my affinity for themeless puzzles, the construction of which eludes me completely.

Updated:

David Ainslie Macleod's LAT puzzle features a synonym theme, which I liked, and some clues that grabbed me: "Fife player" for KNOTTS, "Second opening?" for NANO, "Rubble creator" for TNT, and "Jobs for towers" for REPOS.

NYT 5:37
NYS 5:36
LAT 4:01
CS 3:23