LAT 2:38 (Stella) 
[3.70 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
Newsday 16:30 (pannonica) 
[4.13 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
NYT 12:35 (Amy) [3.28 avg; 16 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Matthew) 
[2.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Matthew) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
WSJ untimed (pannonica) [3.50 avg; 1 rating] rate it
Fritz Juhnke’s New York Times crossword — Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 3/7/26 – no. 0307
This puzzle kicked my butt! Just me? There’s a small chance I’ll finish the Newsday “Saturday Stumper” in less time than the NYT, which is usually an impossibility. (Edited to add: Stumper took me 16:41.)
Speaking of impossibilities: Musical terminology locks me out. 17A. [Like the crescendo in Ravel’s “Boléro”], POCO A POCO? Not sure I’ve seen the term before.
Fave fill: CARD SHARK (yes, the original phrase is card sharp, but shark is more evocative), STAR POWER (tricky clue, [Screen grab?]), “SPIT IT OUT,” “HOLY MOSES,” FACEPALMS, NIGHTMARE, ELBOW ROOM, RIB JOINTS (did you know that the ribcage has 98 anatomical joints?), “NO, I INSIST.”
Fiv more things:
- 55D. [Estoques are pointed at them], TOROS. The estoque is a matador’s sword. The TOROS say no thank you!
- 10A. [Taxing, as a test], STERN. As in a stern test of your mettle? Feels inapt for a school test.
- 43A. [You might dance on one], WHIM. Really? Feels like quite a stretch.
- 46A. [Envelop with a ring], ENHALO. Meh. Have you ever enhaloed anything? Used the word out loud in a sentence?
- 53A. [Like the layout of the central 13 black squares in this puzzle], DOTTED. Can squares said to be dotted?
John Guzzetta’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 3/7/26 by John Guzzetta
I liked this puzzle even though it was too damn easy. Stuff I enjoyed:
- 16A [Tea with a shot of espresso] Oh, now I know what DIRTY CHAI actually means.
- 46A [Setting for Ernie’s “Rubber Duckie” song] is BATHTUB. I didn’t see this clue while solving — see above re: too easy — but it’s evocative and fun.
- 57A [Something a customer service professional might need to wear] is FAKE SMILE. My favorite clue in the puzzle!
- …and 5D WAYBACK MACHINE is my favorite entry.
- 7D [Spanish golfer Jon] is RAHM, the only entry I had real difficulty with. I admit to thinking it probably ended with an A or O given “Spanish” in the clue.
- 9D [Field concerned with movers and shakers] is SEISMOLOGY. It’s a cute clue even if I already had way too many crossings at that point to be fooled by it.
- 30D [Shell ship by the seashore] is OIL TANKER. I like the clue’s reminiscence of the tongue-twister “she sells seashells by the seashore” as well as the deceptive placement of “Shell” at the beginning of the clue so that you might not realize it’s a capitalized brand name.
- 50D [Armistead Maupin’s “__ of the City”] is TALES. Great book!
Gary Cee’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Three-Piece Ensembles” — pannonica’s write-up
WSJ • 3/7/26 • Sat • “Three-Piece Ensembles” • Cee • solution • 20260307
Having just muddled through the NY Times’ Saturday puzzle, this one felt even faster than usual, save for a few tough spots that I needed to slowly absorb into my growing alphabetic empire. Final section completed was the small block in the north-northwest spot.
- 27a. [Hop, skip and jump?] MOVING COMPANY.
- 38a. [Tom, Dick and Harry?] GENTLEMEN’S CLUB.
- 48a. [Hook, line and sinker?] FISHING PARTY.
- 67a. [Morning, noon and night?] TWENTY-FOUR HOUR STAFF.
- 87a. [Lock, stock and barrel?] RIFLE BRIGADE.
- 96a. [Faith, hope and charity?] CHRISTIAN GROUP.
- 113a. [Small, medium and large?] EXPANSION TEAM. This one’s clue needs to be read more dynamically than the others.
So, novel but in-the-language answers to common triumvirate phrases. Works.
- 8d [Refrain heard in the 1983 hit “The Curly Shuffle“] HEY MOE. Rather obscure, but there’s enough information built in to help the solver along.
- 17d [Support for a proposal] KNEE. A wedding proposal, specifically. 99d [Merger acquisitions?] IN-LAWS.
