LAT tk (pannonica) 
[3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 5:14 (Amy) 
[3.82 avg; 19 ratings] rate it
Universal 5:32 (Jim P) [4.00 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (tk) 
[2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Erica Hsiung Wojcik’s New York Times crossword — Amy’s recap
NY TImes crossword solution, 4/10/26 – no. 0410
I really enjoyed this one, and it felt like it was going faster than the clock showed at the end.
Fave fill: The four 15s framing up the puzzle are all great: “AM I LOSING MY MIND?”, SILENT TREATMENT, DRINKING IT ALL IN, and BRINGS UP THE REAR. “AND I QUOTE,” TURDUCKEN, and NEOSPORIN are also snappy.
New to me but gettable: 1D. [Pop-punk band named after a video game company, with “The”], ATARIS. They had one hit in 2003, but it’s a fun name.
Advanced vocab word of the day: 9D. [“Storage unit” of memory in the brain], ENGRAM.
Questionable phrase: 25A. [Totally down (for), SO IN. I don’t buy it as complete unto itself.
Four stars from me.
Dario Salvucci’s Universal crossword, “Roller Coaster”—Jim P’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases with circled letters (two of them in the entry above) representing a roller coaster’s loop-the-LOOP (68a, [Circle around, and a theme hint]).
Universal crossword solution · “Roller Coaster” · Dario Salvucci · Fri., 4.10.26
- 17a. [*Metallic house exterior] ALUM(INUM) SIDING.
- 35a. [*Conscious robot, some say] SENT(IENT) BEING.
- 42a. [*They’re in butter and beef] SAT(URAT)ED FATS.
- 63a. [*H2O particles] WATER MOLE(CULE)S.
I’m fairly certain I’ve seen this gimmick before, but that doesn’t take away from its effectiveness. It didn’t take too long to sort out the trick, but it was still enjoyable uncovering each entry.
I don’t know if it was deliberate or not, but I like the fact that the entries as presented in the grid could still be construed as actual (albeit nonsensical) phrases. ALUM SIDING and WATER MOLES are definitely clueable. SENT BEING and SATED FATS are a bit more difficult to define, but at least they’re comprised of actual words.
I do wish there was a bit more sparkly fill, but at least it’s smooth all around.
Clue of note: 2d. [Grainy building in a farm photo?]. SILO. A little bit forced but I like it.
Good grid. 3.5 stars.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Had a lot of fun with the NYT as well. I like the clue for NUMERO.
I’m reluctant to weigh in on weekend difficulty, since it could be insulting and since no doubt I’m just lacking in crossword skills. Still, I hope you guys will bear in mind that not everyone finds the same difficulty.
I can’t help noting a turn in a different direction at the NYT, a baby step toward TNY difficulty, which is to say gaining difficulty from pop culture names and phrases. Today, say, we have Bad Bunny, Dale Chihuly, Anora, ARES, ATARIS, “C-store,” women’s basketball, NORTON, “Awesome, slangily,” blue soup, and “Yas queen.” (I did finish, because of easier than usual other fill for a Friday.)
Could it be that really fast solvers happen to be a base that shares a certain cultural point of reference? Just yesterday, a skilled solver was stymied by Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, whereas to me that’s just basic literacy, but I realize it may no longer be true for others.
Similarly, if Maleska’s difficulty holds up, could that be because his puzzles are from a very long time ago? He lived in a different world, much as the people who find TNY puzzles often a “slog” and people who note their faves, like Amy each day, face different worlds today.
You raise good points, but as recently as 4-7 years ago, the Friday/Saturday puzzles were considerably harder. I’m doing them now, and was certainly just as much an over-educated GenX adult then as now, so I’m skeptical that it’s just that I happen to be more dialed in to pop culture references now than I was in (for example) 2019. (Frankly, the pop culture stuff you highlighted has always given me the hardest time solving, and it’s kind of a pet peeve. At least today’s were mostly guessable, but it’s still annoying to have something like IVAN clued as an Anora reference rather than something that would be squarely in my wheelhouse, like “Crazy [blank] — maneuver from The Hunt for Red October.)
Thanks. Yeah, to me IVAN is more likely to be “the Terrible” or a brother Karamazov.
I have three theories:
– Will’s editing staff is much, much younger than him. I’m sure they are doing their part to make clues and entries more contemporary.
– The timeline of “easier” Crosswords across the board roughly lines up with NYT’s efforts to publish more puzzles from underrepresented groups. This is a very good thing for reasons I don’t need to explain.
– I think themeless constructors just like going for unique entries and fun turns of phrase these days. (Though there are a few who still manage to keep the difficulty level high.) If you keep up with the language, those long entries are easier to figure out and that speeds up the solve.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
It was really satisfying to slide all the pieces into place on this one. ANDIQUOTE is just a great entry.
Not only did the ATARIS only have one hit, but it was a cover of Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer.”
https://youtu.be/Qt6Lkgs0kiU
Thanks for the link. I’d never heard that before. Their change of “Deadhead” to “Black Flag” amuses me.
I was always take them or leave them regarding Eagles, but for some reason, Don Henley’s original “Boys of Summer” ended up in my record collection.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2.5 stars
I don’t understand why the Friday (and Saturday) puzzles are so easy of late. (Had one of my fastest times ever for today’s — I literally just went top to bottom with almost no pauses or corrections.) All the long entries, while good, were quite obvious with only one or two letters (and sometimes not even that, like for BRINGINGUPTHEREAR and SILENTTREATMENT). The whole point of Friday and Saturday puzzles is that they are hard, no?
