Thursday, April 9, 2026

BEQ 16:34 (Eric) [2.50 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Fireball untimed (Jenni) [3.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
LAT tk (Gareth) [2.50 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 7:27 (ZDL) [3.22 avg; 18 ratings] rate it
Universal 4:26 (Eric) [3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today 10:59 (Emily) rate it
WSJ 8:15 (Jim Q) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it

Peter A. Collins’s Fireball Crossword “Make It Quick” – Jenni’s write-up

This was on the easy side for a Fireball, which was fine with me. It’s been a day.

I knew there had to be a rebus as soon as I got to 2d, [Shakespearean king]. I am not aware of a four-letter king in the Bard’s oeuvre whose name starts with C and I was quite sure that MCAT was correct for 1a.

• The king is CL{AUDI}US, crossing S{AUDI} ARABIA at 17a, so I knew we were looking for cars.
• 10d [Broken] is OUT O{F ORD}ER crossing 25a [Abandoned] – LEFT {FOR D}EAD.
• 39d [“Scandal” creator] is S{HONDA} RHIMES crossing 42a [All-night fundraiser, perhaps]: MARAT{HON DA}NCE.
• 60d [Sugar Bowl sponsor before Allstate] is NO{KIA} crossing 67a [Aspen and Vail, e.g.] for S{KI A}REA.

“Make It Quick” = rebus of car types. It’s a bit more challenging when the rebi are not symmetrical. It was a solid, satisfying, smooth solve. And I’ve used up my “s” quota for the day.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: that Conan O’Brien voiced the RIDDLER in a Lego movie. A Batman Lego movie, apparently. The mind boggles.

Susan Gelfland’s Universal Crossword “Food Supply” — Eric’s Review

The theme hides in plain sight here — it’s all in the clues, with the puns indicated by question marks:

• 20A [Lemon source?] AUTO AUCTION I tried DEALER first, but of course that’s a letter short.
• 33A [source?] POWER GRID
• 41A [Cookie source?] WEB SERVER I’m not the most technically savvy person around, but I would have guessed that it’s the web sites and not the servers that source digital cookies. (Is it just me, or is everyone having to confirm their cookie choices more recently than a few months ago?)
• 52A [Bread source] SAVINGS BANK

The theme snuck up on me (OK, I figured it out after completing the grid), but I like it. Each theme clue contains a food item that has a slang(y) meaning that’s very different from the food meaning. The “sources” are all different but they’re undeniably sources. It’s a little punny, but not cringingly so.

Other stuff:

• 1A [Grated lemon peel] ZEST Is the food meaning of “lemon” meant to throw us off? There are other ways to clue ZEST.
• 19A [“August: ___ County” (Streep film)] OSAGE A gimme, though I’ve not seen it. Tracy Letts’s play won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008, so maybe the movie isn’t as sappy as I’m afraid it might be. If you’ve seen it, please comment yea or nay. Streep is good in just about anything, but I’m still not at all interested in Mamma Mia!
• 24A [Lofgren of the E Street Band] NILS Another gimme; we saw Springsteen a couple of times in the 1980s after Lofgren had joined the band. And I’ve known him as a solo artist and a member of Neil Young’s band Crazy Horse since the 1970s.
• 27A [What you can’t do after moving your king, in chess] CASTLE My husband tried to teach me chess decades ago. We didn’t get very far, but I know (thanks to crosswords) that “castling” is some sort of move.

• 30A [Mythical wife of Jason] MEDEA “Jason” and “Medea” hang out together in a crevice in my head, but that’s about it. I didn’t know they were married. But the little I just read about the myth has me curious to know more.
• 43A [High-pitched woodwind] FIFE Admit it: You tried OBOE, didn’t you? (Crosses spared me that misstep.)
• 65A [What drivers honk] HORN A sincere request: Don’t use your horn unless someone’s about to hit you. It’s not there for expressing your rage at other drivers. That’s why you have a middle finger (two if you’re lucky). (Not that I’m encouraging “obscene” gestures; my middle finger has got me a lecture more than once.)
• 4D [City where the Blue Jays play home games] TORONTO A gimme, which is unusual for me with sports stuff. But why the wordy clue? [Blue Jay’s city] is all you need. (I find it particularly strange that I mostly notice verbose clues in Universal puzzles, given that they’re the only publisher I know of that has a clue character limit (1600 characters, excluding clue numbers but including spaces, for a 15X15 puzzle). I’ve had trouble sometimes trying to stay within that limit.)
• 47D [Place where packages may be delivered] PORCH Poll time: What’s a more unscrupulous act: Stealing a package off someone’s porch or stealing a bicycle? (Yes, I’m  still bitter about the bikes I’ve had stolen.)