- 28d [In the raw, informally] NEKKID, for ‘naked’. Can’t recall seeing this in a crossword prior.
- 29d [Finish off, in gamer slang] PWN. I thought it meant ‘dominate’, but m-w.com’s definition includes the clued sense as well.
- 49d [Straight] HETERO. Maybe could use a qualifier here, but without one the clue is still good, just a bit tougher.
- 50d [High hairstyles] POUFS, crossing 63a [High hairstyles] UPDOS.
- 56d [Laughable] DAFT. 22a [Laughable] INANE.
- 64d [Rock’s genesis] ORE. >squints<
- 65d [Volume setting?] SHELF. It’s a book, just a book.
- 80d [Busts out on the dance floor] TEARS IT UP.
- 111d [Furniture collection?] DUST. “Why should I dust the furniture? They already have enough dust.”
- 9a [On the warpath] IRATE. 120a [Go on the warpath] RAGE.
- 20a [Frostbite remedy] ALOE. Okay, ’tis mentioned here.
- 25a [Chair-designing surname] EAMES. Awkward clue, but easily decipherable. The husband-and-wife team of Charles and Ray.
- 47a [Green feature] HOLE. Golf.
- 78a [Germane] ON TOPIC.
103a [Brand with a sunburst in its logo] DOLE.- 108a [Creator of the Eloi and Morlocks] WELLS, Herbert George.
- 119a [Aviators’ website domain] AERO. News to me; I hadn’t even imagined there was a dedicated web domain for that.
- 122a [They crash and break] WAVES.
Matthew Sewell’s Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up
Newsday • 3/7/26 • Saturday Stumper • Sewell • solution • 20260307
Was feeling rusty since I haven’t had any time to solve crosswords this week (apologies for the absence of write-ups!), but somehow managed to wrestle this bear of a grid into submission in well under twenty minutes. Huzzah!
- 1a [Fed. agency declining to affix a P (in ’92)] CDC. Obviously it’s the Center for Disease Control, but I don’t know whether the proposed P was to be prefixed or suffixed. Going to guess the latter, and that the acronym would have been augmented to “… and Prevention”. Let’s see if I’m correct! § Okay, so I get partial credit. In 1992 it was renamed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but Congress directed that the already-familiar CDC initialism be retained.
- 8a [Eastern terminus connected by the Golden Spike] OMAHA. I feel as if I should have known this, but in reality had to wait for several crossings.
- 13a [String __ ] TRIO. Cheese would not fit, alas.
- 14a [Table read] TELL. In poker, say. For a time I thought it might be ROLE.
- 15a [About to boil] RILED. Between all the IRATEness and RAGE in today’s crosswords, it’s been an angry affair this morning!
- 17a [Go down in history, say] SET A RECORD. Quite.
- 19a [Flight plans?] EXIT STRATEGIES. Took a while, but pieced it together. Nice clue.
- 22a [Relish from Ireland] ÉLAN. The word’s etymology is of course French: from Middle French eslan rush, from (s’)eslancer to rush, from ex- + lancer to hurl — more at LANCE. The clue is a cryptic-style one, with ELAN lurking in Ireland. p.s. The answer was also not SLAW. (etymology thereof: Dutch koolsla, from kool cabbage + sla salad)
- 28a [Rural dam] EWE. Dam here meaning ‘female parent’. The clue didn’t fool me and I guessed the correct answer right away; however, I couldn’t initially confirm it via crossings, so I took it out until later on.
- 29a [What Jazz Moderne became] DECO. Guilty of believing the clue was about music.
- 36a [Snakish intrusion] PSST. 31d [Brief out takes?] ETDS. This crossing was my final square filled, because neither clue is forthcoming. The first is too oblique—I thought it might be SSSS or PSSS—while the second is perhaps a bit too clever, referencing estimated times of departure.
- 43a [Meh] MID. This is newish slang.
- 44a [Photovoltaic system component] SOLAR BATTERIES. An entry that just needed some time and some work to suss out.
- 47a [-ify kin] -ESCE, which certainly looks odd in a grid, but think, for example of coalesce or opalesce.
- 48a [Standard of living] TENET. Another nice clue.
- 49a [North Pole, NY theme park] SANTA’S WORKSHOP. Rather easy to guess with just a few crossings; an instrumental entry to the solve.
