Tuesday, 9/19

Tausig 5:10
CS 4:04
NYS 3:39
NYT 3:08
LAT 3:02

Allan Parrish's NYT plunked his theme entries down amid some juicy fill: words like BREEZES, JUBILEE, KITKAT, GINSU, and NL WEST. The theme gave itself away pretty quickly with BEER BELLY linked to a 3-letter word, and POT was more likely than GUT to lend itself to three more theme phrases. I wonder if the NYT crossword has linked POT to ILLEGAL DRUG before. (My son pretended to smoke a macaroni and cheese noodle tonight—Just say no to powder-based cheesoid substances, kids!) This puzzle also had its share of old-school fill like EDSEL, ETUI, ERE I, and LST, so I was finally compelled to find out just what the heck the [D-Day craft] LST stands for—it's the awkwardly phrased landing ship, tank.

In the Tuesday Sun puzzle by Fred Piscop, "Not the Best Puzzle Ever," the theme is types of WURST. The first theme entry, BRAT FARRAR, was unfamiliar to me; I know of Josephine Tey primarily from crosswords (same as Phil OCHS, who was in the Sunday NYT crossword).

Updated:

I always appreciate getting Ben Tausig's puzzle via e-mail on a Tuesday when it won't be printed in the Chicago Reader until Thursday—Thursday difficulty is always a plus earlier in the week when you crave tougher crosswords. I won't spoil this one ("Check Your Ego for the Season") for you because you should experience it for yourself. I will reveal that it has about 80 theme squares, and you'll want to take a close look (or two) at the clues. Quite a constructorial feat!

Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy puzzle (which you can download here—the Cruciverb.com link gets you yesterday's puzzle) features a quote from CNN's Anderson Cooper.

Today's LA Times crossword (available at the Cruciverb archive page) by Bruce Venzke and Stella Daily just might romance you.