LAT 7:24 (Kyle) 
[3.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 15:22 (Eric) [3.13 avg; 12 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Darby) 
[2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Universal (Sunday) 7:31 (Jim P) 
[3.50 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Norah) [3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
WaPo 7:21 (Matt G) 
[3.81 avg; 8 ratings] rate it
Jill Rafaloff and Michelle Sontarp’s New York Times Crossword “Books of the Bible” — Eric’s Review
Jill Rafaloff and Michelle Sontarp’s New York Times Crossword “Books of the Bible” — 2/22/26 (Click to Embiggen)
If you’re into literature and Bible stories (not everyone’s cup of tea), this is the puzzle for you. And if, like me, you have a bit of knowledge about both topics, the theme answers fill in fairly easily:
- 24A [The Ten Plagues] DEATH ON THE NILE
- 31A [Sodom and Gomorrah] A TALE OF TWO CITIES
- 49A [Samson and Delilah] DANGEROUS LIAISONS
- 66A [Noah’s Ark] WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
- 85A [Garden of Eden] THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
- 103A [Moses Parting the Red Sea] THE PRINCE OF TIDES
- 114A [Jonah and the Whale] THE GREAT ESCAPE
I found the theme answers reasonably clever. I don’t think I’ve actually read any of these books, but I’ve seen movies based on a few of them and I’m familiar with all the titles.
This puzzle is also for the people who complain about constructors using computer code to generate theme answers; I don’t know how you could code to come up with these.
Other stuff:
- 12A [Like pickles, but not cucumbers] ACIDIC Not BRINED.
- 61A [So-called “Hollywood of the South”] ATLANTA I’d not heard this, but it was easy enough to figure out. As a movie fan, the state tax incentives that draw so much production to states like Georgia, Texas and New Mexico is a good thing. As a taxpayer, I’m not sure the economic benefits are worth the cost.
- 76A [Like Constantinople, in 1930] RENAMED
- 19D [Glorify] EXTOL Not EXALT
- 25D [Gullible sort] NAÏF That’s just a neat little word.
- 78D [“Heeere’s Johnny!” announcer] ED MCMAHON For those of you who are too young to remember, McMahon was Johnny Carson’s sidekick on The Tonight Show from 1962 to 1992.
- 86D [Where boaters hang with bowlers] HAT TREES Not HAT RACKS
Doug Peterson’s LA Times crossword “SUPPLIES ARE LIMITED” – Kyle’s write-up
LA Times solution grid “SUPPLIES ARE LIMITED” – Doug Peterson – Sunday 02/22/2026
Thanks Doug for today’s puzzle. Our theme today reimagines two-word phrases as things that might be stocked in various businesses:
- 23A [Writing tablet at a cleaning service?] SCOURING PAD
- 29A [Copier sheets at a French restaurant?] CREPE PAPER
- 45A [Writing implements at a biotech lab?] GENETIC MARKERS. I feel an affinity for this clue/answer as I used to work in biomedical research, long enough ago that I can remember going over printouts of genetic sequences by hand to mark up.
- 66A [File holder at a music store?] ACCORDION FOLDER
- 93A [Metal fasteners at a culinary school?] KITCHEN STAPLES. Took me a moment to realize this plays on “staples” as in flour, sugar, etc.
- 107A [Adhesive roll at a watch factory?] TICKER TAPE
- 117A [Measuring device at a toy store?] PUPPET RULER
Nice how the second word in each answer can be something you could get at an office supply store, which adds a layer to the theme.
Notes on fill and clues:
- 1A [Commotion] FUSS <> 25A [Commotions] ADOS
- Hawaiian mini-theme at the top of the puzzle: 21A [City northeast of Mauna Loa] HILO, 26A [Coffee district west of 21-Across] KONA, 15D [Beadlike piece on a Hawaiian necklace] PUKA SHELL. That K at the KONA/PUKA crossing could be tough.
