Monday

I liked Kevan Choset's NYT puzzle, with the Sr., Jr., 3rd theme and a bunch of longer entries that would liven up even a late-week puzzle: ABE LINCOLN and JANITORS, IN CONTEMPT and MOON UNIT, and even POTPIE and ZSAZSA. Am I the only one who sees Leslie Caron in a clue and immediately fills in _I_I, cursing her for starring in both Gigi and Lili? It's such a drag to actually have to glance at the crossing clues, man.

Updated:

Today's CrosSynergy is by Bob Klahn, and it's probably not really as hard as my comparative times suggest, but if you skip the CS puzzles because they're too easy, you might like this one.

Ogden Porter/Peter Gordon's NYS puzzle improves on standard quip puzzles by having three famous headlines that you may actually be familiar with. The third headline, DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN, reminds me of a less famous wrong headline from the summer of 1980: "It's Reagan and Ford" in the Chicago Sun-Times. (Turned out to be Reagan and Bush running together.)

Over on the NYT Today's Puzzle forum, Lee Glickstein's latest Topical Punch puzzle was posted Monday morning. If you like topical humor (skewing to the liberal side, given the news out of Washington these days) and good crosswords, check it out.

CS 5:15
NYS 3:11
NYT 2:49
LAT 2:43