AV Club 6:03 (Amy) 
[4.25 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
LAT 4:06 (Gareth) 
[3.50 avg; 1 rating] rate it
NYT 4:07 (Amy) 
[2.82 avg; 19 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker tk (Kyle) 
[4.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Universal untimed (pannonica) [3.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today 6:30 (Emily) [4.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
WSJ 4:03 (Jim) [4.00 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
Renee Thomason & Zhouqin Burnikel’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Below the Surface”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are animals directly below phrases that feature the trigram HHO, being the representation of the chemical formulation for water. The revealer is UNDERWATER (63a, [Submerged, like the creatures in 22-, 34- and 56-Across])
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Below the Surface” · Renee Thomason & Zhouqin Burnikel · Wed., 5.28.25
- 22a [Largest member of the oceanic dolphin family] ORCA underneath 18a [Castles in the sand?] BEACH HOMES.
- 34a [Bluefin, e.g.] TUNA underneath 30a [Great expectations] HIGH HOPES.
- 56a [Columbia River swimmer] TROUT underneath 49a [Last of the front half, in golf] NINTH HOLE.
Solid, although I wouldn’t have minded if the animals were all three letters long in order to fit directly underneath the water letters. Let’s see, what three-letter swimmers are there…EEL, RAY, and COD might’ve worked, though finding a word with _HC_ in it might have been limiting.
BOLSTER, ECUADOR, and LION’S DEN are our fill standouts of the day.
Clues of note:
- 48d. [Bridge player’s blunder]. RENEGE. Not a bridge player so I needed nearly all the crossings.
- 61d. [First in a 25-film series]. DR. NO. So, just where are we in the search for the next Bond? I personally wouldn’t mind seeing Jack Lowden in the role as he’s already played a spy (though a hapless one) on Slow Horses.
3.5 stars.
Peter Collins’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 5/28/25 – no. 0528
The theme is FIDDLER on the Roof, with its noted “Sunrise, Sunset” song spelled out in the circled squares, the orb rising towards the top of the grid then setting back at the bottom corner. “GOOD MORNING” and “NIGHTY-NIGHT” are also in symmetrical spots in the grid, but I have no idea if they pertain to Fiddler or just to the sunrise and sunset concepts. While night begins at sunset, most of us aren’t saying “nighty-night” till hours later.
I don’t think the connected ROGERS and ASTAIRE relate to the theme, but it’s distracting to have them highlighted as nonthematic x-refs, with the theme bits not being highlighted upon my solving the crossword.
Awkward to have NAVAL and NAV, when navigation and NAVAL share the same Latin root. Not wild about A NEG (wouldn’t you shorten A-negative to A-?), G-SIX (wouldn’t you use the numeral?), –RONI, VENI, PEU, SST, POINT A, plural ALFAS and IRENES, non-possessive EDY, ASCH … ARMY VET and TEENAGE are fine but four of their crossings are abbreviations, ATV TVA EEG RTE.
Three stars from me.
Matthew Stock & Caitlin Reid’s AV Club Classic crossword, “AV Classic Themeless #82”–Amy’s recap
AV Club Classic crossword solution, “AV Classic Themeless #82” – Stock & Reid
Short on time, but couldn’t resist jumping on the puzzle now because (a) it’s themeless and (b) can’t go wrong with Stock and Reid in the byline.
Fave fill: FAST FASHION, SNOWBOARDER, MINDLESS, “THAT WAS EASY,” PETER PARKER, SEE EYE TO EYE loading the bottom row with E’s but being rock-solid as fill, RARE BIRDS, BLUE APRON, THWART (gotta love a word that’s 5/6ths consonants), HORMONE with an HRT clue, ESPERANTO (did not know it was called “la lingvo internacio”), BIG SELLER. Also love the HAKA, but I didn’t even see it in the puzzle till after I finished.
Liked the FISH clue, [Drop a line?]. My husband went fishing in Burnham Harbor yesterday. Also pleased myself by getting [Plants in the Fabaceae family] with no crossing, PEAS.
Iffiest thing in the whole grid was REOIL, which isn’t terrible. 4.25 stars from me.
Aidan Deshong’s Universal crossword, “Pay It Forward” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 5/28/25 • Wed • “Pay It Forward” • Deshong • solution • 20250528
It’s critical that the revealer appears in the center, between the first two and last two themers, which contain circled letter sequences.
- 17a. [Lacking order] RANDOMIZED (rand).