- 36A [Spots for daith piercings] EARS. As shown here:
- 41A [Catherine of “The Studio”] O’HARA. RIP :-(
- 85A [Sch. that retired Caleb Williams’ No. 13] USC. He’s the Chicago Bears QB now. Williams won the Heisman Trophy at USC, hence his jersey number being retired.
- 115A [Home of the NHL’s Mammoth] UTAH. Founded in 2024, they played their first season as “Utah Hockey Club” before adopting the Mammoth name last year.
- 124A [Place for curlers] RINK. Timely with the Winter Olympics. A curling team is also called a rink.
- 11D [Juice box?] CHARGER. Nice.
- Glad I didn’t fall into the trap of throwing in AMINO for 104D [___ acid]. The correct answer here is FOLIC.
- 109D [Actress Blanchett] CATE. Just saw her in the puzzle last Sunday.
Daniel Grinberg’s Universal Sunday crossword, “Copy That”—Jim P’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases that feature a repeated trigram in their exact centers. The revealer is RECYCLING CENTERS (107a, [Destinations for bottles and cans … and a hint to this puzzle’s theme]).
Universal Sunday crossword solution · “Copy That” · Daniel Grinberg · 2.22.26
- 23a. [“Getting through one day at a time”] “I’M HANGING IN THERE.”
- 34a. [Hit the road, like a band] WENT ON TOUR.
- 47a. [1969 anti-war song by the Plastic Ono Band] “GIVE PEACE A CHANCE.”
- 63a. [Crashed, like a virtual meeting] ZOOMBOMBED.
- 66a. [Hopelessly stalled] AT A DEAD END.
- 77a. [Desktop’s data transmission device] COMPUTER TERMINAL.
- 94a. [Hidden geeky sides] INNER NERDS.
Really nice theme. I especially like the first, third, and fourth entries; those are some lovely finds.
I find it interesting that the theme answers are pretty straightforward. If you really wanted to go with the recycling theme, you could just leave one instance of the trigram in each answer and expect the solver to do the recycling mentally. That is, the second entry would look like WENTOUR, (with the NTO circled) and the solver has to figure out to go back to the N after hitting the O the first time. Sure, that leaves gibberish in the grid, but it emphasizes the recycling aspect. Plus, it makes for shorter theme entries which reduces overall grid constraints.
But that’s a different, trickier puzzle. I still do like this one as it is, especially with the solid-to-good entries and a fully symmetrical grid. The fill is smooth all around with plenty of highlights like THE PITT, LEAP DAY, SHORELINE, “I’VE GOT YOU,” MUNDANE, LAKE ERIE, EURASIA, SPY KIDS, RAP-ROCK, EPITOME, and SLY GRIN.
Clues of note:
103a. [Sammy the Banana ___ (mollusk mascot of UC Santa Cruz)]. SLUG. My daughter is in the process of picking a college, and UC Santa Cruz was one we toured last summer. Surprisingly, we did see a banana SLUG even though it was warm and dry. The campus is forested and surprisingly hilly but quite lovely. Also notable is the Grateful Dead Archive located in one of their libraries.
Four stars.
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post Times Crossword “X Games” — Matt’s Review
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword solution, “X Games,” 2/22/2026
Have to be quick this weekend. Circled letters are arranged in “X” patterns throughout the grid. Each diagonal run of circles contains a country, and a revealer near the bottom hints at it with the entry CROSS COUNTRY SKIING. While that event is not contested at the titular X GAMES, the intersections of each pair of countries spell ASPEN, the host of the Winter X Games.
Cheers!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 1.5 stars
Sorry to come in hot with the first comment… but this puzzle was simply dreadful. Putting aside the religious stuff, we’ve seen (book title describes other thing) as a theme plenty of times. None of the other fill was interesting. And so… much… gunk. I counted 75 three or four letter words. All the greatest hits of crosswordese were here — OTT and ONO and ONEL and EPEE and ADO and RBIS and ETA. Then there was some real yucky stuff, like III and CTR and FRI and MAB and two entries about West Point and that clue for CAREER.
