Monday

Cute anti-theme in Sheldon Benardo's Monday NYT puzzle. It's nice to see a few 8-letter fill entries in a Monday puzzle.

Lynn Lempel's Sun puzzle, "Chain Letters," made good use of ABC, DEF, KLM, STU, and XYZ in the theme entries, but HIJ (HIJACKING) and NOP (NOPROBLEM) would've worked well, too.

And...that's all. Hey, it's Monday.

Updated:

Harvey Estes' "Beer Chasers" CrosSynergy puzzle has 18 non-theme entries that are 7 or 8 letters long, cutting the word count to 72. (So refreshing on a Monday!) Many of those longer entries only show up once or twice in the Cruciverb database, which also ups the freshness factor. The theme completely eluded me until I reached the helper entry, though.

The LA Times puzzle by Barry Silk has a minor mistake in the clue for IZOD. The clue reads, "shirt that once had a reptilian logo." As you can see, Izod apparel still features the crocodile logo.

P.S. Blogspot blogs are slated to be out of commission Monday night from 9 to 10 p.m. Central.)

CS 3:35
NYS (3:something, maybe? Accidentally tossed it out with last week's puzzles)
LAT 2:49
NYT 2:44