Wednesday, 4/4

CS 3:44
LAT 3:40
NYT 3:37
NYS 3:28

Ah, delectable Wednesday Sun crossword! Let me put you in my stash of great puzzles. Rather easy for a mid-week Sun, I thought, but plenty of fun for this fan of tough crosswords. "Ogden Porter" (Peter Gordon) caters to the geography lover in me (have you got one of those? My inner child likes to hang out with the geography lover) with "Modernized Geography": Burma-Shave becomes MYANMAR-SHAVE, Bombay Sapphire is MUMBAI SAPPHIRE, Peking Express is BEIJING EXPRESS, and a Madras shirt is a CHENNAI SHIRT. Perfect theme. The rest of the puzzle's good, too—there's Elton John's SAD SONGS, the verb SHANGHAI and ASIA clued as a region in the game Risk, a St. Bernard's DROOL, a corporate REORG, the SEVENTH inning stretch, and three types you might meet on Match.com: the Snoopy persona JOE COOL, a handsome but dim HIMBO, and the much-coveted EGGHEAD (what?). And did I mention how much I liked this theme?

The NYT puzzle by Bette Sue Cohen...I don't know about combining IDI, SEDUCE, and JOAN RIVERS in one place. Although maybe it's HIRAM and ADELA who are embroiled. The theme is H₂O, with four famous wet people: JOAN RIVERS, BILLY OCEAN, ETHEL WATERS (I prefer Muddy), and CLAUDE RAINS. I liked the little 2 in the center of the grid, crossing AT 2 AM. (Why have I always thought DST involved "falling back" from 3 to 2 a.m. rather than from 2 to 1? Was 3 a.m. ever involved, or just in my house?)