LAT 2:37 (Stella) 
[3.17 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
Newsday 18:43 (Amy) 
[3.83 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
NYT 6:23 (Amy) [3.86 avg; 11 ratings] rate it
Universal 3:41 (Adam S) [3.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Matthew) 
[2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
WSJ 16:35 (Eric) [2.70 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
Royce Ferguson’s New York Times crossword — Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 4/4/26 – no. 0404
A tad surprised to see ASS and POOP in the top two rows, but not offended. I am no POMPOUS ASS.
Fave fill: BREAK SERVE, SECRET SANTA, JEAN RENOIR, ACTION ITEM, “YES INDEEDY,” GLITTERATI, OSCAR HOSTS, GOLDEN RULE, and a topical SPACE SHOT.
Five things:
- 30A. [Building managers, informally], SUPES. Short for superintendents, if you’re a New Yorker. What other locales use “super” or “supe” for that role? Where I hear “supes” is on the show The Boys, where superheroes are created chemically.
- 42A. [What isn’t anyone’s fault?], LET. More tennis, after BREAK SERVE.
- 43A. [Unconvincing way of answering “Did you finish the job?”], “I TRIED TO.” This is a contrived phrase rather than an idiomatic thing that’s dictionary-grade, isn’t it?
- 5D. [Some silent yeses], OK SIGNS. Also called “OK gesture.“
- 11D. [Waste watchdog, for short], EPA. Is it, though? In this administration?
3.75 stars from me.
Jamixiy’s Universal Crossword “Spring 2026 Themeless Week, Puzzle 6” – Adam S’s write-up
Jamixiy’s Universal “Spring 2026 Themeless Week, Puzzle 6” – 4/4/26
A breezy themeless with strong longer entries that played faster than a typical Universal for me. Favorite fill:
- 2d ADOBO SAUCE [Spicy Filipino condiment]. Yum!
- 3d ROADRUNNER [Wile E. Coyote’s target]. I’m looking forward to Coyote vs. Acme later this year.
- 18a ONE TOO MANY [Bit of an overindulgence, idiomatically]. Apt Saturday answer, for some.
- 33a MEESE [Plural form of an antlered animal, humorously]. Also our family name for the kids when they are being the good sort of nonsense.
- 55a EVIL GENIUS [One who might laugh like “Muah-ha-ha-haaa!”]. Let’s hope for the Roadrunner’s sake that Wile E. Coyote never gets replaced by an evil genius.
- 58a LITMUS TEST [Indicator of acidity or political support]. We could do with fewer of the latter, IMO.
- 61a ASHA [“Brimful of ___” (1997 Cornershop hit). Wonderful song. I was surprised to find no prior record of this cluing angle in the Crosserville database (although Asha Bhosle has been referenced a few times).
Two nits. First, there is a little more WWW, SANKA, GER, TBD, OCT, GMO, etc. than is ideally needed for a 74-word themeless. Second, the cluing was clear and accurate, but overall a little dry and definitional. It’s true constructors need to be careful to keep to the difficulty level moderate for Universal, but that still leaves room for more wit, wordplay, interesting trivia, etc. than we got today.
But the longer answers kept it fun throughout. One way I like to test the strength of longer themeless content is by asking whether the entries that speak less to me will delight many other solvers. The three in that category today were PAPER MARIO, WU-TANG CLAN, and MALL SANTA. Many people will have loved entering each of those, so the puzzle passed that test with flying colors.
Matthew Luter’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 4/4/26 by Matthew Luter
Some good stuff in this Saturday, if overall too easy:
- I liked the top stack of MOON ROCK, A-PLUS-PLUS, and TEEN SPIRIT. That last, clued as [1990s deodorant brand whose name inspired a Nirvana song] and crossing KURT clued as [Cobain of Nirvana] was maybe too much Nirvana? Made it easy for me although I can see how solvers of other generations might have had more difficulty with TEEN SPIRIT.
- 46A [Maker of Scribble Scrubbie Pets products] is CRAYOLA. I probably won’t ever be purchasing this product, but it’s a fun brand name for a clue.
- 51A Nice to see IRIS clued with reference to Georgia O’Keeffe rather than, when a constructor uses the art world to clue it, the usual Van Gogh.
- 56A Willa Cather is awesome, so MY ANTONIA was one I needed no crossings for.
- 7D [Perks of big promotions, maybe?] is CLIOS, with “promotions” referring to advertising. Cute!
- 11D [“Inbox zero” obstacle] is EMAIL. As someone who strives to have in my inbox only email that requires an action from me, this clue was highly evocative. It made me wonder, even as I was solving other clues, how there are so many people in the world whose inboxes have hundreds or thousands of unread messages in them. (Also, do these two types of people always marry each other the way my husband and I did?)
