It looks like slower-than-usual Wednesday solving times for Ed Early's musical NYT. There may be people who immediately link, say, CAB CALLOWAY and JIVE, or WOODY HERMAN and BIG BAND, but I am not one of them. "Big jerk" as a clue for TUG misled me; I was thinking OAF and APE and CAD (are there any 3-letter words for nice guys?). And "up" is always wide open for a 5-letter answer starting with A—ASTIR, AWAKE, and ALOFT would do about as well as AT BAT. I liked the longer fill in this puzzle, with TUNA MELTS, SLALOMED, and BONEYARD.

In the NYS, we have a fairly easy outing from Gary Steinmehl, "Disneyfication." The "American Idol" theme entry fell immediately, but DUMBO BROOKLYN (short for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass," apparently) was more elusive for this non-New Yorker. The fill didn't excite me terribly, but with a clever theme containing three 15s and two 13s, I suppose we make allowances.

Updated: I haven't gotten to the Tausig puzzle yet—sick kid. (My kid, that is, not Ben Tausig.)


NYT 4:49
NYS 4:12
Tausig tba
CS 3:14