Saturday, February 28, 2026

LAT 2:36 (Stella) [3.86 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
Newsday 16:45 (pannonica) [3.63 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
NYT 6:35 (Amy) [3.75 avg; 16 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Matthew) [3.07 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Matthew) [1.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
WSJ untimed (pannonica) rate it

Adam Levav’s New York Times crossword — Amy’s recap

NY Times crossword solution, 2/28/26 – no. 0228

Quite a contemporary puzzle here. Which really means the last 25 years or so, not all that new in terms of vocabulary.

To wit, BUTTHURT, 35D. [Acting like a sore loser, informally]. Here’s a Merriam-Webster page about it. I’ve never been a fan of the term, but sometimes it’s le mot juste.

Fave fill: AIM LOW, FRAT BOY, SMEAGOL, pandemic-era BEFORE TIMES, CURLY BRACES {}, AUTOPAY (I like the convenience), LEATHER BAR.

Five more things:

• 21D. [Error correction tool], ERASER PEN. I … don’t know what this is. Something like this? Or just a pen with erasable ink? Uncler to me.
• 51A. [___ Tung, star of cable TV’s “The Summer I Turned Pretty”], LOLA. Fact-check: This is wrong. The show is on Amazon Prime Video, which is a streaming service and not a cable channel. Sloppy. If you’re going to use a celeb who basically has one extant credit, it behooves you to actually get the facts right.
• 57A. [Animals in an early-2000s virtual fad], NEOPETS. I know the name, don’t know the online game. Surprising, given that my kid was born in 2000.
• 2D. [Call at a roll call], “I’M HERE.” Meh. “I SAY SO” and DEAR ONE also fall flat.
• 5D. [Rap pioneers, slangily], OGS. Short for original gangsta, and used much more broadly. For example, Merl Reagle is one of the OGs of crosswords. Pioneering and genuine.

Four stars from me.

Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “C-Notes” — pannonica’s write-up

WSJ • 2/28/26 • Sat • “C-Notes” • Shenk • solution • 20260228

Today’s theme features several popular songs that have been wackified by prefixing their titles with the letter C. The recording artist is provided parenthetically.

• 22a. [Tallest player on the sleep-inducing basketball squad? (Metallica)] CENTER SANDMAN (“Enter Sandman“).
• 33a. [Last of a really big litter of Persians? (Janis Ian)] CAT SEVENTEEN (“At Seventeen“).
• 50a. [“Our neural processing units never produce hallucinations”? (Shakira)] CHIPS DON’T LIE (“Hips Don’t Lie“).
• 66a. [Leprechaun? (Mariah Carey)] CLOVERBOY (“Loverboy“). I instinctively put in “Lover Man” here, which tangled with the crossing entries.
• 81a. [Kin of a dish antenna? (The Drifters)] CUP ON THE ROOF (“Up on the Roof“). Oof, that’s quite a pun in the clue.
• 94a. [Voice mail reminder to yours truly? (Eric Carmen)] CALL BY MYSELF (“All By Myself“).
• 113a. [Warning to someone whose fly is down? (Eminem)] CLOSE YOURSELF (“Lose Yourself“). Are ‘myself’ and ‘yourself’ too close?

Dunno, the quality of these feels uneven to me. Overall, however, the crossword was entertaining and right about the level of difficulty I’ve come to expect from these Shenk-edited 21×21 grids.

• 2d [Starting squad] A-TEAM. 12d [Takes off the bench] SENDS IN.
• 9d [Like Bengali and Marathi] INDIC. Little curveball there; it didn’t immediately register with me that those were the languages.
• 13d [Spot for a shot] BAR, followed by 14d [Lawyer’s org.] ABA. >squints<
• 18d [Forbidding] STERN crossed by 13a [Uncompromising] BADASS.
• 42d [Co-pilot from the planet Kashyyyk] CHEWBACCA. Wow, three consecutive Ys is definitely extreme.
• 47d [Item with decreasing usefulness?] STEAM IRON. Ooh, good one.
• 49d [Nucleus setting] ATOM. 110a [Hydrogen nucleus’s lack] NEUTRON.
• 

  ©Kevin Zaouali | Macaulay Library

  62d [Tradition-bound curmudgeons] OLD FOGEYS, alongside 66d [Black-plumed water bird] COOT.

