Joseph Knecht

  Armed and Quite Punny There is a first time for everything, and just like one of my fellow bloggers admitted a week or so back, this is the first time I was stumped by two clues.  But upon loading the HTML listing all the clues and fill, I did a head slap for missing a clever pun on a pluralized cephalopod (see 8D below).  Had I sussed it, I would have simply learned that the crossing natick was a new bit of slang for the "fuzz". Our constructor today Blake Slonecker , is an LA Times veteran, having debuted on Christmas Day, 2019.  He has also had puzzles published in the New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , and Universal Crossword .  In this puzzle he presents us with a visual theme with the payloads for the 8 themers in carefully arranged triplets of  circles stacked in two rows.  Given the obscurity of the reveal clue (which I did happen to know), I think the theme would be well-nigh imposs

  Today's constructor is veteran Lynn Lempel , who is known in the trade as the "Queen of Monday crosswords" (i.e " easy puzzles ".).  By my count she has appeared in 3 Monday LA Times puzzles, the first in October of 2021 and two earlier this year, all reviewed by Boomer of course.  However she got in the game long before her debut here, appearing first in the Sunday New York Times(!!!) in December of 1979 .  Also Lynn and our very own C.C. Burnike l are two of the women constructors featured in a collection of puzzles called Women of Letters , edited by our very own Patti Varo l.  Here's how you can obtain a copy of those puzzles. Today Lynn ups her LA Times game a bit by moving to a Thursday, with the cluing and fill being  harder than the average Monday puzzle and, for me at least, an even harder theme.  I'll start with the reveal: 59A. Evasive maneuvering, and what can literally be found in t