Thursday, February 12, 2026

BEQ 11:22 (Eric) [2.75 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
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Anna Harkins’s Universal Crossword “Tritones” — Eric’s Review

Congratulations to Anna Harkins on what appears to be her first crossword in a publication regularly covered by Diary of a Crossword Fiend!

I didn’t notice the title before jumping in and was befuddled when the circled letter in the first theme answer didn’t collectively spell anything. So it wasn’t until I was done with the grid that I noticed the musical notes:

• 20A [Activity eased by universal child care] SOLO PARENTING
• 26A [Pennsylvania nuclear accident site] THREE MILE ISLAND
• 45A [1987 psychological thriller] FATAL ATTRACTION
• 53A [America, per “The Star-Spangled Banner”] LAND OF THE FREE I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel as free as I used to.

Given how common the letters used in solfège are, I’m sure themes similar to this have been done many times before. I don’t know how many possibilities there are in which each “note” is separated from the next by at least one letter. And I appreciate that all the notes in the scale made it into the puzzle.

Other stuff:

• 23A [ ___ or later] SOONER

• 32A [It’s about 78% nitrogen] AIR Most of the rest is oxygen, even if  you live at 7,400′ like I do (as I understand it, the molecules of all the constituent gases are just farther apart).
• 64A [Singer Lavigne whose first name is a French month] AVRIL I filled this in from the crosses and just now noticed the double clueing. Either one would have worked for me, but I’m sure some solvers knew one but not the other.
• 9D [“Nationality” of a famed set of Italian steps] SPANISH

• 46D [French colony that some Louisianans trace ancestry to] ACADIA Hence “Cajun.”

• 47D [Road feature that may interfere with a GPS] TUNNEL I’ve not noticed this, but I’ve noticed the satellite radio dropping out in even a large underpass.

Sam Cordes’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Think Twice” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: Common two-word phrases which can be made up of two synonyms if given an alternate context.

THEME ANSWERS:

• [*Be romantically involved with] COURT DATE. One COURTs or DATEs someone they’re romantically involved with. 
• [*Get over a bad habit] DROP KICK. One DROPs or KICKs a bad habit.
• [*Tilt, like a plane] BANKROLL. A plane BANKs or ROLLs. 
• [*Wallop] SMASH HIT. A “Wallop” is a SMASH or a HIT.
• [*Through, as a relationship] OVERDONE. An ended relationship is OVER or DONE. 
• revealer [Good deal, like the answers to the starred clues] TWO FOR ONE. 

As an occasional constructor, publications that allow for puzzles with titles can offer relief. It gives an opportunity to provide a revealer and keep the puzzle full of themers, which can be useful especially when the revealer is difficult to symmetrically balance. On the other hand, if your puzzle has the revealer in the grid itself, then it can be a bit of a snafu to come up with a title that isn’t a revealer. All this to say I really enjoyed the concept of this puzzle and would’ve loved another theme entry (in place of the revealer) since the title did the heavy lifting already.

Theme is solid today, and does a nice job of ensuring that meaning changes from the base phrase to the altered context. For instance, no part of the base phrase COURT DATE refers to what one might do in a romantic relationship, but both words on their own do. Not sure if this works as well for SMASH HIT… well the SMASH part at least… but the others are all on point.

Fill varied between “pleasantly tough” to “oddly clued,” with a couple side-eye moments for me.

• [He wears very little clothing] KEN. Like, the KEN doll, I assume? I mean, doesn’t this largely depend on the outfits one adorns him with? If that’s the case, we all wear very little clothing… until we don’t, right?

***Update*** Lester pointed out in the comments that KEN does indeed wear very little clothing because he’s, well, very little. Ha! Great clue and a facepalm moment for me that I rather enjoyed. Thanks, Lester!