Stanley Newman’s Newsday crossword, “Saturday Stumper” (S.N. byline)—Amy’s recap
Newsday crossword solution “Saturday Stumper” – 4/4/26 – Newman
Just saw that this puzzle wasn’t posted yet, so here’s my solution grid and a brief write-up.
Those squares with a triangle in the corner are ones where I had incorrect letters. I was fighting drowsiness while solving, which didn’t help matters. But finished without looking anything up, so I’ve got that going for me.
Fave fill: CONUNDRUMS, LOAF PAN, ANOMALOUS, RADAR TRAP, PRIME TIME, AUTOTUNES, NEON SIGNS, GANDALF.
New to me: 63a. [Latter-day lucky charms], TALISWOMEN. Not only isn’t that word in Merriam-Webster, but the etymology of talisman includes no man.
A few clues:
- 15a. [High points of an 11-Across tour], in GRAZ, ONION DOMES. These are little, dark onion domes, not the profusion of colorful onion domes we’ve seen from Moscow’s St. Basil’s Cathedral.
- 26a. [Use for a roll], SLIDER. That’s “use” as a noun, a sliced roll enclosing a little burger patty or whatnot.
- 41a. [Dismissed orally], PSHAWED. M-W doesn’t have pshaw as a verb, just an interjection.
I didn’t notice a semi-cryptic clue in this puzzle. Where is it??
3.5 stars from me.
Jeff Jerome’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Asleep at the Wheel” — Eric’s Review
Jeff Jerome’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Asleep at the Wheel” — 4/4/26 (Click to Enlarge)
I often find that puzzle themes are of little use to me in finishing the puzzle, but not today. I had a mistake in my grid that I couldn’t figure out until I finally understood what was going on. Since it’s getting late in the day, and I’ve got other things to do, I’ll just lay out one set of linked answers and let you figure out the others (if you haven’t already). The circled letters are a big hint that there’s something going on here:
- 37A [Title for Robert Francis Prevost] PFORDEOXIV goes with 105A [Kadett maker [Edit 37-Across: Mustang maker]] OPEL Replace FORD in 37A with OPEL and you’ve got a much more logical answer, POPE LEO XIV. (This was where I finished up, as I was reading 37D [Pain in the neck] literally and PEST did not occur to me until I replaced FORD with OPEL.)
There’s a revealer that helpfully explains things:
- 116A [Texting feature meant to rectify typos (that may have gone wild in the circled words) AUTOCORRECT
I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this puzzle. My friend Andy had told me earlier today that she’d solved it and described it as “exceedingly tedious.” But I found it more solvable even when I was still unclear how the trick work. And though I normally don’t care for nonsensical answers like 77A NISSANTE FRISBEE, the swapping in of the different car makes is fairly easy to see. (It would be nice if the paired entries were highlighted, so that you don’t have to hunt in the clues for the auto make to swap in to the nonsense answer.
It helps immensely that all of the Down answers make sense, so I completed a lot of the grid by filling those in.
Other stuff:
- 1A [Highly venomous snake] MAMBA Not VIPER, which I quickly realized was wrong.
- 26A [___ me tangere] NOLI Latin for “Touch Me Not,” it’s also the title of a Filipino by José Rizal published in 1887. I guess ultimately the phrase comes from the Gospel of John.
- 29A [Dickens’s Jack Dawkins, familiarly] ARTFUL MAZDAR (ARTFUL DODGER) From Oliver Twist.
- 75A [House shower] REALTOR Sneaky clue, as most solvers won’t read “shower” with a long O.
- 93A [Oliver’s last name in “Only Murders in the Building”] PUTNAM I haven’t seen that show, but a few key letters made the answer inferable.
- 97A [Produce cross words?] SWEAR How meta!
NYT: Even easier than yesterday’s for me, nothing particularly troublesome.
To answer Amy’s question — I think of SUPES as purely an NYC word. It’s certainly not used in the DC area.
I’ve never heard SUPE for super in real life. New Yorkers pretty much leave it to sitcoms and crosswords.
When I was a kid, I was often asked to fetch the supe for something like a continuously running toilet. Apartment 1A was reserved for him in all the buildings we lived in.
