Tuesday, March 17, 2026

Jonesin’ 5:54 (Erin) rate it
LAT untimed (Jenni) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 5:35 (Eric) [3.17 avg; 9 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker tk (pannonica) [3.72 avg; 9 ratings] rate it
Universal 5:44 (Eric) [3.00 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Sophia) [3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Xword Nation tk (Ade) rate it
WSJ tk (Jim Q) rate it

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Too Many Plot Holes” — readable if you remove the holes. – Erin’s write-up

Jonesin’ solution 3/17/26

Hello lovelies! This week we have novels that devolve into madness when some Os are added here and there.

• 20a. [Hole-y Veronica Roth novel (about rocker Ronnie James hovering above a penguin species)?] DIO OVER GENTOO (DIVERGENT)
• 38a. [Hole-y E.L. Doctorow novel (about a cartoon bartender being told singer Rita earned a moon of Jupiter)?]  ORA GOT IO MOE (RAGTIME)
• 57a. [Hole-y Daphne du Maurier novel (about a cookie-flavored chocolate drink stirred with a woodwind)?] OREO OBOE COCOA (REBECCA)

Other things:

• 33d. [Only bone not attached to another bone] HYOID. It kind of floats above the voice box, held in place by ligaments and muscles.

Until next week!

Owen Bergstein’s Universal Crossword “Economic Growth” — Eric’s Review

Owen Bergstein’s Universal Crossword “Economic Growth” — 3/17/26 (Click to Embiggen)

I feel like I solved something very similar to this about a week ago. Take a well-known phrase or compound noun in which one part can be imagined as a corporation and the other as some other thing, and voila — crossword puzzle theme!

Some people feel that companies and brands show up too often in crosswords. As someone who avoids advertising as much as possible, I can sympathize. On the other hand, that’s the society we’ve made for ourselves, one in which brand names are often bigger that people whose decisions or actions significantly control our lives.

Here, we’ve got three companies from a loosely-defined tech sector (thus the title’s “economic”) plus part of a living organism such as a tree or a grass (thus the “growth”):

• 20A [*Flowers in an orchard (computers)] APPLE BLOSSOMS
• 32A [*Tire feature (video games)] VALVE STEM I didn’t recognize that company name; Wikipedia describes it as “the developer of the software distribution platform Steam and the game franchises Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Dota.” None of those games sounds familiar, but if I were to play video games, I likely wouldn’t choose a first-person shooter game. (No criticism intended of anyone who does play those kinds of games; they’ve just never appealed to me.)
• 41A [*Two and three, to four and nine (point-of-sale technology)] SQUARE ROOTS
• 51A [Musician who isn’t self-made … or what the starred clues’ answers form?] INDUSTRY PLANT I listen to music for at least half my waking hours. I don’t read as much about it as I used to, so maybe that’s why I’m unfamiliar with this term. The clue made me immediately think of the Monkees, the epitome of a manufactured band during my youth. (One of the SiriusXm channels we often listen to in the car plays more Monkees than I had heard in years; some of that stuff is undeniably catchy.)

This is a solid theme in that the companies are mostly well-known and the answers definitely are. One quibble: The first three answers are conveniently flexible because the terminal S is not necessary. That’s not a bad thing, but it does make it easier to get a symmetrical theme set. 

Other stuff:

• 14A [Home to the solar system’s largest volcano] MARS Somehow I managed to read “the solar system” but my brain thought of “earth.” That meant it took me longer than it should have to get the answer here. 
• 18A [Color popularized by a 2024 Charli xcx album] BRAT GREEN Reading about music that I really don’t have much intention of listening to, coupled with dozens of mentions of Charlotte Emma Aitchison in crosswords, made this relatively easy.
• 65A [Disgusting] NASTY That’s a pretty useful word sometimes.
• 9D [What people connect their phones to when they’re “on aux”] STEREOS Using an auxiliary cable seems dated, but I’m lucky enough to have a relatively new car. (It’s predecessor was a 2001 model and we paid a car stereo guy a few hundred bucks to install the connection for my long-gone iPod.)
• 10D [This snack item is often in crosswords and, moreover, it’s hidden in this clue!] OREO If you’re going to use an overly-long clue for something like this, I appreciate that it doesn’t try to convince me that Oreos taste good. I’ll eat them in ice cream, but otherwise, they’re not worth it.
• 27D [K-pop girl group, or a first-person contraction] IVE I got this completely from the crosses, but if I’d used the clued, I’d have appreciated the “contraction” because K-pop is not a genre I know much about.

Kiran Pandy’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s Review

The theme’s a nice example of how much of internet language involves repurposing common words — sometimes by stretching an existing meaning a little, sometimes by going a little further:

• 17A [Thin Mints and Tagalongs] GIRL SCOUT COOKIES
• 26A [One in a breakfast chain?] SAUSAGE LINK
• 37A [Dose dropped for a trip] LSD TAB
• 47A [Likely to attract attention, as a criminal case] HIGH-PROFILE
• [Hopelessly internet-brained … or a description of the ends of 17-, 26-, 37- and 47-Across?] TERMINALLY ONLINE

An extra column to this grid can sometimes slow a solver down, but it didn’t make much difference for me. The theme is straightforward enough that inexperienced solvers can understand it, and the theme answers are reasonably interesting.

Other stuff:

• 22A [Sci-fi character who says “Your father, he is”] YODA The little Jedi’s syntax is formally called “anastrophe.”
• 44A [Little squirt in a garage, say] OIL Cute, but I didn’t fall for the misdirection (if that’s what was intended).
• 10D [Home to Shibuya Crossing, the world’s busiest pedestrian intersection] TOKYO Easy enough to guess, though I’ve never heard of the crossing.
• 40D [Bit of internet writing] BLOG POST Bonus theme answer? Distraction?

Sala Wanetick & Amie Walker’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Jenni’s write-up

I was relieved that this wasn’t a St. Patrick’s Day theme. I prefer my crosswords to be evergreen (see what I did there?).

It was a straightforward solve and I had no idea what the theme answers had in common until I got to the revealer. It’s a good Tuesday.

Los Angeles Times, March 17, 2026, Sala Wanetick, Amie Walker, solution grid

• 19a [Emotional plea in ‘Top Gun” and “Top Gun: Maverick”] is TALK TO ME, GOOSE.
• 26a [“I didn’t hear a ‘Please’!”] is SAY THE MAGIC WORD. In my house this was always “What’s the magic word?” My response to SAY THE MAGIC WORD would be “abracadabra.”
• 43a [“Why this course of action?”] is EXPLAIN YOURSELF.

And the revealer at 56a: [Requests to Siri and Alexa, or what 19-, 26-, and 43-Across literally are] is VOICE COMMANDS. I enjoyed this.

Shoutout to Jim Peredo, our very own Chamorro (native of GUAM).

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: that MIRAMAR means “sea view.” Hey, I studied French.