Thursday, January 22, 2026

BEQ untimed (Eric) [3.75 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
Fireball untimed (Jenni) [3.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
LAT tk (Gareth) [2.25 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 7:47 (ZDL) [2.60 avg; 20 ratings] rate it
Universal 8-something (Eric) [2.90 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
USA Today 10:32 (Emily) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
WSJ untimed (Jim Q) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it

Joe DiPietro’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up

Time: 7m47s

Difficulty: Breezy (<8m)  |  Easy-ish (8-9m30s)  |  Working on it (9m30s-11m)  |  Rough going (11+m)

Joe DiPietro’s New York Times crossword, 1/22/26, 0122

Today’s theme: TRAFFIC / SIGNALS (With 42-Down, they tell you when to stop and go … as seen in this puzzle’s theme)

• COME[S TO P]ASS
• WORKIN[G O]N IT
• LO[ST OP]PORTUNITY
• XIN[G O]UT

This one was really stop and go for a while.  [HEE HAW!]  I was also wondering if we’d see something along the lines of RUN(YELLOW), but would have been hard to fit another theme entry in with the vertical revealers essentially spanning the entire puzzle.

Cracking: NICE TRY, but I wasn’t born yesterday!

Slacking: URANO position to defend this one

Sidetracking: Platonic, starring Seth ROGEN, which I only recently discovered, but is very funny if you’re Apatow-inclined

Richard D. Allen’s Fireball Crossword “Metamorphic Rock” – Jenni’s write-up

Custom-sized grid for the theme. 85a is the revealer. [Stretchy things on a shoebox guitar…or what you’ll find in this puzzle’s highlighted squares] are RUBBER BANDS.

Fireball, January 21, 2026, Richard D. Allen, “Metamorphic Rock,” solution grid

• 18a [Panera Bread option] is an ASIAGO BAGEL. ASIA
• 29a [Loud parts of leaf blowers] are TWO–STROKE ENGINES. TOTO
• 43a [Gooey pies] are FOUR–CHEESE PIZZAS. FREE
• 56a [Be cut from the same cloth] is HAVE A LOT IN COMMON. HAIM
• 69a [“Let me know what they’re saying out there”] is KEEP YOUR EARS OPEN. KORN

Each band name is stretched further across the grid as we go down. Nice!

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: that N DAK is the #1 producer of honey in the U.S.

Daniel Bodily’s Universal Crossword “Bringing In the Pros” — Eric’s Review

Daniel Bodily’s Universal Crossword “Bring in the Pros” — 1/22/26 (Click to Embiggen)

Today’s theme: Common two-word phrases that are reimagined in the context of professional athletes:

• 20A [Pro billiard player’s opening?] BIG BREAK
• 32A [Pro golfer’s putt?] MASTER STROKE
• 39A [Pro baseball player’s strike?] PERFECT PITCH
• 57A [Pro volleyball player’s smash?] GOLDEN SPIKE

That’s a solid theme, but not as inventive as Daniel Bodily’s work often is. I like that PERFECT PITCH and GOLDEN SPIKE are so far removed from their usual meanings. The latter is also a timely reminder that the first transcontinental railroad in the United States was built in large part by Chinese immigrants.

Other stuff:

• 11A [The Magic School ___ (Ms. Frizzle’s vehicle)] BUS I don’t have any idea who Ms Frizzle is — maybe a kid lit character from after the point I generally stopped reading such books.
• 23A [Knee part, in brief] ACL Where’s the love in crosswords for PATELLA? ACL hogs all the attention. (Today I Learned that newborn’s patellas are cartilage and don’t ossify until between the ages of three and five. And yet infants crawl around on them like it was nothing.)
• 2D [Manning of NFL fame] ELI/6D [Tennis star Chris who won 18 Grand Slam titles] EVERT Sports is one of my weak areas when it comes to trivia, but these were both gimmes.
• 

  Melvin Kaminsky on the 1944 Eastern District High School [Brooklyn] yearbook

  49A [Shout at a futbol game] GOL Not OLÉ.
• 56A [EGOT winner Brooks] MEL For, respectively: Outstanding Writing Achievement in Variety for a Sid Caesar special (1967) and three Outstanding Guest Actor roles on Mad About You (1997, 1998 and 1999); Best Comedy Album for The 2000 Thousand Year Old Man in the Year 2000 (1999), Best Musical Theater Album for The Producers (2002), and Best Longform Music Video for Recording The Producers: A Musical Romp With Mel Brooks (2002); Best Original Screenplay for the The Producers (1967); and Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score, all for The Producers (2001). And the guy turns 100 in June.
• 41D [Floral symbol of love] RED ROSE I had a typo in PERFECT PITCH — a T where the R should’ve been — so I kept trying to get TEA ROSE to work here.
• 53D [Wiesel who wrote “Night” and later became a knight] ELIE I didn’t know about his knighthood.

 Tom Pepper & Zhouqin Burnikel’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Missed Connections” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: The letters -TIES are missing from the ends of the clues to theme answers. Theme answers do not make sense unless clues are read with those letters added.

WSJ • 1/22/26 • Thur • “Missed Connections” • Tom Pepper • Zhouqin Burnikel • solution • 20260122

THEME ANSWERS:

• [Jet] WHARVES. Jetties = WHARVES. 
• [Nigh] SLEEPWEAR. Nighties = SLEEPWEAR
• [Coo] PLAYGROUND GERMS. Cooties = PLAYGROUND GERMS. 
• [Boo] BABY SHOES. Booties = BABY SHOES
• (revealer) [End a relationship, say, and a hint to the clues for 17-, 20-, 41- and 59-Across] CUT TIES.