Barbara Lin’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up

Time: 7:27

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

Today’s theme: just desserts

• PINEAPPLE upside-down cake
• BANANA split
• APPLE turnover
• BLUEBERRY crumble

They’re also all fruit-based.  Is that part of the theme too?  In any event, it was just peachy.

Cracking: NOODLE BOWL

Slacking:”Shall I put on some Beethoven?” — “Nah, BACH IT”

Sidetracking: MALIBU Stacy

 

 

 

 

Brian Callahan’s USA Today Crossword, “Bananas Foster” — Emily’s write-up

A sweet treat today!

Theme: each themer contains –FOSTER– scrambled

Themers:

• 19a. [Traditional Russian dish cooked with smetana], BEEFSTROGANOFF
• 37a. [Festivus tradition that involves wrestling the head of the household], FEATSOFSTRENGTH
• 52a. [Tries to finish in first place], GOESFORTHEGOLD

Another themer set of a wide range of topics with BEEFSTROGANOFF, FEATSOFSTRENGTH, and GOESFORTHEGOLD. For me, I needed a few crossings to get each started but everything was fairly crossed so they weren’t too tricky to fill.

Favorite fill: ABASH, FWIW, and RUFFLE

Stumpers: EGONWODIM (new to me), IMSODOWN (needed crossings), and ETUDE (“scale” and “arpeggio” came to mind first)

A longer solve for me today. I found the cluing tricker and some entires took me a while to fill. Overall, there’s a lot of fresh fill and the grid design offers a great flow. How’d you all do?

4.0 stars

~Emily

Tom Kain’s Wall Street Journal crossword “Ill-Informed” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: Phrases that mean “NO CLUE” are in the puzzle, sans clue.

THEME ANSWERS:

• I HAVE NO IDEA
• DON’T ASK ME
• I COULDN’T SAY
• (revealer) [What 18-, 37- and 58-Across all have…and mean] NO CLUE

Fun puzzle today. I mean, I had NO CLUE what was going on and wasn’t able to unveil any of the themers fully before getting the revealer. I usually like to avoid the revealer until last and try to figure out what I can without it, but it was in an unusual spot (due to its 6-letter nature, perhaps?), so I couldn’t intuitively avoid it.

With a focused theme and a grid that isn’t packed with entries that put a lot of strain on the fill, there is a lot of nice breathing room, and Kain took advantage of that to pack in a lot of nice seven-letter fill entries: HOT RODS, OVERACT, PORK FAT, BOOED AT, EKED OUT (the whole phrase!), TURNOUT, etc.

One nit I have would be that the casual nature of the revealer doesn’t fully match the themers. NO CLUE = COULDN’T SAY or NO IDEA more-so than I COULDN’T SAY and I HAVE NO IDEA.

Also, the word NO feels like a bit of a dupe in NO CLUE / I HAVE NO IDEA  since it’s central the theme. If NO were repeated casually in the fill it would bother me much less. Another alternative might be to have a revealer like AIN’T GOT A CLUE or something, which would avoid the NO dupe and possibly provide a more satisfying revealer.

But alas, those are nits in the big picture.

OTHER THINGS:

• [Central section of a bicycle] FRAME SET. I just call it the FRAME. Didn’t know SET was part of that term. That’s embarrassing considering I’ve done quite a bit of cycling.
• [Environs for Marco Polo?] POOL. Not sure if the ? is necessary here.
• [Companion of magenta, yellow and black] CYAN. Ah. And with that, the printer ink quartet is complete.
• [Star fish?] PISCES. Good clue. Took me way longer than it should have to get this one.
• [Little john?] LAV. Cute.
• [Frat house handout] SOLO CUP. Nice.
• [Make the restaurant regret its buffet pricing] EAT A TON. Is that an language phrase? I suppose so. It’s a fun clue / answer pair regardless!

3.25 stars from me today!

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1877 “Speed Demons” — Eric’s Review

Maybe I’m just having a bad day (too little sleep will do that, and having the main part of the dinner you’re going to serve guests appear to not be working doesn’t help). But after 16+ minutes, I unstuck myself from the NE corner by revealing an answer or two.