- 54a [Big Apple area named for it’s Colonial calcium carbonate deposits] WHITESTONE, Queens. There are enough hints in the clue to get the solver there, but it helps to already be familiar with New York City neighborhoods.
- 46a [Standing challenge] BAD PR. 54d [Global match maker] WBC, World Boxing Council. Another tough crossing, and my second-to-last filled square. In 46-across, ‘standing’ refers to reputation.
- 57a [Breadless Subway footlong of 2025] OREO. Honestly, I’d rather not know anything further about that.
- 58a [Swift group that ran more than three hours, not long ago] ERAS, referring to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, where I gather each concert lasted that length of time. “Group” in the clue is iffy.
- 60a [Hops on the band wagon?] WEDS. Note that the clue has band wagon as two separate words rather than a single compound word. So it’s a wedding band. Even with the question mark, this clue feels like a stretch nearly beyond the pale.
- 2d [Movement’s softening] DIMINUENDO.
- 3d [Machine with a water fall bucket] COPTER. Helibucket at Wikipedia.
- 5d [Game stop] DEER LICK. Guessing it’s a specialized salt lick? Anyway, my hackles still go up when I see ‘game’ used in this connotation.
- 7d [Tickled] ELATED, not AMUSED.
- 8d [Greek salad staple] OREGANO. FETA too short, KALAMATA too long.
- 9d [Readying to go on stage] MICING UP, a variant spelling of MIKING. Anyway, I tried LACING UP first.
- 11d [Oft-stitched assignment] HERS. “Assignment” doing some work here.
- 12d [cc, e.g.] ADD. Am … guessing … that ADD here is an abbreviated ADDITION or ADDITIONAL, but even with that I’m not sure how the clue works.
- 13d [With 16-Across, something to get over]; 16a [See 13-Down] THE | HUMP. Typically referring to Wednesday, the middle of the workweek.
- 18d [Thing of the past] RELIC. Such a straight-up clue; one of my first entries filled.
- 23d [Courteous double-contraction] YES’M, for yes ma’am. Was thrown off by the specified ‘double-contraction’, but yes I can see how that works.
- 26d [Simpsons minion] MR SMITHERS. Took an early flier on this and it turned out to be correct. Without that intrepidity the puzzle would definitely have taken much longer to finish.
- 33d [Pair of psychic pseudonyms] SILENT PS. Oof.
- 35d [What mice and elevators are] BUTTONED. Do not like.
- 38d [Furniture movers] CASTERS. Another clue/entry that’s much easier than expected for a Stumper, and hence deceptive in a meta way.
- 41d [Platforms for “licorice pizza”] STEREOS. Apparently licorice pizza is a slang term for vinyl LPs. I’ve heard of the 2021 film with that title, and apparently there was a Los Angeles-based record store chain with that name—but no I never heard the term before the film.
- 46d [Knocked off] RESTED. As in, knocked off for the day. Classic tricky Stumper clue.
- 49d [Executive in the etymology of “exchequer”] SHAH. Crazily in the news again.
- 51d [Carried on] WORE. <head waggle>
- 53d [What 30+ Oxonians became] PMS. Helps to know that Oxonian is the term for an alum of Oxford University.
NYT: Moved through the grid clockwise, starting in the NW. Things were going fairly smoothly until I got to the SW corner. For a long time, I had nothing but NIGHTMARE and FINAL. Didn’t know ANYA or LIANE, didn’t know ninnyhammer, I’m familiar with FACEPALMS from crosswords, but it’s not an expression I’ve ever used, so it took a while to see that.
I didn’t care for STERN or DOTTED, as clued. Didn’t care for ENHALO no matter how it might have been clued.
Nice long entries, and some fun/challenging cluing throughout.
I’ve never come across POCO A POCO as a musical term, but it was the title of my Spanish 101 textbook, so it was a familiar phrase. And it seems appropriate for the buildup in Bolero.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
was also my slowest nyt saturday in some time. made a nice change of pace! nice tricky clues. 3.5 from me.
This was brutal, more than twice my typical Saturday time of late. But finally a challenging Saturday puzzle! Had WADI for WASH for a long time, which killed me.
Same here on WADI. I outsmarted myself and paid for it with a slow solving time.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
Ditto
Loved the long entries, not as keen on some other aspects.
I don’t understand the clue for ONEL
In US traveler is spelled with one l, in UK (maybe others?) with 2….
