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Administrivial Puzzle Contest Alert! All the puzzles this week, from Monday to Saturday, have been created by one person, Patrick Blindauer. Keep your solutions handy, because the Saturday puzzle conceals a meta-challenge involving the solution grids of all six. When you have the answer to the meta-challenge, send it to crossword@nytimes.com. (Please do not post them here on the blog; they will not be counted as submissions.) Twenty correct solvers, chosen at random, whose entries are received by 6:00 p.m. E.T. Sunday, Oct. 26, 2014, will win one-year online subscriptions to the New York Times crossword. Only one entry per person, please. The answer and winners’ names will appear on Friday, Oct. 31, at www.nytimes.com/wordplay. Good luck to all who enter!

Administrivial Links Alert! As many of you have noticed, the box that contains the links to the puzzle and the syndicated Wordplay posts is not working. I am removing it from posts until it gets fixed, so until then, please download your copy of the puzzle from the main puzzle page. Thank you for your patience.

TUESDAY PUZZLE – This is the second puzzle of the 2014 New York Times crossword contest, and constructor Patrick Blindauer continues to talk about TIME.

I’ve decided that I’m not going to discuss my thoughts on how this theme does or does not fit into the ultimate meta-challenge that needs to be solved; I’d rather hear your opinions on the puzzle and its place in the contest. Yesterday, though, we spoke about increments of TIME. Today we’ve got three TIMES in the clues. What could that mean? Those theme entries are all 15 letters. Is that even relevant? It’s too early to tell, it would seem.

The theme clue, TIME, has as its answers MARATHONER’S STAT, PARTNER OF WARNER and WHAT PRISONERS DO. In addition to the theme clues, I liked DINOSAUR, NAVY SEAL and RHINOS. In addition, the link between NATL and NPR was cool, as was the one that turned the separate 36- and 44 Down into the fictional prankster TOM SAWYER.

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Administrivial Puzzle Contest Alert! All the puzzles this week, from Monday to Saturday, have been created by one person, Patrick Blindauer. Keep your solutions handy, because the Saturday puzzle conceals a meta-challenge involving the solution grids of all six. When you have the answer to the meta-challenge, send it to crossword@nytimes.com. (Please do not post them here on the blog; they will not be counted as submissions.) Twenty correct solvers, chosen at random, whose entries are received by 6:00 p.m. Eastern time Sunday, Oct. 26, will win one-year online subscriptions to The New York Times crossword. Only one entry a person, please. The answer and winners’ names will appear on Friday, Oct. 31, at www.nytimes.com/wordplay. Good luck to all who enter!

MONDAY PUZZLE – This is going to be an exciting week. Not only do we have our crossword puzzle contest, but all of the puzzles through Saturday are by the one and only Patrick Blindauer, a man of infinite creativity, a man of both words and letters, a man whose “Change of Heart” puzzle made me consider changing my name and finding another line of work, based solely on the comments and mail we received about it.

But Mr. Blindauer, who is also a man of incredible perseverance, has worked with Will Shortz to put together a suite of puzzles that will challenge even the most experienced solver. Maybe not at the beginning of this week, but surely by Saturday. And if not by Saturday, then when contemplating the meta-challenge that needs to be solved correctly in order to enter the contest. Remember, all of the solutions for this week are needed, so hold on to them.

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Administrivial Puzzle Contest Alert! It’s that time of year again, and next week, Oct. 20 through Oct. 26, puzzles will make up a suite that you will have to solve in order to enter to win a prize. And you’ll want to enter this year: Twenty randomly chosen solvers who submit the correct answer to the challenge will receive a one-year online subscription to The New York Times Crossword. The rules will be on the puzzles, and I’ll be posting them here as well. Good luck to all who enter!

SUNDAY PUZZLE – Today’s puzzle by David Phillips asks the question “Why not?” Actually, it takes phrases or items that contain the “Y” sound, substitutes a soundalike word for it, then clues the resulting phrase in a punny way. This struck me as kind of business as usual, until I noticed that Mr. Phillips had avoided using the letter “Y” anywhere in his 21-by-21 grid. Nice touch.

The theme worked for me for some of the entries, and I particularly liked TRUSTEE SIDEKICK (instead of “trusty sidekick”) and CHAISE REBELLION (instead of “Shay’s Rebellion”). Some of the others seemed like stretches in the way they were clued, like NO RIME OR REASON (instead of “no rhyme or reason”), which was clued as “Lack of logic and a frosty coating?” GUISE AND DOLLS (instead of “Guys and Dolls”) also bothered me; it was clued as “Two concerns of a secretive voodoo practicer?” Well, yes; but you have to go a long way to get there, and when you arrive, it’s not all that entertaining. Also, I would be likelier to refer to someone who practices voodoo as a practitioner, not a “practicer.” The thing about changing real phrases is that the new phrase has to make surface sense, and the clue should make it sparkle even more. CLEAR THE WEIGH, to me, is not something even the most embarrassed dieter would say. Your mileage, and all that.

