Monday, March 23, 2026

BEQ 12:43 (Eric) [3.75 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
LAT 2:00 (Stella) [2.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 4:27 (Eric) [3.38 avg; 13 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker 6:49 (Amy) [3.29 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
Universal untimed (pannonica) [3.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (?) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
WSJ 4:19 (Jim Q) rate it

Matthew Luter’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s Review

Matthew Luter’s New York Times Crossword — 3/23/26 (Click to Embiggen)

Maybe if I’d paused to see what was in the circled letters, I’d have predicted the revealer. Or maybe not; while I’ve encountered the phrase before, I don’t think I’ve ever used it:

• 17A [Popular character actor in both “The Godfather” and “Barney Miller”] ABE VIGODA A gimme; The Godfather is one of my favorite movies (though Part II is better). In The Godfather, he played the caporegime Salvatore Tessio; on the 1970’s sitcom, he was Sgt. Phillip K. Fish. (I just now learned that character’s first name, though I’ve seen that show many times.)
• 25A [Avian metaphor for a romantic couple] LOVE BIRDS
• 40A [Part of the federal government that includes the presidency] EXECUTIVE BRANCH
• 50A [Cinema lover] MOVIE BUFF
• 64A [Off-putting aura … or what 17-, 25-, 40- and 50-Across each have?] WEIRD VIBES

The theme answers, with their mixed-up arrangements of VIBE, are all interesting enough — though the less time I spend thinking about the current head of the executive branch, the happier I am. I do like the way VIBE is split between two parts of each answer and gets “weird” in different ways. And it’s an easy-to-grasp theme, which is always a plus in a puzzle that’s supposed to be solvable by novice solvers.

Other stuff:

• 13A [“The ___ Game” (song that begins “Shirley Shirley bo-berley, bonana fanna fo-ferley”] NAME Shirley Ellis, 1964, if you’re lucky enough to have either forgotten it or have been born since then.
• 35A [Divas’ big moments] ARIAS/59A [Works of Rossini and Bellini] OPERAS Some high-brow music to offset the vapidity of “The Name Game.”
• 52D [Salsa ___ (condiment that might include tomatillos and cilantro)] VERDE If you’re going to cross OPERAS with VERDE, why not clue the latter to the composer of Aida and Otello?

Caroline Hand’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Los Angeles Times 3/23/26 by Caroline Hand

This is a theme of the old school: There’s no revealer, but IMO it shouldn’t be too hard for even beginning solvers to figure out that all the theme entries are women whose first names are of the ?OLLY pattern:

• 17A [“The Piano” Best Actress Oscar winner] is HOLLY HUNTER.
• 28A [Actress known for saying “Kiss my grits!” on the sitcom “Alice”] is POLLY HOLLIDAY.
• 48A [“Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club” actress] is MOLLY RINGWALD.
• 64A [Country music legend who founded the nonprofit literacy program Imagination Library] is DOLLY PARTON. Let’s not forget, also the country music legend who donated $1 million for the development of COVID-19 vaccines and adapted one of her most famous songs to encourage others to get the jab.

I wish GOLLY had been the last Across entry, just as an Easter egg. The fill is pretty clean if unexceptional, which is just fine on a Monday.

Henry Lin-David’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Mixed Load” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: The letters S-P-I-N can be found jumbled in common phrases.

WSJ • 3/23/26 • Mon • “Mixed Load” • Henry Lin-David• solution • 20260323

THEME ANSWERS:

• HMS PINAFORE
• GO UP IN SMOKE
• PLAINSPOKEN
• CONSPIRATOR
• (revealer) [With 67-Across, washing machine phase suggested by the circled letters (and the center of the grid)] SPIN CYCLE

Familiar and serviceable Monday theme today. Enjoyed revealing the bulk of the themers, especially HMS PINAFORE [Gilbert and Sullivan operetta set on a Royal Navy ship], which is in my wheelhouse but still jarring since the first few letters look wrong in a crossword. CONSPIRATOR is a bit blasé being that it’s one word and the SPIN variant can’t really hide all that well across words in the phrase as it does in the others.

I found the middle section of the west surprisingly tricky for a Monday with THOS (unfamiliar to me), WANE, the cleverly clued OPS, and KLIMT (which I should be confident with by now). The rest of the puzzle was relatively over-the-plate, though it might give some pushback to non-frequent solvers.

3 stars from me.

Natan Last’s New Yorker crossword–Amy’s recap

New Yorker crossword solution, 3/23/26 – Natan Last

Mystery vocab for me: 33d. [Balked], JIBBED. Neither my husband nor I have seen JIB as a verb. Is this regionally used, or uncommon, or just a blind spot chez Reynaldo?

Tricky corner there, with fragrance brand J’ADORE and a less commonly read fictional EMIL ([___ Sinclair (narrator of Hermann Hesse’s “Demian: The Story of a Boyhood”)]) crossing JIBBED, which parallels LANÇOME and LUDACRIS. Those L names also cross 32a. [Founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World], LUCY PARSONS, a name I didn’t know. In other intersecting name news, the opposite corner has ALDO, ELIF, STU, and poem title word HOBOS ([“The ___” (Maurice Manning poem that begins, “One boy says he is going back home to sleep in a real bed”)]) crossing Daniel ELLSBERG. Natan, these corners probably frustrated a lot of solvers. Here’s that poem if you’d like to read it.

Fave fill: ALT-RIGHT, new-to-me ECOHORROR, MUDDY WATERS, DEBATE TEAM, GRAVITY’S RAINBOW, SHUT-INS, NO FUSS. Not so keen on “SO DOPE” and “AM I TO BLAME?”

