LAT tk (Gareth) 
[2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 15:52 (Eric) 
[3.50 avg; 18 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Darby) rate it
Universal (Sunday) 8:17 (Jim) [3.67 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Norah) 
[4.10 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
WaPo 6:13 (Matt G) 
[3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Adam Wagner and Rebecca Goldstein’s New York Times Crossword “Tossing & Turning” — Eric’s Review
Adam Wagner and Rebecca Goldstein’s New York Times Crossword “Tossed and Turned” — 6/15/25
I was happy to see the byline on today’s puzzle, as Mr. Wagner and Ms Goldstein are two of my favorite contemporary constructors.
The theme did not help during my solving experience. But as soon as I was done, I reread the title and the revealer, looked at the first theme entry, and the theme became clear.
Each theme answer has two clues, separated by a slash. The first clue fits the answer read left to right. Each theme answer has one circled letter (in red below) that needs to be ignored (“tossed”) when the answer is read right to left (“turned”). That backwards answer fits the second clue:
- 23A [Device used to clear out nasal passages / Final part of a radio countdown] NETI POT / TOP TEN
- 25A [Brunch entrees / Figure with an eponymous fire] OMELETS / ST ELMO
- 36A [Genetic repositories / Reel Big Fish or Sublime] DNA BANKS / SKA BAND
- 40A [Takes advantage of / Decoration painted on many a W.W. II aircraft] TRADES ON / NOSE ART
- 54A [Hit 1981 German-language film / “What a shame!”] DAS BOOT / TOO SAD
- 58A [Women abroad / Wrapped garments] SIGNORAS / SARONGS
- 80A [Offerings from Healthline / Roasting on an open fire, maybe] DIET TIPS / SPITTED
- 84A [Pioneer in Modernist poetry / Throne] T.S. ELIOT / TOILET
- 98A [Portmanteau drinking hangouts / Marine crustacean] BARCADES / SEA CRAB
- 101A [Like some bikes / Sunken, as the eyes] TEN-SPEED / DEEP-SET
- 115A [Comparatively upper-crust, in a way / Wood cutter] WASPIER / RIP SAW Because it’s Father’s Day in the United States, I’d like to thank my long-gone father for teaching me the difference between a rip saw (used for sawing with the grain of a board) and a cross-cut saw.
- 118A [Component of a Caesar salad / Captivate] ROMAINE / ENAMOR
That’s an impressive amount of theme material, full of nice entries. I’m sure the constructors put a lot of time and effort into finding words that worked with the trick. But for me, the puzzle solved like an easy themeless puzzle.
(Addendum, thanks to a comment on the NYT Wordplay column: On the left side of the grid, the circled letters spell INSIDE from top to bottom; on the right side, they spell INSIDE from bottom to top.)
Other stuff:
- 34A [Five-time world chess champion Viswanathan “Vishy” ___] ANAND This might be the only name in the grid that I didn’t know; leaving it blank until I had two or three crosses might have cost me a minute.
- 52A [Thawb-wearing leaders] EMIRS I had IMAMS for a long time.
- 65A [Record label founded by Clive Davis] ARISTA A gimme for me; I read a biography of Davis 50 years ago and that at least stuck.
- 1D [“The Governator”] AHNOLD For anyone too young to remember, that’s Arnold Schwarznegger, governor of California from 2003–2011; the nickname is a play on his role as The Terminator. Schwarzenegger was born in Austria and never quite lost his German accent (hence “Ahnold”).
- 10D [One of at least 35 smashed in 1967 alone by the Who’s Pete Townshend] GUITAR I missed this clue while solving, filling in the answer from the letter pattern. The Who were the first band I saw live, in 1976. Pete was no longer smashing his guitar onstage, but Keith Moon was still alive.
- 111D [One of many on Antarctica over 280 million years ago, scientists have discovered] TREE I did not know this. Per Wikipedia,”In the Cretaceous [from about 145 million to 65 million years ago, Antarctica] was dominated by a fern-conifer ecosystem, which changed into a temperate rainforest by the end of that period.”
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post Crossword “Flying Colors” — Matt’s Review
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post Crossword “Flying Colors” solution, 6/15/2025
A meta this week. We’re asked to name a country. A number of clues are marked with asterisked, but let’s start with a handful that along with the title make our first insight clear:
- 51a [“Latvia and Luxembourg are not involved in this meta,” e.g.] HINT
- 65a [The only features of five designs suggested by this puzzle] STRIPES
- 67a [Celebration of a national symbol] FLAG DAY
- 81a [Feature of the meta answer’s national symbol] STAR
Along with the title, “Flying Colors,” it’s pretty clear we’re working with flags, and while we have to find five that are made up of only stripes, our meta answer has a star.