XWordInfo has this one’s freshness score at 0%. That about sums it up. I’ve said before I would only ever give 1* for offensive or unsolvable grids, but this is as close as I’ve come to breaking that rule.
Side note – are fewer people submitting Sundays these days? The Sunday grids lately have been noticeably lower in quality and less fun to solve than the other days of the week.
All the preamble about how you’re allowed to like or dislike a puzzle, people have different tastes, etc., and I’ll admit maybe I’m predisposed to feeling more positive because I set a personal best on my Sunday NYT paper-solving time, but a lot of these objections don’t make much sense to me.
1) “we’ve seen (book title describes other thing) as a theme plenty of times” … we have? I don’t recall seeing it done this way very often, and even if I could remember another one off the top of my head, I’m not sure how much I would care. Finding a group of apt book titles that can be reinterpreted as Bible stories gives the theme a fairly tight constraint, even if the subject matter isn’t your jam (I’m not religious either, for the record).
2) “I counted 75 three or four letter words” … okay, and? What would be a good number for you? My puzzle this weekend has more than that (83). Does anyone besides constructors and editors really count the number of three- or four-letter words in a Sunday puzzle and dismiss it for that reason?
3) “All the greatest hits of crosswordese were here — OTT and ONO and ONEL and EPEE and ADO and RBIS and ETA” … I personally hate discussions of “crosswordese” because we all have different definitions of it and I think a lot of short words get unfairly treated like demerits when I think they’re fine, so with that in mind, I have basically zero problems with any of these entries.
4) “Then there was some real yucky stuff, like III and CTR and FRI and MAB and two entries about West Point and that clue for CAREER” … I don’t mind most of these either? MAB is maybe one I wouldn’t prefer since she generally wasn’t a speaking character in the most famous works where she’s referenced, but the other three don’t seem so bad to me. It’s not to say I think every filler answer was great — I can’t say I’ve encountered IRED much outside of puzzles — but even so I don’t think there’s as much dreadful fill as you suggested. And the theme takes up quite bit of room (115 squares, which is a lot), so I’m surprised there weren’t more serious compromises than I might have expected.
5) “XWordInfo has this one’s freshness score at 0%” … sorry but XWord Info’s Freshness score is not a useful metric for evaluating the quality of a puzzle at all. It’s just a number that tells you how often the answers have shown up in the NYT crossword before, nothing more than that.
Sorry Evan, but we’re just going to disagree on this one. I didn’t enjoy solving it at all and I think I’m at least being consistent with my personal taste in crosswords.
If it helps, this isn’t some kind of Mr. Grumpy troll bit. It’s been a couple of years or more since I felt this way about a puzzle. I don’t know, maybe I should just stick to themeless.
Right, I never said you had to like it or that you were doing a troll bit, and I wouldn’t say you need to stick with themelesses. I’m just asking you to reflect on the reasons you’ve given for calling it “simply dreadful” and whether that’s a fair assessment.
Back when I was new to making puzzles, I would come up with similar technical justifications for why I thought a puzzle that I didn’t enjoy shouldn’t have been published — too many three-letter words, this word here is crosswordese, this other word is also crosswordese, this puzzle didn’t have a high enough Scrabble score or Freshness score, whatever. Of course I’m in a different position now than I was 13 years ago, but as the years have gone on I’ve just mellowed a lot about that stuff, especially with Sundays. It’s a hard enough task putting one Sunday together, and even harder to get one accepted, that I think it’s worth being forgiving of whatever small things I could nitpick about it. This puzzle has 77 three- and four-letter words. So what?
Spot on, Evan, Spot on!!
I totally agree with you, Evan. I solve every day, and every day there’s something to enjoy—big or small. I stopped reading comments because people just complain all the time 🙄
+1 beautiful point/counterpoint discussion here, I tend to be convinced on Evan’s side.
I may be the only one here who remembers Point/Counterpoint on 60 minutes many years ago, with Shana Alexander and… somebody else. Better yet, SNL’s take-off on it with Dan Aykroyd starting discussion with Jane Curtin going “Jane you ignorant slut”…
James Kilpatrick. What a smug, condescending asshole. Dan Akroyd’s “ignorant slut” line was not much worse than the way Kilpatrick treated Shana Alexander.
