LAT untimed (pannonica) 
[3.64 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
NYT 5:25 (Amy) [3.39 avg; 14 ratings] rate it
Universal 3:36 (Jim) 
[2.88 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Emily) [3.50 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Colin Adams’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s write-up
NY Times crossword solution, 7/4/25 – no. 0704
Oops! Got caught in watching episodes of Bridgerton (late to the party) and forgot about the puzzle. And the clue for HER was here to welcome me: 24A. [___ Grace], as in Her Grace the Duchess of Hastings. See? I was studying for the puzzle by watching TV.
Overall, bit of a guyish vibe here. Baseball (SHOHEI OHTANI and BATTER’S BOX), basketball (COACH K), the motorsports vibe of MUSCLE CAR atop SPEEDWAY. ELLE King and TONI Collette take up a mere eight squares.
Fave fill: BALLOON DOG, FRUIT BAT, ART HISTORY, “I’LL CATCH UP,” “PLEASE RISE,” “THIS OLD THING?”, “GOD, YES!”
Three more things:
- 25A. [The Spanish alphabet’s 14th letter (without a tilde) or 15th letter (with a tilde)], ENE. I never learned the spellings of the spelled-out Spanish alphabet, but if you gotta have ENE in your grid, this is a more savory angle than a chemical suffix or a rarely specified direction.
- 36A. [One meaning of the “+” in LGBTQ+, in brief], ARO. Short for aromantic.
- 60A. [To pieces?], ODES. As in “Ode to a Nightingale.”
3.75 stars from me.
Zachary David Levy’s Los Angeles Times crossword — pannonica’s write-up
LAT • 7/4/25 • Fri • Levy • solution • 20250704
- 64aR [Goldarn, or a hint to making the starred clues match their answers] DOGGONE. Both are euphemisms for the now-mild oath goddamn. More critically, we’re to remove the names (or nicknames) of dog breeds from those clues.
- 3d. [*Jet setter] PITCH BLACK (jet).
- 7d. [*Puget sound] PHONE HOME (ET sound). Note that ‘sound’ is uncapitalized here.
- 11d. [*Boxer brief] SHORT LIVED (brief).
- 53a. [*Labatt offerings] WIRELESS ROUTERS (ATT offerings).
I liked this one, and the left-right symmetry gives it a fresh feeling.
- 5a [Ready for bed, briefly] IN PJS. Perfectly fine.
- 16a [River that ends in Cairo] OHIO. Cairo, Illinois that is. Of course I took the bait and went with NILE despite knowing that the Egyptian capital is some way south of the river’s exit into the Mediterranean.
- 19a [Not all] MOST, not SOME.
- 22a [Demo letters] TNT. -lition, not -stration.
- 32a [Got ready for school?] TUTORED. One of several outstanding clues. I’ll try to collect the others here as well. 38a [Spot for rumination] LEA. 40a [Vehicle on the move?] VAN. 1d [News stands?] OP-EDS. 55d [Studio figure] RENT.
- 39a [Salon step] SHAMPOO. Perhaps at the dog groomer’s?
- 51a [Word on a cornerstone] ANNO. Note that the clue doesn’t ask for an abbreviation (i.e., ESTD).
- 61a [Figure on the red carpet] A-LISTER, not ALL-STAR. Also, I glossed the clue and at one point tried ALI BABA (even though it’s Aladdin who rode the magic carpet). See also, 4d [Word in a magical phrase] SESAME.
- 63a [Serene] ZEN. I’d prefer an “in a way” qualifier for the clue.
- 67a [Gregory Peck’s co-star in “The Paradine Case”] ANN TODD. New to me.
- 6d [Guiding principle, metaphorically] NORTH STAR; 8d [First Native American to win Olympic gold] JIM THORPE. Nice pair to flank themer 7-down.
10d [Itinerant people whose flag depicts a wagon wheel] ROMANI.- 13d [Hopscotch, in New York slang] POTSY. That’s pretty old-school and regional. Do many people know this? It’s also the nickname of a character from the television series Happy Days, but perhaps there’s too much pop culture in puzzle already.
- 33d [Old TV dial letters] UHF, ultra high frequency. Also the title of a Weird Al Yankovic film. Ditto.
- 46d [Canadian tea brand] SALADA. Hadn’t realized it was Canadian.
- 52d [Seemingly forever] NO END, not AEONS.
- 53d [Google Maps alternative] WAZE. Developed and owned by Google.
- 59d [Former NBAer known as “The Big Cactus”] SHAQ.
Noelle Griskey’s Universal crossword, “Cross State Lines”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases that feature (in consecutive letters and spanning two words) two two-letter state abbreviations of actual geographical neighbors. In an elegant touch, north-south neighbors are placed vertically and east-west neighbors are placed horizontally.
Universal crossword solution · “Cross State Lines” · Noelle Griskey · Fri., 7.4.25
- 18a. [Pinch pennies, say] CUT CORNERS. Utah-Colorado.
- 64a. [Scope out] LOOK AROUND. Oklahoma-Arkansas.
- 3d. [Felines that prefer carpeted trees to real ones] INDOOR CATS. Oregon-California.
- 31d. [Humorous parts of a newspaper] FUNNY PAGES. New York-Pennsylvania.
Wow! Really impressed at the tightness of this theme. There are a lot of constraints here, but with such fun entries, our constructor makes it look easy. I looove the fact that we have both north-south and east-west neighbors in the same grid. Normally, placing theme answers in a pinwheel pattern feels like a little bit of a cheat when constructing a grid, but here it’s a feature. I also love that everything is geographically correct where, for example, Oklahoma is west of Arkansas. An entry like OHM’S LAW wouldn’t work because, although it features neighbors Mississippi and Louisiana, they’re on the wrong side of each other. Great theme and even better execution!
