Saturday, June 28, 2025

LAT 3:36 (Stella) [3.21 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
Newsday 26:21 (pannonica ) [4.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 6:14 (Amy) [3.29 avg; 17 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Matthew) [3.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Matthew) rate it
WSJ untimed (pannonica ) rate it

Jesse Guzman’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap

NY Times crossword solution, 6/28/25 – no. 0628

Good puzzle, tough but not overly so. Cool-looking grid.

I wasn’t excited to hit a Mario video game name at 1-Across, BOWSER, and another at 16-Down (KOOPA TROOPA), but luckily I’ve seen the names in Sporcle trivia quizzes.

Lots of spiffy fill. Faves: DAWDLED, SARONG, KABLOOEY, SANTA TRACKER, SEALED THE DEAL, ANGELICA (never heard of this [Sweet wine of California] but it’s a pretty name), PRISMS, TOUR DE FORCE, DAISY CHAINS, ASTERISK, “LEAN ON ME.”

Three more things:

• 12D. [Depictions of Arcadia], IDYLLS. Anyone have a favorite idyllic poem?
• 15A. [Bit of unisex attire], SARONG. Hey, do they make sarongs with a pocket for your phone now?
• 32A. [They focus on subjects of interest], CAMERA LENSES. Lots of photographers have high-octane zoom lenses to take pictures of the local piping plovers. When a chick is tiny and people need to keep their distance, you’re not getting a good photo with your phone’s camera. Here are some pics from someone I know.

Four stars from me.

Alan DerKazarian’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Let’s Go to a Fireworks Show!” — pannonica’s write-up

WSJ • 6/28/25 • Sat • “Let’s Go to a Fireworks Show!” • DerKazarian • solution • 20250628

• 121a^R [Holiday for which the starred clues’ answers would be good mascots] THE FOURTH OF JULY. Ah, I hadn’t caught on that they were all nouns, entities.
• 22a. [*Princess in the “My Little Pony” universe] TWILIGHT SPARKLE.
• 27a. [*”Manic Monday” band] THE BANGLES.
• 34a. [*Hairy member of the Guardians of the Galaxy] ROCKET RACCOON. I would’ve used ‘furry’.
• 51a. [*Best Actress Oscar winner in 1975] ELLEN BURSTYN. For Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.
• 70a. [*Breakfast trio] SNAP, CRACKLE, AND POP.
• 86a. [*Band begun in 1975 by Bob Geldof] BOOMTOWN RATS. Known for their single “I Don’t Like Mondays”.
• 104a. [*He fought Lawrence Taylor in Wrestlemania XI] BAM BAM BIGELOW. Whatever you say.
• 112a. [*Rapper with the 2011 #1 hit “Black and Yellow”] WIZ KHALIFA.

Some of the theme answers are more strongly evocative than others—for instance I feel the whizz of WIZ KHALIFA to be on the weak side, whereas I found the burstin’ of ELLEN BURSTYN inspired.

• 6d [Contrite feeling] REGRET, 7d [Compassionate feeling] PITY.
• 20d [Popular apples] HONEYCRISPS. Yep, I like ’em.
• 32d [Intent] GOAL. 82a [Intentions] AIMS.
• 44d [Loos in the library] ANITA. 14a [Loos] WCS. 1a [Twist in a story] OLIVER.
• 46d [Seminole Wars leader] OSCEOLA. Vsse Yvholv in Creek, also spelled Asi-yahola (per Wikipedia).

• 50d [Suffered humiliation] ATE CROW. I tried ATE DIRT first, which I still feel is a better match to the clue.
• 57a [Vancouver Island city that lends it name to a bar cookie] NANAIMO. Sounds only vaguely familiar to me.
• 25a [One of Minn.’s northern neighbors] ONTario, the other is Manitoba. And of course, to the east, Ontario extends below even the southern border of Minnesota.
• 33d [Like some difficult golf lies] SIDEHILL. I recall a paper in The Journal of Irreproducible Results describing a creature called something like a SIDEHILL walker; the premise was that the legs on one side of its body were significantly shorter than those on the other, and that they were evolutionarily adapted to traveling around hills and mounds. Sadly, I believe, they were endangered because they had trouble reproducing and maintaining diversity—the clockwise and counterclockwise walkers couldn’t get their act together. It’s also possible that I’m misremembering a lot of this.
• 64a [Site of la torre pendente] PISA. That’s the leaning tower, of course.

• 94a [ __-pah band] OOM. Easily the roughest entry of the puzzle.
• 107a [Lighter version of a classic treat] OREO THIN. For a brief flicker, I thought the classic treat was a s’more and the answer was to be something like s’nothin.
• 130a [One of Zimbabwe’s official languages] TSWANA, crossed by 117d [Fiji’s capital] SUVA. That’s an intersection I anticipate some solvers having a complaint about.

p.s. I don’t really like fireworks. To me, they aren’t worth the spectacle, what with the injuries and accidental fires, and especially the way they traumatize wildlife, pets, and many people. 116d [Vet’s affliction] PTSD.

Ricky Sirois’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Los Angeles Times 6/28/25 by Ricky Sirois

This puzzle had a couple of annoyances, one of which contributed to the difficulty of the NW corner. Annoyance #1: 59D [U.K. honor], or MBE — if this puzzle were running in the UK, I’d say that’s a fair clue, but I’d say we Americans are far more familiar with OBE (“Order of the British Empire”) than with MBE (“Member of the British Empire”) to a degree that renders MBE damn near unfair to put in an American puzzle. Perhaps this is just sour grapes for how long I mistakenly had OBE in that slot; you tell me. Annoyance #2: 5D [Some brews] for LITES, which I thought was Saturday Stumper-level of difficulty through vagueness.

