Sunday, 5/31

PI 9:03
LAT 7:41
NYT 7:32
BG 6:29
CS 3:27
NYT diagramless 16 minutes

Kelsey Blakley's New York Times crossword, "Odd One Out"

Well, you can fill in the whole puzzle without reading the Notepad note and without having the faintest idea of what the theme is. Then you can read the Notepad and get an anagramming puzzle...for which you don't need to do any work because 68- and 70-Across can be filled in via their clue (68A. [With 70-Across, some people are ___ crosswords]) and the easy crossings. Each of the eight long starred answers contains each of its letters twice, except for one solitary leftover letter. The eight leftovers can be anagrammed to spell NUTS OVER, but you don't need to pull out those letters and anagram them, do you? And knowing the letters-appear-twice gimmick probably wouldn't speed solving because those answers have straightforward clues and mostly easy crossings. I am left wondering what the point is, as the theme didn't give me any "wow" effect. Oh, well.

I was churning through it at breakneck speed until I hit the midsection of the right side. Ye gods, that zone worked me over:

• 46D. [*Real work] is STRENUOUS EFFORT. (The U stands alone.) I had the bottom part early on.
  
• 47D. [It may be tapped] clues a TREE TRUNK yielding maple sap.
  
• 55A. ["Gloria ___" (hymn)] is completed by PATRI.
  
• 60A. [King of England, 946-55] is EDRED. He is not among the most famous 20 or 30 English kings.
  
• 65A. [Montana Indians] clues CREES, which are much more often clued as being in Canada.
  
• 56D. [Italian Renaissance composer Banchieri] was named ADRIANO. He is not among the most famous 20 or 30 Italian Renaissance creative types.
  
• 84A. [You name it] cleverly clues a NOUN.
  
• 35D. The [1967 #1 hit whose lyrics begin "What you want / Baby, I got it"] is RESPECT. I know, you all got that one right off the bat. I'm terrible with lyrics, and wasn't sure if RES**** might be a two-word song. Those crossings were not helping me!
  
• 72A. [Paint choice] is the TINT you have the paint colored rather than a kind of paint.

It wasn't all a grumblefest, I promise. I liked these things:

• 23A. I like the theme entry UNITARIAN CHURCH, the [Religious affiliation of John Adams and William Howard Taft], because a couple gay friends have found the Unitarians to be welcoming. ATHEISM, a [Lack of faith], also pleases me.
  
• 94A. The SKY is the [Ocean's reflection].
  
• 4D. A [Dead giveaway?] is the deceased's ESTATE.
  
• 7D. [The Osmonds, e.g.] are UTAHNS.
  
• 25D. [Sea lily, e.g.] is a CRINOID. Crinoids are also called feather-stars, and they're cousins of starfish. Excuse me, sea stars. But on SpongeBob, they're starfish.
  
• 45D. [Beta blocker?] without a question mark would be a blood pressure medicine. With it, it's the VHS, which conquered the Betamax videotape format.
  
• 117D. Why did I know with just the first E that [She can be polled] clued a EWE? I couldn't tell you. What is polling? Oh! The dictionary tells me it's cutting off an animal's horns.

In the underwhelming category, we have some -ER people and an -EST superlative. A [Telecaster] is an AIRER. A [Jester, e.g.] is an AMUSER. An ENTICER is a [Siren] luring the DESIRERS, or [Those with yens]. The superlative is MINUTEST, or [Least]. It's got plenty of Google presence, but some of those hits are typos for "minutes."

There's some crosswordese sprinkled throughout the grid, too—OLEO and STERE, STRIAE and NEE, that sort of stuff. And DIESEL OIL is clued as [Semi fill-up]. Is there such a substance? If there is, I don't think it's what truckers buy at the gas pump—that'd be diesel fuel or diesel. Diesel oil may be motor oil designed for diesel engines.

Francis Heaney's NYT second Sunday puzzle, a diagramless crossword

Diagramless fans are especially fond of puzzles that draw a picture, aren't we? Here, the diagram ends up depicting a spiral, which adds visual oomph to the theme. My spiral spills over by two columns on the right side of the grid because I settled on a starting square after figuring out the first four and a half rows, and I assumed the answers would spill to the left more. (The correct starting square is the fifth one.) Not a tragedy, as there's plenty of room in the right margin for a couple more answers.

