Wednesday, April 1, 2026

AV Club 12:18 (Amy) [2.70 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
LAT 4:22 (Gareth) [3.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 5:54 (Amy) [3.38 avg; 20 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker 3:45 (Jim Q) [3.79 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
Universal untimed (pannonica) [2.83 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today 9:07 (Emily) [2.50 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
WSJ 6:46 (Eric) [3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it

Zachary David Levy’s Wall Street Journal Crossword ‘Monster Mash-Up” — Eric’s Review

It’ll be something close to a miracle if I get through this without getting a certain 1962 novelty song stuck in my brain for the next day. It’d be too bad if that song haunts me, because I otherwise enjoyed this puzzle from my fellow Fiend reviewer.

Bits and pieces of scary beasts are found in otherwise unrelated things:

• 17A [Popular hard seltzer brand] WHITE CLAW As soon as I got the end of this, I knew that I’d heard of this brand. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember the first part of the name.
• 26A [Where to find the Drake Passage] CAPE HORN
• 39A [Movie staple of 1960s TV, and a clue to 17-, 26-, 53- and 66- Across] CREATURE FEATURE I watched way too much TV in the 1960s, but not a lot of monster movies.
• 53A [Situation Room setting] WEST WING Today I Learned that the Presidential Emergency Operations Center is in the East Wing (or was until it was torn down for a ballroom) and that it’s not the same thing as the Situation Room. Be that as it may, Dr. Strangelove is always worth revisiting:

• 66A [Something negotiated by a union] WAGE SCALE

The theme answers all feel pretty fresh to me and they are interesting enough.

Other stuff:

• 19A [Sylvester’s five-time co-star] TALIA Shire, who starred with Sly Stallone in more Rocky pictures than I’ve seen.
• 36A [Noted bankruptcy of 2001] ENRON Is it only in crosswords that the defunct energy company is remembered?
• 47A [Ready for bed, perhaps] IN PJS That answer doesn’t seem particularly idiomatic to me, but it’s not quite green paint, either.
• 71A [“Like a Rock” singer Bob] SEGER Another one for us old folks. I saw him when “Night Moves” had brought him national stardom but before he was playing arenas (though I also saw him in a now-demolished basketball arena a few years later).
• 7D [Oscar with a Golden Globe] ISAAC Some 21st century pop culture! I’d not heard of the 2015 miniseries Show Me a Hero, in which Isaac played Yonkers, New York mayor Nick Wasicsko.
• 11D [Alaskan fishing migrations] SALMON RUNS/13D [Give rise to] SPAWN I’m a bit surprised these two weren’t linked somehow.
• 38D [Light you sight at night] NEON Cute little rhyme for a pretty standard entry.

Michael Schlossberg’s AV Club Classic crossword, “It’s All Relatives”–Amy’s recap

The theme is phrases that include sorts of relatives, and the family tree on the PDF version lets you interpret how each figure is related to you.

• 23a. [*Rider [orange square]], GRANDFATHER CLAUSE. The PDF version shows just an orange square emoji, with grandpa’s name, Rider, in the tree. A rider is a clause, he’s granddad.
• 31a. [*May and June [yellow circles]], CALENDAR GIRLS.
• 45a. [*Tristan [weeping face emoji]], CRYING UNCLE. The emoji connotes crying, and medieval-lit Tristan cried, and Tristan’s “me’s” mother’s brother.
• 64a. [*Iris and Lily [red circles]], FLOWER CHILDREN.
• 76a. [*Chad and Jordan [purple square and purple circle]], COUNTRY COUSINS. Uncle Tristan’s kids, the nations.
• 90a. [With 109-Across, *Kayson [blue square]], BROTHER FROM / ANOTHER MOTHER. Me’s half-brother.
• 118a. [*Huey and Bird [green square and green circle]], HELICOPTER PARENTS. Their names are things we call certain helicopters, a bird and a Huey in the military.

Okay, that’s cute. I solved from the .puz file, so didn’t understand at all what was going on with the theme till after I finished and checked the PDF.

