Thursday, June 12, 2025

BEQ 5:48 (Eric) [3.50 avg; 1 rating] rate it
Fireball untimed (Jim) [3.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
LAT 4:23 (Gareth) [3.25 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 6:45 (ZDL) [3.71 avg; 12 ratings] rate it
Universal 5-something (Eric) [2.67 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today 9:43 (Emily) rate it
WSJ untimed (Jim) [3.75 avg; 8 ratings] rate it

Drew Schmenner’s Universal Crossword Puzzle “In Full Bloom” — Eric’s Review

With the summer solstice (northern hemisphere) a little over a week away, it seems like an odd time to run a spring-themed puzzle, but that’s what we get. Much as it sometimes does in real life, SNOW disappears bit-by-bit:

• 17A [Fruits known for their white flesh] SNOW APPLES I’m not familiar with that variety.
• 24A [“It’s your only chance!”] NOW OR NEVER
• 35A [“Man, it’s painful!”] OW THAT HURTS
• 50A [“United Shades of America” host whose middle name ends with “U”] W. KAMAU BELL I’d not heard of this CNN series, but it looks interesting and certainly relevant. This clue struck me as a bit odd and I wonder how much the reference to Mr. Bell’s middle name helps anyone.
• 58A [Sign of winter’s end, as depicted at the starts of 17-, 24-, 35- and 50-Across] SPRING THAW Forgetting that it would violate the “rules” of crossword construction, I tried putting some variation of SNOW MELT here at first.

The theme wasn’t particularly helpful for my solving, though if one had trouble with 43D [Some time] AWHILE, understanding the theme would have helped one get Mr. Bell’s first initial. But I had a fairly smooth solving experience, as I expect with a Universal puzzle.

Other stuff:

• 29A [Carpool lane letters] HOV I almost always avoid HOV lanes because it’s usually just me and my husband in the car, and I’m never sure whether two people counts as “high occupancy.” I’d think not, but the signs are often ambiguous.
• 3D [“Bye-bye,” to a Brit] TOODLE-OO The New Oxford American Dictionary marks this as “dated” and speculates that it’s “an alteration of French à tout à l’heure ‘see you soon.'” Other dictionaries say it’s imitative of an automobile horn.
• 6D [Informal response to “Thanks”] NO PROB I’m old-fashioned enough to prefer “You’re welcome” as the proper response to “thanks,” and NO PROB is not much better than “no worries.”
• 21D [1/2, to 2] INVERSE I had QUARTER for a minute or so.
• 61D [“Rushmore” director Anderson] WES Mr. Anderson makes quirky pictures, some of which I’ve thought were quite funny. I’m moderately interested in his latest, The Phoenician Scheme.

Brad Wiegmann’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “You Can Say That Again!”—Jim’s review

Theme answers are familiar two-word phrases but it’s the clues that need explanation. Each one is a phonetic pronunciation guide to a word that has a homophone. The theme answers—while still being familiar phrases—are synonyms of (or an example of) each of the two homophones.

• 18a. [/faul/ x 2] DIRTY BIRD. Foul fowl. This was the toughest one to see because I thought the pronunciation was trying to get me to say “fall”, and I couldn’t think of a homophone with a different spelling.
• 23a. [/tāl/ x 2] BACKSTORY. Tail tale.
• 35a. [/māl/ x 2] POSTMAN. Mail male.
• 47a. [/sŭn/ x 2] CHILD STAR. Son sun.
• 53a. [/hyümərəs/ x 2] FUNNY BONE. Humorous humerus.

I first did the .puz version of this puzzle and it was all kinds of wrong. Thanks to Martin’s tip in the comments, I went and checked the actual correct versions.

If I had solved this version, it would have gone much more smoothly, especially those middle two entries with the long A’s. I still think the first one is way off; there are far fewer words where “au” makes the “ow” sound than the “ah” sound.