The theme entries are:

• 12A. [Source of an osmena pearl] is the NAUTILUS SHELL. Raise your hand if you have no idea what an osmena pearl is. *raising hand*
  
• 32A. CEPHALOPOD is a [Creature in a 12-Across].
  
• 40A. [Shape of a 12-Across] is a SPIRAL, visually represented by the spiraling shape of the diagram.
  
• 56A. [Like a 12-Across] clues CHAMBERED.
  
• 61A. Just for the hell of it, OCTOPUS is stacked below CHAMBERED. It's a [Kind of 32-Across]. Kudos on the 100% defensible "kind of ___" clue, Francis.

The nonthematic fill is colorful. NICK FALDO ([Three-time Masters winner who's now a TV golf analyst]) and DANIEL BOONE ([Eponym of a Kentucky national forest]) sit up top. There's a DOPE FIEND who's a [Candidate for rehab]. [Vacation spot for people who like to pack light?] is a NUDIST CAMP. A plain old MUSIC BOX is a [Portable player that has only one song]—great clue, as it evokes questions about which iPod or MP3 player has such a limit. KUDZU ([Comic strip that shares a name with an invasive plant]) shares a Z with Tony DANZA (["Taxi" co-star] back in the day). The craziest answer is RAGNAROK—[Cataclysmic even in Norse myth that inspired "Götterdämmerung"]. There are also a lot of 3-letter answers to facilitate the spiraling diagram, which helped me a lot in solving because many of them had fairly easy clues. I was led astray by the clue for 24A, though—the [Traditional July birthstone] I know of the RUBY, but the answer here is ONYX, also 4 letters. Apparently the onyx is linked to the zodiac sign Leo, which begins in late July, but the clue borders on unfair because most sources will say July's birthstone is the ruby.

Edited to add: Holy cow! Reader Matt points out that two short answers also look to be part of the theme. The APEX is the innermost empty chamber, clued here as [Tiptop] rather than duplicating the words shell, chamber, or nautilus. I don't know if the outermost part of a nautilus creature or its shell is called END, but END is at the end of the spiral clued as [Wind up].

Edward Sessa's syndicated Los Angeles Times Sunday crossword, "Double Plays"

There's a critical mass of L.A. Times crossword bloggers (well, three of us—me, PuzzleGirl, and Rex) who blithely pay little attention to Broadway shows and fail to work up much enthusiasm for themes centered on them, especially when it comes to musicals. Today's theme entries combine the titles of two plays (some musicals, some not) and concoct a clue for the resulting phrase. [Munchkin femmes fatales?], for example, are WICKED LITTLE WOMEN, combining Wicked and Little Women. The latter was made into a play? I didn't know. My favorite theme entry wins for its "ick" quotient: HAIR GREASE is clued as [Inferior pomade?], and Hair and Grease are both quite familiar. I didn't know there was a show or play called Fanny, so FANNY-PROOF, [Like sturdy chairs], didn't readily come to me. And [Jazz lovers on the Mississippi?]—BIG RIVER CATS? Yes, I know about Cats, but I can't say Big River rings a bell at all.

Interesting word of the day: ALLONYMS, clued as [Ghostwriters' noms de plume, say]. As A.Word.A.Day explains, it's "the name of a person, usually historical, taken by an author as a pen name (as opposed to using a fictional pseudonym)." Orange is a fictional pseudonym, but I read another blog where a writer uses an allonym. You know what would be a great pseudonym? Mac Homan. That's what 3D, the [1978 Village People hit], looks like when spaced differently. I envision Mac Homan as not at all a MACHO MAN.

There's more on the puzzle from PuzzleGirl at the other blog.

Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "Going into Overtime"

Merl is the master of the entertaining Sunday theme. Sometimes his puns are groaners, yes, but he shines when it comes to cracking wise via a crossword theme. The title's a little backwards, as the OT goes into each theme answer rather than the reverse:

• 22A. [Something Iago probblyl never said?] is "OTHELLO, IT'S ME." Is "Hello, it's me" suitably in-the-language to serve as the basis of a theme twist? I say sure, if the result is funny.
  
