LAT tk (Gareth) 
[2.00 avg; 1 rating]
NYT Slightly over 12 parsecs (Eric) 
[3.38 avg; 4 ratings]
USA Today tk (Darby) 
[3.00 avg; 2 ratings]
Universal (Sunday) 7:54 (Jim)
Universal tk (Norah) 
[4.38 avg; 4 ratings]
WaPo 4:49 (Matt G) [4.50 avg; 1 rating]
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword, “Pieces of the Pie”—Matt’s write-up
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword, “Pieces of the Pie” solution, 5/4/2025
Themers jump out at us this week, with circled squares spanning multiple entries at four spots at the grid, and four clues reading [Topping for a pie in this puzzle].
The “toppings” are PEPPERONI, SAUSAGE, CHICKEN, MEATBALL, and the circled letters are sliced-up styles of pizza: SICILIAN, CHICAGO, NEAPOLITAN, NEW YORK.
A central revealer pulls it together at 69a [Cuts from a pie, and an alternate title for this puzzle] PIZZA SLICES
A fun little theme that’s easy to spot and fill in quickly, if a little short on wordplay. Lots of short stuff in the middle, but also tuned easier so I flowed nicely. I enjoyed having two different types of theme entries and certainly don’t mind thinking about pizza.
Other highlights: I’m a huge Moby-Dick fan, and my profile picture in many places is an image of a 2017 Wall Street Journal puzzle with AHAB at 1-Across, so I’m happy to see him in that spot again here // I haven’t heard of the poem “Hárbarðsljóð,” but with that orthography, not hard to land on THOR // A nice touch to the TV show, using “Survives” in a clue for OUTLASTS // Similarly, just a nice prosody to [Those whining about not winning] for BAD SPORTS and later, [Nauseous in a Nissan, say] for CARSICK // Full name (well, kinda) ANWAR SADAT is fun // Rolling my eyes hard at Kellogg’s SMORZ cereal, but it made this puzzle possible so I suppose I’m a bit grateful
Brandon Koppy’s New York Times Crossword “Force Play” — Eric’s Review
Brandon Koppy’s New York Times Crossword “Force Play” — 5/4/25
Puns! Rebuses! Star Wars!
I expect most readers know that May 4 is informally Star Wars Day, with “May the Fourth Be With You” riffing on the Jedi salutation “May the Force Be With You.” I’m enough of a geek to have seen most of the theatrical releases in the Star Wars universe, but not enough of a geek to notice when it’s May 4.
Though I can never remember if the amazing knives hawked on TV in the 1970s were GINZU or GINSU, I knew that 22A had to be that brand. The fact that it didn’t fit meant there was a rebus somewhere.
I chipped away at the grid, filling in whatever answers I could, but ignoring the rebuses until I hit 70A MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU. Then, it was obvious that the fourth letter of each longer Across answer would be a rebus with the U that follows it.[Sunday morning addendum: Thanks to Fiend readers mutman and Josh for pointing out that the other letters in the rebus squares, read in grid order, spell STAR WARS. That’s an elegant bonus that must have made the puzzle much harder to fill cleanly. I’m sorry that I missed that.]
Favorite fill: BEGRUDGING, BLOW-UP DOLL, VITRUVIAN MAN, SENSUALITY.
Jessica Bloom-Foster and Larry Snyder’s Universal Sunday crossword, “Ticktock”—Jim’s review
Theme clues are all familiar two-word phrases where the second word is “time,” and the first word changes meaning giving rise to the punny theme answers.
Universal Sunday crossword solution · “Ticktock” · Jessica Bloom-Foster and Larry Snyder · 5.4.25
- 23a. [Closing time?] SALES MEETING.
- 39a. [Reaction time?] CHEMISTRY LAB.
- 69a. [It’s about time!] SPECIAL RELATIVITY. Given its central placement in the grid and the different clue, this one is a pseudo-revealer…sort of. Or you could just enjoy the wordplay.
- 100a. [Crunch time?] PILATES CLASS.
- 120a. [Spare time?] BOWLING NIGHT.
- 30d. [Buying time?] BLACK FRIDAY.
- 50d. [Flight time?] WINE TASTING. Where “flight” = a sampling of multiple things (in this case wines).
Really nice theme! I balked a little at CHEMISTRY LAB as a “time”, but if you think of it as a class and not just the location, then it works fine. Great choices in theme answers and lovely wordplay. I’m also impressed at the two Down entries crossing two of the Across themers each. Nicely done!
Despite a grid fully packed with theme answers and some of those crossing, we still have some nice long fill entries to enjoy like: HAT STANDS, SEA PLANES, US SENATOR, SLOW CLAP, AIRBALLS, MACARONI, Princess JASMINE, and AKIMBO. Even aside from that strong fill, the shorter entries were quite smooth all around, and the straight cluing allowed for a quick solve time, ensuring the grid never bogged down.
