Monday, April 13, 2026

BEQ 26:15 (Eric) [4.25 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
LAT 2:00 (Stella) [3.40 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
NYT 5:15 (Eric) [3.36 avg; 11 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker 7:43 (Amy) [3.85 avg; 10 ratings] rate it
Universal untimed (pannonica) [3.38 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (?) [3.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
WSJ 4:01 (Jim Q) rate it

Congratulations to all who participated in the just-concluded American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, but especially to grand prize winner Erik Agard!

Brad Wiegmann’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s Review

Brad Wiegmann’s New York Times Crossword — 4/13/26 (Click to Enlarge)

It took me almost as long to figure out that the New York Times puzzle folks seem to have bungled the highlighting on the theme answers as it took me to solve the puzzle. Maybe the first string all went to Stamford for ACPT?

I’d have been lost trying to figure out the theme without the revealer:

• 17A [Rap songs and such] HIP HOP MUSIC
• 24A [Places to stick wallets] HIP POCKETS
• 39A [Risky time for beach property owners] HURRICANE SEASON Where I live, the “risky time” is wildfire season. This year could be bad, as we didn’t get a lot of snow. I’m not sure what other answer could have been used here, so I’m glad this didn’t get a cute clue.
• 49A [Singer with the 1961 #1 hit “Hit the Road Jack”] RAY CHARLES
• 62A [“Woo-hoo!” … as suggested by the starts of 17-, 24-, 39- and 49-Across] THREE CHEERS

Thus HIP HIP HUR RAY. Very basic stuff, as appropriate for Monday.

Other stuff:

• 1A [Undergoes a chemical change] REACTS I’m a bit sleepy, and this did not come to mind as quickly as I would have liked.
• 31A [Paula of “American Idol”] ABDUL I’ve never watched that show, but it’s been around long enough that it’s hard to not have heard of her in that capacity.
• 60A [Tehre are two in tihs clue] TYPOS And probably 10 in my grid as I was solving.
• 2D [Send out of the country, as a disgraced leader] EXILE What a great idea!
• 30D [Baking quantity] CUP Crossword solving habits made me try TSP first.
• 46D [Afghan language] PASHTO Another instance of something that should have popped right in but that took a cross or two.
• 56D [Rich cake whose name comes from German] TORTE Ultimately, it comes from the Late Latin torta, “round loaf,” which is also the source of “tortilla.”

Pranav Daryanani’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Los Angeles Times 4/13/26 by Pranav Daryanani

BREAKING NEWS: This puzzle appears to be a debut, so congratulations to the constructor! BREAKING NEWS is also the revealer at 54A, clued as [“This just in!,” or what 20-, 33-, and 40-Across are doing?]. That’s because each of the three answers cited in the clue has the word NEWS “broken” by the rest of the phrase. In each case, NE is up front and WS is at the end:

• 20A [“Bridgerton” and “Stranger Things,” for two] is NETFLIX SHOWS.
• 33A [Cushions for napping on long flights] is NECK PILLOWS.
• 40A [Statutes that attempt to ensure a carbon-neutral future] is NET-ZERO LAWS.

I like the first two theme answers better than I like the third, which feels a little green paint-y to me. I also wish there weren’t two 10-letter Across entries (GUILT TRIPS and VARIETY ACT). Both are very good entries, it’s just that they’re almost as long as the two shortest theme entries. I was genuinely thrown by it while solving (because I wondered why VARIETY ACT didn’t fit the pattern), and I think for beginner solvers who are trying to catch onto a theme, that might be even more confusing. IMO these types of fun longer non-theme answers are better as Downs (or as Acrosses if the theme involves Down entries).

I do like the fill a lot: As mentioned, GUILT TRIPS and VARIETY ACT are great except for their placement; I also like Steve CARELL, HYGIENE, GET WELL, and KEWPIE.

Ella Dershowitz’s Wall Street Journal crossword “Multipurpose” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: The word USE can be found jumbled in common phrases

WSJ • 4/13/26 • Mon • “Multipurpose” • Ella Dershowitz • solution • 20260413

THEME ANSWERS:

• BLUES BAR
• SUEZ CANAL
• CLOSE UP
• ORPHEUS
• CANE SUGAR
• (revealer) [Like developments blending residential, commercial and cultural spaces, and a hint to this puzzle’s theme] MIXED USE. 

Happy Monday to everyone! A quick shout out to the awesome people I met or re-met at the ACPT… what a fantastic (and fantastically nerdy) bunch. The puzzles were all top-notch as well, even though I floundered and botched more than one (here’s lookin’ at you, north-middle section of puzzle #2!)

Anyway, this offering from Ella Dershowitz is a solid, ideal Monday puzzle. I peeped the title, saw the circles, and correctly guessed the gist of the theme prior to starting, which is a rarity for me. There’s something satisfying about that.

