Sunday

Solving Elizabeth Gorski's Sunday NYT crossword was an on-again, off-again experience, with 14 squares containing ON/OFF. In the unchecked center square, ON/OFF reads across as is; in the other spots, the across answer uses OFF (as in [OFF]ENDER) and the down answer uses on (as in BEAC[ON]). This one's like a Thursday puzzle wrought large, and that's always a good thing. Extra bonus points to the constructor for the elegant consistency of across = OFF, down = ON (as Byron noted), even if up = ON for all my light switches. Slightly surprising to find an obscurity in the top row (Italian film director ELIO Petri—wonder if he was a dish?), but with PILLSBURY BAKE[OFF] and OXYMOR[ON] in that section, you take whatever works. The '60s TV series LAREDO was, apparently, a "light-hearted action" show. I can't say I'd seen URANIC before, but "pertaining to element 92" seems straightforward enough. Plenty of good fill worked in amid the many theme/rebus entries—EL NORTE and EGOMANIA, to name a couple.

NYT 10:20
LA Weekly 10:16
WaPo 8:54
LAT 7:47
CS 5:30