Did not know:

• 75d. [Martiniquan poet and politician Césaire], AIME.
• 108d. Feeling of exhilaration after a romantic experience, from the Tagalog], KILIG. It’s got a whole Wikipedia page, and really, every language should have a word that plays this role.
• I’ve heard of HEATHER, but 94d. [Common name for the plant Calluna vulgaris]? Didn’t ring a bell.
• 2d. [One tato to another], HERMANO. Tato can mean “brother” in Spanish.

Fave bits:

• 57d. [Diamond family name which, due to a clerical error, was used instead of the paternal surname Rojas], ALOU. MLB, know your Spanish naming conventions! Felipe Rojas Alou, Sr. Rojas; his mother’s surname was Alou.
• 95a. [Teams whose shifts might include mid-flight brawls and cabin-filling farts], AIR CREWS. Oof.
• 51d. [LGBTQ advocacy gp.], PFLAG. Tuesday was Transgender Day of Visibility. Hi, trans friends!
• PHLEGM! Clued via the ancient humors rather than bodily secretions. Gotta appreciate a word where half the letters aren’t pronounced as themselves.

Four stars from me.

Jess Shulman & Amie Walker’s New York Times crossword–Amy’s recap

Well, it’s 10:30 p.m. now that I’ve gotten around to the puzzle, and the quip theme just felt surreal to me. Had to check Wordplay for the theme explanation. No, it’s not just an April Fools prank, it’s an actual theme!

• 17A. [Quip, part 1], QUICK START. The START of the word QUICK is Q, which is circled here to (try to) help solvers spot the theme. The clues all have cryptic crossword vibes in the way they point to a single letter.
• 27A. [Quip, part 2], YOUNG AT HEART.
• 43A. [Quip, part 3], SECOND IN LINE.
• 57A. [Quip, part 4], PAY UP FRONT.

It was a bit of a mindf*ck because QUICK START / YOUNG AT HEART rhymes and halfway sounds like it might be an adage of some sort (“red sky at night, sailor’s delight”), but no, the lines don’t go together to make an actual quip. The START and SECOND IN LINE felt connected, too. Without the circled letters, this would feel much more like an April Fools joke. With it, it still played like a Thursday puzzle. Really hard to make any progress on the theme clues without getting most of the letters from the crossings.

Fave fill: DOG TOY, MICKEY D’S, “WATCH THIS,” HOT DATES, INDIE POP (peculiar clue, though), “I GOTTA SAY …”, TREE FROG. Didn’t care for plural AHAS, SOY clued as a burger option (VEGGIE burger was fine, though).

3.5 stars from me.

CJ Tan’s USA Today Crossword, “Radioactivity” — Emily’s write-up

Can you hear me now?

Theme: each themer contains —RADIO— scrambled

Themers:

• 20a. [“vampire” singer], OLIVIARODRIGO
• 39a. [“Loosen up a little!”], LETYOURHAIRDOWN
• 54a. [waterway that goes through the Grand Canyon], COLORADORIVER

A wide variety in the themer set today with OLIVIARODRIGO, LETYOURHAIRDOWN, and COLORADORIVER. I needed a few crossings for that first two but the third filled in more easily. Everything was fairly closed though so they weren’t too tricky to complete.

Favorite fill: SPRY, RUMBA, and TARO

Stumpers: MOBILEADS (needed crossings), UNDERARM (needed crossings), and EBOOK (misdirected by cluing)

Overall a fun and smooth solve. Great cluing and lots of fresh fill, though some were a bit rougher for me so it took me a bit longer than usual.

4.0 stars

~Emily

Adrian Johnson’s Universal crossword, “Spring 2026 Themeless Week, Puzzle 3?” — pannonica’s write-up

I haven’t done any of the other Universal crosswords this week, so I don’t know if they are in fact themeless, but my working theory is that they probably are, and today’s is actually an April Fool’s anomaly.

