LAT 4:03 (Stella) 
[4.25 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
Newsday 10:23 (Amy) [4.25 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
NYT untimed (Amy) 
[4.00 avg; 14 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Matthew) [4.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
USA Today tk (Matthew) rate it
WSJ 15:13 (Eric) 
[3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Blake Slonecker’s New York Times crossword–Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 6/7/25 – no. 0607
No idea on the difficulty level as I poked through the puzzle while watching some TV.
Fave fill: “I KNEW IT ALL ALONG,” SPOILER, FAIR ISLE SWEATER (I had a red one in my teens and loved it to pieces until I outgrew the preppy fixation), MAKE A FRESH START, AT NO POINT IN TIME, and CHOCOLATE-COATED.
Entirely new to me: 55A. [Board game variant used as a last-resort tiebreaker], ARMAGEDDON CHESS. How common is this?
Not quite grasping: 24A. [Takes the field?], MOWS. You cut the grass or hay from the field and then … take it?
Fun clue: 24D. [“Bare” bottom?], MINIMUM. The bare minimum is the bottom of what you could do.
Also liked: 43D. [Change seats?], SOFAS. I think the gist is that sofas are seats where spare change might reside after falling out of your pocket. Yes?
Four stars from me.
Gary Larson & Amy Ensz’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Lying Around” — Eric’s review
We get a classic type of theme this week — add some letters to common phrases and see what crossword wackiness results. In this case, we’re adding LY:
Gary Larson & Amy Ensz’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Lying Around” — 6/7/2
- 23A [On the verge of being unattractive?] CLOSE TO HOMELY That’s kind of funny, though judging someone by their physical appearance is puerile.
- 39A [Nowhere near making the team?] CLEARLY CUT
- 67A [Sensibly stimulated at Starbucks?] HARDLY WIRED I like this one a lot, maybe because I can’t drink much coffee anymore without getting that overly-caffeinated feeling.
- 95A [Like the bulk of RuPaul’s wardrobe?] MAINLY DRAG This one’s pretty good, too.
- 115A [Coat with a smidgen of one’s coat?] SHED LIGHTLY ON
- 17D [Bootylicious?] COMELY FROM BEHIND Forget what I said about judging someone on their appearance. Who among us doesn’t like a nice-looking butt?
- 38D [Recalling where one met a hospital worker?] PLACING AN ORDERLY I’m good at remembering faces and lousy at remembering names. But every once in a while, I see someone outside the context in which I know them and all I can remember is that I know them.
Overall, this is a solid and amusing theme set.
The fill is nicely diverse, with highlights that include G-FORCE, the rarely seen PILOSE (fortunately, HIRSUTE didn’t fit), ASPERSE (more common in the noun form, I would imagine), the talented Jeffrey TAMBOR, the history-making Geraldine FERRARO, BONITOS (thanks, NYT Spelling Bee, for this one), NON-EVENT, PAPEETE (which I’ve just learned has twice as many syllables as I thought), Kurt COBAIN, ARTESIAN wells (not to be confused with artisan wells), Evelyn NESBITT (if you’ve never seen Ragtime, you should) and Nolan RYAN.
21X21 grids often get a bit tedious for me to finish. Not this one; there’s enough humor in the theme answers and enough freshness in the fill to hold my attention to the end.
Rafael Musa & Rebecca Goldstein’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 6/7/25 by Rafael Musa & Rebecca Goldstein
Wow, a genuinely hard LAT puzzle! I’m here for it!
- 1A [Option for keeping travel plans on track?] This one is tough because the answer is TRAIN but could be ACELA before you have any crossings, and it’s 1-Across so it’s very likely you’ll try to solve it without having any crossings.
- 22A [Scary stories?] is a very tough, and very clever, clue for HAUNTED HOUSE.
- 29A [Try something new] is SHAKE IT UP, which I’m including in this list mostly because it makes me think of The Cars.
- 34A [Luxury fashion house founded in Madrid] I know more fashion than the average solver, and I didn’t know that this was LOEWE. It’s certainly not something you’d guess from the German-sounding name!
- 51A [When many abandon ship] is a cute clue for SHORE LEAVE. I didn’t see this clue while solving but appreciate it after the fact.
- 53A [Exclamation from someone refusing to buy something] is LIAR, which is a pretty great clue.
- 54A [Move that can plump accent pillows] is KARATE CHOP, a fun entry clued in a fun and very evocative way.
- 8D [Public hearing guidelines?] is NOISE LAWS. Very clever.
- 10D [Meeting points?] is ACTION ITEMS. Also clever, and quite difficult.
- 22D [Portable self-checkout devices?] is HAND MIRRORS. Ditto!
- 51D [Common sight at oversized baggage pickup areas] is a nice evocative clue for the ubiquitous SKI.
Matthew Sewell’s Newsday “Saturday Stumper”–Amy’s recap
Newsday “Saturday Stumper” crossword solution, 6/7/25 – Sewell
Tougher than the NYT, of course, but easier than many Stumpers of late.
Fave fill: SWAG (COMP and SWAP were my prior stabs there for [Goods for nothing]), DISNEY LEGENDS awards (other companies have in-house awards but they don’t pretend anyone else would be interested), SEA LEGS (nice clue, 43a. [Establishment on the water]), PARALLEL LINES, BAMBINOS, DIAL DOWN, SPACE NEEDLE, LIVING LARGE, GLOWERED, LEGO SET.