CALIENTE, CHUMP CHANGE, and BLIND AS A BAT are standout entries, though when I was trying to make the first theme answer into DIRTY WORD, I had BLOND AS A BAT for a little while. Surprised to see LMFAO which makes its WSJ debut. It’s shown up in the NYT a few times already. Not keen on the mashup of abbreviations in the middle: PTA, TSA, ATL, and TMS even though they’re all familiar.

Clues of note:

• 10a. [Kellogg products, in brief?] and 10d. [Feds’ focus] really stymied me in the NE (I just glossed over that apostrophe). I thought 10d wanted DOW, and I don’t know anything about Kellogg School of Business. The correct answers are MBAS and MOB.
• 17a. [“ET” subject]. CELEB. Entertainment Tonight, not Extra Terrestrials.

3.5 stars.

Daniel Bodily’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up

Difficulty: Easy (6m45s)

Today’s theme: QUADRUPLE DOUBLE (Major basketball feat … or a feature shared by 3-, 6- and 9-Down)

• AD HO(C C)O(MM)I(TT)(EE)
• A(LL) A(CC)E(SS)PA(SS)
• P(EE)W(EE)F(OO)TBA(LL)

The hardest thing about this puzzle, by far, was trying to remember how to spell Hakeem “The Dream” OLAJUWON‘s last name.  I swore there was an I in there somewhere, but apparently not.

Considering how much theme material there is, and how constrained the grid must be (particularly that SE corner, where OLAJUWON crosses QUADRUPLE DOUBLE and abuts PEE WEE FOOTBALL!), the fill was pretty smooth.

Cracking: “Did you hear about the stand-up that only did educational jokes?  Yeah, real CLASS ACT”

Slacking: SORT DATA, hard to even finish typing it before falling asleep

Sidetracking: I mean it’s gotta be the best of Hakeem OLAJUWON

Peter Gordon’s Fireball crossword—Jim’s review

Jim here sitting in for Jenni who’s traveling today. This week’s Fireball is a themeless, and as you’d expect, it’s filled all kinds of goodies.

The seed entries come in the NW and SE corners, where Peter Gordon is wont to put them: HUSH HUSH at 1a and TUSH PUSH at 64a. For any of us who watched the 2005 USC/Notre Dame football game, we wanted this to be BUSH PUSH after USC’s Reggie Bush who pushed QB Matt Leinart across the goal line for the game-winning touchdown (never mind that it was an illegal move that wasn’t called by the officials). In more recent years, the move has been executed effectively by the Philadelphia Eagles (hence the alternate moniker “Brotherly Shove”). A proposal was put forth to ban the move, but failed to gain enough votes.

Other goodies in the grid: SWIM TEAM, GOOD COP, DEAD SEA, NEUTRINO, OATCAKES, HEMLOCK, SOFT SPOT, REAR BRAKE, ART SCENES, IRONSIDE, ODYSSEUS, TREASURER, LUDDITES, HAVE-NOT, and CLAPTRAP.

Sometimes in a Fireball grid I get Naticked by some little bits of trivia, but not today. The grid flowed smoothly even with some typically tricky cluing. Didn’t know author Shere HITE, but the crossings were fair. Same with AEROASTRO [MIT engineering department, familiarly]; I’m dubious as to how this is crossword-worthy, but it filled in easily enough.

Clues of note:

• 43a. [Six-time Emmy nominee (and two-time winner) in the 1980s]. GLESS. Sharon Gless of Cagney & Lacey.
• 61a. [“The way we are feeling” in a 1978 #1 hit]. GREASE. The year didn’t register at first and with the leading G, I went with GROOVY. Once I saw the year, I rethought it. (Simon and Garfunkel’s “Feelin’ Groovy” came out in 1966.)
• 9d. [Fontanel, informally]. SOFT SPOT. An idiomatic phrase, but we get a literal, medical clue. Luckily for me I have a pediatrician for a wife, and somewhere along the way I learned the fontanel is “a space between the bones of the skull in an infant or fetus” (per the Internet).
• 21d. [Show on against “Bewitched”]. IRONSIDE. I was expecting the answer to be a show in more direct competition against Bewitched, along the lines of I Dream of Jeannie (no idea of they were actually on the same network or not).
• 37d. [Way-back machine destroyers]. LUDDITES. Love this word and the parody song by the British troupe behind Horrible Histories and Ghosts. (see below)
• 60d. [Bowlful for un chien]. EAU. “Chien” means “dog” in French.