• 26A. [Singer who's never forgotten her roots?] is VIKKI CARROT. Does anyone younger than me have any familiarity with Vikki Carr? She lives in the same part of my brain as Vicki Lawrence, which is to say that I don't really know anything about Vikki Carr either. Slightly before my time, I think.
  
• 41A. ["Okay, dog, you happen to be eating my most valuable baseball card"] clues MEL OTT'S IN YOUR MOUTH. Thank you for getting the dog concept in there, Merl.
  
• 55A. THE OLD BALLOT GAME is [Chad checking?].
  
• 69A. [Why I'm still waiting to take off?] is that GODOT IS MY COPILOT. I laughed out loud at this one, and so did my husband when I read it to him. Waiting for Godot + aviation + cheesy "God is my co-pilot" bumper stickers = win.
  
• 85A. [Studies helicopters?] is THINKS ROTATIONALLY.
  
• 102A and 110A are a father-and-son pair, Carl and Rob Reiner. ROBOT REINER is [Artoo Detoo's favorite director?] and CAR LOT REINER is a [Director who's been around the block a few times?].

In the shorter answers, I duped myself into thinking the 3-letter [On-the-rack item?] (17A) was a BRA...but the answer turned out to be HAT. Whoops. Looking at 62D, I assumed there was an adjacent-key typo in the clue for GATES. Robert GATES is the [DOD boss], after all. But what Merl was going for was Bill GATES, the Microsoft [DOS boss].

Favorite non-theme clue: [Rocky greeting] for YO, ADRIAN. When I see "rocky" in a clue, I think of IBEXes gamboling on the TORs. WHO'S NEXT is a seminal album by The Who, but it's clued as [Waiting room query]. Thanks to songs like "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again," I like WHO'S NEXT even with a waiting room clue.

Toughest clues: [Samoa's monetary unit] is the TALA. GEMSBOK is a [Large antelope]. ALTHORNS are certain [Brass instruments]. There are two old-school crosswordese actresses: THEDA Bara is clued as the [First name of "The Vamp"], and [Actress Negri] is POLA.

Henry Hook's Boston Globe puzzle in Across Lite, "Big Bucks"

The theme is a little flat, as it looks like most of the theme entries are about wealth, but then MISS MONEYPENNY doesn't connote wealth. And ROLLING IN DOUGH means "wealthy," but most of the other answers just include words that mean "wealth." So it feels uneven. And then there are a handful of woeful entries that make me say, "Oh, Henry, you're better than this." ELEMI and ANENT at least are old-school crosswordese that long-time solvers don't blink at. But VENITE? That's the [95th Psalm] and not a familiar word or crossword entry. UPOLU? It's a [Volcanic Samoan island], apparently. Better are ZAFTIG, MCGRUFF, TYLENOL, and even the Sea of OKHOTSK (Russian inlet).

You know, I'd write more about the puzzle if there were more of an audience for it. But when it's been a month and a half since it was in the newspaper and there are just those of us who use Cruciverb.com or Will Johnston's Puzzle Pointers page who are still thinking about the puzzle...the motivation dwindles.

Updated again Sunday evening:

Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy themeless "Sunday Challenge"

Aww, another easy themeless? I crave crazy-tough clues, I do.

The QWERTY KEYBOARD is a [Standard typing setup], all right. Joining it among the more lively answers here are these:

• JAKARTA is [University of Indonesia location]. Never heard of the school, but Jakarta's the best-known city in Indonesia so that was inferrable.
  
• WARNER BROTHERS has certainly done a lot since then, but back in the day it was the ["Casablanca" studio].
  
• You'd think TIBETAN would be a common 7-letter crossword answer with the alternating consonant/vowel pattern and nothing more unusual than a B, but it really isn't. Clued as [The Dalai Lama, for one].
  
• What's [Gumption]? It's MOXIE or spunk.
  
• Samoa's crosswordese capital Apia moves to the clue side of things. [Apia natives] are SAMOANS.

