Thursday

I’m glad Ben Tausig doesn’t reserve all his best puzzles for syndication, because then we occasionally get a week with two of his fun puzzles. The NYT puzzle has a reversal theme leading to a completed grid wth YGOLOHCYSP as a theme entry. Besides the spelled-backwards theme entries, there’s chipper fill in which JAY-Z and MRS C can MEET for a PILSNER and admire the four X’s and two Z’s.

Ogden Porter/Peter Gordon’s Themeless Thursday in the Sun is the second puzzle I did on Wednesday that included ALL KIDDING ASIDE (the other was Rich Norris’s Wednesday CrosSynergy featuring 15 IDEs). Peter clearly couldn’t resist the letters in BKLYNQNSEXPWY, or in BILL MAZEROSKI (not a ballplayer I’ve heard of, but with a name like that, how many crosswords is he going to appear in?). “Centipede’s place” put me on edge (oh, how I loathe centipedes) until I figured out it was ARCADE.

I managed to do only about 10 puzzles on paper yesterday, but I'd done almost 30 the day before so I remain roughly on target for 20 a day.

NYS 5:30
NYT 4:58
LAT 3:16
CS 2:59
Newsday 2:53 (on paper)