Saturday

Robert H. Wolfe's Saturday NYT is a fairly straightforward puzzle—if you can consider anything with one triple stack and two double stacks of 15's straightforward. The clues tended to be straightforward, anyway. Not only is NO SUCH LUCK a lively entry, but it also ties together five of the 15-letter entries. The only fill-in-the-blank clue, "___-Mex," was designed to dupe, as most people will confidently plug in TEX long before CAL occurs to them. For me, the deadliest spot in the puzzle was the last across entry, GO BY SEA; I entered GO TO SEA and wondered how a FIT was an "inconsequential invention" (try FIB) and how "movable type" might mean SOFTO (try SOFTY). I clicked "done" and spent a minute reviewing the entire rest of the grid before questioning those two answers that made no sense to me. (Note to self: when the puzzle is incorrect and a couple entries don't make sense, reconsider those ones first!)

Patrick Berry's Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle was cute—a fun Beatles theme tied loosely into academia.

NYT 6:46
Saturday Stumper tba
LAT 4:47
CS 4:02
12/9 CHE 3:45