Tuesday's better than Monday

The NYT is by the brilliant Patrick Merrell, who made a giant letter A in the grid, from the bottom corners to the top center, composed of all the A's in the fill in connect-the-dot fashion. Think about the construction process involved in this puzzle—A's in specific locations, and absent everywhere else in the grid. And then be grateful for the RUTABAGA, which fit in nicely (there aren't many ***A*A*A words to choose from outside of Japanese words). Kudos to Pat on another twisty innovation in puzzling!

Lynn Lempel's NYS puzzle, "Color Mixing," has anagrammed color names in the theme entries (I loves me some anagrams, I do), and a couple great clues: "What running mates do?" for ELOPE (not quite as devious as the window-vs.-aisle clue in last Sunday's NYT by Rich Norris, but good all the same), and "Three-seater, e.g.," for COUCH (I started out with the not exactly accurate COUPE).

I did almost 20 crosswords on paper today, and the night isn't through yet. Stamford, I'm a-comin'.

NYS 4:53 paper
CS 3:57
LAT 3:30
NYT 3:14
Tausig tba