Monday, April 20, 2026

BEQ 12:05 (Eric) [3.63 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
LAT 1:41 (Stella) [3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 2:46 (Sophia) [3.61 avg; 9 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker 11:49 (Eric) [3.85 avg; 10 ratings] rate it
Universal untimed (pannonica) [3.13 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (?) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
WSJ 5:16 (Jim Q) [3.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it

Freddie Cheng’s New York Times Crossword — Sophia’s Recap

New York Times, 04 20 2026, By Freddie Cheng

Hi folks! Back from a week off of blogging to attend the ACPT – it was great to see so many crossword folks there, and I hope to see even more next year when the tournament moves to Philly!

The revealer today is NATURE CALLS, and each of the five other theme answers has an animal sounds hidden within it. Here’s the full set:

• 19a [Low red card in a deck] – TWO OF HEARTS (contains woof)
• 21a [Locomotives, to kids] – CHOO CHOO TRAINS (contains hoot)
• 28a [“The worst!”] – THIS SUCKS (contains hiss)
• 38a [City and its surroundings] – METRO AREA (contains roar)
• 43a [“Don’t mention it — it was easy”] – NO TROUBLE AT ALL (contains
• 53a [“I need to use the bathroom” … or what the shaded squares spell?] – NATURE CALLS

I like this theme set a lot! CHOO CHOO TRAINS, NO TROUBLE AT ALL, and THIS SUCKS are my favorite answers. All of the hidden words span across several words, which is elegant. There is also a huge amount of theme material overall – six theme answers in any puzzle is a lot, but in a Monday puzzle where the fill has to be clean it’s especially impressive. This has led to a lot of three letter answers in the puzzle (and some less than stellar fill like CCELL and HIE), but that makes sense as a trade-off for the number of long theme answers.

Fill highlights: PRO BOWL, NIAGARA, SAVVY

Clue highlights: [Fig. from an out-of-order ATM?] for AMT, [Golfer McIlroy] for RORY – apt clue as he won the Masters earlier this month!

New to me: [“Sometimes you just gotta ___”] for LAUGH – I got this all from crosses, there are many words I would have put in this blank before LAUGH.

Happy Monday all!

Doug Peterson’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

The revealer at 63A [Finale that earns a standing ovation, and a feature of 17-, 24-, 38-, and 50-Across] is BIG FINISH, because each theme entry FINISHes with a synonym for BIG:

• 17A [Piano studio instrument] is a BABY GRAND.
• 24A [Indulging in a luxurious existence] is LIVING LARGE.
• 38A [Mascot on cans of peas and corn] is JOLLY GREEN GIANT.
• 50A [NHL team in Salt Lake City] is UTAH MAMMOTH.

Really nice fill on this one, with nothing to get in the way of a smooth solve and some really fun long Downs with OUTER SPACE and SELENATORS.

Ryan Gallagher’s Wall Street Journal crossword “Burning Question” — Jim Q’s write up

THEME: Phrases/words where the first part is a synonym for marijuana

WSJ • 4/20/26 • Mon • Burning Question • Ryan J. Gallagher • solution • 20260420

THEME ANSWERS:

• WEEDWACKER
• GRASSHOPPERS
• BLUNT INSTRUMENT
• JOINT CUSTODY
• (revealer) [Peter Tosh album, or a rallying cry referring to the starts of 17-, 23-, 36- and 44-Across] LEGALIZE IT

This theme feels a little dated to me, but that may just be because I can’t drive five miles in rural New York without passing a cannabis dispensary. As of now, recreational weed is legal in 24 states, with another 16 allowing medical use (which, practically speaking, often means recreational with easy-to-secure paperwork).

So the plea from Peter Tosh’s 50-year-old album seems to have been answered with a collective “sure, fine.”

Oh… right. It’s 4/20. That explains the timing. Unofficial pot holiday.

Okay, that reframes things. Still a slightly dated vibe, but now it reads as more knowingly tongue-in-cheek.

As for the grid, it was solid enough, though I hit a surprising number of slowdowns in the bottom half. Just one mental lapse after another. I hadn’t thought about Ralph NADER in a hot minute, EN ROUTE TO held me up longer than it should have, and BELLOW, BOLL, and SPATE all took a beat. No real excuse. Just one of those solves. My time ended up closer to a typical Tuesday.

OTHER THINGS:

• [Yard-trimming tool with an alliterative name] WEEDWACKER — Great product name. Is that official, or just universally agreed-upon slang?
• [Action star Chuck] NORRIS. We’ve been without him for almost exactly a month. 😢
• [Pair of hand drums in Indian music] TABLA. New to me, I think.
• [Say “I do” without ado?] ELOPE.  Nice clue!

A little name-heavy and slightly crosswordy in spots, but overall a pleasant enough solve.

3 stars.

Will Nediger’s Universal crossword, “Minitheme” — pannonica’s write-up

Universal • 4/20/26 • Mon • “Minitheme” • Nediger • solution • 20260420

A little wordplay.

• 17a. [Feeling?] SMALL PRICE TO PAY.
• 34a. [Starling?] MICROCELEBRITY.
• 52a. [Riffling?] SLIGHT VARIATION.

fee, star, riff

Just for random funsies, I checked to see what anagrams could be made from that letter string: fare stiffer, fire staffer, tariffs reef (reef as a verb). Some others not worth mentioning.