Four stars.

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1791 “Full of Energy” — Eric’s review

Today, we get sort of a silly theme that contributed to a quick solving experience for me:

• 20A [“Holy cow, you two”?] GOOD GOD COUPLE [The] Odd Couple
• 36A [ER employees who petrify patients?] HOSPITAL GORGONS Hospital RNs I lost a little time here because I hadn’t figured out the theme and I tried putting NURSES as the second word.
• 48A [American Samoa toilets?] PAGO PAGO JOHNS Papa John’s I should by now remember the capital of American Samoa, but for some reason I conflate it with Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia.
• 62A [Full of energy, and what is added to this puzzle’s theme answers] GO-GO

I didn’t fully read the clue for the revealer and so didn’t notice until I started writing that when you disregard the GO-GOs, what’s left of the answer makes a common phrase. That makes me like the theme a little more than I did before.

Other stuff:

• 23A [Black ___ event (extremely rare occurrence with a paradigm-shifting impact)] SWAN That’s new to me.
• 44A [Camera company] CANON From the N of ATHENA, I tried NIKON first.
• 4D [Move that avoids a defender and often ends with a layup in basketball] EURO STEP I don’t watch much basketball, but I picked this up from some crossword. It’s also called a two-step or a long lateral.
• 5D [Jackson nicknamed “The Queen of Rockabilly”] WANDA A gimme for me, thanks to SiriusXM’s Bakersfield Beat channel.
• 9D [Charlatan] IMPOSTER I know how to spell that word. So why did I put an O in the place of the E?
• 22D [“The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” author McCullers] CARSON I think my high school English teacher got tired of presenting lessons: I remember watching the film version of this novel (with Alan Arkin), but I don’t remember actually reading the book.
• 29D [Shakespeare villain with more lines than the titular character] IAGO I wish I could remember where I saw this clue recently.

Noelle Griskey’s USA Today Crossword, “Moving Parts” — Emily’s write-up

Catch it!

Theme: each themer contains scrambled (aka “moving”) —PARTS—

Themers:

• 17a. [Newspaper section with stats and scrores], SPORTSPAGE
• 29a. [Amazon Echo or Google Home, e.g.], SMARTSPEAKER
• 49a. [Optimal method of doing something], BESTPRACTICE
• 64a. [Maintains awareness], KEEPSTRACK

A quirky themer set today with SPORTSPAGE, SMARTSPEAKER, BESTPRACTICE, and KEEPSTRACK. Great cluing, though I must have been a bit off today since I needed multiple crossings to get each. Hopefully you all got them quicker.

Favorite fill: ASSAM, AFOOT, KAPPA, and LARK

Stumpers: STAMINA (only “endurance” came to mind), AAA (new to me), and AMO (also new to me)

Lovely puzzle and grid design, with a smooth flow though I found the cluing a little tougher for me today so it took a little longer to solve. Everything was fairly crossed though so I never got too stuck. Overall a very fun solve!

4.25 stars

~Emily

Amie Walker & Amanda Rafkin’s LA Times Crossword – Gareth’s theme summary

I have never encountered the acronym(?) the puzzle is built around IRL. The phrase, yes, the acronym, no. It seems to exist largely as the title of a Taylor Swift song, but the crossword makes no allusions to that. I wonder if that was an editorial decision? Anyway, LOML is spelt out in four answers as LOVE/OF/MY/LIFE:

1. [Elixirs that stir passion], LOVEPOTIONS
2. [Steinbeck novella featuring George and Lennie], OFMICEANDMEN
3. [Franchise whose characters have cutie marks], MYLITTLEPONY
4. [Appreciate every moment], LIFEISSHORT

Gareth