Manny Nosowsky serves up a grammar lesson in Wednesday's NYT, with theme entries conjugating the verb is five ways in contraction (I'M, HE'S, YOU'RE, SHE'S, THEY'RE). I did get slowed down by two phrases I haven't heard before—RUN TO SEED (I usually hear "go to seed") and BY ALL ODDS. One clue also rang a little untrue to me: "source of an androgyne's confusion" for SEX. Who says androgynes are confused about their identity?

Gary Steinmehl follows up his Monday NYT with another NYS outing, "Jeepers Creepers," featuring a SPIDER, WORM, BUG theme—and actually, looking at it again, I see that the HAL ROACH and SLUGFEST entries are also thematic. Even so, this was much less creepy than the centipede/millipede puzzle Dave Mackey concocted for me in July, which gave me a nightmare. (Literally.) The Sun puzzle pops with fill like WHAMMO, OAXACA, and POOHPOOHS. And the clue for ODOR, "mephitis," reminds me that I should use the word mephitic more often.

NYS 5:17
NYT 4:32
LAT 3:28
CS 3:10