I don’t do crossword puzzles as some sort of art form to enjoy, in terms of the grid or the cleverness of clues, or the interestingness of the entries. I do them to present my mind with a difficult challenge that (hopefully) I will succeed at, but that is hard enough so that I will fail often enough to make it special when I do succeed. Blargh.
I’m guessing the puzzle tomorrow will be a doozy.
The Times has printed some books of Crosswords from the Eugene Maleska era, if you’re really wanting to feel the pain of a super hard puzzle. Check your local bookstore.
I’m working my way through one of those books, and I am conceiving a great dislike for the style of the puzzles. They’re difficult because they’re filled with obscure words, or familiar words clued by obscure ones. Some start to recur, though. ‘Glissaded’ as a clue for SLID has come up several times, likewise ‘Asian goat antelope’ for SEROW. YEGG has made a number of appearances (typically clued by ‘peterman’) and good old ADIT has shown up quite a bit. I could go on…
Yeah — ditto to what David L said. Not my cup of tea. I’m just working my way through much earlier Shortz-era Fridays and Saturdays back when they were much more difficult.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
You have to admit it was a nice themeless Wednesday puzzle though:)
Is there not a history of NYT Friday and Saturday puzzles skewing a bit easy during the weekend of ACPT? The theory, I think, is that Shortz et al. want to give contestants an easier warmup puzzle.
Or am I imagining reading that?
How many participate in ACPT? Maybe 1,000? Aren’t there over a million who solve the NYT puzzle? If my AI sourced numbers are correct, I don’t see modifying the NYT puzzles for ACPT. Obviously, I’m not in charge, though
I’m not saying it makes sense to cater to the relative few who compete at ACPT. But I remember, perhaps erroneously, reading somewhere that that is what they do.
The NYT played more like a Saturday to me. 1D and 2D both took me a while to see, and I had SOLD for SOIN, which caused more problems. And although I’ve heard and seen the phrase ‘Yas queen!’ I didn’t know what it actually meant.
I liked the long answers, though, and thought it was a very well constructed puzzle.
Hi – does anyone know if there is a problem with the Andrews and McMeel website? I tried to get the Universal puzzle, and got 404.
Just tried the link on the Today’s Puzzles section and it seems to be working
UNIVERSAL: There still seems to be a problem as of Friday morning–9:20 am, Arizona time. Clicking on the HTML link does indeed produce the 404 error and not allowing access to yesterday’s puzzle. Worse is clicking on the Across Lite link to get today’s puzzle which causes an attempt to reinstall Across Lite which, of course, is already installed. This seems to be happening with the other Across Lite puzzle links for WSJ and LAT. Any hope for a fix soon? Thanks! David
The links to the Across Lite puzzles all seem fine. I’m not sure what is causing your attempt to reinstall the app, but it’s local to your machine. You can try right-clicking the link, downloading it to your computer and then opening in locally.
Thanks so much, Martin. No idea why this suddenly started happening. I reinstalled Across Lite. Things seem OK now. Keep your fingers crossed. David
Still can’t get A and McM to work, but thanks for turning me on to Across Lite, which provides an adequate work-around.
Tony –
Thanks, but it’s still not working for me. Could you post the URL that you used?
The AcrossLite link seems to be the only way.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
NYY: An absolutely delightful Friday puzzle! Such great long answers! I must confess that I was unfamiliar with The Beatles song “No Reply”. Thanks Erica for this wonderful solving experience!
+1
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
+1
“No Reply” is a song that you probably wouldn’t know unless you are really into the band or you are old enough to have heard a lot of Beatles albums in the 1960s (they broke up before I started buying records, but I had four older siblings who all listened to them).
I know the title but can’t come up with the melody and certainly not the lyrics. I’m guessing it’s from Rubber Soul or another album from that 1965—1967 period. If I recall correctly, it’s a John Lennon song.
It’s from Beatles For Sale, which for my money is the least great Beatles album.
You’ll probably recognize it right away when you hear it.
https://youtu.be/YgFo9STa70E
Yep. I remembered the song immediately. Thanks for the link.
I haven’t heard that album in over 50 years. The AllMusic Guide reviewer seems to agree with you: “It was inevitable that the constant grind of touring, writing, promoting, and recording would grate on the Beatles, but the weariness of Beatles for Sale comes as something of a shock.”
Oddly, AMG also gives the album four and a half stars. (But I’ve seen similar discrepancies at AMG with regards to other albums.)
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Some really nice stuff here. I liked DRINKING IT ALL IN, SILENT TREATMENT and AM I LOSING MY MIND? in particular. And TENABLE is just a great word to have around.
But boy I was slow. I started last night when I was barely awake and got at most a third of a it — and some of what I typed was just garbage. My eye-hand coordination seems particularly bad today, as finishing it involved a lot of typos.
Oops! I hadn’t read Amy’s review before I commented and didn’t mean to parrot so much of it.
Not remotely a problem, Eric!
Really enjoyed the NYT puzzle, but am puzzled by “numero” being clued as “Once, e.g.” Can someone explain? Thanks much!
“Once” is Spanish for “eleven.”
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 4.5 stars
Very creative puzzle, and a fun solve. TY to Dario Salvucci!