Friday, February 27, 2026

LAT untimed (pannonica) [3.25 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
NYT 4:28 (Amy) [3.86 avg; 14 ratings] rate it
Universal 4:25 (Jim P) [3.50 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Emily) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it

Caroline Hand’s New York Times Crossword — Amy’s recap

NY Times crossword solution, 2/27/26 – no. 0227

Another straight-up “here’s a Friday puzzle, breezy.” I like that.

Fave fill: SACAGAWEA DOLLAR, DISTRESSED DENIM, RUN INTERFERENCE, ANASTASIA STEELE, and MANHATTAN, KANSAS. Memo to the Kansas legislature: You are hateful bigots. Highlights of the Downs: CESAREANS, OLD AS DIRT, BASS LINES.

Four more things:

• 5D. [Tailor’s measurement], GIRTH. Ha! Girth was recently in the news for the Norwegian ski jumping team’s Crotchgate, wherein the fellas injected something into their penises to expand the general girthiness of their bulges so they could legally add more fabric to their jump suits and get more air time. I do not think of GIRTH as a tailor’s measurement.
• 26D. [You can find her in this clue (hidden!)], ERIN. Ah, the patented Newsday “Saturday Stumper” quasi-cryptic clue for a hidden name, only with “(hidden!)” to give away the game.
• 42D. [Brightness measurement of a sort], IQ TEST. I’d say that IQ is the measurement, IQ test is a measuring instrument.
• 55D. [Standoff’s conclusion?], ISH. As in standoffish.

Four stars from me.

Sara Muchnick and Doug Peterson’s Los Angeles Times crossword — pannonica’s write-up

LAT • 2/27/26 • Muchnick, Peterson • solution • 20260227

So, I triple-checked to make sure I was solving the correct day’s puzzle this week.

Once I figured out what was going on with the theme entries—which preceded encountering the revealer—the solve went much more quickly, although at the end I needed to hunt up an incorrect square.

• 37a^R [Silent display of skepticism, or a phonetic hint for making sense of the answers to the starred clues] EYEROLL. For those entries to make sense, occurrences of the letter I should be mentally rotated, or ‘rolled’, 90° to form hyphens. The crossing down entries treat them as normal instances of the letter I.
• 17a. [*Inlay material, often] MOTHER-OF-PEARL.
• 28a. [*Not cooped up] FREE-RANGE.
• 49a. [*Flexible] OPEN-ENDED.
• 61a. [*Lightheaded ones?] JACK-O-LANTERNS.

Quite nifty!

• 6d [“Ask someone else”] NO IDEA. 29d [“10-4”] I SEE.
• 10a [Floral leaf] SEPAL. Altogether, the SEPALs of a flower form the calyx.
• 12d [Starter, e.g.] HURLER. Didn’t understand this during the solve, but I guess a starter is the starting pitcher for a baseball team, and HURLER is a casual term for a pitcher.
• 18d [Cutesy growl] RAWR. Typically polarizing in the comments.
• 26d [Expressed contempt] SNORTED, not SNEERED. Kind of an apt central crossing for EYEROLL.
• 39d [Predict-ability?] ESP. Bleh.
• 42d [Settles down, in a way] WEDS. The SITE (58d) of my aforementioned incorrect letter. I’d put in the reasonable BEDS, but during my post-fill survey I saw that 40a [Cash back?] COB didn’t work—turns out to be a mildly tricky clue referencing the phrase cash COW.
• 45d [Discreetly, in slang] ON THE DL (down low), not ON THE QT.
• 46d [Chemistry lab feature] GAS JET, the erstwhile ETNA of crosswords yore.
• 63d [Joey of fiction] ROO, the offspring of Kanga in the WinnieItheIPooh books.
• 1a [After-dinner drink] DECAF. Speak for yourself!
• 21a [“iZombie” setting] SEATTLE. Didn’t know this, but had sufficient crossings to see it.
• 34a [Treats embossed with flowers, dots, and dashes] OREOS. Hmm, there could be a code …
• 46a [Typical choice] GO-TO. Problematic in this crossword, because it’s a hyphenated formation and thus should have one of those rotated Is. Might have been better to clue it as a BASIC command.
• 55a [Price points] TAGS. Could’ve used a question mark on this one.
• 68a [Acrobat’s platform] ADOBE. A veiled proper noun in the clue.

Patrick Maher’s Universal crossword, “Do the Math”—Jim P’s review

Theme answers are familiar phrases that feature numbers, but they’ve been changed to different numbers. The revealer is “LOSE MY NUMBER” (49a, [“Don’t contact me again!”… or a hint to interpreting each starred clue’s answer]).

Universal crossword solution · “Do the Math” · Patrick Maher · Fri., 2.27.26

• 20a. [*Overnight sensation’s trajectory] TWENTY TO HERO. Zero to hero.
• 28a. [*Air Force facility in many conspiracy theories] AREA SEVENTY-NINE. Area 51.
• 43a. [*Last minute] FIFTY-FOURTH HOUR. 11th hour.

I really wanted these numbers to mean something, but it sure looked random. Why did we go from 0 to 20 and from 51 to 79? It just seemed too loose to me. Plus the revealer tells us to “lose” the number, but it’s more that the numbers have been replaced than lost.

But digging deeper, the title exhorts us to “do the math”, so I did. Of course “twenty” is 20 more than 0, and where do we find that entry? At 20-Across. 79 – 51 = 28, so the second entry is at 28-Across. Lastly 54 – 11 = 43, and 43-Across is where we find the final theme entry. Pretty nifty, eh?

I found this to be quite impressive. There’s some serendipity at play here, but it also took some skill to find appropriate common phrases that could have their numbers replaced and be placed in the exact spots in the grid to match the square numbers. And don’t forget our constructor managed to maintain grid symmetry and find grid-spanning entries to boot! All in all, pretty impressive, I’d say.

My nit about the revealer still stands, but it pales in comparison to the impressively tight theme.

In addition to the good theme, the grid feels quite open with plenty of 6- and 7-letter entries providing breathing room. Plus, we get longer highlights RAIN HATS, BOHEMIAN, and Dan AYKROYD.

Clue of note: 45d. [Near and dear to each other?]. RHYMES. It took a few crossings before I understood this lovely clue.

Nice puzzle. 3.5 stars.