• [“The Time Machine” people] ELOI. At one point I used to enter this automatically as standard Crosswordese. But I struggled this time. Just realizing it’s been a long time since I’ve seen this entry!
• [Foppish accessory] ASCOT. Sounds like something our naked KEN might wear to a fancy keys-in-the-bowl party.
• [Greatly hinders] HOGTIES. Eew.
• [Bass part] FIN. I’m all about that bass. The fish, of course.
• [Skeletal pair] TIBIAS. Somewhat of an awkward plural. I wanted OARS or something of that ilk.
• [Unsure utterances] EHS. Ehhhhhh….
• [Chews, in slang] NOMS. Don’t think I’ve seen this as a present tense verb like this. I’ve seen NOM NOM.
• [Hard-to-find game cards, in collector’s lingo] RARES. Rare as a plural noun is very new to me.
• [Burns books, e.g.] POETRY. Great clue. Books by the poet Robert Burns are indeed POETRY.
• [Juicy gossip, slangily] HOT TEA. Otherwise known as… TEA.
• [Org. with Fire and Earthquakes] MLS. Major League Soccer. This was difficult for me next to DAL, EHS, and the ambiguous utterance before STOP [“You’re embarrassing me!”]… in this case OH.
• [Fresh] ANEW. Not to be confused with ABET and A BIT.

Jonathan Raksin’s Fireball Crossword “Going Downhill Fast” – Jenni’s write-up

The theme/gimmick of this puzzle is absolutely brilliant and indeed blazingly hard. The central section is blazingly unfair.

I finally figured out the trick when I remembered to look at the title. This is why at competitions they often remind us to look at the title or the notes. I presume “Going Downhill Fast” is running this week because of the Olympics. In any case, we have two entries that go down(hill) through each theme answer: AVALANCHE and LANDSLIDE. The theme answers only make sense when you ignore the letters from those crossings. Peter’s grid shows it better than mine.

• 21a [Angler’s accessories] are LAURELS – LURES.
• 27a [Run-D.M.C.’s “You Be ___”] is VILLAIN – ILLIN.
• 29a [Authoritarian] is STERNA -STERN.
• 31a [Premature] is NEARLY – EARLY.
• 35a [“Salt” start] is JOLLIED – JOLIE.
• 43a [Dances in the noho and luna positions] is HAUL ASS – HULAS.
• 48a [Big name in freight transport] is NESTLES – ESTES
• 50a [Mince words?] is PARSEC – PARSE.
• 52a [Last word in the title of Hemingway’s first novel is IRISES – RISES. This was the first theme answer I got because I actually know the answer (English major!) and so I thought there was something about doubling vowels…
• 56a [Concerning] is ASHFORD – AS FOR.
• 64a [Was a cord cutter?] is SEAWEED – SAWED.

LANDSLIDE was a gimme; it’s clued as [“Fleetwod Mac song with the question “Can I handle the seasons of my life?”] and I’m a child of the 70s and an alto to boot. AVALANCHE gave me a little more trouble because it’s clued as 22d [NHL team that was formerly the Nordiques]; once I grokked the theme and realized it had to be something that went downhill fast, I got it. And the theme is, as I said, brilliant – so much fun to solve and figure out!

That central section, though. Theme answers requiring the name of an actor (clued with reference to a 2010 movie which is not one of her better-known vehicles) and a freight company? Luckily I was solving this across from my husband and he knows freight companies. And both crossing an NBA coach with an unusual spelling of his first name (LUE)? And the at least legitimately misleading 38d [Down] for EAT? I tried SAD and LOW first. Since SAD also works with HULAS I was really in the dark.

I do realize that “fair” is subjective. I think it’s risky to cross two names, especially if one is a theme answer, and to make that harder by using a relatively obscure clue for one of them is what makes it unfair in my eyes. ESTES made that section challenging for me no matter what; having easier clues for JOLIE and EAT would have taken the difficulty level down just a smidgen into at least somewhat fairer territory.

That said I did really enjoy the puzzle! It’s the kind of theme I love and that Peter and his constructors do so well.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: see above re: ESTES and the movie “Salt.” I also did not know that ENID, OK was named after the Tennyson character.

Kareem Ayas’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up

Time: ?????

