Jeudi

The finished grid in Kyle Mahowald’s Thursday NYT rebus puzzle looks bizarre in the timed applet—SIGIITHERAI and RIGADIGDIG, anyone?—with I replacing IN in most instances, both across and down. I counted just three regular I’s in the puzzle, along with a whopping 22 condensed IN’s; what’s the record for number of rebus squares in a daily puzzle? I wonder if the genesis of this puzzle was noticing that MAITAI is MAINTAIN without the N’s, as demonstrated in 8 Down.

John Farmer’s Themeless Thursday in the Sun
plenty of good entries, like GREEN EGGS AND HAM, ER DOCTOR, OH GOSH, AFTER DINNER MINT (new), FITNESS CENTER (new), EYE OPENER, ZODIAC, and SLEAZY. The clues seemed pretty straightforward (though still interesting), but “check accompanier, perhaps" (for AFTERDINNERMINT) kept me guessing longer than it should have.

NYT 5:41
NYS 5:26
LAT 4:21
CS 2:55