Monday, February 23, 2026

BEQ 17:58 (Eric) [2.75 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
LAT 2:13 (Stella) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 3:21 (Sophia) [3.68 avg; 11 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker 9:03 (Amy) [2.67 avg; 9 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (pannonica) [3.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (?) [3.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
WSJ 5:11 (Jim Q) rate it

Hannah Binney’s New York Times crossword — Sophia’s recap

Theme: ROLE REVERSALS – Each theme answer has the letter string “ELOR”, which is the word “role” backwards

New York Times, 02 23 2026, By Hannah Binney

• 17a [Home for a single guy] – BACHELOR PAD
• 25a [Dr. Seuss book with the quote “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”] – THE LORAX
• 50a [Time machine car in “Back to the Future”] – DELOREAN
• 59a [Fruit with a “bellybutton”] – NAVEL ORANGE
• 37a [Psychotherapy switcheroos … or what are hidden in 17-, 25-, 50- and 59-Across?] – ROLE REVERSALS

Great Monday-level wordplay theme that’s elevated by how strong the theme answers are. All four of BACHELOR PAD, THE LORAX, DELOREAN, and NAVEL ORANGE are answers that I’d love to see in any puzzle, so it’s wild that they are able to form a symmetric set that fits a theme. Repeated-string puzzle answers can sometimes feel repetitive, but the “elor” here is split in different ways in different answers, which is nice.

I also loved the two longest down answers of SEE YOU NEVER and LOBSTER TRAPS (it’s my inner New-Englander). Both of these cross three theme answers too!

Fill highlights: HEAT UP, WOODSY, BOOYAH, I VOTED. I also enjoyed that USA and USB were directly next to each other in the puzzle.

Clue highlights: [4.75 seconds to assemble a Mr. Potato Head, per Guinness] for RECORD, [Object hitting people’s heads in old cartoons] for ANVIL, [63-Down, in this puzzle] for END (very meta with this clue being for 63-Down!)

Happy Monday all!

Robert E.L. Morris’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Los Angeles Times 2/23/26 by Robert E.L. Morris

Raise your hand if you’re old enough to remember the Chicken Tonight ad, whose jingle I now have stuck in my head after doing this puzzle. The revealer at 59A [Wishes of a lifetime, or what the starts of the answers to the starred clues form at a chicken restaurant?] is BUCKET LIST, because each theme entry contains a type of piece you’d find in a BUCKET of fried chicken: LEG, BREAST, and THIGH. (Oh man, now I also want some Korean fried chicken.)

• 16A [*Woolen garments for ballet dancers] is LEG WARMERS. While correctly clued, Gen-X me would’ve loved an ’80s reference. Come on, Jazzercise!
• 10D [*Defensive armor that covers the chest] is BREASTPLATE.
• 24D [*Fitness gadget promoted by Suzanne Somers] is THIGHMASTER, which, although not ’80s, is pretty retro at 35 years old, I suppose. Also, the THIGH is the best part of the chicken. Change my mind.

With only three theme answers, I would’ve liked to see the theme entries all as Acrosses rather than distributed pinwheel-style, which even with the asterisked clues I think makes things a little harder for beginning solvers. The fill is pretty Monday-appropriate, with I would say no high highs but also the lows are no lower than RET’D.

Katherine Baicker & Laura Dershewitz’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Do You Follow?” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: Things associated with the word “track”

WSJ • 2/23/26 • Mon • “Do You Follow?” • Katherine Baicker & Laura Dershewitz • solution • 20260223

THEME ANSWERS:

• BLOODHOUND [Dog with a nose job?]
• PEDOMETER [It takes things one step at a time]
• PLACEMENT TEST [It can put you in a class of your own]
• DOLLY SHOT [One way to follow a dramatic arc]
• (revealer) [“Sounds about right,” and a hint to 17-, 26-, 37- and 49-Across] THAT TRACKS

I very much enjoyed this puzzle, despite having a couple nits with it. Still, I found myself liking it more and more as I eventually hit the revealer with the snazzy, very current in-language revealer THAT TRACKS. Future me probably likes this phrase less than current me, but I use it and hear it with high frequency as of late.