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SATURDAY PUZZLE – There is a reason the Saturday New York Times crossword is both feared and respected; it’s primarily because of the devious cluing, the obscure references, the fact that it’s the weekend and my brain is on cruise control … oh, and the hardness. Let’s not forget how all of that adds up to the hardness. This is a puzzle that I had to put down and come back to more than once.

It took me a while to gain a toehold in today’s puzzle by Evan Birnholz, and I think it might have been because the clues, while totally fair, were ramped up to a crazy level that needed a lot of thought. Very little in Mr. Birnholz’s puzzle was what it seemed to be. I love misdirection just as much as the next person, but I had to really work for this one.

Another reason why I might have found it tough is a very personal one: I’m terrible with names, and there were quite a few of them in Mr. Birnholz’s puzzle. That means that even though I am a pop culture devotee, and even though 10 Down was a fill-in-the-blank — which technically should have sparked my memory — I could not come up with RA’S al Ghul to save my life. C’est la vie.

What I liked about this puzzle, though, other than having a lot of respect for Mr. Birnholz and Will Shortz for coming up with it, is how you can see how times change by solving it. I got the biggest kick out of seeing KICKSTARTER in the grid, especially since it was clued in the context of the crowdfunding campaign website. The only other usage of the word in the Times crossword was as a “moped igniter,” back in 1986 before the idea called crowdsourcing and this fad they call the Internet really got going. Entrywise, I also really liked PSYCHOPATH, AGE LIMIT, LASERDISCS, AUTOCORRECT, DIRTY HARRY, RARE BIRD and TRUTHINESS.

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Administrivial Puzzle Contest Alert! It’s that time of year again, and next week, Monday, Oct. 20 through Saturday, Oct. 26, puzzles will comprise a suite that you will have to solve in order to enter to win a prize. And you’ll want to enter this year: Twenty randomly chosen solvers who submit the correct answer to the challenge will win a one-year online subscription to the New York Times Crossword. Detailed rules will be on the puzzles, and I’ll be posting them here as well. Good luck to all who enter!

FRIDAY PUZZLE – What better way to end our weekday solving than with a clean, fresh puzzle by Michael Ashley?

Ten unique words or phrases make their way into the puzzle today, and it opens with what we in the business call “digital content.” That would be the MOBILE APP entry. With a middling word count of just 70, Mr. Ashley has left a lot of white space for us, which enables him to fill his puzzle with really spiffy entries like STRUCK DUMB, SEEN IT ALL, THIN AS A REED, FASHION ICON, DIET SODAS, SOLO SHOTS and more.

I also loved the “I AM AMERICA” nod to Stephen Colbert, who will move to the Late Show in 2015. In my humble opinion, Stephen Colbert, whether in character or out, is one of the most skilled interviewers I’ve ever seen; he expertly walks a fascinating line between skewering a bombastic guest and generously keeping them aloft when they falter. It’s thrilling to watch. My guess is that a good portion of that comes from his improv background at Second City. [You're drifting. -- Ed.]

Oh, right, the puzzle. You’ll want to discover the rest of the fill for yourself, but for me, Clue(s) of the Day were “Development sites?” for UTERI, “Ones hanging around delis?” for SALAMIS and the tough-while-you’re-solving-but-funny-once-you-get-it-in-the-grid “Was ducky?” for WADDLED.

Very nicely done, Mr. Ashley, and it’s an excellent warm-up for the crossword contest next week.

Constructor’s Notes:

In my themeless crosswords, I like to lead off with something that makes me appear considerably more tech savvy and up-to-date than I actually am. In this case, we start with a MOBILE APP at 1-Across. Since I don’t have a cell phone — and I may yet become the last person in America not to have one — I’ve never actually used a mobile app, let alone downloaded one. But never mind: in the age of Google, even a tech ignoramus can feign knowledge by dropping a trendy app name or two.

Then, I tried to work in as many long, lively entries as I could. In this puzzle, there’s 14 answers of 9 letters or more, which I suspect is pretty much my theoretical limit, although I’m sure the younger, less computer-challenged set has improved on that. I tried to make the answers widely and interestingly varied in terms of learning categories, though, and I’m pleased with how the puzzle came out.

Your thoughts?

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THURSDAY PUZZLE – Hands up if you solved a lot of John Farmer’s puzzle suspecting that there might be a rebus. Or perhaps that it was a letter-deletion theme, like yesterday’s puzzle. Me, too.

