LAT untimed (pannonica) 
[3.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 4:34 (Amy) 
[4.32 avg; 22 ratings] rate it
Universal 5:53 (Jim) [3.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Emily) rate it
Adrianne Baik’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s write-up
NY Times crossword solution, 6/20/25 – no. 0620
Even though I didn’t fill in any of the triple-stacked 15s at the top, the puzzle still progressed swiftly. Not as easy as a Wednesday New Yorker puzzle by any means, but not a toughie.
Fave fill: “THAT ANSWERS THAT,” EVERY VOTE COUNTS, MAIN POINT, FLIP PHONE, “HATERS GONNA HATE,” WORD ON THE STREET, RACCOONS, SHOOK UP, LION’S SHARE.
No idea what this means: 35D.
[Moves slightly closer, as a baseball fielder], CHEATS IN. Never heard the term before. Are they not allowed to move that distance or direction?
Three more things:
- 39A. [Variety of violet], PANSY. Pansies are cute and cheery! Been seeing a lot of them planted around town.
- 49D. [“OMG!,” in a modern spelling], WOAH. Ugh. Saw the answer, with no “modern spelling” caveat, in another crossword recently, I think at the Atlantic. I’m a “whoa” prescriptivist.
- 15D. [Model Holliday], TESS. Hadn’t heard of her before. She was on the cover of Cosmo UK, which Women’s Media Center wrote about. The odious Piers Morgan complained that the magazine featured a plus-size model.
Four stars from me.
Christina Bodensiek’s Universal crossword, “Summer 2025 Themeless Week, Puzzle 5”—Jim’s review
Lots to like in this smooth themeless grid, so let’s get to it.
Universal crossword solution · “Summer 2025 Themeless Week, Puzzle 5” · Christina Bodensiek · Fri., 6.20.25
I love the colloquial stack starting the grid in the NW: “WE’RE DOOMED!”, “I’M OVER HERE“, and “DO ME A SOLID.” The corresponding corner in the SE is just as fun: “THAT’S AMORE“, the HOKEY POKEY, and “STAND ASIDE“. Plus ALONE TIME, “I MISSED IT!”, MORAY EELS, “ARE YOU MAD?”, TIGER LILY, CAT TREATS, and NO REGRETS.
The only one I needed a lot help with was CAMEL CASE [capitalizationStyleOfThisClue]. Never heard the term, but I’ve used it myself way back in the days when I did some programming. Per the Internets, “Camel case is a popular naming convention in many programming languages like Java, JavaScript, and C# for variable and function names. It’s also used in URLs and hashtags to improve readability.”
Clues of note:
- 33a. [Temptations rewards]. CAT TREATS. Didn’t know where this was going as I could only think of the Motown group.
- 45a. [Tattoo words that are often misspelled]. NO REGRETS. Is this a thing? Maybe they were trying to spell “pregernet“. (It’s actually a thing stemming from the film We’re the Millers.)
- 11d. [What the king had, besides horses]. MEN. A Humpty Dumpty reference, I presume.
- 64d. [How many tickles it takes to make an octopus laugh?] TEN tickles. (Say it aloud if you don’t get it).
Fun grid. Four stars.
Jeremy Vernook’s Los Angeles Times crossword — pannonica’s write-up
LAT • 6/20/25 • Fri • Vernook • solution • 20250620
Took me a while to figure out precisely how the theme works, but I recognized the shape of it pretty much right off the bat.
- 59aR [Comment to a less-than-thorough cleaner, or an apt title for this puzzle?] MISSED A SPOT. To wit, the themed across answers are missing the word SPOT. The crossing downs, they’re unaffected and behave normally.
- 17a. [Person who’s always available to help] JOHNNY-ON-THE{-SPOT}.
- 27a. [Theater employee who follows the stars closely] {SPOT}LIGHT OPERATOR. Light opera is in the phrase.
- 44a. [Portable Wi-Fi source] HOT{SPOT} CONNECTION.
I like how we get a SPOT at each location: beginning, middle, end.
- 3d [Cry at the beginning of summer break] SCHOOL’S OUT. Timely.
- 8d [Morse taps] DITS, which are dots when written out. They look like tiny spots.
- 18d [Speak horse-ly] NEIGH. Even though the wordplay is obvious, it feels as if this should have a question mark because of the silliness …
- … kind of like what was done at 28d [Shrouded locale?] TURIN, although the pun is much more subtle here.
- 32d [“I’m buying”] ON ME. Such as what happened to me at a very enjoyable lunch yesterday.
- 5a [Site that calls itself “the heart of the internet”] REDDIT. I was unaware of this distinction.
- 34a [“The Garden of Earthly Delights” painter Hieronymus] BOSCH.
- 40a [Stay out all night] CAMP. This is a clever one, and I’m genuinely not sure whether it should have a question mark.
- 42a [Tortuga‘s country] HAITI. A Spanish-named place in a francophone country.