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Friday, 1/2

Sun 10:01
LAT 5:42
NYT 5:13
CS 3:11
WSJ 7:14

(all done updating at 4:20 p.m. Friday)

I hear that the Friday Sun crossword is one of those rare but exceedingly tough treats—a vowelless puzzle by Frank Longo. This might help tide us over until June, when Frank's entire bk f vwllss crsswrds wll b pblshd. Cn't wt! Except I can wait until morning to do the Sun, as I don't want to start it when I'm already tired because then it will kick my butt.

Speaking of the Sun crossword, if you haven't already subscribed, I encourage you to do so here. Editor Peter Gordon has overseen the development of a number of cruciverbal innovations. The vowelless puzzles, some of Patrick Berry and Patrick Blindauer's crazy twists on the format, some rebus puzzles that are too tough for the New York Times, asymmetrical grids—if you have even the slightest appreciation for puzzle challenges like these, please help keep Peter's crossword factory churning out the goodies.

The New York Times crossword is a themeless by Martin Ashwood-Smith, who's one of the regulars on the CrosSynergy constructors team. He's placed a triple-stack of 15-letter answers at the top and bottom of the grid, and a couple more 15's near the middle. Usually when there are that many 15's, one of them might be a gimme for me, but not this time. Here are the big girls:

• SALES RESISTANCE is a [Problem in closing?]. Coffee is for closers, they said in Glengarry Glen Ross. My brother-in-law used to be in sales, despite his own comically low sales resistance. He bought a vacuum cleaner from a door-to-door salesman...as a single man who never vacuumed. He bought a set of encyclopedias for himself around the same time. See? No sales resistance.
  
• [Just before it's too late] is THE ELEVENTH HOUR.
  
• [1984 JoBeth Williams comedy/adventure film] was not ringing any bells for me. According to this page, the tagline for AMERICAN DREAMER was "She was an ordinary housewife until her trip to Paris turned into an extraordinary adventure." Well, doesn't that sound intriguing.
  
• AVERSION THERAPY is [One way to kick a bad habit]. What would crossword aversion therapy consist of? I think speed solver Dan Feyer may be due for an intervention, as he recently reported solving 9,000 crosswords last year. (This is good news for all the rest of us—if a loved one suggests we're spending too much time on puzzles, we can place things in perspective with the Feyer Scale. "Me? Are you kidding? Some folks do, like, five or ten times as many crosswords as I do.")
  
• An INVITED AUDIENCE is a [Preview crowd].
  
• WEATHER STATIONS are [Pressure points?] that may record the barometric pressure. I love my Lacrosse weather station, I do.
  
• [Who said "A hungry man is not a free man"] was ADLAI E. STEVENSON, promoted from his usual initials or first name appearances in crosswords to the marquee level of his full name emblazoned across the grid. It just so happens that I drove about 40 miles on the Adlai Stevenson Expressway today.
  
• [One who'd like to put you in your place] in a nice way is a REAL ESTATE AGENT.
  

It's getting late, so without further ado, other clues and answers I want to include here follow:

• [Seventeen people, briefly] are EDS. at Seventeen magazine.
  
• A HEN is [One whose deposits are often collected]. Eggs, not ore or silt.
  
• [It's a shore thing] means a PIER. Not sure why I opted for TIDE first.
  
• ABS ([They look better when they're ripped]) and GUT ([Instinctive]) appear together...just before GREASED, which puts me in mind of shiny body-builders.
  
• [Supporting piece] clues both a collar STAY and a framework STRUT. A [V-shaped carrier] is a HOD. Are you ready to build some stuff?
  
• The [Word associated with a light bulb] is AHA. Metaphorical/cartoon light bulb, not an actual one.
  
• [Whitebait, e.g.] is HERRING. Isn't that a New Year's tradition in some cultures, eating pickled herring?
  
• I don't know why LAPIS is clued [Stone, to Caesar]. What's the Caesar/lapis lazuli connection? The dictionary tells me lapis is Latin for "stone," so there you have it.
  
• [Ban succeeded him in 2007] refers to Kofi ANNAN. Ban is UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
  
• If proofreaders [Decide to leave] something as is, they STET it.
  
• [Never heard of [Jazz guitarist Farlow], named TAL.
  