There’s a lot to like about this puzzle, most of which I didn’t appreciate until post-solve. It was an odd solve for me in the sense that I was able to infer the answers for SLEEPWEAR, PLAYGROUND GERMS, and BABY SHOES despite having no idea what the theme was and with clues that certainly didn’t match up. I like those kinds of solves best though, when the revealer patiently waits to be the last one uncovered. My steady North to South solve helped that.

For the life of me, I could not figure out WHARVES. The reason for that is I completely forgot to consider it as a themer. It’s length did not scream “I’m a themer too!” So I managed to get it on the crosses.

I was Naticked on the TATAR/RTS crossing. I’m sure it’s completely fair for most, but for this guy who thinks of The Superbowl as a concert preceded and truncated by some silly play-fighting, I am just as apt to put RBS (Running Backs, amiright?) as I am to put RTS, which google says means “Right Tackle(s).”

I love the central crossing, PLAYGROUND GERMS, for the [Coo(ties)] clue. Not sure if it’s an in-language phrase, but it totally works.

OTHER THINGS:

• [Kidney-shaped snacks] CASHEWS. Never thought of them as having this shape. Now I’ll never un-see it. Like the arrow in the FedEx logo.
• [Muppet with a pet goldfish] ELMO. Awwwww. Lucky goldfish.
• [First word of “Send In the Clowns”] ISN’T. Right in my wheelhouse. Redeeming me for my football ignorance.
• [Brunch cocktail] KIR. Bartended at a high end restaurant for 20+ years and served many a brunch. I believe I’ve made 3-4 of these cocktails in my whole career. Mimosas are crushing KIRs in the brunch cocktail department.
• [“Who’s on First” catcher] TODAY. Not nearly as famous as his buddies, Who, What, and I Don’t Know.

Clean, consistent, and entertaining. Clever too :) 4 stars.

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1855 “Reverse Gear” — Eric’s Review

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1853 — 1/22/26 (Click to Embiggen)

The title made me think this was going to be about automobiles, but instead, the theme answers in this 14X15 grid are a sport followed by an anagrammed bit of relevant equipment:

• 18A [Bill for bowlers and wickets?] CRICKET TAB
• 23A [Flatcap you wear while doing a suplex or body slam?] WRESTLING TAM
• 37A [A.A. Milne character that can dunk?] BASKETBALL POOH
• 48A [Hottie who hits a shuttlecock?] BADMINTON TEN It helps if you know that a badminton birdie is formally called a shuttlecock.
• 60A [Coffee pod for the Bruins and Canucks?] HOCKEY K-CUP This is my least favorite of the theme answers, if for no other reason than the fact that the guy who invented that way of making coffee now regrets how environmentally unfriendly those pods are. Plus, almost every time I’ve tried to use one of those machines, I’ve managed to make a mess.

None of the theme answers much amuses me, but at least they are consistent.

Other things:

• 4A [Longtime Bowie collaborator Carlos] ALOMAR I don’t recognize that name, though I probably should. I wasn’t ever a huge Bowie fan, but I do like a lot of his songs.
• 10A [Largest funder of both the UN and NATO] USA Yeah, but for how long?
• 14A [Baroque’s relative] ROCOCO After entering that word in Spelling Bee 100 times, I finally remember that it only has two C’s. C’mon — What self-respecting polysyllabic Italian word doesn’t have at least one doubled consonant.
• 19A [Tennis star Raducanu] EMMA That’s a new name for me.
• 21A [“Me as well”] I ALSO Said no one ever.
• 28A [Best replacement] STARR As in Beatles’ drummers Pete and Ringo, respectively.
• 42A [Japanese electronics company whose name means “three oceans”] SANYO A bit of corporate trivia that I didn’t know. Maybe I’ll bother to figure out which three oceans they had in mind.
• 46A [Speculum doc] OB-GYN It’s mostly from reading The Cider House Rules that I have the vaguest idea of what a speculum is.
• 3D [Centerpiece of an hourglass figure] TRIM WAIST Yes, but that’s a bit green painty for me.
• 24D [Art deco designer whose name is a pronounciation of two letters] ERTÉ I guess, if those letters are in French.
• 32D [Law school accreditor] ABA I’m not sure how useful it is to have a degree from a law school that’s not accredited by the American Bar Association. Most states won’t issue a law license to someone who graduated from an accredited law school.

Emma Oxford’s USA Today Crossword, “Crack Team” — Emily’s write-up

Only the best and brightest!

USA Today, January 22, 2026, “Crack Team” by Emma Oxford

Theme: each themer ends in something that can be “cracked”

Themers:

• 20a. [11101, for Long Island City, for example], POSTALCODE
• 40a. [Easter treat featuring a chocolate shell and a fondant filling], CADBURYCREMEEGG
• 57a. [It won’t click outside a clique], INSIDEJOKE

A fantastic set of themers today! An easy fill for me with POSTALCODE and CADBURYCREMEEGG, though I needed some crossings for INSIDEJOKE. With the theme, we get to crack a CODE, an EGG, and a JOKE. Nice!

Favorite fill: SASSY, BOPS, ASANA, and GREATIDEAS

Stumpers: OTOH (new to me), BOGUS (only thought of “fake” and “unreal”), and BEACHTOYS (needed a few crossings)

Today’s puzzle was a tough one for me–some of the cluing was tricky and paired with fresh fill made for a longer solve. Lots of wonderful overall fill, especially lengthy bonus fill. Loved the grid design, too!

4.5 stars

~Emily