Wednesday

The theme entries in "Roger DePont's" NYS puzzle ("And the Nominees Are...") are the films that were nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award, announced Tuesday morning. With so little theme flexibility, some of the fill is blah (ITA, NAV, ULE), but some is zippy (VJ DAY, G STRING, R CRUMB, INKWELL, BREVITY). My favorite clue was "Number one place" for POTTY. I also learned about the Pittsburgh Steelers' logo (the three hypocycloids represent ORE, coal, and steel scrap) and a math term in 56-Down. (Not bad for a few hours' work, eh?)

If you're like me, when you do Ben Tausig's puzzle (the aptly titled —"Word Botching"), you'll ask yourself, who is this "noted OCD sufferer Summers" named MARC in 1-Across? Wonder no more. Right beneath MARC, we have ANAL ("uptight, slangily"), appropriately enough. Great spoonerism theme. I'd enjoy others like it—anyone know of other spoonerism crosswords?

Elizabeth Gorski multiplies by 10 in the NYT puzzle. I'm sure there's more to say about this puzzle, but I still haven't caught up on sleep since Sundance. So sleepy...

Updated:

During a two-hour period this morning, I did 20 old Newsday puzzles on paper. (And took short breaks for e-mail and blog-tending.) Okay, I think I'm done with Stamford training for today...

NYS 4:43 paper
Tausig 4:39
NYT 4:12
LAT 3:35
CS 2:59