Tuesday

LAT 4:14 (while carrying on a phone conversation)
NYS 4:04
CS 2:59
NYT 2:50

Anne Garellick's NYT has four theme entries tied together by a fifth, shorter entry, which is generally a good thing but I'm not too excited about this particular fifth entry. I did like the four main theme entries, though. (I rather think I've seen other themes along these lines, but that's fine by me.) It kinda felt like a Monday puzzle, didn't it? Occasionally some people claim the early-week puzzles have gotten harder lately—would that it were so!

I liked Todd McClary's Sun puzzle, "Same Difference," which has a theme I might've thought Peter Gordon wouldn't have gone for—rumor has it Peter doesn't much care for repeated-letter themes, and this one repeats the ISO at the beginning of each themer. Either Peter appreciated the overall quality—phrases like MADE ROOM and WRAP IT UP, Scrabbly fill like VEXED and OVITZ, and the consonant-dense PNC PARK—or maybe he just couldn't resist the concept of the cast party that a bunch of roly-polies could put on (ISOPOD CAST). (Did you know how freaking big isopods can be?) Along the way in this puzzle, I picked up knowledge of another baseball player, José RIJO. Great puzzle, Todd!