• 68d [Business big shots] BARONS, not MOGULS as I had (remember, “Lover Man”). 32d [Syndicate bosses] CAPOS.
• 74d [Hotel room convenience] SAFE, not WIFI.
• 77d [Where there’s a weigh] SCALE. Groan, ok.
• 94d [Parabola or hyperbola, e.g.] CONIC, not CURVE.
• 103d [Nap sites, perhaps] SOFAS, 107d [Take a nap, say] REST.
  
• 8a [Aids for working at home] MITTS. Baseball, catchers.
• 24a [Curling stone’s makeup] GRANITE. The Olympics have ended, but 19a [Like the Olympic flame] ETERNAL.
• 27a [Banned pesticide] DDT. I imagine the current administration is working on deregulation for it, after taking extraordinary steps to boost Bayer’s deadly Round-Up products.
• 41a [Smart] ACHE. I think of a smarting pain as more acute than an ACHE? m-w.com seems to agree, characterizing it as sharp and stinging.
• 45a [Ticket cost, of a sort] FINE, not FARE.
• 46a [City between El Paso and Fort Worth] ODESSA. The Ukrainian spelling of the namesake locale is Odesa.
• 54a [Kitten handle] NAPE. I’d prefer a question mark on this clue. Also, don’t do this too often, and don’t do it to more grown cats, even though they will reflexively go limp—they’re really too heavy for such treatment and you can injure them.
• 57a [Hymns of thanksgiving] TE DEUMS.
  
• 64a [Fields of endeavor?] FARM. Groan, ok.
• 73a [Dodger’s catchers?] AUDITS. Nice.
• 91a [Honey bunches?] SWARMS. More like a colony, but that’s why there’s a question mark in the clue.
• 100a [Avocado or olive] TREE. HUE is too short, GREEN is too long. TINT fits and I probably would have tried it had I not gotten enough crossings squared away beforehand.
• 119a [Cartoon character with a horse named Nightmare] CASPER the friendly ghost.
  
• 121a [Puts back in a box] RECASES. Sure, it’s legitimate, but I don’t have to like it.

Zhou Zhang & Rafael Musa’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Los Angeles Times 2/28/26 by Zhou Zhang & Rafael Musa

After I finished this puzzle, I couldn’t help but imagine how dramatic it could be as a tournament final. It’s very easy, but there’s a trap for the speed solver who isn’t checking herself. Hi, it me: 58A [Suddenly gave way] is CRUMPLED, but could easily be CRUMBLED as clued, and I didn’t check the nonsensical TABE crossing this produced instead of the correct TAPE at 51D. So…let’s just say I’m glad this was NOT a tournament final, if I ever make a tournament final again.

Anyway…despite how easy this puzzle was, there was some fun stuff like the cluing of ESPRESSO as [Ingredient in carajillo and affogato] (ever had a carajillo? Like an espresso martini, but better), DEBTOR as [Short person?], the reference to Queen Latifah’s Nature of a SISTA, and learning that OKRA is the [National vegetable of Pakistan]. Also 11D [Push-up form?], which is BRA PAD and IMO the most fun clue-answer pair in the puzzle. I could’ve done without the phrases DO TO A T and ACT AS IF.

Anna Stiga’s Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up

Newsday • 2/28/26 • Saturday Stumper • Stiga, Newman • solution • 20260228

Solving sequence: the usual few desultory fills in various parts of the grid, then the center- to lower-left section in toto, followed by the complementary symmetrical section on the upper right. From there, I worked the bottom right area, leaving only the top left, which was highly recalcitrant—I was about to say ‘unusually’ but in truth I would say that the northwest was the one area of the grid that was classic Stumper.

• 1a [Phrase on the Victoria Cross] FOR VALOUR. Not having one handy, I didn’t know this. 10a [Small snare drum] TABOR.
  
