A bit off

I returned home last night and got all caught up on the Friday through Sunday puzzles—but I'm not posting my solving times. Because they sucked, incomprehensibly. If you're usually a little behind me, just assume you beat me this weekend. And if you're usually a little ahead of me, pretend I was right there, just a couple seconds slower.

A very nice hardware-themed Monday NYT from Jay Livingston. Pairing NORA and ASTA made both entries fresher, and TURBAN was a nice hat for the IMAM below it. There was some decent 8-letter fill, including MYSTIQUE and FOLLOW ME.

Brendan Emmett Quigley's "Sit for a Spell" in the NYS was good and Scrabbly (yes, I know Scrabble doesn't allow proper nouns like ZIMMER and JETER, but I'm talking about high-scoring letters). You've got 1A, "it might be right under your nose" = ZIT—and aren't those zits some of the peskiest ones? TURGID, INFINITI, LOLITA? Good stuff. (And if ZIMMER and JETER are actually in the Scrabble dictionary as uncapitalized words, pretend I gave other examples.)

Harvey Estes' CrosSynergy puzzle is another tribute to the late Don Adams. I never, ever watched "Get Smart," but the previous tribute puzzle(s) gave me all the theme answers.

NYS 3:46
NYT 3:10
CS 2:50