Tuesday 9:07

Fair puzzle and a pangram. "Not on my watch" ties the other long clues together. Thei ends are all part of traditonal watch, but the clue is what a smart device owner might say (or a hint to the ends of 20-Across etc.) since a smart watch has none of those things (although what's a "case" is watch terms?) The smart watch seems pretty excessive as a device. Most texts are brief, but not so brief as I would want them in tiny text on my wrist, much less e-mail. I already have a phone, and it can do all that and much more, on a device that's much easier to use. If the watch could totally supplant the phone that would be one thing, but it can't, so you're going to have a phone anyway. A smaller, less useful phone on your wrist is nonsense.

I don't know. I'm far from a technophobe, but I do appreciate a paper book, a real magazine, a real deck of cards, physical software. I can appreciate breakthrough tech, too. The iPod, the iPhone, those literally changed my life. But I doubt a watch ever could. Phones have been supplanting the watch for years. It's as if we've all gone back to carrying pocket watches

Blah, I don't like this little treatise, but I wrote it, and I do have a blog, so whatevs. <clicks Publish>

 Tuesday 5:23 (crusht)

New Tuesday record! The theme (three-hole punch) is a little loose. A logical fallacy could be called a hole, an empty space is kinda a hole, and pigsty is also a little off. Punch works fine, but the other "holes" are a little too metaphorical.

Update: I just realized thid grid is only 14x15, which makes the time a tiny bit less impressive, but I'm counting it.

 Saturday 12:30

Hey, a double-pangram, and a good solve time. That's looks like an above average number of black squares for a Saturday. My time would have been a little faster if I hadn't tried to identify one pangram while solving. Since I finished in the southwest, I got the second Q and C very late, so it wasn't until the end that I discovered it was a double, and with 5 Zs in all. Clean fill, jazzy long answers, "new" things like SMH, POKEBAL, TSWIZZLE. Not much misdirection (29 Across, Made a lap?: SAT is one of very few). Overall very enjoyable, if a little on the easy side.

 Saturday 16:47

Not too tough for a Saturday, and my time bears that out. And a theme, kinda. Locked letters are usually verboten without a good reason. This one is a little thin, but making all the black blocks singlets (the confetti shapes don't appear until you finish) makes sacrifices like this necessary, and they do all connect. Plus there are 6 grid-spanners across and down. There's some nonsense like 50-down, but not too much. Just a Z short of a pangram.

 Monday: 5:10 (crusht, new online record)

Pretty straightforward. When the theme is redundancy, the long clues are easy to induce with just a few letters. There's the possibly problematic crossing of two proper names at 43-Down/60-Across. But most people know at least one, if not the other. 

Sunday 22:23* 

The time is asterisked because it's when I finished, but not to whatever the Times counts as done. This stuff has happened before in similar puzzles and it tends to break my streak. See, quite a few squares are rebuses, with either a card suit or rank, together making a Texas Hold 'Em Royal Flush (39-Down). However, they are suits going down, and ranks going across (the 1-Down and 8-Down answers are AV(CLUB) and IN(SPADE)S, but 22-Across is (QUEEN)ANNESL(ACE)).

I've tried refilling the puzzle with all ranks, but that hasn't worked to give me the done. All suits didn't either.

As it turns out, I had a wrong letter, and I didn't check, so my streak is broken and it's my own fault. (The clue for 33-Across was "Former MGM rival," and I immediately thought Vegas instead of Hollywood)  Without that errors, it might have even worked on my original mixed fill. Bah. This representation (which only appears after you finish) makes it much clearer what's going on, with 4 hands and 5 community cards in the middle. Sucks to be the guy on the lower left with the full house.

 Monday 5:43

New online Monday record! I could have shaved a handful of seconds without looking at the theme until I was done. 71-Across describes what you can do with the first word of all the four long Across answers (a common thing), so cast a spell, a net, etc. I could have just rushed the fill, since I did the puzzle mostly in order, but I had already solved all the theme answers, and I like to see what the relationship was, so I paused my solving for a few seconds to see. Monday puzzles are posted way earlier than other days of the week (this was up at 3:00 pm Sunday, usually it's 6:00 the evening before).