BLUES BAR, SUEZ CANAL, ORPHEUS (as clued with a Hadestown reference), and CANE SUGAR (as clued: [Ingredient of Mexican Coke that leads some to prefer it to American Coke]) were my faves to uncover.

The shortness of the themers allows for a lot of other longer, fun fill in the grid. Most notably SAMESIES, HERE YOU GO!, DRUNK FOOD (A+), FOLK ART, EARFULS, MISMATCH, and SUNRAY. That’s a lot of good stuff, especially for a Monday. And minimal crud in the fill. ARFS ain’t my fave, but I’ll take it if it’s the reason I was fed DRUNK FOOD!

In fact, I think the fill may have upstaged the themers a bit, but that’s only in retrospect and it’s fine.

4.25 stars from me.

Elizabeth Gorski’s New Yorker crossword—Amy’s recap

New Yorker crossword solution, 4/13/26 – Gorski

Quickly, so I can get back to work:

Fave fill: SPLATTER, FINGERPRINT, UNSCRAMBLES, ARLINGTON.

Question: Is I OVERSLEPT good fill or a gratuitous pronoun + verb combo?

Didn’t know that VICTORIAN CORSET was a specific thing, but apparently the Edwardian corsets that followed arched the back more, embiggening the bust and flattening the stomach. Re: both of them, ouch.

Question: Are CLASS PLAYS a thing? At my high school, plays weren’t limited to a single class year or classroom.

Crosswordese: NACRE, a different ERLE, guess-the-Roman-numeral LEO V, foreign ARTE, letter run RSTU.

New to me: [Conductor Järvi], PAAVO and [Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean], MCVAY. Overall, a lot of names in this one.

Fave clue: [Get the ball rolling, in a way], PUTT.

3.5 stars from me.

Tom Kain’s Universal crossword, “Reaction Time” — pannonica’s write-up

Universal • 4/13/26 • Mon • “Reaction Time” • Kain • solution • 20260413

The circled squares tell the story, elucidated by the revealer.

• 46a^R [Initiate fission … or what 20-, 26- and 41-Across do?] SPLIT THE ATOM.
• 20a. [Defying comprehension] UNFATHOMABLE.
• 26a. [Underground site in France’s capital] PARIS CATACOMBS.
• 41a. [Places to go in airports?] BATHROOM STALLS. Why airports specifically? Seems as if it’s just in service of a mild misdirection, which departs from the tone of the other theme clues.

So, in nuclear fission atoms are indeed separated and do move apart from each other, but working from the revealer I would have expected all of the theme answers to simply have the letters of A-T-O-M separated by a single square. Perhaps varying where the split occurs? No doubt a bit less dynamic than this version, and that’s just my take.

• 1d [SoCal home of the Aztecs] SDSU, San Diego State University.
• 5d [One of music’s “Three Bs”] BRAHMS. Classical music, obviously. The others are Bach and Beethoven.
• 7d [They’re AWOL from military time!] AMPM. Not sure about the AWOL and the exclamation point.
• 29d [Morning jolt source] ALARM. Coming right after 28d [Chocolate bean] CACAO, I was naturally thinking about coffee-type things.
• 37d [Failed a polygraph, say] TOLD A LIE. Maybe.
• 39d [Primitive flatulence simulators] ARMPITS. What an odd clue.
• 48d [Paper-__ ] THIN.
  
• 50d [Little] TINY, like an atom?
• 53d [Blog feed letters] RSS, which stands for really simple syndication.
• 23a [Top 40 medium] RADIO.
  
  (“Radio Girl”, by The Henrys)
• 36a [Things might be drawn to it] SCALE. Nice clue.
• 37a [Three-__ sloth] TOED. Referring to the digits on the forelimbs. Three-toed sloths comprise the genus Bradypus and are not as aggressive as Choloepus, their two-toed counterparts. Regardless, they don’t make good pets, although some people have attempted this. Folks, keeping exotic pets is bad!
• 39a [Not together] APART. Had this entry been one over—that is, in the central across spot—it would certainly have constituted a theme element. Located here, however, it elicits a raised eyebrow.
• 58a [Onetime currency in 15-Across] LIRA. 15a [Citta del Vaticano’s locale] ROMA. Despite 58-across referring to Rome, it got me wondering about the currency of Vatican City. They issue their own Euro coins (no banknotes), and prior to that (since 1929) it was a special issue of Italian LIRA.
• 62a [Green-__ monster] EYED. Why green anyway? Pretty sure it comes from Shakespeare. Let’s check. Yes it’s from Othello. And speculation is that green is associated with envy based on the four classical humours. See this comment citing the OED at stackexchange.

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1878 — Eric’s Review

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1878 — 4/13/26 (Click to Enlarge)

I suppose every so often, one of Brendan’s “Hard” puzzles will live up to that label. Today’s did, at least for me in my sleepy state. That’s unfortunate, as there is a lot of nice fill in this grid. (Almost all of the 10- and 12-letter answers are kinda fun.)