Updated:

It's noon, and I've only been up for two hours today. Is that a good thing or a bad one? I think it's good, but it leaves me behind schedule for the day.

The cluing style in Edward Sessa and Nancy Salomon's LA Times crossword clashed with my mindset—there's nothing so inherently challenging about the theme or the fill that accounts for this puzzle taking me longer than the NYT themeless, other than the clues just not resonating with the words in my head. The theme is summed up by TEE-OFF TIME, a golf [Driver's request, and a hint to this puzzle's theme]. The phrase I'm familiar with is "tee time," which gets about 17 times more Google hits than "tee-off time." This answer suggests that the other theme entries have a T taken off a unit of time, but the T is lopped off a set of unrelated words:

• ONE GOOD URN (turn) is [Caterer's minimal requirement].
  
• HOLY ERROR (terror) is [Slip-up in the pulpit?]. My first thought here was that Reverend Spooner and spoonerisms would be involved.
  
• [Reveille duettists?] are a PAIR OF ROUSERS (trousers).
  
• NO NEW AXES (taxes) is a [Lumberjack's lament?].
  

In the fill, [Swedish golfer Stenson], or HENRIK, was a stranger to me. [Ford : RESCU :: GM : ___] clued ONSTAR, which I've heard of; I don't think Ford has done such a good job of publicizing their version of. [Creator of Kissy and Pussy] is IAN Fleming of James Bond fame; I don't recall a Kissy. [Reason for weight loss?] clues TARE; with super-dry factual words like TARE, I think I prefer super-dry factual clues. Why is [Jewish star] MOGEN? I don't know. [First name in detection] is NERO, as in Nero Wolfe. [Place at the track] clues LAY, as in "lay a bet" or "place a bet" on a race. GLUON is a [Quark-binding particle]. The units of time in the crossword are a SPAN, or [Some time], and ERA, or [Hunk of history]. [Ale brewer Slosberg] is named PETE; I've never heard this name, but Google tells me he's the founder of Pete's Wicked Ale. BEETS are [Commonly biennial garden plants], but I do not know any gardeners who grow beets; I hear that eating a lot of beets will turn your digestive output purple or red. (Blue frosting or dye gives kids green poop.) [Cyrene's daughter, in a TV drama] is XENA the Warrior Princess. My favorite clue here is [One of them?] for a FOE.

Ray Hamel's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Word of Mouth," gathers four phrases that include parts of the mouth:

• LIP SERVICE is a [Bit of insincerity].
  
• TONGUE-TIED means [Unable to speak].
  
• A really [Hard candy] is a JAWBREAKER.
  
• The TOOTH FAIRY, besides being that generous ethereal being who gives kids a quarter or a buck for a lost baby tooth, is also a [Ravenous creature in "Hellboy II: The Golden Army"]. I forgot those hideous little creatures that chewed up everyone and -thing at the auction house were called tooth fairies. They feed on calcium. If you haven't seen the two Hellboy movies and you enjoy wry, check 'em out.
  

BEET is in this puzzle, too, but clued more accessibly as a [Red vegetable] since the puzzle's targeted at more of a Wednesdayish level. Favorite clues: [It makes il mondo go round] for AMORE; [Carnegie foundation?] for STEEL, the foundation of Carnegie's wealth; [Marriage agreement?] for I DO; [Shorts supports] for the HIPS; and [Unlucky number, in ancient Rome?] for XIII or 13. I also like "DO TELL!" clued as ["Please continue!"], though I hear that Southerners who say "Do tell!" really mean "You don't say" and don't want you to say more. (This page explains that it's an expression of surprise. But this Northerner says it to mean "Please continue.")