Physician Jenni privately sent up a flare about 56a. [On-call VIP], ER DOC. If your ER docs are on call, they’re not already in the ER, so you’re not really providing emergency treatment, are you?
I don’t get this one at all: 48d. [Upended prybar], REVEL. Merriam-Webster doesn’t list this as a noun relating to prybar. M-W also doesn’t list prybar or pry bar. Ah, this is the weekly cryptic clue. A pry bar is a lever, and if you “upend” the word, you get REVEL.
Five more things:
- 18a. [They’re unqualified], ABSOLUTES. As in “let me qualify that by saying …” for something that’s not a fixed absolute.
- 35a. [Yarn piece], EPISODE. As in an episode of a story being told, a yarn.
- 37a. [Thoughts on paper], IDEA MAP. This isn’t an approach I ever use. You?
- 46d. [Cardinals’ double picks in 1978], POPES. Not the St. Louis Cardinals but the College of Cardinals. The first 1978 pick promptly died and John Paul II followed. The new Pope Leo XVI grew up a half hour from my hometown in the South Suburbs of Chicago, one of my cousins has met him, and Leo and I have patronized the same pizza place, Aurelio’s. Yes, of course they have a Pope-eroni pizza now.
- 11d. [What dexterity comes from], LATIN. Know your etymology!
3.75 stars from me.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
[NYT]
This makes two days in a row with gorgeous themeless constructions! I’m glad it solved faster than Friday’s masterpiece of clever cluing.
The fill here is very clean, with ppp is kept to a wonderful bare MINIMUM. (That clue doesn’t really work for me.)
Never heard of ARMAGEDDON CHESS.
Company ad copy should stay out of the puzzle (BOSE, as clued).
And even though I’m a millennial, I was a bit put off by the mini-theme of AGING, SENILE, THE OLDS, RIPE. Am I reading tasteless “Generational disconnects” (GAPS) into the puzzle that aren’t there? — Yes, I think I was. Turns out the constructor Blake Slonecker is a history professor and surely has a strong connection to the olds.
NYT: Looking at a grid with 8 grid-spanning answers was intimidating at first, but this puzzle ended up being a very nice Saturday puzzle. My biggest trip-up was having BEAST instead of BEAUT for “Doozy.” It took quite a while to figure out what I was doing wrong.
I had the same problem. In the 38D clue, I couldn’t see past “digging” in the sense of “making a hole.” I was certain that BEAST was correct, which made it impossible to see SOURS ON.
That one little bit took me as long as the rest of the puzzle.
Ditto. I like BEAST much better for that answer. I also did not understand how TOWN went with GOWN.
TOWN and GOWN is an idiomatic phrase relating to a town largely dominated by a college/university — as in the movie Breaking Away. The local kids and the students from elsewhere do not necessarily get along with each other.
Not to pick nits, but having lived in a couple of “town and gown” communities, in my experience (“Breaking Away” notwithstanding), it’s more a tension between adult residents of the community and the students (or between the city government and the university administration) than between local kids and university students.
Yeah, me too with BEAST/BEAUT. Frustrating to get stuck at the very end— otherwise a very nice puzzle.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
NYT: I think “takes the field” refers to removing all your grass clippings after you mow the yard (like with a bag attachment or a leaf blower or whatever).
That would be a separate task. Mowing is simply cutting the grass. Bagging the clippings may be part of the chore, but it isn’t mowing.
I’m with you. I think that’s a lousy clue.
I think it’s a fine Saturday clue — the definition of, “it’s a clue, not a definition.” When one tells a barber to take a little off the top, it’s not really about the disposition of the trimmings.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
NYT: Great Saturday! Went from “I’ll never finish this” to “That wasn’t so bad!” in 20 minutes. Just took a lot of here and there filling to get started. Loved discovering ARMAGEDDONCHESS. (Wasn’t crazy about SENILE, though.)
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 4 stars
Played a little easier for me, too. Did well early in the NW and SE. Then a little struggle until 6D opened things up.
Stumper: Like others here, easier than last week. Worst corner was the southwest with 46D and 48D. Other than those, not too bad — never heard of Disney legends, but could get it from the crossings.
NYT was quite a bit easier than yesterday’s for me. Not familiar with TRITONS, and I was somewhat surprised to see SENILE, which to me is a outdated and generally disparaged word describing old people (like my grandma, back in the day) with dementia of some sort.
The Stumper was also not super hard this week. The clues for GODOT, SEALEGS and LIVINGLARGE amused me, when I finally figured them out. I was slow getting the SW corner, but eventually twigged to REVEL as the cryptic answer of the puzzle.
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 4 stars
48D clue “Upended prybar” for LEVER is the cryptic. We are a fan of this Stumper peculiarity.
Thanks, Amy, for explaining the REVEL/LEVER in the Stumper. Lever sat in my grid until PARALLEL LINES became obvious. It certainly had me grasping for a word _ArT meaning “sprinkle about” at 61A.
SWAG filled in early but that left me thinking Grimaced, and later GLared at for 9D.
Nice puzzle this week!
Puzzle: WSJ; Rating: 1 star
Classic Gary Larsen puzzle. Perfect if you are 80 or enjoy obscure clues and crosswordsese.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
NYT, great puzzle.