The asterisked clues are all for five-letter across entries which are arranged into five 5×3 blocks in the grid. Each clues a phrase that contains a color, but we have to leave the color out to fit it in the grid. The first example:
- 1a [*Cosmic phenomena in which light cannot escape] {BLACK} HOLES
- 19a [*”This is an emergency,” on the Enterprise] {RED} ALERT
- 23a [*Olympic champion’s prize] {GOLD} MEDAL
Now that we’re thinking about flags with stripes, we can pull “Germany” out of this combo, as its flag has a black, red, and gold stripe. The other in-grid flags, in each corner and the center, provide Hungary, Austria, the Netherlands, and Armenia. (Red-White-Red could be Latvia, and Red-White-Blue could be Luxembourg, but we’ve already been told not to use those.)
The first letters of these five countries spell GHANA, our meta answer who indeed has a STAR on its flag. As a small easter egg, 48a references a traffic LIGHT, whose Red-Yellow-Green arrangement matches the stripes on Ghana’s flag.
One of my biggest challenges as a middling meta solver is finding the early steps and having confidence I’m moving in the right direction. This puzzle has many pointers to make that first step very clear – I had more difficulty landing on ORANGE as the last color in Armenia’s flag (from 119a PEELS) than anything else – so I’m hopeful it was a pleasant meta experience for many.
A happy Father’s Day to those who are celebrating, and peace and good vibes to those for whom it’s a tough day.
Dylan Schiff’s Universal Sunday crossword, “Tech Start-up”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar(ish) names and phrases whose first letters spell out a tech company. These letters are circled and go upwards (as the title suggests) before the entry finishes in the Across direction.
Universal Sunday crossword solution · “Tech Start-Up” · Dylan Schiff · 6.15.25
- 23a. [*Pride letters] (LG)BTQIA with 1d AGLET.
- 32a. [*Nietzsche’s ideal man] (UBER)MENSCH with 13d REBUFF.
- 61a. [*Electrical transformer named for its inventor] (TESLA) COIL with 39d FALSETTOS.
- 63a. [*”Bad Moms” actress Christina] (APPLE)GATE with 42d HELP PAGE.
- 100a. [*Tess portrayer in “Touched by an Angel”] (DELL)A REESE with 75d WALLED OFF.
- 121a. [*Black Sabbath superfan, e.g.] (META)LHEAD with 79d “UP AND AT’EM“.
Great theme with the perfect title. (I suspect the title was the impetus for the entire puzzle.) It was clear what to do once I uncovered the first theme answer, but it took a while to get the tech angle. I don’t usually think of LG as a tech company, since I know them for mostly making appliances (though I have one of their TVs). If you don’t like seeing products or company names in your puzzle, then this one’s not for you. But otherwise, I enjoyed the aha moment and the clean execution.
Plenty to like in the fill: SNAP BEANS, “LET’S DANCE“, GROCERIES, ALPHA TEST, EXAM PAPER, “I’M GOOD,” DOG PILE, CATNAP, WHATNOT, and MATT STONE of South Park fame. Second time seeing LMFAO this week (the other time was its debut in the WSJ).
Clues of note:
- 89a. [“Party Rock Anthem” duo]. LMFAO. I don’t know the band other than from crosswords. Respect to the WSJ that clued it as an initialism.
- 106a. [Villain ___]. ERA. No idea what this is. Maybe Taylor Swift? Well, not exactly. AI tells me this: “Villain era” is a social media trend and concept referring to a period where one prioritizes their own needs and desires, often by setting boundaries and saying “no” to things that don’t serve them. It’s a way of describing a shift towards self-prioritization and asserting oneself, rather than a descent into actual villainy.
- 118a. [“I’m taking my time, taking my time / ‘Cause you took everything ___ me” (Taylor Swift lyric)]. FROM. TL;DR. Saw the length of this clue and didn’t bother. Got it from the crossings.
- 64d. [In need of sanitizing]. GERMY. I also would have accepted [What my niece called her friend Jeremy].
- 67d. [Bathroom fixture]. BIDET. I went with BASIN, but I’m glad to see bidets becoming more popular in this country. If you don’t have one yet, why not? The ones that attach to a regular toilet are easy to install…as long as you have an outlet nearby.
Good puzzle. Four stars.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2.5 stars
Thanks for explaining the theme, Eric! I started at the grid for five minutes after completing the puzzle and still had no clue. Works decently as a themeless, although there wasn’t much sizzle to the longer answers. Lack of junk keeps this at an average score for me.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
I actually found the theme helpful in a few spots, even though I didn’t figure out the entire theme answer for awhile. I knew it was INSIDEOUTAND… something, but that was enough to go on once I caught on to skipping the circled letter.
Impressed they came up with that many themers without any real clunky or eye-rolling entries.
One star docked because I don’t think the theme is very fun or humorous. The theme isn’t much of an obstruction and once I know how it works, I don’t feel compelled to fill out the themed entries first with the newfound knowledge.
But otherwise, the entries and clues are good just like most other Birnholz puzzles.
It’s helpful to other Fiend readers if you preface your comment with some indication of which puzzle you’re referring to.
