Monday, 7/30

CS 3:06
NYS 3:01
NYT 2:55
LAT 2:55

Monday, Monday. What is there to say about Monday crosswords? Not a whole heckuva lot.

The New York Sun puzzle by Jack McInturff is called "Business Founding Fathers." The names in the theme are three of America's founding fathers as well as corporate names: SAMUEL ADAMS beer, JOHN HANCOCK insurance, and ETHAN ALLEN furniture. They're all, in a sense, COMPANY MEN. I like that VAGRANCY is clued as [What a hobo might be charged with]; yesterday I learned that a friend's husband wrote his career-making dissertation on hoboes. The opal is the most common birthstone found in crosswords (it's for October); McInturff includes February's AMETHYST instead. Here's a site with photomicrographs of the standard birthstones; cool pictures.

Elizabeth Long's New York Times crossword takes three celebs whose last names double as sporting terms and tacks a possessive 'S onto their first name: LUCILLE'S BALL, SALLY'S FIELD, and NEIL'S DIAMOND. Two other candidates for this theme, both athletes, are the especially apt MARGARET'S COURT (Margaret Smith Court is a retired tennis player) and GILBERT'S ARENAS (Gilbert Arenas plays basketball in the NBA). There are a number of people named Park to choose from, too. Hey, pick an athlete named Park with an odd number of letters in his or her name and you've got yourself a doubly sporty variant on Long's celeb theme, if you don't mind having a pair of 14s in there.