LAT
Stella, in response to your “maybe too much Nirvana” comment, I think that was on purpose. Although his body wasn’t found until a few days later, it is believed Kurt Cobain died on either April 4th or 5th.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
NYT: another (too) easy Saturday. Sigh. I had an error that took forever to find (TAMEr instead of TAMED), but other than that it was a breeze (not in a good way). No junk fill or impossible-to-guess proper nouns, which was nice. I’ve been working my way backwards through NYT Saturday puzzles, and they were WAY harder as recently as the late 20teens (with basically the same editorial staff and same roster of constructors). Since I’m the one doing them contemporaneously, it’s not just that I’ve gotten better… What gives?! (Try it out — I’m currently in August 2017, but they are basically all super tough.)
I’m working my way forward from November, 1993, in the NYT archives. I’m currently finishing up March, 2009.
It’s not unusual for me to spend 20 or 25 minutes on one of the old Saturday puzzles (and even some of the Friday ones). The contemporary puzzles rarely take me more than 15 minutes. They are just that much easier.
Today’s puzzle was exceptionally easy. It’s my 5th fastest NYT Saturday ever.
NYT: pretty smooth, though the SW took me a while to crack. Smallest of nits: the German scale uses H as a NOTE in place of B. But overall, a pretty reasonable puzzle. Wasn’t expecting POMPOUS ASS and POOP in the same puzzle though :-)
Stumper: Assume a review is in progress. It was slightly on the hard side — took both my husband and I going back and forth several times. Also, a few double-ckecks — that Graz was in Austria, that Ames was on I-35, etc. Never heard of a lepton, but the rest I’d at least heard of, even if it was slang like “yeets” or seldom used like “illy.” Also, one minor error –the Statue of Liberty faces southeast, not east, but that’s a quibble.
I found it relatively easy, for a Stumper. It helped that I knew Graz, and I guessed Ames because it has 4 letters, is in roughly the right place, and is a crossword favorite. And lepton is a familiar word for me, although I needed a couple of letters to see that it was the correct answer.
You knew more than we did! :) I thought of Graz, but wasn’t sure that it was in Austria (thought it could be Switzerland, etc.) Yes, my first thought was Ames, but (again) wanted to make sure. You know a heck of a lot more than we do about the atom! I know a few of the subatomic parts from crossword puzzles (meson, for one), but lepton is a new one, I think. At least the last I had physics (which is the science I think would be involved) was in high school and all we covered were protons, neutrons, and ions.
My guess was that Lady Liberty referred to the Statue of Freedom on the US Capitol dome, which faces east.
I thought this was harder than most recent ones. The only things I had penciled in after my first run-through were YEETS, ASSN, AGTS, NADIR, and EVA.
Ah! That’s a possibility! You had more than my husband’s start — he had only three, I think, and one of those was wrong. :) He got better, though, after I’d done the upper right — he was the one who finished the upper left and completed a large portion of the lower left.
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 4 stars
I found the Stumper exceptionally difficult. My favorite: LOCALSTOP.
The OED has taliswoman: “A talisman … associated with a woman; (now) esp. one in the shape of a female figure. Also: a woman likened to a talisman, esp. in providing protection or bringing luck; (now chiefly) spec. a female sports player regarded as the leading representative of her team, who inspires other members to perform to their utmost ability or achieve outstanding results.” First use: 1856.
And pshaw as a verb: “To say ‘pshaw!’ (as an expression of impatience or disgust).” First citation: Tristram Shandy, 1760: “My father travelled homewards … in none of the best of moods,—pshaw-ing and pish-ing all the way down.”
Thanks for the information on “taliswoman.” I hadn’t heard of it, but it was fairly obvious from the crossings.
Puzzle: WSJ; Rating: 1.5 stars
WSJ
not a car buff and not a fan of this puzzle, I agree it’s exceedingly tedious.
Puzzle: LAT; Rating: 2.5 stars
I’m rating the constructor at 3.5 stars, and the editor at 1.5 stars. The blunders include 57A: “Joint with crossed cruciate ligaments” and the answer is “Knee”. (Cruciate means “crossed”.)
And 6D: “Antagonize” and the answer is “Oppose”. Antagonizing someone is a lot more fierce than just opposing them.
Puzzle: WSJ; Rating: 1.5 stars
WSJ blech
Puzzle: WSJ; Rating: 5 stars
Wall Street Journal crossword: 5☆☆☆☆☆
Clever, original theme, with decent fill.
While others found it tedious, I approached it meticulously with furrowed brow, working it slowly, step-by-step…
and when I finally, lastly, uncovered the Revealer… I experienced the Glorious, Overwhelming crossword Nirvana that momentarily stops my mind from thinking.
I’ve been doing crosswords for over 50 years,and have yet to experience the malaise others experience (too easy,too similar, too complicated, too much crosswordese, too many proper names I don’t know, fill in your pet peeve)…
because I approach each puzzle without expectations, just experience it for what it is.
Maybe I should write a book: The Zen of Crosswords.