Or maybe my reaction to the theme is just sour grapes. The 48th Annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament starts tomorrow and I had hoped to be there. Instead, I’m over 2,000 miles away.

Circled letters in the wacky theme answers hold the surnames of gents who have done well at ACPT over the last 25 or 30 years:

• 17A [Hardly heavy head cases?] THIN MANIACS Tyler Hinman, a seven-time winner.
• 23A [Part of a story that features benevolence?] PLOT KINDNESS David Plotkin, who won the Junior Division in 2013 and 2015 and came in third a few other years.
• 35A [Arable place of Ames?] IOWA GARDEN Erik Agard, the 2018 winner and 2014 junior division winner.
• 43A [Guy who guides Dad on the field?] PAPA’S COACH Paolo Pasco, who won in 2024 and 2025 and Division B in 2022 and the Junior Division.
• 50A [Non-crazy influencers?] SANE DIGERATI Will Nediger, who has a second and third place finishes to his credit.
• 62A [Part of Armenia’s capital that has no crime?] SAFE YEREVAN Dan Feyer, a nine-time winner. I should probably have been able to get the city without crosses; I’ve certainly heard of it, but nothing came to mind.

(Apologies, gentlemen, if I inaccurately described anyone’s ACPT prowess.)

About halfway through, I realized that the circled letters in 17A spelled “Hinman,” and I knew what the theme was. I certainly don’t object to recognizing these guys for the crossword whizzes they — I can never hope to be that fast — but to make this theme work, Brendan had to come up with some really ridiculous phrases. And they’re just too ridiculous, and not funny enough, for me.

Other stuff:

• 8A [Coup group] JUNTA I’m fairly certain I’d have gotten this on my own if I had had any idea about 8D [Stand-up Kirkman] JEN. I’ve never heard of Ms Kirkman and (my bad) the only names I could think of that worked with what I had were BEN and KEN.
• 39A [Out lines?] ALIBI Cute clue, and it avoids my pet peeve about the way the meaning of “alibi” has been warped to include “excuse.”
• 41A [Its first original broadcast covered Senate hearings on the Vietnam War] National Public Radio. I can’t say that I knew this, but I did know that NPR started around 1970.
• 60A [Totally average] FAIR I’m not sure this clue works.
• 61A [It’s located at Fort Meade, MD] NSA HQ The added letters seem extraneous to me.
• 68A [Model Hadid] GIGI I’ve heard of Ms Hadid, but tried GINA first.
• 72A [“I’m totes confused”] WUT Not WHA.
• 4D [Governor during 9/11] George PATAKI Even if the Across answers hadn’t spotted me a letter or two, I think I’d have realized “Governor” meant “New York governor.”
• 11D [Acronym about #47’s inability to finish things] TACO “Trump Always Chickens Out” is new to me. I do as much as I can to avoid reading about him or listening to him.
• 20D [English cathedral city near London] ST. ALBANS A few weeks ago, someone questioned why I didn’t like theme that make use of the Down answers instead of the Acrosses. This isn’t a theme answer, but it shows my difficulty making sense of Down answers. I had STAL____ and could not see what the rest of it was.
• 24D [He’s Amin guy] IDI No, he’s a despot who died in 2003.
• 26D [Goal scorers, in soccer] STRIKERS A sports answer that should’ve been a gimme for me, as I sometimes watch association football, but I blanked on it.
• 31D [Strong weed] ENDO That slang for cannabis was not in my vocabulary.
• 49D [Game that has its faults] TENNIS Cute.
• 51D [Cauliflower ___ (rugby injury)] EAR I’d heard of prizefighters developing a cauliflower ear, but hadn’t realized it’s a risk in rugby, too. But it makes sense and was easy enough to get.
• 53D [“The Empire Strikes Back” director Kershner] IRVIN My biggest “should have had that one right” moment was spelling the name with a W instead of a V. It was a big deal when The Empire Strikes Back came out and it wasn’t directed by George Lucas.
• 57D [Symbols in hieroglyphics] ASPS/63D [Symbol in hieroglyphics] EYE I didn’t register that clue echo when I was solving. Usually, that kind of thing throws me for a few seconds.

Despite my grumpy-ish review, a sincere good luck to anyone participating in ACPT this weekend. May you exceed your expectations for yourself!