Traveler vs Traveller
(also had WADI)
AH! thank you :).
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
Agreed! I loved it. Finally solved it after what seemed like forever. Very tricky, but nothing impossible or requiring guessing. Another 5 star rating from me after yesterday’s similarly perfect Friday. Why aren’t they all like this??
I’m not sure I understand ONEL but it doesn’t matter since the crosses were gettable.
Nevermind — I just googled “traveller vs traveler” and understand. As per usual, my default internal spelling is British English, and I have no idea why. Traveler just looks wrong…
Hand up for wadi here too. This one was pretty brutal, which is a good thing for a Saturday NYT . Dancing on a whim? That works I guess. Lots of clever cluing, fresh fill and misdirecting for me.
My only real question is, would a card shark really be playing ‘go fish'(a childrens game)?
See pannonica’s response to David L below. “Fish” is a sucker.
thx! I missed seeing that before I posted. Never had heard that definition of a sucker/fish.
WSJ – “In the south there’s a difference between ‘Naked’ and ‘Nekkid.’ ‘Naked’ means you don’t have any clothes on. ‘Nekkid’ means you don’t have any clothes on and you’re up to somethin’.” — Lewis Grizzard
A good bit of Grizzard’s humor hasn’t aged well. This one has
haha
Definitely a tough NYT. ‘Ninnyhammer’?? C’mon now…
The clue for CARDSHARK seems silly — surely no one is making money by playing Go Fish — or am I missing something?
And I don’t understand at all the clue for RIBJOINTS. Is there some other meaning besides the anatomical one (which is all I can find with Google)?
See sense 3c at m-w.com for the definition of (and cross reference for) fish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbecue_in_the_United_States#The_barbecue_region
Thanks. Never heard of that meaning of fish, and I don’t live in the ‘barbecue region.’
Juke joint, beer joint, BBQ joint, rib joint. They all refer to small unassuming places of business. Often black owned but certainly not always. Should you find yourself in the Tuscaloosa area stop at the original Dreamland BBQ. When I started going there 50 years ago it was the quintessential rib joint. It served ribs, sauce, and sliced white bread. The motto was “No slaw. No beans. No potato salad. Don’t ask!”
Thanks pannonica… I missed seeing this before I posed the same question.
I do think this was a great puzzle for Sat. NYT, lots of fresh fill and interesting cluing as well as some misdirection (FISH! Screen Grab etc.)
anybody else been playing Shuffalo at TNY?
pannonica,
(Stumper)
I think you add someone to an email thread when you cc her.
“Enhalo” is a word I would expect to see only in Sam Ezersky’s Spelling Bee, where the list of acceptable words is arbitrary and unpredictable.
Actually, I find Sam rejects words that appear in NYT crosswords more often than accepting obscurities. ENHALO has been rejected from 5 Bees now. AROAR is another example. It’s been rejected 111 times. I’m much more likely to be irked by a word that I think is in common usage that Sam rejects as too technical or niche in some other way.
Oh — don’t get me started on all the common usage words that get rejected from the SB! I play only to get the pangrams, and it is infuriating when there is a perfectly normal, common pangram word that is rejected for unknowable reasons. The only one that leaps to mind is CHILBLAIN, but there have been many others. I agree that it is a far more common issue than arcane words slipping in.
CONCOMITANT was excluded just the other day! Ruined my whole morning.
I remember typing CONCOMITANT two or three times to be sure I hadn’t misspelled it. As Eric so memorably said some time ago, Ezersky’s selection of legit and disallowed words is capricious.
Just today, GIRO and GRINGO are two crossword-friendly words that are excluded. I especially dislike bowdlerization, which I suspect is GRINGO’s downfall. PAPPY but not MAMMY and CHICA but not CHICO strike me as so sensitive as to be bigoted.
I think just calling it poor-quality editing is more accurate than “capricious.” The point of the game is not “guess what the editor’s whimsy is today” one would assume. I really enjoy getting the PG(s) every day, but when an obvious one is missing, it just ruins the whole experience. I should probably quit playing it, but I can’t. It’s like WORDLE — I play it to try to lose, and still can’t most of the time (95% solve rate, despite starting with words like XEBEC and POOPY and CLUMP). I should just quit. I keep telling myself — just quit. But I can’t.