Clue of note: 9d. [“Is a hot dog a ___?”]. SANDWICH. Not sure if this is a quote from somewhere in particular, but it’s an intriguing question.
Strong puzzle. And a debut for Jessica Bloom-Foster. Congrats!
No rating today?
So we’re working on a new way to rate puzzles on this site where you submit your rating along with a comment. (You should see 2 new input fields at the bottom of the comment form.)
For now, there will be some delay with displaying updated rating totals at the top of the post.
NYT: Eric. Surely you noticed that the 8 rebus squares (first letters) spell out STAR WARS, correct?
That little tidbit made the rebuses worth it!
Thanks!
I completely missed that. Yes, it is a nice touch.
In my defense, it was very late when I finished the puzzle. And the NYT puzzle app thinks I have an error in my filled-in grid, but I couldn’t find it after spending several minutes trying to find it.
I flew through the puzzle, caught that all the rebuses were *U, but then forgot to go back to read all of the letters to figure out what it spelled :-) Cute Sunday!
Added bonus: the first letters of the rebus squares spell STAR WARS, which is the title of Episode IV. Hence, “May the [first letters of the title of the] Fourth [episode] be With ‘U’”
Perhaps the first meta I’ve ever figured out, since it happens to be right in my uber geek wheelhouse.
Thanks! Congratulations on spotting what I missed. (Given my frequent failure to solve meta puzzles and the condition under which I solved the puzzle, I’m not at all surprised that I missed that).
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 4 stars
Today’s Universal themeless is put together nicely with some excellent stacked quads and tasty phrases throughout, but I’ve never seen the plural form for 31. “Straight shots?” (the answer is 2 words, 9 letters) appear in print, or heard anyone say it.
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 4.5 stars
Agreed. That NW stack with Britishism GOBSMACKED won me over. That SE stack has TALKY though, which is weird. TRUTH SERA didn’t bother me too much; we see the plural of “serum” often enough on its own in crosswords.
I’m also commenting here to test Dave’s star-rating aggregator up at the top of the page. (I would probably rate the puzzle 4 stars, but I went up a notch, just to make the aggregator do some work.)
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 4 stars
Agree- some very refreshing answers in the Universal.
I hope that some means of allowing stars without commentary can be formulated. Often there’s nothing interesting or pithy to say about a puzzle, or one’s thoughts have already appeared in an existing comment.
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 5 stars
I really liked the UNI 15×15 puzzle by Adrian Johnson! Having 16 unique answers that are 8 letters or longer is a work of genius!
Wonderful puzzle! I loved it. If there were stars I would give them all.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
NYT: Loved it! I wish all Sunday NYT puzzles could be as wonderful as this one!
The clues were in general not pushovers, so this did not get filled speedily. The idea of squeezing two letters into one square with the second one a U dawned pretty quickly, forced by the crossings. I usually just enter the first letter of a rebus square but this time used the ESC key to put both letters in. When I had entered all the more-or-less obvious answers, I had a big hole in the middle, not knowing APEROL or SHISO or ARTUR, and not having the F-word of the long theme phrase, since the apparently obvious “FOrce” was one letter too short. By staring at it long enough, the light finally dawned to see that FOURTH was the missing word, as all the rebus squares were the fourth square of the answer, and they all were “with” tfhe letter U. And the letters accompanying the U’s spell STAR WARS! So that was like a second puzzle to solve! Very cool!
Re WaPo: Chicken?!? On a Neapolitan pizza?!? Heresy!
Personally, I will never accept referring to pizzas as ‘pies,’ but I liked the puzzle anyway.
NYT: I groaned when I got the revealer at 70A. Not my cup of tea. At all.
Here’s a suggestion re ratings… ratings aren’t very meaningful when there are only a few. So how about collecting ratings, but only publishing them when there are a certain number, say 10 ratings?
Yes. I do not like having my rating of a puzzle publicly associated to my username and I hope that practice ends ASAP. Among other problems, this creates an obvious conflict of interest, biasing the ratings.
Only an *average* rating is meaningful, so I hope that the averages of all ratings for a given puzzle are the only ratings that are published here.
I’m curious why you would want to rate a puzzle, but wouldn’t want to have that rating associated with your username (which is pretty anonymous anyway – there are quite a few folks named “Dan” out there).
I can see why someone wouldn’t want the ratings to be attached to their username. You meet people at tournaments or workshops, and you tell people you like posting on Crossword Fiend, or you make some comment that echoes something you posted anonymously. Some constructors are going to know who rated their puzzles poorly on this website.