+1
Kilpatrick as little as I recall was extremely condescending, which Aykroyd portrayed to a ‘t’, with humor/shock value added. Otherwords, Kilpatrick might as well have opened with “Shana you ignorant…(insert expletive/insult here)
I’m a little uneasy posting this, but the flood of comments in support of, well, all puzzles doesn’t feel quite fair to me. Now, I can’t count myself among the haters of today’s. As I already posted, it’s to me nothing special or terrible. And I agree that there’s (nearly) always something to like about solving. That’s why we do crosswords.
Still, surely some are more creative than others, some are funnier or more interesting in a serious way, some just strike you and some don’t, and, yes, some are better than others. That’s true about pretty much every category of things, not just crossword puzzles. The people who rave about a puzzle thus shouldn’t have their comments dismissed, and in practice they don’t. And the people who find solving something a chore shouldn’t either. If it’s because of pop culture names or misleading factoids, by all means it’s not awful to hear it. Besides, the setter is entitled to at least the superlatives.
Puzzle: WaPo; Rating: 4.5 stars
A fitting theme for today being the final day of the Winter Olympics with “country” names “crossing” each other in a diagonal orientation in the circled cells (Ireland/Brazil, Greece/Sweden, Japan/Nepal, Australia/Russia, and Canada/France), so knowing that helped me out with some of the clues I didn’t know which contributed to a decent solve time at about 23 minutes despite stops and starts from the vaguer clues, making it a very fun challenge to solve.
I also didn’t expect The Owl House and They Might Be Giants being referenced in here, but I’m still holding out hope that an obscure visual novel or anime will be referenced next one of these days now that I’m a veteran of Evan’s solves now!
In keeping with the Olympics theme, Russia should not have been one of the countries. Oh well.
Yep! Really fun Sunday from Evan as usual. No ANI Difranco showing up, but TMBG will work for me, and I’ve now seen Owl House thanks to my 10 yo, but it didn’t help me get DANA.
Puzzle: NYT
As someone who knows all the Bible stories and also knew all the book titles, I thoroughly enjoyed this one. And I’ve been doing the NYT crossword every day for 30 years. Like art, puzzle enjoyment is subjective. To Jill and Michelle, thank you for a fun solve.
I thought it was a pretty fun Sunday; very enjoyable!
Puzzle: WaPo; Rating: 4.5 stars
Accessible, delightful and elegant
Puzzle: WaPo; Rating: 4.5 stars
Accessible, timely, elegant, delightful
I didn’t see the NYT themers as terribly punny or funny. Sure, big-budget movies and classic Bible episodes will stick closely to type-determining plot lines, and these do without saying all that much. So it works, but quick and dirty.
I may have been less impressed because of my own lack of knowledge: I had forgotten that all these were books at all (albeit mostly ones that serve as source for movies), particularly The Great Escape. Still, I’ll just say that it’ll do and leave it at that.
Sigh. I miss Devil Cross when Evan wasn’t constrained by the mainstream.
Devil Cross was fun to do, but how am I being so constrained now that you find it dissatisfying?
You must agree there are a lot of words you used in Devil Cross that Wapo won’t allow. And what about your (I think) last one? MODOR repeated & repeated…..
It’s not really a hardship that I can’t use most curse words in Post puzzles. HODOR is still in my word list, though.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
I think that those of us who have been doing umpteen crosswords for however many years, forget that newspaper puzzles are designed for the masses,not individuals with specific likes and dislikes.
Myself, I’ve been doing crosswords for over 60 years… and have yet to encounter one that I downright hated.
It’s also worth recalling the insightful aphorism coined by renowned science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, a saying that has become embedded in the zeitgeist:
“90% of Science Fiction is crud.
But then 90% of anything is crud.”
Side Note:
I really, Really, REALLY enjoyed this one.