- 62a [The Brewers, in box scores] MIL. It’s also the name of a unit of imperial measurement, equivalent to one one-thousandth of an inch.
- 66a [Invisible pollution] NOISES, which can of course be visualized, but the clue is good.
Enjoyed this one, and it took me a little longer than usual to solve.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
CHEATSIN can happen in most sports. In baseball it usually happens when an infielder expects a bunt. They move closer before the pitch so they can get to the ball faster and hopefully throw out the lead runner.
CHEAT
3
: to position oneself defensively near a particular area in anticipation of a play in that area
“the shortstop was cheating toward second base”
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
Love the grid-spanners on this one. Congrats on an excellent debut, Adrianne!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
Amazing NYT debut puzzle! Can’t wait to see more from Ms. Baik.
NYT was tough for me, but generally doable. Cluing was mostly fair, long entries were in the language. I got stuck at CDSLOT and the fact that Paul Bano is a googleable actor.
NYT: not an overly difficult Friday. Glad CHEATS IN was explained already.
I don’t really think of 39D as a PUN. Perhaps if it said “I just read a book about the Minotaur … it was a-maze-ing”!! But maybe that’s just my interpretation of what a pun is.
Nice Friday!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Excellent Puzzle. Love the long stacks!
Confidently put down “C’EST” (jolie) for 1D, crossed it with TIC instead of SEC and that slowed me down.
Interesting factoid about CORGIS- I tried CROWNS and TIARAS before pivoting.
I miss flip phones… But not CD SLOTS.
Agree that the clue for PUN was slightly off. Clever clue for HIT ME!
Great Debut! Congratulations.
LOL, Amy re “the odious Piers Morgan”…
Fun Friday! I’m not sure when cars stopped having CD SLOTs but it’s definitely been in the last 5 years :-) I got tripped up in the SE corner, as I had HOT and TEST instead of HIP and PEST, both of which seemed to work, but I could not figure out what HOTME was supposed to be as a request :-)
Loved seeing the triple stacks!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
Just could not see 56a until I got filled using process of elimination. With multiple options at 46, 49, and 53D, it just wouldn’t click. I think it was because I was parsing the clue for 56a incorrectly, but that’s part of the fun. Definitely gettable with the crosses, but it just wasn’t my day. Great puzzle though!
lol. I had exact same problem at 56A. But it finally fell.
NYT: Nice puzzle.
All the grid-spanners are in the language, but I needed quite a few crosses before I got any of them.
I agree with others about the clue for PUN – seems more like a “Dad joke” than a pun to me.
Don’t think I’ve seen a CD SLOT in a car for quite a few years, but I’m sure they’re still out there.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
Thank you for 44-A !
+1
NYT: I absolutely despise the presence of WOAH in a puzzle. That’s just awful. Isn’t it just a renegade misspelling that strong-armed (via apathy and ignorance) its way into Common Usage? I don’t want it to be in common usage; I want it to stay on its side of the tracks–WOAH brings out some tribalistic, perhaps elitist part of me (that I’m not proud of) and I want to shout at it, “You don’t belong here!”
There is no other correct spelling for Keanu Reeve’s contribution to the language.
Interesting that whoever uploaded that clip to YouTube spelled it “whoa.”
Probably autocorrect :).
Puzzle: LAT; Rating: 4 stars
I thought we might see School’s Out in the review. I didn’t expect a lullaby
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
FLIPPHONE is having a renaissance though
NYT: CD slots in cars aren’t entirely gone. Our 2023 Subaru has one in the console.
We paid extra for it and have never used it.
My 2009 Honda has one too. I’ve also never used it, especially since I uploaded all my CDs to the ether and gave them away.
I’d call them obsolescent, but not obsolete. I appreciate the saved space on the dash now, but especially enjoy the room freed up in the glove compartment getting rid of that huge collection of CDs. Glove compartments are too small.
The 2001 BMW that preceded the Subaru had a neat thing in the console with six pop-up trays for CDs (sans jewel cases). That was enough music for driving around town.
Yeah, I had a car with a CD changer. It was very cool. It was just a slot in the dash, but the carousel was internal. You kept feeding in CDs until it was full. You could chose to eject CD by number.
The 2001 before that had a changer in the trunk. The idea was that six CDs would be enough for any trip, but boy did they think wrong. That was truly hated.
But with over 1,000 CDs’ worth of space on a 1TB USB flash drive, spinning bits of plastic are so quaint.
We eventually retrofitted the BMW so that you could plug an iPod into the sound system. That worked great until it didn’t. The last road trip we took in that car, we were back to a wallet holding 24 or 30 CDs.
WSJ: The June 20 meta is fun and not overly challenging. The first step was obvious to me, but if you don’t see it, there are several hints in the grid.
Agreed. Perhaps a little heavy on the hints for this late in the month.
I thought the title was enough of a hint, but I recognized a few of the words that the mechanism hinges on.
It wasn’t until later that I saw the extra hints.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
I agree that NYT was not difficult, but I quite enjoyed it.