Crosswords of the Day, 8/27/2009

Quick write-ups tonight; I'm tired, have a long day coming up tomorrow, and still need to go on my marathon training run.

The NYT was a crazy puzzle featuring a theme I'm not even sure I can explain well, so I defer to Rex Parker's writeup today. Let's just say that this really was an odd puzzle to solve; it felt incredibly scattered, and many of the answers were very very short and curt. I didn't dislike this puzzle, but it wasn't very fun to solve; I can't imagine the average solver would have finished this, not because of the difficulty, but because it felt more like work than like a fun time. **1/2, and that 1/2 * is for the incredible amount of difficulty the constructor must have gone through to make this thing.

The LAT was very cute. It had a wacky theme where there were clues that worked like "lofty bills?" for HIGH FIVES, where the fives are referring to five dollar "bills." But then it had a bonus one, where the clue was "Hated bills [that appropriately spoil this puzzle's symmetry]?" The answer was TERRIBLE TWOS, which is cute, but I couldn't figure out the symmetry thing until I noticed that that particular theme entry had a white square where it should have had a black square if the grid was completely symmetrical. What a bizarre concept! Unlike the NYT, though, the theme didn't deter the fun of solving the puzzle, and there were some great entries in this one. ***1/2.

Winner: LAT, by a mile. However, I have to give credit for the NYT for the construction feat, even if it wasn't fun to solve.

Best clue: There weren't really any great clues today, but the LAT had a bunch of nice entries. My favorite was probably "Swinger in a box?" for HITTER, but this puzzle also had HOLY COW for "Jeepers!" and RICOLA for "Swiss cough drop," and "Word spoken with a headslap" for DOH.

Worst clue: Also from the LAT comes "It's pd. monthly" for ELEC. Ick to the pd. abbreviation, and ick to the answer, which I guess works for the electric bill, but still. This felt really really forced.