A pinwheel-shaped theme often precludes long fill entries and that’s the case here. But all the 6s and 7s are smooth and gettable with highlight “HECK NO“. I didn’t know actor EBON Moss-Bachrach, but the crosses were all fair.
So-so fill, but the theme is delightful, especially on close inspection. Four stars.
Anyone else having trouble with the WSJ download link?
I know a market holiday means no WSJ. What happens to the meta this week? Saturday?
No contest puzzle this week. A Friday market holiday is pretty rare.
Thank you
I think in previous instances where they had a holiday on a Friday, they’ve published the contest crossword on the Thursday of that week instead. Odd that they wouldn’t do the same thing now, but oh well.
NYT was mostly easy, but the SE corner almost did me in. I wanted APES for at 61A and had no idea what the X or XL clue referred to. Eventually I guessed AUTO for the flash setting, settled on non-standard OXES, and concluded that 55A must be UBER — but I have no idea why. Explanation, anyone?
Uber X and Uber XL are types of requests you make on the app.
Thanks. In my defense, I’ve only used Uber once. In Poland. I still get occasional emails offering me 15 zlotys off my next trip.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
I got the SE but not the spelling of the crossing of Spanish and the baseball player, and mostly it was the NW that slowed me up. Guy thing? To be those are all just more names and unwelcome.
Because I neither follow baseball nor speak Spanish, the ENE / SHOHEI crossing was pretty Naticky for me (A seemed just as plausible to me).
Agreed. I know some Spanish and who Ohtani is, but it didn’t help that square!
USA TODAY:
Really lovely and sly puzzle today from Erik Agard to “commemorate” the 4th of July. The first great quote which should be thought about on this day is at 56A (where the quote is mentioned) and 58A which together clue the famous speaker and agree perfectly with 5D. The second quote at 54A—just clued for a very common three-letter word answer—is a complete sentence from a thinker who should also be associated with the 4th. The threesome of words of dissatisfaction at 6D, 10D, and 16A are daily expressions from many of us who bridle at the continual bad news associated with our F.I.C. who understands little of 46D and with its clue, 47D. Thanks Erik.
Puzzle: USA Today; Rating: 5 stars
David Steere, thank you for posting your comment; I don’t usually do the USA Today puzzle and would not have done this puzzle otherwise.
Yes, this was a really good puzzle from Erik Agard. Very well-constructed, but also makes you think and appreciate about what this day is about (and not about), and with some I’m-sure-quite-intentional references to some of the craziness of our world today. Bravo, Erik!
Thanks for mentioning that. I rarely do the USA Today puzzles and would have missed it otherwise. It’s a very good puzzle and appropriate for today.
Puzzle: LAT; Rating: 4 stars
Fun solve…do the blocks look like the face of a pooch to anyone other than me?
(Psst to pannonica: the “Happy Days” guy was “Potsie”)
My mom talked about playing potsy. She grew up in Brooklyn but my folks moved to the suburbs when I was a kid so it was already a regional difference between us.
The marker you tossed to the next stone was the potsy. In Brooklyn it was a squashed tin can. Potsie on Happy Days was named because he played with clay as a kid.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2.5 stars
How does OXES get through the editing process?! So terrible it ruined an otherwise pretty breezy, fun Friday,
Two of the animals are oxen. Two big oafs are oxes. The editing is fine.
Sorry — have to disagree. I just googled “oxes” and got only “acceptable in scrabble because it is is the scrabble dictionary” as the closest thing to an explanation. It might be a word, but only in the most ridiculous sense, and should never, under any circumstances, be used in a crossword puzzle. (Unless maybe clued as “more than one ox, except spelled wrong/non-standardly.”) It’s a terrible entry.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ox
It’s probably a shortening of lummox. And no, there are no lummoxen.
This is the ninth appearance of OXES in a NYT crossword, The first was 55 years ago.
I didn’t care for OXES either, although I guess it’s the kind of occasional ugliness one has to accept to make a puzzle work.
I’ve never come across ‘ox’ as a synonym for ‘oaf.’ Saying that someone is as strong as an ox is a compliment, not an insult.
Also, I don’t know who is behind dictionary.com and I don’t give it a whole lot of credence. I couldn’t find any legitimate online dictionary that gives the ‘oaf’ meaning or sanctions ‘oxes’ as a plural.
Finally, your speculation that ‘ox’ in this sense is from ‘lummox’ is just that — speculation.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oxes
Cool to learn that it might be a pluralization of lummox, but I will still simply have to disagree with you that it passes muster as an entry. 9 times is 9 too many, IMO.
I have to do this as separate posts because of the way the blog software works, but I can’t find a dictionary that doesn’t agree with this sense of ox. Here’s Random House. Note the plural is specified to be “oxes.”
I don’t know what to tell you. OXES is certainly, 100% a word. It does not, under any circumstances, belong in a NYT Friday puzzle. I guess ultimately my perspective is that it just shows poor taste and incredibly poor judgment. Which is why my original comment criticized the editing. What’s the quote? Just because one can do something doesn’t mean one should do that thing.
Here’s Merriam-Webster. Note the plural is specified to be “oxes.”
Here’s the OED. The meaning is slightly different in British English, more dumb and less clumsy.
Well, it’s a sad day when M-W and the OED disagree with me. Sad for them, I mean 😊
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
Going contrarian here, but I wouldn’t even gain a foothold in this puzzle if Ohtani weren’t a gimme for me.
That said, I didn’t enjoy the puzzle as much as I wanted to. Was the puzzle too hard? No, but the puzzle for some unexplainable reason wasn’t very fun. Maybe it’s the lack of humor.