- 24a. [Superheroine with a tiara] WONDER WOMAN (won). Could’ve just said superhero here, right?
- 36aR [Transaction depicted by the indicated letters?] CASH ADVANCE. The first pair featured units of money at the beginnings, whereas the pair that follow feature such units at their ends.
- 47a. [Protective, as a guard dog] TERRITORIAL (rial).
- 57a. [“Fingers crossed!] LET’S HOPE SO (peso).
We’ve seen countless crossword themes based on denominations of and names for money, but this one manages to find a slightly new, albeit in my opinion tenuous, twist.
- 5d [Mathematician Terence] TAO. New to me, and a new clue framing for this staple crossword entry.
- 11d [Not store-bought] HOMEMADE. I sometimes like to pronounce this with four syllables, in a vaguely Italian accent.
- 18d [Card game with hidden rules] MAO. Completely new to me, though as with TAO, it’s a common enough word/name.
- 24d [Tangles of lies] WEBS. Webs are precise, intricate constructions, but eventually they degrade and become twisted and tangled by the elements.
- 25d [Cynthia of 2024’s “Wicked”] ERIVO. At this point she must be crossworld’s current MVP.
- 10a [Attempt] SHOT, not STAB.
- 29a [Kylo whose surname sounds like a bird] REN. Not mentioned: that this is a fictional character from the Star Wars universe.
- 43a [Exercises where only your hands are on the ground] L SITS. I didn’t know what they were called but I know what they are. 54a [Tummy muscles] ABS.
- 56a [1 1 1] ONES. Crucially, not clued as money.
- 64a [ __ Paradise (The Rock’s name for his gym)] IRON. We’re supposed to know this, or care?
Lynn K. Watson’s USA Today Crossword, “Mind-blowing” — Emily’s write-up
Check this out!
USA Today, May 28, 2025, “Mind-blowing” by Lynn K. Watson
Theme: each themer contains —MIND— scrambled (aka “blown”)
Themers:
- 20a. [App that locates lost Apple devices], FINDMYIPHONE
- 40a. [Jennifer Lopez rom-com set in a New York hotel], MAIDINMANHATTAN
- 56a. [Unreliably successful], HITANDMISS
A little bit of everything in the themer set, starting off with FINDMYIPHONE. I’ve maybe seen MAIDINMANHATTAN once but it was so iconic and hyped for its time that it was an insta-fill for me today. However, HITANDMISS took me a few crossings to complete.
Favorite fill: NES, SPOOFS, and INHERE
Stumpers: HOPIN (nice cluing but didn’t quite get me there so needed a few crossings), REMARK (needed crossings), and ELENA (new to me)
Overall a solid puzzle with a nice grid and flow. One of my fastest times, so the cluing and fill were just clicking for me today. That’s always a fun time!
4.0 stars
~Emily
Sala Wanetick & Emily Biegas’ LA Times crossword – Gareth’s summary
Sala Wanetick & Emily Biegas’ puzzle is a fairly sparse three entries plus a long revealer. I actually generally prefer this setup as the puzzle can “breathe” more. The final entry reveals that ITSASETUP, and each of three other entries are things that are setups – a BLINDDATE or STINGOPERATION or setup, an OBSTACLECOURSE. The problem with three entries, is when two are more similar to each other than the third, it looks a bit wonky.
Others worth noting:
- ERIVO sang “Defying Gravity” with Ariana Grande, reaching the heights of US #44. Excuse me while I look skeptically at Billboard’s chart metrics, especially given the way every song seems to be hanging around forever ATM.
- COCO Gauff is hoping for their third major next week at the French Open, either a 2nd singles or doubles…
- Are TVROOMs, [Den]s an endangered species?
The clue for EIDI repeats […eid…] twice, which is awkward, but I think the editors wanted it clearly defined, as it hasn’t appeared in many (any?) puzzles before…
Gareth
NYT – I had RED OUT for the longest time instead of XED OUT. Too many abbreviations I did not know in this one with DAK, SRA, SST, GSIX. Also, I am fairly certain by 2025 that most of us Swifties are actually pushing 30+.
Confirmed with a Google search: Swifties are
Millennials (27-42): 45%
Gen X (43-58): 21%
Gen Z (26 and under): 11%
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 1.5 stars
Too much junk in this one (PEU, EDY, DAK, SST, JIB, ASCH). But hey, with Rogers and Astaire at least it’s timely.
pannonica, I think the takeaway from the Universal theme isn’t just that money starts two themers and ends two themers, but that synonyms of “money” are advancing across the grid. Or, to my embarrassment, was that just so self-evident it didn’t necessitate clarification?
