Saturday, 10/7

NYT 7:40
Newsday [untimed]
LAT? tba
CS 2:58

As of Friday night, the Cruciverb.com site is still offline, so broad access to the Across Lite version of the LA Times puzzle is still gone. And apparently there was a fire earlier on Friday that knocked out the Houston Chronicle's posting of the CrosSynergy puzzles in Across Lite. If the puzzles are there Saturday morning, I'll do them; if not, then maybe another day...

Another commendable themeless crossword from David Quarfoot, the Saturday NYT. It's got the hallmarks of a good time: a dozen entries with 9+ letters, not to mention plenty of...Scrabbly letters, multi-word phrases (the cross-referenced SQUARE PEG and ROUND HOLE, C'EST LA VIE, and AS SOON AS), unexpected letter sequences (V SIGN, IT'LL DO, RATED G, ABC SPORTS), slang (DA BOMB), and clues that make you work for the answers. 2-Down is clued as [Choice], 20-Across as [Smart, in a way] and 29-Across is [Break], fighting the noun vs. adjective, verb vs. adjective, and noun vs. verb battles. (If you guessed adjective, adjective, verb, well done—EXQUISITE, LASER-GUIDED, VIOLATE) The [Wooded area surrounding a community is GREEN BELT; read the Wikipedia article to learn more. My favorite clue was [One subjected to disarmament?] for VENUS DE MILO.

Updated:

Daniel Stark's Newsday Saturday Stumper was fairly straightforward as themeless puzzles go. My sources have expressed doubt about 26-Across, though, saying that [He sang about Bo and Luke] can only be Waylon Jennings, whereas this crossword has MERLE (Haggard). Can anyone shed light on this?