But part of Will Shortz’s job is to keep you on your toes, my friends, which means that today’s twist is a bit different. If you solve from top to bottom and made it all the way to the end, you’ll find the reveal at 69 Across, which tells us that there are five theme entries where three of the letters REPEAT.

How does that work? Some of them, I found, were harder to suss out than others. Let’s look at a relatively obvious one. The infamous “Mark of dishonor,” the SCARLET (LET)TER, has three letters that repeat at the end of the first word and the beginning of the second. Mr. Farmer has crammed them into a 10-letter entry by just overlapping the repetition.

The repetition was a bit harder to recognize in an entry like WHOOPIE (PIE)S at 18 Across, because the word as entered, WHOOPIES, is a fairly plausible, if not in-the-language, word.

Got that? Now go and find the other three REPEATS.

Outside of the theme, I liked CORNUCOPIA, TRIPLE PLAY, PRIME RIB and BUOY UP.

Clue of the Day for me was “Sightseers?” for EYES.

Will Shortz’s Notes:

John’s manuscript had the overlapping three-letter parts indicated by circles. I thought that made the puzzle too easy. Anyway, I’m always in need of fresh Thursday-ish gimmicks, so the circles are gone, and — voilà — a Thursday!

Constructor’s Notes:

My soccer-playing, Landon Donovan-jersey-wearing son, Donovan, will be happy when he sees his name in the paper. That said, 57 Across was not the seed for the puzzle, but actually the last of the theme’s answers I found. At first I just looked for answers with repeating letters, not sure where it would lead. Three-letter strings seemed promising and from there I narrowed the choices, eliminating repeats within single words (e.g., Chihuahua) and ones that didn’t break evenly across separate words (e.g., atom bombs). By then it was down to a short list of candidates. Adding another angle – e.g., using all names, spelling something with the combined letter strings – was a bit much to ask, so after a final cut (and one close call) I went with this selection. The theme answers felt like a good mix and worked well in the grid.

I had a notion the puzzle might run earlier in the week using circles or shaded squares. It was Will’s idea to let you solvers find the five repeating three-letter words yourselves. Good move: more fun that way, and a better fit for Thursday. Happy hunting! Hope you enjoy the puzzle.

We’re experiencing what feels like an unseasonably warm fall so far, but as we head toward the cooler weather, this is always a good piece of advice:

Your thoughts?

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WEDNESDAY PUZZLE – I had to think about this one for a bit, but when I finally got the punchline in David Poole’s revealer, I laughed out loud. It honestly never occurred to me that the name of one of the Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame’s original inductees could be synonymous with what amounts to a food fight. That made for an excellent “Aha!” moment.

There are four theme entries that Will Shortz refers to in his notes below as “mutilated.” That’s pretty strong, but he’s right. Mr. Poole has “chucked” the BERRY from all four theme entries and left us with semi-intelligible phrases and names, like HUCKLE FINN and RASP BERET (better known as the song “RASPBERRY BERET,” by the artist formerly known as Prince, formerly known as an unintelligible symbol, and now known as Prince again.) But that’s O.K., because when you finally get the revealer, CHUCK BERRY, and you think about it a bit as I did, you will most likely laugh at the idea of chucking the berries out of the grid.

In nontheme news, I liked EARL GREY, which was not only a choice for television’s Frasier Crane, but for Star Trek’s Captain Picard as well, DECLAWED and BLABBED, which is making its debut today.

Not a whole lot of wordplay in the clues today, but I did like the reminder of the romantic line that has become almost a cliche, “You had me at HELLO,” from the film “Jerry Maguire.”

Will Shortz’s Notes:

I don’t usually run puzzles in which the mutilated theme answers don’t themselves make sense. But the reveal to this one was so charming, and the mutilations so clear, I made an exception.

Constructor’s Notes:

I don’t have a lot to say about this puzzle. Not surprisingly, the seed entry was the revealer at 56 Across. CHUCK BERRY just struck me as a directive — the other theme entries came quickly after that.

Will liked the puzzle, but wanted a few changes in the grid. I think we went through two more iterations before he was happy with the grid you see today. The clues for the theme entries at 17-, 33- and 56 Across are Will’s; my original clues were perhaps a little too easy. To my delight, Will left almost all of my remaining clues alone — this very seldom happens!

I hope people enjoy solving this one!

The artist formerly known as Prince and who is apparently very sensitive about copyright has prevented any videos of “RASPBERRY BERET” from being played on YouTube. Let’s move on to the Thursday puzzle with some AIMEE Mann instead. Here she is, singing “That’s Just What You Are,” which she wrote with collaborator John Brion:

Your thoughts?

Updated, 9:27 a.m. | In an earlier version of today’s column, the song “That’s Just Who You Are” was incorrectly credited as having been written by Cyndi Lauper. The song was written by Aimee Mann and John Brion.