No, that’s a good read on it too. Probably a better one than mine.
yep, that’s the point
Apologies for the disservice!
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 4 stars
Great observation by placematfan! And the monies “march” across in perfect symmetry with no skipped or overlapping spaces.
Very nice puzzle by Aidan Deshong!
Off topic: Spelling Bee
I know I’ve seen this pangram before, because I didn’t know how to spell it! And now it’s confirmed that I’ve seen dupes before. My daughter said maybe center letter is different. I don’t care.
Is it that hard to come up with a unique word everyday? I mean I’m sure Sam has a database and all you need to do is check it. And if he’s running out, start using the ‘S’.
Rant over. But that felt good!
The Bee is very inconsistent. He likes strange foreign foods, but rejects common sailing terms. I just deal with it, but it is irritating to the extreme.
You might like a game Merriam-Webster publishes online called “Blossom.” Similar idea to Spelling Bee, but instead of trying to find as many words as you can, you try to come up with the 12 highest-scoring words that you can. And they seem to accept any word that shows up in their dictionary:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/games/blossom-word-game
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Many thanks, Gary, for letting me know about ‘Blossom’! Seems like a refined Spelling Bee. More wheat, less chaff.
I like the cut of the Fiddler puzzle’s JIB. IRENES not ideal, but SUNRISE and SUNSET arcing over FIDDLER through GOOD MORNING and NIGHTY NIGHT— works for me.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
Thank you Gary for the Blossom link…love it!
I think the NYT puzzle is pretty elegant…I imagined after the solve that the song sort of floated over a roof.
+1 for Blossom rocking
I quickly found a pangram that is a compound noun and wondered how you could have had trouble spelling it. Then, after 10 minutes or so, I found another pangram with a French etymology — and counting typos, it took me three or four attempts to spell it correctly.
Oui! That was the one!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 1 star
I thought this was a horrible NYT. The sun rises in the EAST [the right side of a map] and sets in the WEST [the left side], so the whole basis for the circled letters was ass-backwards. Yes, the letters rise and set — but in the wrong direction. Ugh.
But if you’re standing someplace in the northern hemisphere, looking south, the sun rises to your left and sets to your right. ;-)
Tru dat! When I look out my back door, that’s the track it takes. It’s all relative!
I wasn’t bothered by the placement. Sunrise precedes sunset in the song, in any a story, and in life. If we read English left to right, that’s a convention we’re stuck with. In this particular story (or puzzle), it doesn’t happen to be the same direction as east to west, but writing is a fine invention.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
my only quibble was that the musical is “Fiddler on the Roof” and the puzzle looks to me like the fiddler is under the roof, if that grid art over the word fiddler is a roof. maybe I’m imagining too much.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 1.5 stars
NYT: I like a broadway musical theme, but didn’t love much else about this puzzle. Kinda surprised Amy gave it 3 stars? Seemed like there was a lot more she didn’t like than that she did, too
Puzzle: WSJ; Rating: 4.5 stars
Thank you Jim for the WSJ review which opened up the theme for me…DUH, I never noticed the H2O thing! Apologies to Renee and Zhouqin for mistakenly thinking initially that their very nice puzzle didn’t…um…hold water.
Glad I could help. It may have come a little easier for me since I once created a puzzle based on H2O for a geocache I hid. You can still see and solve the puzzle here.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2.5 stars
What a very strange puzzle today. I love that song, and loved being reminded of it. And I found the puzzle reasonably entertaining, if very, very easy. Monday easy, actually.
But what are Rogers and Astaire doing in a puzzle whose theme seems to be “Fiddler”?? And same question for what appears to be a Christian church tower smack in the middle of the grid?
In another blog, someone mentioned that babies gurgle and brooks babble, and I agree. And here, Amanda B points out that only a small fraction of Swifties are TEENAGE; I wondered about that, and now I know.
Also, the G6 was not an alliance, it was “an unofficial group of the interior ministers of the six European states…with the largest populations” (per Wikipedia). You could look it up, and so could the NYTXW editors.
Add to those oddities and errors all the 3-letter fill, and I conclude that this puzzle has a good idea at its core, but really needed some more work before publication.
I liked the puzzle, but I’m responding to DougC only about “gurgling brook.” The word “gurgled” came to me right away. “Babbling” might be quite common in searches, but M-W uses a brook in its example for definition 1 for “gurgle,” and a baby in its example for definition 2.