Monday solvers! Lovers of smooth, breezy crosswords! Hurry up and check out Patrick Blindauer’s Kickstarter for Piece of Cake Crosswords. The Kickstarter deal’s deadline is 4:17 pm Eastern/12:17 pm Pacific on Monday. Patrick’s been posting sample puzzles, and the third one is right here in PDF form. Give it a whirl, and you’ll probably sign yourself up for a year’s subscription of Piece of Cake puzzles! (I count no fewer than four entries in the Monday NYT below that Patrick is unlikely to go near in the Piece of Cake Crosswords.)

Hey, ladies! The Cubs are going to the World Series for the first time since 1945!