That being said, I think this new system is a nice compromise, and I thank everybody for instituting the new system. I don’t want to speak for Dan or others who don’t like having the ratings associated with their usernames, but for me, that would only be a problem for me if I gave a negative rating. So I’m not going to give a lot of negative ratings, which causes some bias but I don’t think that’s a problematic bias, since my main interest in continuing the ratings is to learn about especially good puzzles that I wouldn’t do otherwise, as opposed to learning about bad puzzles to avoid. I’m doing my usual bunch regardless of the ratings.
Associating a rating with a comment is why we’re changing things here. It puts some responsibility on the commenter to have a justification for their rating. Previously, we had many puzzles rated 1-star probably out of spite or just to troll us. Now someone who rates a 1 will be seen. If they feel justified in that rating, fine. They don’t have to explain their justification, but they now know they will be seen. If they’re just being mean-spirited, then we can all see that and act accordingly. I don’t see the obvious conflict of interest you’re talking about. In contrast, I think it removes some conflict of interest by discouraging a constructor from rating their own puzzle highly.
I agree with LaurieAnnaT’s comment regarding only showing the average rating at the top once we reach a threshold. 10 might be a little high since some puzzles don’t garner that many ratings, and there might be fewer ratings now since some commenters will be more reluctant to rate, so maybe somewhere between 5 and 10 would be a good number. But I don’t know how that would work on the coding side of things and whether Dave can make that happen given the tools he has.
My guess is this will lower participation and average ratings will be inflated
I think you’re addressing voter fraud when low turnout is the issue
Compulsory voting, like they do in Australia? (jk, of course)
I agree that *someone* should know who posted what, but I think it suffices for the forum hosts to know that. There is a good reason that voting in the U.S. has always been without public disclosure of who voted how.
Who knew crossworld can have its own silly season? Secret ballots prevent voter intimidation, vote tampering (as by preventing vote buying) and blackmailing. Do you find these likely threats for crossword raters?
If you like to see ratings, fine. But I’m amazed at some of the conspriratorial notions. Constructors holding it against solvers for negative ratings? It must be the fluoride in the water.
+1
If there were ratings for comments, I would rate this a 5 .. or 10 :) .
I completely agree with dismissing the theories you dismiss.
But nothing you mention (a “straw man”) relates to what I posted. And your comment is offensive.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Style points for having GINSU and KUDZU in the same puzzle!
As soon as I filled in 88D, I thought of the classic line; so when I saw 121D I thought they should be linked! [121D], Dad, it’s a [88D]!
Puzzle: LAT; Rating: 2 stars
This theme did not work for me. Is RACE really faster than RUN? Is BOLT faster than RACE? Is FLY faster than BOLT? Mark me as unpersuaded and unimpressed.
The NYT wasn’t intended for me, so I’d be wrong to complain, but I hardly share the sentiments of those who wish they could give it lots of stars. The abundance of trivia on top of Star Wars (which to me is cheap-s* entertainment) made it way hard with no rewards. At the end, I never could understand why FORCE didn’t fit and what, in its place, FOURTH meant. I guessed there was some them-entry manipulation required, but nope.
Well, can’t please everyone.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
NYT: Right down the middle of the road. Perfectly adequate.
So I’m going to try suppressing ratings at the top unless there are 5 or more ratings for a puzzle. Hope that encourages folks to make them appear!
That’s a very good idea, Dave, and I’m all for it!
Also, TYVM for all the work you do to make this website popular. (On another note and out of curiosity, do you have the number of hits this site gets per each day of the week?)
Joon Pahk chose the same theme as Brandon Koppy for today’s Boston Globe puzzle. It’s titled “May the fourth be with you,” and the theme answers are all puns on Star Wars character names. 😀
How do you spell “Wookiee”?!
Puzzle: WaPo; Rating: 4.5 stars
I really like this rating system…thank you!
Evan never ceases to amaze me…his breezy style helps this always-finished-in-the-cellar-at-Stamford-solver feel better about herself!
I would’ve given it a 5 but, as a Motor City native (now living in Boston) I was a tad chagrined that Detroit-Style Pizza — I was practically weaned on it — didn’t make the…cut. Still, really fun, smooth, and enjoyable.
Agreed—great puzzle from Evan! My only “complaint” was that all the toppings were meat… ;-) Really nicely executed.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2 stars
NYT: It doesn’t spark joy when WURLITZER next to PEET crosses two theme entries.
Universal 15×15:
Good puzzle (although I generally prefer those with themes…). Just a scientific nit to pick:
38 across, “Jupiter or Neptune, e.g.”
Isn’t Neptune generally called an ice giant, rather than a gas giant? Better to go with Saturn.
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 5 stars
I saw your column on 04/02/16 on the Newsday Saturday Stumper. You omitted the grid from your column. Could you please reply??? Thank you
Nine years later, I’m not going to have the puzzle on hand anymore.
I found this https://www.wordplays.com/crossword-answers/newsday/crossword/2016-04-02
It requires a subscription I don’t have.
I sent him the file last month via FaceBook Messenger but never heard back.