3.5 stars from me.

Joe Rodini’s Universal crossword, “What the What?” — pannonica’s write-up

Universal • 3/23/26 • Mon • “What the What?” • Rodini • solution • 20260323

• 30d^R [Delayed reaction to a surprise … and what can precede the two words in each starred clue’s answer?] DOUBLE TAKE.
• 15a. [*Agent’s task following a PR debacle] DAMAGE CONTROL (take damage, take control).
• 22d. [*Getty Images offerings] STOCK PHOTOS (take stock, take photos).
• 24d. [*What can be waived for ladies on ladies’ night] COVER CHARGE (take cover, take charge).

So. Only three theme entries aside from the revealer; their relative lengths necessitate the unusual grid symmetry we see. For the most part, strong theme—but I feel take photos is milquetoast.

Once again, I’m not thrilled with the the crossword’s title referencing the revealer without relating to the actual theme. Perhaps this doesn’t bother others as much.

• 8a [Doesn’t just stand there] ACTS. 27a [Decide] OPT.
• 43a [Basketball game you can play without dribbling] HORSE. Wikipedia offers no insight on the origin of the game’s name, H-O-R-S-E.
• 53a [“__ cares?”] WHO.
  
• 61a [Bird “eaten” by the humbled] CROW. Today I learned that the phrase is American in origin, from roughly the 1870s, and that the original version included specified boiled crow.
• 2d [Eco-conscious org.] EPA. How quaint. Constructors, maybe update your cluing to match the current Ministry of Truth-style realities?
• 4d [What contains a hot spot?] TEA CUP. Playing off then phrase, ‘spot of tea’.
• 8d [Buck’s horn] ANTLER. Colloquially perhaps, but horns and antlers are distinct anatomical features.
• 17d [Book of King’s] NOVEL. Presumably author Stephen, and nothing to do with the Bibble. I was expecting a title rather than just a generic term.
• 34d [ __ Khan (Kipling tiger)] SHERE.
  
  7d [Demon hunters’ genre] KPOP.
  

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1872 — Eric’s Review

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1872 — 3/23/26 (Click to Embiggen)

Brendan marked this “Hard,” but I found it easier than some of his recent themeless puzzles. I was surprised that the grid flowed as smoothly as it did, given the weird shapes of nine contiguous blocks on the fourth and 10th rows. I’m not sure why I find that sort of grid design visually unappealing; maybe it just reminds me of something I might do if I were having trouble getting a fillable grid.

Five grid-spanning entries anchor the puzzle; two of them are pop culture things that might be gimmes for some but for which I needed copious crosses to figure out.

Spanners and such:

• 1A [Big name in bikes] SCHWINN The first bike I owned that wasn’t a hand-me-down was a Schwinn Varsity, a classic 10-speed road bike with drop handlebars back when 10 gears was pretty much the max. It was stolen from my junior high school.
• 8A [Walter Mitty type] DREAMER “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is a classic 1939 short story by James Thurber about a guy who perpetually daydreams that he’s some sort of hero — a Navy pilot, a surgeon, etc. I vaguely remember the 1947 movie version with Danny Kaye, but didn’t realize there’s also a 2013 version with Ben Stiller.
• 15A [Competition where one player is going to get their hands dirty] WHEELBARROW RACE
• 17A [Home to Denali National Park] ALASKAN INTERIOR Is it still called Denali?
• 19A [Cognitive psychologist Tversky] AMOS I’d not heard of him; his work dealt with systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk.
• 20A [“Choosin’ Texas” singer Langley] ELLA Another name (and song) I didn’t know. (Maybe I’m not alone; when I started typing “Ella” in YouTube’s search field, the song popped up immediately.) We’ve been listening to more country music in the last few years, but I hadn’t heard this one despite it’s being a recent crossover hit.
• 

  Rendering of András Győrfi’s “The Swimming City”

  36A [“Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs” author] CHUCK KLOSTERMAN I didn’t recognize the title, but eventually had enough letters to pick out a name that’s somewhat familiar.

• 39A [Living on permanent ocean platforms] SEASTEADING I’d not heard of that; it sounds like a way to evade taxes to me.
• 55A [Took every advantage of an opportunity] MADE THE MOST OF IT
• 58A [1988 Michael Jackson single] ANOTHER PART OF ME I was never a big fan of Jackson’s music, but I watched enough MTV circa 1988 that I would have expected any title of his to sound familiar. This one doesn’t.
• 60A [Securers of some locks] MOUSSES You knew the “locks” were hair, right?
• 6D [Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy org] NBA I wasn’t familiar with the name of that trophy, but the A from ALASKAN got me NBA.
• 8D [Brocolli feature, in the early ’60s] DR. NO Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman produced most of the James Bond movies up to The Man With the Golden Gun (1974).
• 10D [Young gimmer] EWE Not EEL. I can always count on BEQ to teach me some obscure word. And I’m constantly amused by the abundance of nouns in English that refer only to a farm animal of a specific age and sex.
• 30D [Unlikely to mingle] ICY Not SHY.
• 32D [Over the moon] GLAD Not GAGA, which I think fits the clue better.
• 42D [Za’atar ingrediemt] SUMAC I’ve come across the Middle Eastern herb blend before, but I couldn’t remember what’s in it.
• 43D [Bird contemporary] TRANE Somehow I knew this was about the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker and not, say, NBA great Larry Bird, but it took me a few crosses to see John Coltrane’s nickname.
• 46D [“YuYu Hakusho” genre] ANIME Not a title I knew, but it sounds Japanese enough for ANIME to be a safe bet.