• 15a [Grant command] UNION ARMY. Very deceptive clue; fooled me good.
• 17a [Any Federal Reserve Note] RECTANGLE. 58a [What all BMWs must carry] VIN (vehicle identification number). These clue/answer pairs are very general; I wouldn’t call them green painty, as we often often say in the trade, but there’s something too open-ended and borderline unfair about them.
• 21a [Pool pocket complement] SEXTET. One of my first gets, which also gave me 11d [Campaign manager] AD EXEC.
• 24a [Lacking] NULL. Strongly considered DULL here, as I was trying to make headway into that final upper left section.
• 26a [“He who thinks little, __ much”: Leonardo] ERRS, but SAYS seems plausible too. Crossings helped sort that out.
• 27a [Cutting board brand] OXO. A case of what-else-could-it-be?
• 29a [Peak of Tibet] TEE. That is, the capital T that starts the word. This was my reflexive idea for the answer, but I waited to get at least one crossing to confirm.
• 31a [Liquid sold by the liter] JUG WINE. The -INE ending is deceptive, putting one in mind of GASOLINE or some such.
• 35a [“Go,” or “go” starter] GIT, which can be a synonym for “go!” or can precede it in git-go.
• 37a [#2 for much management] COO, chief operations officer.
• 39a [Uncle’s kin] I GIVE UP. 61a [Uncle’s kin] NIECE.
• 41a [Action antonym] CUT; in moviemaking. 66a [Ease antonym] ANGST.
• 56a [Times up] AT BATS. Was not misled here.
• 60a [Night follower] -MARE.
  
• 62a [King David raiment] FINE LINEN. Am trusting that the clue/answer is more salient than it seems to this layperson.
• 65a [35–55 NFL total score, typically] OVER-UNDER. I recognize the answer as a betting term, but don’t really understand how it works here. That’s certainly just my ignorance at play.
• 67a [Reproduction redundancy] XEROX COPY. Was initially considering the clue to be referencing something biological.
• 1d [Wraps closed] FURLS. Perfect answer, but it didn’t readily occur to me, so I was working with SEALS for a time.
• 2d [“Wilt Chamberneezy”] Shaquille O’NEAL. Okay, if you say so.
• 4d [Quash] VOTE DOWN, not TAMP DOWN.
• 5d [What makes men mean] AN A; just add the vowel in there.
• 7d [Mass medium] ORGAN. Predictably, I toyed with LATIN as the answer here, but it just wouldn’t work with any potential crossing answers.
• 8d [What Zurich needs in Nuremberg] UMLAUT. Winged it on this entry and got lucky.
• 9d [Manhattan must] RYE. Too strong a word; many if not most manhattans nowadays are made with bourbon, despite rye being the original specified liquor for the cocktail.
• 10d [Words often woven] TALE. Falls into the so-simple-it’s-hard category of Stumper clues.
• 14d [Thomas Edison and Woodrow Wilson, heading south to Delaware] REST STOPS on the New Jersey Turnpike.
• 21d [Skill that sounds scanty] SLEIGHT/slight.
• 31d [Tropical tree with purple flowers] JACARANDA. I needed more than half the crossing letters, but I eventually recalled the name, putting in the J (and thence JUG WINE) last.
• 33d [Honoree of a Postal Service 500th Anniversary stamp (1952)] GUTENBERG. Not a 500th anniversary of the (US) Postal Service, but that of Johannes Gutenberg—either his birth or death or perhaps the date of his invention of the moveable type printing press. ~searches~ Aha, it’s the date of the publication of the first book printed with his press, an edition of the Bibble.
• 34d [Rub down] ERODE. Typical stumpery trickyclue.
• 40d [Third-discovered nutrient in its class] VITAMIN C. I didn’t bother to think this one through and just put VITAMIN in, waiting for the crossing entry to automagically complete it.
  
• 51d [Car for courses] DINER, on a train. 13d [Calls for courses] ORDERS OUT, which means the same thing as orders in.
• 54d [Emulate alligators] CREEP. Tried CRAWL first.
• 55d [Dr. Heimlich or Jekyll] HENRY. Took a while, but I did remember this.
• 59d [Despot in throne rooms] NERO. A cryptic-style clue featuring a hidden word. Today its identity leapt out at me.
• 63d [Dixitque Deus: “Fiat __”: Genesis 1:3] LUX. Didn’t know this. Even though it’s only three letters, it fell into place through a combination of crossings and educated guess (which is basically how crosswords are supposed to work).

And there it is.