I assume from your second paragraph that you’re talking about the WaPo puzzle. It’s nice to know that up front, because I like to skip comments about puzzles that I haven’t yet solved.
Thanks.
Sorry for that. I thought I pressed the rating button but I made a mistake.
Thanks.
Did you even try to figure out the meta answer? I think there’s fun in that, personally.
Nice puzzle, as expected, and it was exceedingly obvious that a whole slew of colors were to be omitted from the grid.
What was exceedingly not obvious to me was what to do with the colors. I wrote them out in a list and … crickets. But as usual I didn’t spend much time trying to figure it out.
3A is gold instead of yellow, so I realized it’s not normal colors, but the flag of Germany. Seeing it’s a five-lettered country that starts with a G, I guessed Ghana. (Sorry for all the Gabonese out there)
I didn’t even try to figure it out but the answer just came, at the third across entry of a 21×21 grid. Bummer.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
I thought the theme was quite impressive, and the fill pretty solid considering how much theme material there was. One of the better Sundays in recent memory.
NYT had a lot of contemporary vocabulary that was tough on me, like NETIPOT (totally unfamiliar) and USE CASE (kind of green paint if you ask me, and I started at it a long time. Didn’t help that I had plain Arnold. So a lot of staring in puzzlement at the more or less complete fill.
I’ve never used a NETI POT, but as someone with chronic sinus issues, I’ve irrigated my sinuses plenty of times. I’ve known people who swear by their neti pots. As always, one person’s unknown is another’s gimme.
USE CASE is new to me, but judging from the length of the Wikipedia article that I am not going to read, it’s hardly green paint.
I think the NETI POT (I’m not clear on whether that’s a trade name or a generic name for the device) has been around for quite a while. My wife uses one from time to time. I tried it once – never again!
I’m vaguely familiar with USE CASE. I wouldn’t call it green paint, but I do think it’s a bit arcane.
I’d never heard of either one. I do know what it means for something to be case sensitive.
Use case analysis is a fundamental step in product development. It’s there to prevent programmers from inventing all sorts of super-nifty features that nobody will ever use. (Anyone ever seen any of these?) Ditto for toaster engineers.
You start with a number of use cases — scenarios describing how a human would use the product to accomplish a task — and measure the niftiness of the feature against these. Hopefully, you talk to real users to develop the use cases. And also hopefully, they become your testers to let you know how well your new code or toaster matches their expectations.
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 5 stars
great grid
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
NYT – Love this one. Clever and challenging just enough for me.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
NYT: I thought this theme was clever and quite a feat of construction. It took me a few answers to understand it; at first, I was reluctant to put a letter in the circle even when I knew what it should be. The INSIDE/EDISNI order of the circles was amazing. How did the constructors even do that?
I must object, however, to being called a TEA SNOB because I like Darjeeling [97D, Someone who might find Darjeeling appealing]. Darjeeling is a tea that is available at many non-upscale grocery stores. I do like the flavor but I am not a tea snob. Is it liking Darjeeling specifically that makes one a snob?
I can’t think of a better way to clue that entry, though.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
Mixed feelings about this one.
The central theme revealer made me chuckle- I had a kid who woke up at the last minute on school days and did this on a regular basis… The theme helped a bit with the solve, but typically, the first clue was enough to get me the answer, the reverse was a nice check. I can definitely see the prowess involved in the construction and some of these combinations were very cool.
My problem was with the density of proper nouns in some corners as well as some of the fill. For example ETD crossing EBT, or WHO SAYS SO, which I believe would more typically be SAYS WHO? I understand that compromises were needed to accommodate the theme, but they impacted my solving experience.
I do appreciate the creativity!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2.5 stars
These are two accomplished constructors, and I usually enjoy their puzzles, but, sadly, not so much today. In fact, I found this both easy and tedious, an odd combination. The payoff, IMO, was not worth the effort to get there. Lots of trivia, lots of crosswordese, way too much 3- and 4-letter fill. A commenter on another blog has described it as an “avalanche of gunk” and I agree with that assessment.
Really fun NYT Sunday! Got the central down right away, and didn’t take too much to figure out how the theme worked. Lots of theme answers, and being able to solve them backwards was helpful too. Only the NW gave me a little trouble at the end, especially with AHNOLD instead of ARNOLD but it all worked out. Also love the INSIDE / EDISNI pattern!
Fun WaPo! Solve went very smoothly, and the meta was fun… I knew Germany, but the rest I had to get by scrolling through a webpage full of flags. And then with the five, I saw the first letters, and that was it. Very nice puzzle, Evan!
Thanks, Dallas. :)
Puzzle: WaPo; Rating: 2 stars
The meta didn’t work for me because I don’t have the time to look through the flag colors of over 200 nations.
Googling “flag with black red gold stripes” turns up the correct flag on literally the very first hit. Rinse and repeat with the others. There, saved you some time.