Thursday, March 19, 2026

BEQ 10:37 (Eric) [3.00 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
Fireball untimed (Jenni) [3.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
LAT tk (Gareth) [1.67 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 7:31 (ZDL) [3.37 avg; 15 ratings] rate it
Universal untimed (Eric) [2.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today 7:53 (Emily) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
WSJ untimed (Jim Q) [2.83 avg; 3 ratings] rate it

Jonathan Raksin’s Universal Crossword — Eric’s Review

Sometimes it pays to read the clues carefully — or even at all. Had I done so here, I would have found my mistake on my own. “Things with Strings” get collected here, as indicated by circled letters:

• 17A [Lounge lazily] SIT AROUND
• 25A [Chilled] TOOK IT EASY
• 42A [*Ryan Reynolds or Rob McElhenney, to Wrexham’s pro footballers] CLUB OWNER
• 58A [*Part of the Constitution that establishes the legislative branch] ARTICLE I
• 61A [Given false hope … or a hint to this puzzle’s theme] STRUNG ALONG I didn’t notice the clue was in the past tense and never read the clue for 57D MUD. STRING ALONG and MID looked right in the abstract. Oops.

It’s a nice mix of theme answers; for some reason, finding a flowery necklace in the Constitution amuses me.

Other stuff:

• 22A [“Painting to Be Stepped On” artist Yoko] ONO/24A [Colonial housing unit?] ANT NEST Cute clue for the second answer, but these two answers so close together bring to mind stepping on an ant bed. Not fun, especially if they’re the fire ants that live in Texas.
• 6D [“___ ever lie to you?”] WOULD I The clue’s “ever” is superfluous to my ear, but I’m not all that crazy about the answer as a puzzle entry. It seems like there’s an infinite number of colloquial phrases waiting to be cut up into five- and six-letter fragments that can only be clued with a Fill in the Blank clue.
• 49D [Intoxicated, informally] TURNT I came close to entering TIPSY before remembering this bit of slang that I know only from crosswords.

John Kugelman’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up

Time: 7:31

Difficulty: Breezy (<8m)  |  Easy-ish (8-9m30s)  |  Working on it (9m30s-11m)  |  Rough going (11+m)

Today’s theme: OFFSIDES (Certain hockey and soccer infractions … or a hint to this puzzle’s circled and shaded squares)

• FOODLESS / OODLES
• ROMANIA / OMANI
• IF AT ALL / FATAL
• EMERITA / MERIT
• STORMED / TORME

The “sides”, when taken off the theme entries, spell out FRIES and SALAD, respectively.  Order the frites, you only live once!

Cracking: LOOK, I GET IT

Slacking: FOODLESS

Sidetracking: ALBANIAN

Geoff Brown’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Look Sharp” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: The word GO can be found under different types of knives, which are hidden in common phrases.

THEME ANSWERS:

• POISON PEN LETTER. Pen knife. 
• DAVID BOWIE. Bowie knife. 
• JACKPOT. Jackknife. 
• POCKET ACES. Pocketknife. 

What’s a POISON PEN LETTER?

Ohhhh. That makes sense. Really tough clue imo for that one: [Malevolent missive]. I’m very accustomed to “missive” leading to DART in a crossword, so I was picturing like a blow dart or something.

Boy. Clever idea, but this was difficult for me to get through. Felt like a lot of super hard / vague clues with a lot of difficult fill. Lots of strain on the grid, and the letters GO force much of the… less savory fill. Perhaps one less theme entry may’ve made my solve more enjoyable.

Based on the title, I was misled early on with [Sharp increase] and [Sharp] being clues for SPIKE and KEEN respectively. They were in the same area too (the NW), so I assumed I was going to be seeing that word a lot more. Nope! Nice misdirect.

The revealer was fun though, and I didn’t fully grok the theme until I uncovered that, which is how I prefer my solves :) JACKknife is a bit of an outlier as it’s the only one that isn’t some sort of implement.

Plenty of things I simply did not know, and I do wish the cluing were a little less difficult in areas where a lot of the new-to-me stuff was. New fill for me included Luis FONSI crossing Marcus LOEW, SHARIA, DADOS, CASE MOD.

Other tough pills for me to swallow included EMIN, ETH, EHS, ERAT, PDT, SSR crossing BTS, MKT, OPA, LEOV, TAJ, ECO, GNP, and KOP. I kinda feel like I’m over YEET too. Does anyone really say that anymore?

Fave clues/entries:

• [Beam in a bar] JIM. I don’t think I see my name on its own like that very often in crosswords.
• [Aww-inspiring] CUTE. Cute indeed.
• [Pass from history?] DONNER.
• [Backward swimmer, on occasion] EEL. Fun fact!

