My Cruciverb.com membership is paying dividends, as members will have access to each day's LA Times puzzle in Across Lite. It'll be added back into my daily crossword diet.

The NY Sun puzzles have gone AWOL. My standard five-puzzle glut on Monday mornings has been postponed to whenever the puzzles are unloosed on the world.

Sarah Keller's Tuesday NYT kicked my butt. There's a restaurant chain in the Chicago area called Leona's—the last two CruCago dinners have been held there, in fact. My familiarity with that and my unfamiliarity with MAMALEONES killed me (to the tune of 30 or 40 seconds—hey, it felt much longer). There was a typo, too. I figured out the theme right away, but then BABYSNOOKS slipped my mind, and the dastardly "one end of a bridge" clue for TOOTH had me thinking NORTH or SOUTH (despite the "a"). HORRORS and SOBSTORY: those pretty well sum up my experience tonight. Which is unfortunate, because it's really a lovely puzzle. Tight theme, fresh fill like HORRORS and SOBSTORY, perky clues—good stuff.

Updated:

Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Cel Mates," made me laugh when I figured out MULAN ROUGE. Cute theme, plus it's a pangram, and I think it's a good example of what an easyish crossword should be. The only entry that seemed a little iffy was SWIPER, and it's not iffy at all for anyone whose kid watches "Dora the Explorer."

NYT 4:17
CS 3:01
LAT 2:55
NYS MIA