Andrea Carla Michaels came up with a theme idea about ANTs and Patrick Blindauer crafted a fun-looking grid to embody it. Today's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Down on the Farm," has a bunch of black squares that draw the tunnels in an ant farm, and the ANTs are crawling all over the puzzle (everywhere but in those black tunnels, actually]. There's one explanatory ANT at 6-Down: [Farm creature that can be found 30 more times in this grid]. Though there aren't really any traditional theme entries in this grid—certainly none to be found in symmetrical spots given that this grid is asymmetrical—the ANTs theme was an aid to solving the rest of the puzzle because you knew that a bunch of answers would contain the ANT trigram. For example, there's a [Hairy creature], the TARANTULA, and a VANTAGE [Point with a view] beside INFANT, or [Babies], with the pair crossing a TYRANT, ATALANTA, and RADIANT. GRANT'S TOMB, the [Memorial in New York's Riverside Park], sits atop a praying MANTIS, or [Devout insect?]. Every section of the puzzle has an ANT or three crawling in it. Cute! But I feel like getting some bug spray now, or calling the constructors Antrea and Pantrick.

Updated again, at last, with the Vwllss Crsswrd:

Frank Longo's Sun crossword is both themeless and vowelless. To keep things clear, there aren't any Y's serving as consonants or vowels in this grid. This puzzle felt easier than Frank's past ventures in vowel-free entertainment. Here's what the NSWRS are when you reanimate them with their lost vowels:
1A. JNLC is Jean-Luc Godard.
5A. MTLPLCHCQZ is multiple-choice quiz.
15A. FTSR is footsore. Not a word I've ever used, but I must concede it should have a place in my vocabulary.
16A. LTHLCMBNTN is a lethal combination.
17A. FDST is fades out, I think.
18A. TRVLDSTNTN is travel destination. Use of those -tion/TN noun endings makes these vowelless monsters a little more pliant.
19A. RSNR is a reasoner.
20A. NTRNTNLZNG is internationalizing. There's another -tion lurking in there. Given how common T and N are in English words, the vowelless constructor is probably quite fond of -tion words.
21A. STTC is static.
22A. GRDTNS are graduations.
23A. NTHM is an anthem. They sang "O Canada" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" before the NHL Winter Classic at Wrigley yesterday. If you watched that, did you see those military jets roar overhead? I heard them fly over my house a few seconds before they reached Wrigley.
24A. PCC is ipecac.
25A. GTHSMN is Gethsemane. It's the name of a good garden center a couple miles from me—very little agony and betrayal going on at this Gethsemane.
30A. MSMFFNRTS is a Museum of Fine Arts. Where are the museums of coarse arts, like the rendering of armpit farts and belching the alphabet?
33A. RNMNT is an ornament.
34A. MSPRNTS are misprints, with only two vowels omitted.
35A. I couldn't figure out what CSNGSTR was short for, so I checked Pete Mitchell's Sun Blocks blog—causing a stir. Ah, the deceptive inclusion of an invisible "a" as a word...
37A. RNCTD is reenacted.
38A. SPRNGRLLS is also missing just two vowels so it looks nearly normal: spring rolls.
40A. LTTSNW is "Let It Snow", times three.
42. LLL is lull; this could also have been clued as loll or Lille.
43A. NKNT is in a knot, againn with an "a" that's dissolved away.
44A. DSCCTS is desiccates.
46A. RLSH is relish.
47A. DRSSRHRSLS are dress rehearsals.
51A. VDTP is videotape.
52A. SSTRPBLCTN is a sister publication.
53A. LTTC is lettuce.
54A. NDNPLSCLTS are the Indianapolis Colts.
55A. TMTT is the tomtit.
56A. GDNCCNSLRS are guidance counselors.
57A. NSNR is ensnare.

1D. JFFRSNMMRL is the Jefferson Memorial.
2D. NTDSTTSSNT is the United States Senate.
3D. LSSNTHMPCT is lessen the impact.
4D. CRTRCMFRTS are creature comforts.
5D. MLTNGPT is melting point.
6D. LTRTRCRSS are literature courses.
7D. THVRDCT is The Verdict.
8D. PLLNT is pollinate.
9D. LCDTNG is elucidating.
10D. CMSNSTRNG is comes on strong.
11D. HBTL is habitual—half the word is omitted vowels.
12D. CNNZ is canonize—ditto.
13D. QTTN is quotation—five vowels dropped, four consonants holding steady.
14D. ZNNG is zoning.
26D. HNGRNRVLTN is the Hungarian Revolution.
27D. SMSLKLDTMS is, I suppose, "Seems Like Old Times."
28D. MNTLNSTTTN is a mental institution.
29D. NTRSTHPCTR is enters the picture. Nice lively phrase.
31D. FNDNDRPLC is find and replace—also lively.
32D. SCRLTLTTR is The Scarlet Letter.
36D. SNLSSNSS is sinlessness. It's not a coincidence that four of those S's double as the last letter of the crossings—those S's come in handy here.
39D. PLCSCLL is places a call.
41D. WSHBSN is washbasin.
45D. CRLCS are curlicues—I like this one.
47D. DSNG is dousing. Could just as easily be dosing, but dousing makes for a crisper clue.
48D. RSDD is resided.
49D. STNN is sit in on. As Pete M. noted, "sit in" sounds a tad more right than "sit in on" here.
50D. SRPC is Serpico.