Other notables:

• 16A [Whitlock Jr. of “The Wire”] is ISIAH. I had the IAH of this first and figured, “this must be an ISIAH or URIAH I haven’t seen in a puzzle before.”
• 17A [Governed by fate] is MEANT TO BE, the hardest clue in the puzzle IMO.
• 59A [Hit that’s hardly felt] is a very tough clue for MICRODOSE, and it sure didn’t help that I had an O in the first square for a while.
• 4D [Whiff] is FAN. Very tough base/softball clue (both “whiff” and “fan” are slang for striking a batter out).
• 23D [Touchdown celebration in Green Bay] is a LAMBEAU LEAP. I’d never heard of this, but it was very inferable.
• 56D [Toast Skagen garnish] is ROE. Love this angle I haven’t seen before on a crossword-ubiquitous word (I’m not going to call it “crosswordese” because it certainly has a life outside of crosswords). I fell in love with toast Skagen on a trip to Sweden a couple of years ago, and have not been able to find a restaurant in NYC that does it as well as the ones in Stockholm and Gullholmen did. (I’ve also tried mightily to recreate it at home, since it’s a rather simple dish to prepare, but IDK, maybe their sour cream is tarter? Maybe North Atlantic shrimp are just tastier than Gulf shrimp or shrimp from southeast Asia?) Anyway, if you’re in Scandinavia, try some if you can do so with an attitude of Buddhist detachment.
• 58A [Disney channel?] is ABC. I totally missed this clue when solving, but it’s cute.

Matthew Sewell’s Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up

Newsday • 6/28/25 • Saturday Stumper • Sewell • solution • 20250628

This one was indeed tough, and frankly I’m amazed that I solved it in under thirty minutes.

Solvewise, the middle was a muddle, but the first section completed was the upper right, and the last was the lower left.

• Things started auspiciously, with both 1-across and 1-down coming easily. 1a [Meet head-on] RAM, 1d [Rolls-Royce customer for 100+ yrs.] RAF.
• 9a [Coral Triangle isle] BALI.
• 13a [Its execs have included Poitier and Peck] AFI. American Film Institute, Sidney, Gregory.
• 14a [Checked out] LOANED. I was afraid it was going to be like that.
• 15a [Mostly-female nation?] OMAN, which is 80% of ‘woman’. It’s cryptic-style clue for this crossword.
• 16a [Sound advice for sailors] FOG WARNING. Yeah, tricksy.
• 20a [Blameworthy quality] DEMERIT. A lot of answers were like this for me: confusion, then maybe … could it be? nah. oh wait, maybe it is … wow, it is that.
• 31a [Hybrid beachwear] CAMIKINI. You bet I tried MONOKINI first.
• 36a [As in a lab] ARSENIC. Had there not been some rocksolid crossings in place, I’d have been certain the answer was IN VITRO. Instead the chemical symbol for the element is cleverly masquerading as another part of speech.
• 38a [Au __ de (on behalf of)] NOM. 28d [ __ des arts (Parisian patrons)] AMIS. I could easily make sense of these after the fact, but not being a French speaker I couldn’t know the phrases from the clues alone.
• 39a [Group with celebrity bloggers] DIGERATI. Not a formal group or organization, which was not clear from the clue.
• 46a [Biscuit close kin] BEIGE. Kicked myself for not thinking of biscuit as a color. Held up my solve for quite a while as I eliminated possibilities such as SCONE.
• 51a [Aim to soften, perhaps] IMMERSE, not APPEASE.
• 56a [Citrus sinensis] ORANGE TREE. Decoded this as Chinese citrus, and the ORANGE part was pretty easy to get, but that TREE was tough to root out.
• 59a [What p and v are called] ORAL. This has to do with pronunciation. Very recondite clue.
• 60a [A question of taste] LIKE IT?
• 2d [Legalese “all the more”] A FORTIORI. Did not know this, but I took a chance that it ended in -I, and that helped (a little) with DIGERATI.
• 3d [Tern term] MIGRATING. Hmm.
• 5d [Not following any order] RANDOM. Ridiculously straightforward clue for a Stumper, which means it ended up being quite difficult to get.
• 7d [Steward] TEND, not LEAD.
• 10d [ __ eterno (passionate pledge)] AMORE. Fairly easily surmised, and a big help in my completing that northeast corner first.
• 14d [Grandma Moses, for instance] LATE STARTER. FOLK ARTIST was one letter shy. Weird having instance in this clue right after 12d [Redi- relative] INSTA-.
• 23d [Fairly friendly] NICEISH. oof.
• 27d [Cost] RAN. Does this pass the substitution test?
• 37d [Name found in the alphabet] STU. Another easy one, but I had no second thoughts about it here.
• 42d [Reindeer of rhyme] OCTET. Ooh it was a plural.
• 44d [Bit of Thanksgiving decor] KERNEL. Oh, come on. That’s absurd. Okay, I suppose it’s a little better if parsed as {bit of | Thanksgiving decor} rather than {bit of Thanksgiving decor}, but still, wow/ouch.
• 47d [Nonskid mat material] EMERY. A whole mat?
• 50d [Protection and support] AEGIS. Another exceedingly straightforward clue.