Really struggled in that opening corner, glomming on to the less-than-pretty EEO before jumping ship and gaining TRACK-tion in the NE. But even there… MENU for MINT [Restaurant giveaway] slowed me down (anyone else?)

Elegant how TRACK has a contextually different meaning with each term, though I must point out that- after being in education for 19 years- use of the word TRACKing in order to determine a student’s class placement has fallen out of favor. Big time. Decades ago. I’ve written essays on this, as the practice of TRACKing was a hot-button issue whilst earning my degree, but inclusion is the way of things now, thankfully.

OTHER THINGS / HANG-UPS / MUSINGS:

• [Not many times] ONCE. I thought “NEVER” for a split-second before realizing that would be inaccurate, and was later delighted to see NEVER at the other extreme end of the grid with callback cluing: [Not any times]. Love that! What a difference one letter can make!
• [Choreographer Ailey] ALVIN. I know surprisingly little about him, despite a rather intense obsession with theater. I do know there is a section of 55th street in Manhattan bearing his name.
• [Sheer fabric] TOILE. I had SATIN. Not sheer at all.
• [Dog with a nose job?] BLOODHOUND. I find it a bit odd when theme clues are given a “?” when it has nothing to do with the theme. Probably just me, but it seems deceitful.
• [Dance for seniors] PROM. Unless you went to high school where I was. There it’s the juniors who go to prom, and circa 1997 we were required to go with a date who was the opposite gender. No date, no ticket. The rules may have changed here (where I still live), but unfortunately the mindset lingers. My political yard signs look quite different than those of most of my neighbors.
• [One way to follow a dramatic arc] DOLLY SHOT. The camera is on a DOLLY, which is on a TRACK. How does this clue not get a “?” and the BLOODHOUND one does? Actually, now that I think about it, all the theme clues have a little bit of a “?” vibe! Only the BLOODHOUND gets the love!
• [No-calorie soda renamed in 2024] DIET RC. Sure. Tired of getting invited to social events? Next time, go bring a few cases of DIET RC. Those invitations will stop right quick.
• [Piano part] PEDAL. The one on the right sustains. That’s the only one you need to care about. You’ll notice on most frequently-used pianos, the right pedal is shiny vis-a-vis the others. That’s because it gets used and is inadvertently polished with the pianist’s foot. The left one softens in a way (depending on if it’s a grand piano or an upright) and the middle one… don’t ask. I’ve used it intentionally a total of one time in 40 years of playing piano.
•  [Site of two TKTS booths] NYC. TKTS is part of the Theater Development Fund and offers discounted tickets to Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. The popular one with the huge line is in Times Square, and the secret one with the short line is in Lincoln Center. Go to the secret one if you must. And only if you must. I can almost always find an equal or significantly better discount and avoid those lines altogether. Also, fun fact: there used to be a TKTS in the Twin Towers back in the day. That one felt super-secret and I miss it still.

Thanks for this one! 3.5 stars.

Brooke Husic’s New Yorker crossword–Amy’s recap

New Yorker crossword solution, 2.23.26 – Husic

I managed to complete this one without any errors or grid checks, but there were plenty of name-type answers that I wasn’t familiar with.

16a. [Journalist Owda who won a Peabody Award for her reporting on the war in Gaza], BISAN. Bisan is her first name. Her last two letters cross NOLA (New Orleans, LA, for short) and a blog I’d never heard of, TRANSGRIOT ([GLAAD Media Award-winning blog created by Monica Roberts]). The founder is credited with focusing attention on murders of trans women of color. I love the word griot.

SGA is basketball star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and his jersey looks bonkers with 18 characters in his last name. However … NBA TV is a thing?