Sam tends to be very consistent. He may decide a word, once accepted, is now rejected, but it rarely returns. So I think “poor-quality editing” and “today’s whimsy” are both undeserved. He rejects words that he believes are too niche or offensive. I personally find the latter filter to be a unhappy slippery slope but I understand his motivation.
I may disagree with some of his choices, but I would never disrespect the job Sam does.
I’m not sure I agree. When there are so many times a fairly common pangram word is excluded from the word list — CONCOMITANT is a perfect example — I don’t know what else to call it but shoddy editing. It’s no different than the various NATICK/GREEN PAINT examples being indicative of shoddy editing. With a crossword puzzle, there are some extenuating circumstances in terms of grid/theme constraints, and then the fact that there have to be crosses. With SB there are no constraints. It’s literally just “is it a word?” and then “do I feel like including or excluding it?” When the answer to “should I include CONCOMITANT?” is no, then something has gone wrong. Call it what you want, but it ain’t ok.
It’s different with a word like EDAPHIC — a fairly arcane word that happened to be a PG but was excluded, yet I happen to know it due to many of my friends being soil scientists. Regardless — no compliant. It’s a weird word. (But then sometimes really weird arcane words do make it in, like when MALEFIC was included as a PG.) Anyway — I honestly don’t know how else to describe an editing process that excludes CONCOMITANT (or CHILLBLAIN or GROUNDNUT or DILUVIAN etc.) but then allows MALEFIC, or (maybe even worse) allows PEAFOWL but not GRAYLING. It just isn’t up to snuff.
If you haven’t already seen it, you might enjoy: https://dontwordle.com/
That’s hilarious — it’s how I actually play the real game. Even with this one I still managed to “lose” 😂
Thanks for checking that out. My teenage daughter told me about it. I like having the undo feature.
A good Wordle-related challenge is the Octordle, especially the Extreme version:
https://www.britannica.com/games/octordle/
I played sedecordle for a while. It was challenging, but felt too much like brute force solving.
Yikes! I draw the line at 8.
Like others here, don’t get me started on the acceptable words list for Spelling Bee. Simply infuriating.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
NYT: toughie! Some of the cluing seemed overly wrought/ more misleading from an inapt pairing with the answer than the kind of clever mislead, though there were some of the latter as well. Very fun challenge, definitely doubled+ my average solve time.
LAT: more typical fare here, not bad, not great. I thought the cluing was on point with (again) some great freshness that I’ve come to expect.
Great puzzles today but I have to go for the NYT… hard but rewarding.
“Have you ever enhaloed?”
Flashbacks to the Bill Clinton presidential debate…
NYT: Pretty tough; I was stuck with ON TEMPO instead of IN TEMPO, but couldn’t figure out WHOM should be WHIM (and WHIM still didn’t really make sense to me with the clue when it was finished either).
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2 stars
NYT: the cluing got so annoying as to make the whole puzzle a slog, and ENHALO? Please.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
There are no answers longer than nine letters in the NYT crossword today. Odd. I think this contributes to the puzzle’s difficulty because sometimes it’s the longer, conversational answers you typically see in a themeless that help open things up.
Stumper: As ususl, pannonica is on target! It took us way longer than her and our usual time, though. My husband got “relic” and I got the upper right from that, but it was a slow slog after that, including dictionary look-ups and many incorrect guesses, including “etc” for 31D. We, too, had never heard of “licorice pizza” at all, much less the film. I assume that the “group” referred to in 58A is the group of tours, but that’s a stretch. I’m still puzzled by 25D “what authority figures” with an answer of “dogma.”
Is USA Today always easy? thought it might get tougher as the week went on but no? M
In my experience, there’s no systematic variation in difficulty of either the USAT or the Universal puzzle throughout the week. FWIW, my solve times on them are usually around my NYT, LAT & WSJ Monday or Tuesday times (sometimes a little slower, depending on the constructor and how my brain is working on a given day). I’ve solved both of them daily since about 2019 as a warm-up for the NYT, LAT, WSJ and New Yorker.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2 stars
My favorite puzzle of the week is the Saturday Stumper. When it beats me, I always feel like I lost a fair fight. This NYT fought dirty. It didn’t leave me feeling challenged. It left me feeling f*ed with. WASH/WHIM/TWOS is a fair crossing. Two obfuscated clues is crunchy. Three is obnoxious.