Saturday

Patrick Berry, who spoiled us rotten with his collection of intricately interwoven, multilayered Starbucks puzzles over the past couple months, constructed the Saturday NYT crossword. Somehow this puzzle fell all too quickly for me, but if you take the average of this puzzle and the Starbucks tiebreaker...then my average solving time is astoundingly long. I bet people will be Googling like mad to ascertain the following answers: LAS CASAS, the "Spanish priest who famously oposed the conquistadors"; EDNA BEST, "she played a jilted wife in 'Intermezzo,' 1939"; AVERILL, "Earl in the Baseball Hall of Fame"; STEGNER, "'Angle of Repose' author"; CALX, "metal oxide"; and TSONGAS, "Massachusetts senator succeeded by Kerry." Lots of pop culture, with SINISE, DAVID CARUSO, IRENE CARA, and JAMES CAAN (it's always impressive when a first and last name appear together in the grid). Other great entries include THE IDIOT BOX, LET THERE BE LIGHT, LIPSYNCHED, and MANUMIT (which is a goofy-looking word). My absolute favorite clue here was "Colonial home?" for ANTHILL.

LAT 7:05
NYT 4:23
Newsday [untimed, but it felt fast]
CS 2:37

LA Weekly/Hook 9:20
WaPo 7:14