BENITO is the first name of Puerto Rican music star Bad Bunny, Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio. Lots of people refer to him as Benito. I loved his Super Bowl halftime show. Innovative and educational as well as catchy.

13d. [Ethiopian honey wine], TEJ? New to me. A local Ethiopian restaurant makes it.

Fill I didn’t much care for: CLEAR IDEA, U.S. ROUTE, EITHER ONE, ALOE PLANT, LET’S GO OUT. None of these feel particularly idiomatic to me.

Fave fill: CROCHET, LAST STRAW, STEP AND REPEAT, PREGAME RITUAL (I appreciated the “court” mislead in the clue, made me want PLEA- or PRETRIAL- at first), RIGHT ON RED, WNBA star AJA WILSON. Make a point of remembering Aja Wilson’s name, because that 3-letter first name offers an alternative to a 1970s Steely Dan album title. She’s a commanding player, so she’s a newsworthy AJA option.

3.25 stars from me.

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1864 — Eric’s Review

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1864 — 2/23/26 (Click to Embiggen)

I seem destined to keep forgetting the name of Japan’s current prime minister, because this isn’t the first BEQ puzzle where I’ve struggled to come up with either her first or last name. That and an unknown-to-me Latin phrase made the middle a mess, even though the Lollapalooza performer should’ve been a gimme.

Stuff:

• 1A [Lines on a diamond] BASEPATHS I knew right away that “diamond” here was a baseball field, but the actual answer took a few crosses to get.
• 15A [One who needs space to work] ASTRONAUT Cute clue.
• 17A [“While we’re on the topic …”] SPEAKING OF WHICH My recurring difficulty with crossword answers that are conversational phrases is that the answer is almost always not something I would personally say. Not so here; I use that phrase fairly often.
• 19A [Mexican-America brand whose name is a number] SIETE I’d not heard of this Austin-based maker of “nontraditional versions of traditional Mexican and Mexican-American ingredients and foods” such as tortillas made with almond flour. Per Wikipedia, the company was purchased by PepsiCo in 2025.
• 31A [He was the first (alongside Chris) active NBA player inducted into the National Basketball Hall of Fame] LEBRON James; I assume “Chris” is James’ Miami Heat teammate Chris Bosh.
• 37A [Things always go their way] TOTALITARIANS Fortunately, most such despots are eventually removed from power.
• 40A [Clay man of myth] GOLEM A gimme thanks to Michael Chabon’s wonderful The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
• 41A [O’Connor who played the 1995 Lollapalooza tour] SINÉAD I’d have gotten this with a lot less trouble had I not answered 25D [“___ vir lupus” (“Every man is a wolf”)] with OMNIA rather than OMNIS. Sinéad O’Connor has a fantastic voice and was probably at the peak of her popularity around 1995. But I blanked on anyone named O’Connor and the A threw me off for far too long.
• 56A [Richard who won the 1991 Chemistry Nobel] ERNST Not a name I recognized or remembered; the Swiss chemist was recognized for “for his contributions towards the development of Fourier transform nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.” Well, OK, then.
• 58A [“Dream on!”] I WOULDN’T BET ON IT Another conversational phrase I can imagine myself using. Once I had the ULD, the rest was obvious.
• 64A [Wildcatter’s location] DRILL SITE/47A [Pitcher’s platform] AD SITE I don’t always notice duplications in a crossword grid, but this seems a pretty egregious violation of that convention.
• 24D [Stormy weather] HAIL Not RAIN
• 35D [Shigeru’s successor as prime minister] SANAE Takaichi The Liberal Democrat is Japan’s first female prime minister. I really ought to know her name by now. (Despite the name, the party is “a major conservative and nationalist political party.”)
• 4oD [Leerfish by another name] GARRICK I’ve not heard either name for this gamefish, which is native to the eastern Atlantic Ocean mostly along the African coast.
• 51D [Gospel offshoot] R AND B No, it’s R&B (as I’m sure Brendan knows).