• 51a^R [2025 meme, or what the starts of 15- and 34-Across and the ends of 20- and 46-Across amount to] SIX SEVEN.
• 15a. [Fancy-schmancy language] FIVE-DOLLAR WORDS.
  34a. [“Just a second”] ONE MOMENT.
  5+1=6
• 20a. Words before “you’re out”] STRIKE THREE.
  46a. [March Madness quartet] FINAL FOUR. Exquisite timing.
  3+4=7

---

• 2d [Nothing, to Nadal] LOVE. Was unreasonably constrained into thinking about Spanish rather than tennis. Maybe it’s the nada-Nadal similarity?
• 6d [Memphis street known for blues] MEMPHIS.
  
• 7d [Cry on Talk Like a Pirate Day] ARR. 23d [“Hi” on Talk Like a Pirate Day] AHOY. Hum, is Talk Like a Pirate Day proximate? Nope, that’s 19 September, a vast distance away.
• 24d [Anvil, stirrup or hammer] BONE. In your ear. The trio is also known as incus, stapes, and malleus, respectively.
• 25d [One battling for either a mate or a knockout] CHESS BOXER. Yes it does exist.
• 31d [Words on a haunted house’s sign] IF YOU DARE. Mwahahaha, et cetera.
• 56d [“I’m scared!”] EEK. Usually said in jest, so I guess the clue is meant to be read that way as well.
• 18a [Cry mournfully] WAIL. or …
  
• 23a [What’s as easy as pie?] ABC. Parallel metaphors.
• 27a [One goes “zzub” when flying backward, in a joke] BEE. 41d [Reacted to a bad joke] GROANED.
• 43a [ __ moco (Hawaiian meal)] LOCO. Encountered this in another puzzle just a couple of weeks ago yet still couldn’t recall the first letter of the answer.
• 57a [“Ugh, enough of this meme!”] PLEASE NO, which describes most people’s reactions to the SIX SEVEN meme, appearing just above in the grid. Definitely intentional placement and cluing!

Robyn Weintraub’s New Yorker crossword — Jim Q’s write-up

HIGHTLIGHTS:

• THAT’S HOW WE ROLL
• YES OR NO QUESTION
• CROSS PARTY LINES
• CRIMINAL RECORD

I feel like that set could have some snarky clues that relate to one another:

[Things many politicians have difficulty answering] YES OR NO QUESTIONS [Something a politician without a backbone doesn’t do] CROSS PARTY LINES [Something at least one prominent US politician has] CRIMINAL RECORD and [How politicians might respond to these crossword clues] “THAT’S HOW WE ROLL!”

So there’s that. Anyway…

Also enjoyed ERROR CODE (how is that related to the number 404 that we see so often? I never see the preceding 403 error codes that must also be present somewhere…), CELL PHONE as clued with a Broadway musical, and I’M AT A LOSS.

The layout here has themed vibes, no? Nothing wrong with that, but it did feel like there was more shorter fill than normal with a couple partials and abbreviations I’m not used to seeing in the Wed. New Yorker.

4 stars.

Tara Holland’s LA Times Crossword – Gareth’s summary

Unusually for a puzzle that spells out a phrase, the words aren’t consistently in the front, middle or back of the phrase. Rather, they move all over the place. I think this is a style choice, to make the theme more cryptic. The revealing entries are right at the bottom and spell out RICK/ROLL. The other five entries contain NEVER/GONNA/GIVE/YOU/UP. So:

1. [“That’s the last time!”], NEVERAGAIN
2. [The Proclaimers hit subtitled “500 Miles”], IMGONNABE
3. [Is apathetic], DOESNTGIVEAHOOT
4. [“Should’ve listened to me!”], TOLDYOUSO
5. [Began to relax], LOOSENEDUP

Trickier clues/entries:

• [Top no. in a blood pressure reading], SYS. Systolic pressure. Pressure as the heart contracts. The opposite reading is diastolic pressure.
• [Some high-end insulated mugs], YETIS. A brand. Not sure why fancy mugs have become so trendy of late?
• [Celebrity chef Martin], YAN. I love YANCANCOOK!

Gareth