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

Today’s theme: STEAL A KISS / GIVE A HUG

• Remove an X from the STEAL A KISS answers
• Add an O to the GIVE A HUG answers

Apologies for the late post.  Wrote this from an aeroplane over the sea, then lost reception, crossed several time zones, and only now starting to reconstitute my addled personal GPS.  Probably finished in the 12s, as I had a particularly hard time getting started with RADIAN and OWES TO crossing LISTEE.

Cracking: PANTERA

Slacking: LISTEE 

Sidetracking: EVEN STEVEN

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1859 “Sweet Puzzle” — Eric’s Review

A few extra letter wackify some compound nouns:

• 17A [Where airheads get cleaned up?] SPACY BATH “Spa bath” doesn’t strike me as that common a term, but it googles well enough.
• 23A [Calligrapher’s output?] FANCY LETTERS Did you know that crossword veteran Elizabeth Gorski is an accomplished calligraphist?
• 36A [Valentine’s Day gift, and a literal hint to what’s added to this puzzle’s theme answers] CANDY Literally, “C AND Y.”
• 45A [Highland cloth worn by thriller writer Tom?] CLANCY TARTAN
• 55A [Where the utterly foolish drink?] LUNACY BAR

The wacky theme answers don’t do a whole lot for me, but I appreciate that the added CYs are all contiguous. (When I was still figuring out what the theme was, the initial C in CLANCY threw me for a bit.)

Other stuff:

• 1A [Magizoologist Scamander] NEWT Who? What?
• 9A [Air and mini] IPADS The M in “Mini” ought to be capitalized, but that would have given it away too quickly (not that it took very long anyway).
• 29A [Long lunch?] HOAGIE Cute clue.
• 41A [Copy badly] FORGE I assume that “badly” here refers to the deceptive intent of the person doing the forging and not the skill with which they do it.
• 42A [Spondulicks] DO RE MI I couldn’t remember what “spondulicks” (also “spondulix”) means. Like DO RE MI, it’s old slang for “money.” Merriam-Webster says the origin is unknown; other sources speculate that it come from the Greek spondylos, meaning vertabra, from the resemblance between a stack of coins and a spinal column.
• 49A [Brexit’s opponent] REMAIN That clue seems off grammatically to me.
• 58A [“50 First Dates” director Peter] SEGAL I’ve heard of the movie but had no idea who directed it.
• 1D [SpaceX partner] NASA I don’t get why anyone would want to gratuitously remind people of Elon Musk.
• 18D [Sourdough’s lack] YEAST That’s technically not true; sourdough bread includes naturally-occurring yeast.
• 22D [Parish who wrote the “Amelia Bedelia” books] PEGGY I hadn’t started school when the first book in that series was published, but I never read any of them. I needed a few crosses to get this one.
• 24D [“OOOUUU” rapper] YOUNG M.A I didn’t know the song or the artist.
• 28D [Actress Lifford of “Queen Sugar”] TINA Ditto.
• 36D [Figure skater Kadavy] CARYN Another name that I figured out only because I recognized it as a name. A cursory glance at her Wikipedia entry suggests that the high point of her skating career was winning bronze at the World Figure Skating Championships in 1987; she also won some professional figure skating competitions. Granted, that makes her an elite athlete, but is she really crossword worthy?

Norman M. Aaronson’s USA Today Crossword, “Spinning Tops” — Emily’s write-up

Hold on!

Theme: each themer begins with “tops” scrambled

Themers:

• 17a. [Place to buy stamps or apply for passports], POSTOFFICE
• 27a. [Cooking vessels], POTSANDPANS
• 44a. [Brake quickly and precisely], STOPONADIME
• 59a. [Random inspections], SPOTCHECKS

A wide variety of themers in today’s set with POSTOFFICE, POTSANDPANS, STOPONADIME, and SPOTCHECKS. The cluing made for easy fills today.

Favorite fill: DENADA, ABODE, and SIESTA

Stumpers: YOKE (needed crossings) and NOSES (new to me)

A smooth solve today with a great grid, fun overall fill and enjoyable theme.

4.0 stars

~Emily