Did you notice that this is a 60-"word" puzzle with just 25 black squares? If this were a standard crossword, this grid would be off-the-hook insane, with quadruple-stacked 10-letter answers in each corner and those 9-letter answers in the middle binding them all together.

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Wednesday, 4/16

LAT 3:37
NYT 3:34
NYS 3:15
CS 2:42

Edward Sessa's got a kicky theme in his New York Times crossword. The theme clues for four 15-letter entries are [INK], [IN], [I], and [ ]. The first is CEPHALOPOD SPRAY; next, a SOCIAL ADVANTAGE; then a PERSONAL PRONOUN; and finally, DISAPPEARING INK. It's cute—sort of like those word pyramids (have they got a name?) in which one letter is removed at each step, only this one goes one step further and thereby circles back to the beginning. I got mildly mucked up early on—3-Down, [Bonehead], starting with DO...hmm, is it DODO or DOLT? Neither—it's DOPE. (With that sort of clue, it's more likely to be DODO or DOLT, statistically.) Toughest words lurking within: ANOXIA [(It) may cause a coma], not to mention death; MARL is a [Clayey sediment]; [Ptolemy's lighthouse locale] is PHAROS; the [Dispatch boat] beloved in crosswords is the AVISO; and [Coral producer] is a POLYP (polyps: they're not just for intestines and noses any more!). [No-brainer?] seems slightly cruel as a clue for MORON, though.

Lee Glickstein's New York Sun puzzle, "Name Changes," takes three phrases in which a word is duplicated and flips one of the dupes into a surname. Shaw's Man and Superman becomes Horace MANN AND SUPERMAN; Gabriel Byrne with that Irish accent takes part in BURN BABY BYRNE (just a mild sunburn); and a heart-to-heart talk is a (Gary) HART-TO-HEART (the band) TALK. (Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers' Hart to Hart doesn't enter into the equation.) Plenty of good clues and fill, but it's almost midnight (condo meeting and a phone call dislodged puzzle time) and I'm too tired to make judgments about which ones I liked now.

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Alan Olschwang's LA Times crossword places MUSIC and GENRE in symmetrical spots to explain that the theme entries begin with just that—ROCKET FUEL, PUNKY BREWSTER (['80s title sitcom role for Soleil Moon Frye], and a show I never saw), RAPID RESPONSE, and POPPY SEEDS all are longer words with contemporary music genres at their starts. A SPONGE may be used as a [Counter cleaner], but if that sponge has already picked up bacteria from one spot in the kitchen, it'll be spreading it all over the counter. (Wash those sponges in the washer or dishwasher and let them dry thoroughly to kill germs. This has been your public service announcement for 2008.) The POLYP returns, again clued as a [Coral component]; sea anemones, like that pictured at right, are also polyps and are more fun to look at since their tentacles move.

Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy crossword, "La-La Land," has five two-word phrases in which both words start with LA. In the central entry, in fact, the first word is LA: L.A. LAKER. I like a LABOR LAWYER (one lives two doors down from me) and deep blue LAPIS LAZULI, but LAST LAUGHS in the plural seems off, and the [Cape Canaveral concern] LATE LAUNCH feels like it's not a stand-alone concept. Nice touch: placing the full names of LENA OLIN and TERI GARR across from each other. Both actors' first and last names appear separately in cameo roles as 4-letter fill in a zillion crosswords, and it's lovely to have them both take larger supporting roles here.

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