Part of my difficulty was the four pairs of answers (by my count) that are fairly meaningless cross-references. I’ve been spoiled by solving New York Times crosswords online, where at least those kinds of cross-referenced answers are typically highlighted in the grid. Having to look for tiny little number in a grid or clue list is just annoying.

Stuff that caught my half-open eye:

• 5A [Use a 26-Across] SAIL/26A [See 5-Across] SHIP These are simple, obvious answers. But you need enough crossings in one answer to infer that answer, and even then it’s not a sure thing: I got SAIL when I had nothing of SHIP, so the answer could have been BOAT or JUNK (in the nautical sense) or probably lots of other thing. What irks me about cross-references like these two is that until you get one of the answers, there are just too many possibilities for what the pair could be. 
• 9A [“Leave already!”] SCRAM The other possibilities that came to mind are four-letter words like SHOO and SCAT, so this one was fairly easy.
• 14A [See 54-Across] STEP/54A [14-Across, in Ávila] PASO OK, so 54A is Spanish. That certainly narrows down the possibilities. Even when I had filled in 14A from crosses, I couldn’t immediately think of the Spanish for “step.” My Spanish vocabulary is pretty limited, but I do know that one.
• 15A [“Nearly done”] ALMOST HERE I wonder if, when he wrote that clue, Brendan thought that answer had two T’s in a row. I struggle to imagine someone saying “almost here” without some pronoun for the subject (“They’re almost here”). And I struggle to imagine using the phrase in the sense it’s clued.
• 17A [Makeshift wallets, at times] BRAS Not in my limited experience. And does an article of clothing into which you tuck one or two bills make it a “wallet”?
• 25A [___ Masters (most-decorated US Winter Paralympian of all-time)] OKSANA Not a name I knew, and a bit hard to put together since the surname doesn’t hint at her Ukrainian birth. But her story looks interesting; she had several birth defects due to radiation from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
• 30A [Soccer fan’s cry] CHANT A slightly deceptive clue in that I was expecting the answer to be more specific to association football. 
• 33A [Debate club assignment] TOPIC I don’t like public speaking and can’t imagine ever wanting to be in a debate clue. I considered ISSUE at first and then decided to wait for a cross or two.
• 34A [“___ the first cock his matin rings” (“L’Allegro,” Milton)] ERE The answer seemed pretty obvious despite my never having read any Milton. It just didn’t seem to work with the crosses (until it did).
• 35A [Ned who won the 2004 Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres] ROREM An educated guess; the American composer, who died in 2022, is the only “Ned” in the arts that I can think of offhand. It helps that he had a grid-friendly surname.
• 36A [“Are things bad for me?”] AM I COOKED I can imagine saying “I’m cooked” (and may have even said that myself), but “Am I cooked?” just seems a bit strange to me?
• 38A [She directed Margot and Ryan in “Barbie”] GRETA Gerwig. I still haven’t seen that movie, but this should have been a game anyway. I just blanked on her first name.
• 41A [Character by 29-Down] ARAMIS/29D [See 41-Across] Alexandre DUMAS At least this pairing hints that 29D is likely a writer. Once I had ARAMIS, DUMAS was a gimme. 
• 42A [Monaco honey] AMIE Not AMOR (which is Italian, not French).
• 48A [___ Noir (chess piece company)] REX I’ve never heard of that company and will probably forget it by bedtime. (And what’s with the half-Latin, half-French name?)
• 5D [Home to the fennec fox] SAHARA Not AFRICA.
• 9D [One delivering a revealing message?] STRIPPERGRAM It took me too long to sort that one out.
• 20D [Was debriefed?] WENT COMMANDO Cute clue. Distracting image. 
• 27D [No miracle performer] MERE MORTAL Nice fill to see in a grid.
• 28D [What syringes are designed for] ONE-TIME USE A hard but fair clue.
• 31D [Amber-colored beverage] PEKOE I rarely drink tea and thought first of beers and then of CIDER. 
• 32D [Fabulous lesson] MORAL “Fabulous” in the adjectival sense, relating to a fable.
• 37D [Circular seals] O-RINGS Again, something that took longer to figure out than it probably should have.
• 41A [___ Quijano (Don Quixote)] ALONSO I should probably read Cervantes’ novel someday. Any recommended translations? 
• 45D [Broccoli, kale, and cabbage, e.g.] COLE My dictionary labels that as “Mainly archaic.” It means a “brassica,” which is “a plant of a genus that includes cabbage, turnip, Brussels sprout, and mustard.” It’s stuff like this that made the puzzle feel like a Saturday Stumper to me. 
• 49D [System with the Game Pass streaming option] XBOX Until I figured out REX, this could have been almost anything. “Streaming option” made me think it was passive video streaming service like HULU.