Really liked the concept, but did not enjoy the solve much due to the fill. 2.5 stars from me.

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1871 “Sort of Puzzled” — Eric’s Review

It didn’t take long to grasp the theme here — take some common phrase or compound noun and tack on ISH to wacky effect:

• 20A [Hard-to-eat breakfast pastry?] STEELY DANISH I got the end of this first, and when I figured out the play on Steely Dan, I thought this would be a musical theme.
• 27A [Person buried in a vicar’s yard?] ONE UNDER PARISH
• 43A [What a porch pirate will make?] DELIVERY VANISH
• 48A [Knockout done with the hips?] PELVIC FINISH

The theme answers are all mildly amusing; I especially liked PELVIC FINISH.

Other stuff:

• 1A [Compliment for someone with a shapely rear end] GYAT This was the last word I got, and when I entered the last letter, I was quite surprised that I had filled in the grid correctly. I hadn’t known this bit of slang previously.
• 5A [Actress Paulson] SARAH The clue didn’t bring anyone to mind, though I’ve seen Paulson in 12 Years a Slave, the series Ratched and probably some other projects. I used to be much better with actors’ and actresses’ names.
• 10A [Colliding sound] BLAM Not WHAM, which makes more sense to me.
• 35A [Litter box user] TOM Not CAT.
• 38A [Tackle box material] LURES I lost a little time here trying to think of what a tackle box might be made out of, not what it might contain.
• 55A [“Bugonia” actor Delbis] AIDAN We missed that movie, which was Delbis’ film debut.
• 62A [[Tell me when I can take my fingers out of my ears]] LA LA This needs a third LA to sound right to me.
• 65A [One who never gets tired of playing the hits] AI DJ This took a second to parse after I got it. The term seems to apply both to the use of AI for selecting songs to play and for choosing or creating musical elements in a recording. Not for me, thanks.
• 7D [“UR killing me”] ROFL Not LMAO.
• 10D [Its capital is Bandar Seri Begawan] BRUNEI I didn’t know the capital of the Islamic monarchy on the Malaysian peninsula, but a key letter or two was enough.
• 13D [Blend together] MESH Not MELD.
• 42D [Singer/songwriter McCombs] CASS I have a couple of his songs and yet perpetually conflate him with country singer Luke Combs when he appears in a puzzle. Maybe because mainstream puzzle editors still prefer Cass Elliot?
• 48D [Hoka purchase] PAIR Presumably running shoes, which I haven’t owned in 20 years or longer.
• 58D [Unc] OLD I picked up “unc” as short for “uncool” just a week ago or so, from another Quigley puzzle, and was happy it stuck with me.

Zhouqin Burnikel’s USA Today Crossword, “Cutting Costs” — Emily’s write-up

Here’s the deal…

Theme: each themer is contained within CO–ST (i.e. “cut cost”)

Themers:

• 15a. [Sitting around], COLLECTINGDUST
• 39a. [“Batman” or “Wonder Woman” illustrator, say], COMICBOOKARTIST
• 62a. [Virtuoso like Lang Lang], CONCERTOPIANIST

Today’s themer set includes COLLECTINGDUST, COMICBOOKARTIST, and CONCERTOPIANIST. With fair crossings, none were too difficult to fill, though each took me a few to get. A fun mix of topics in the set given the theme.

Favorite fill: STAYTUNED, SPILLIT, and ESTE

Stumpers: IMATALOSS (needed crossings) and GRAM (also needed crossings)

A quicker solve for me today with a smooth flow–great fill, nice cluing, and a delightful grid design.

3.5 stars

~Emily
TIME

AUTHOR’s USA Today Crossword, “TITLE (Freestyle)” — Emily’s write-up

INTRO

alt=”Completed USA Today crossword for Thursday March DD, 2026”
USA Today, March DD, 2026, “TITLE (Freestyle)” by AUTHOR[/caption]

Favorite fill: ENTRY, ENTRY, ENTRY, and ENTRY

Stumpers: ENTRY (COMMENT), ENTRY (COMMENT), and ENTRY (COMMENT)

WRAPUP

# stars

~Emily

Alex Eaton-Salners’s Fireball crossword, “Extra Sides”–Amy/Jenni’s recap

Jenni’s traveling, might not have the bandwidth to talk about her solve. Meantime, Amy’s posting the solution grid and theme explanation. Each theme entry is contains two words, starting and ending with a doubled pair of letters. [Nitwit from an Indiana University campus?] clues KOKOMO DODO (I’m in a state next to Indiana and don’t think of Kokomo as an IU town). The other themers are TOTO QUEUE, NENE WAGERER (contrived, meh), BABA’S SO-SO (punctuation lacking in the other themers), and PIPING MEME (meh). I didn’t solve the puzzle myself, so that’s all I’ve got.