This was, with the exception of BEQ's, the most boring day of crosswords I've had in a long while. Both the NYT and the LAT were insanely dull today. Mondays aren't usually deep or anything, due to the clues being overly easy and the fill being pretty basic. But there is an art to making easy yet engaging crosswords with clever themes. Both the NYT and the LAT had either boring or lame themes, and the fill/cluing was very dry in both.
I actually don't even remember the LAT anymore, and the NYT I only remember because of how lame the theme was. The clues were all words that are homophones, specifically MAZE, MAIZE and MAYS. OK, that's fine. But the answers were impossibly lame; for example, Maize? as a clue had the answer PALE YELLOW COLOR. You've gotta be kidding me. Both puzzles get ** from me, maybe even *1/2.
BEQ's, on the other hand, was a typical great themeless puzzle from him. It was a weird blend of totally gettable and very difficult. But it was extremely smooth, and really fun to solve. ****.
Favorite clue: BEQ's puzzle had a fantastic clue/answer in it. Lemon aid? was the clue. The answer... CASH FOR CLUNKERS!!! This is one of the best kinds of clue/answers: topical, fresh, very clever, yet totally gettable. Great stuff.
Least favorite clue: I heavily disliked the answers for the theme entries in the NYT, but it's not really fair to highlight those, as those are inevitably going to be the most forced anyways. There was one in the NYT I remember as being highly annoying, which was the clue Viscous for GLUEY. Gluey?!?!? Sigh.
Winner: BEQ by a long shot. To be honest, this particular contest every week won't be won by anyone other than BEQ too often, considering he's doing hard, sophisticated puzzles on Mondays and he's such a great constructor.
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Got to agree. For the first time in a long time, I did the NYT puzzle today, and it was uninspired (if easy).
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