• 1d [Add as a bonus] TOSS IN. My brain completely misread and reformatted the clue to read [As an added bonus] so I put in TO BOOT.
• 29d [Cul-de-__ ] SAC, which comes from French, meaning ‘bottom of the bag’. Cul derives from Latin culus, which also connotes an animal’s rear end.
• 34d [Battleship failure] MISS. Referencing the game, either the tabletop or paper-based version.
• 37d [Camera __ first] EATS. New to me, but presumably a phrase from the phenomenon of food blogging.
• 25a [Megan Thee Stallion song named for a snake] BOA. Crossing 25d [“A scrub is a guy that thinks he’s fly / And is also known as a __” (TLC)] BUSTA. Didn’t know either of these, despite being aware of the song “No Scrubs”. Anyway, it was EASY (19d) enough to figure out the correct letter to place.
• 60a [Feudal lands] FIEFS. Oh, another potential anagram was rafter fiefs, but that’s rather meaningless.

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

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1878 — 4/20/26 (Click to Enlarge)

Once again, Brendan has labeled his themeless puzzle as “Hard” — but unlike last Monday’s offering, I found this one pretty breezy except for the NW corner.

Highlights and other points:

• 1A [“Couldn’t have said better myself”] HOW APT It fits the clue, but is this really something people say?
• 7A [Pulp frontman Cocker] JARVIS A nice gimme to get me started, though I’m not all that familiar with the band.
• 13A [Showy plant that scores 15 points in Scrabble] AZALEA If you only get 15 points for that word, either you didn’t have a good place to play it or there’s a lot about Scrabble you’ve yet to learn.
• 15A [Hurdle on the way to one’s Masters?] DOGLEG I knew this would be about the golf tournament.
• 16A [Heartburn treatment] PRILOSEC I’ve taken that OTC drug and knew the name, but I suppose even if one isn’t personally familiar with it, one might have seen ads for it.
• 18A [Macbeth’s title] The THANE of Cawdor, if I remember correctly.
• 20A [Reduce the effectiveness of weapons, as in video game] NERF I put that in immediately; though I don’t play video game, I’ve seen this usage in other crosswords. I promptly took it out when I thought 3D [DraftKings transaction] was TRADE, not WAGER (from what I can tell, my original answer would have been valid, too).
• 23A [Sint ___] MAARTEN The Dutch half of the Caribbean island St. Martin (the other have being French territory). It’s east of Hispaniola.
• 25A [“The Angry Hills” author Leon] URIS That’s not a title of his that I remember, but I can’t immediately think of another author named Leon.
• 29A [Doesn’t lose it] STAYS COOL I considered KEEPS COOL but waited for a crossing.
• 33A [Funeral cloths] PALLS I’m surprised that I have no memory of “pall” being defined as “a cloth spread over a coffin, hearse, or tomb.” I guess the definition I know — “something regarded as enveloping a situation with an air of gloom, heaviness, or fear” — is allegorical. Thanks for expanding my vocabulary, Brendan!
• 36A [Former congressman Engel] ELIOT I’d forgotten that name. He represented the northern Bronx and southern Westchester County for 16 years.
• 40A [Call in the hospital] OH, NURSE That’s a bit green-painty, no?
• 51A [Blunt object?] CIGAR Cute clue and timely for 4/20.
• 2D [Pungent-smelling allotrope] OZONE If I learned in high school chemistry what an allotrope is, I forgot long ago.
• 7D [Enlist] JOIN IN Not JOIN UP, which better fits the clue.
• 9D [Oreos’ filling?] REO I guess I have to give Brendan credit for a novel clue on this bit of crosswordese that doesn’t refer to a century-old auto manufacturer or a 1980s band named after one of the manufacturer’s signature vehicles.
• 14D [Stories set in exotic locations?] TRAVELOGUES I’m not sure the question mark is necessary.
• 18D [Consistent element in a story] THROUGH LINE Today I Learned the term was coined by the acting teacher Konstantin Stanislavski as a simplified way for actors to think about characterization.
• 24D [The “A” of “PDA”: Abbr.] ASST Nothing to do with a public display of affection.
• 27D [Store that sells falafel meatballs] IKEA Easy enough, though I haven’t been in an Ikea store in about 20 years. Question: Can something made (presumably) from chickpeas be called a “meatball?”
• 29D [You might build on it] SPEC Not SITE.

Kameron Austin Collins’s New Yorker Crossword — Eric’s Review

Kameron Austin Collins’s New Yorker Crossword — 4/20/26 (Click to Enlarge)

I’m always happy to see KAC’s byline on a puzzle, because the odds are high I’ll enjoy it. This lived up to my expectations, even if it was on the easy side for a Monday New Yorker puzzle.

And there’s a nice mix of answers here, with triple-stacked 11-letter answers in the NW and SE and four more elevens running Down in the other corners.

Highlights:

• 1A [Means of creating an antagonist, in reality TV] VILLAIN EDIT I don’t watch reality TV, but I’d seen this term in some previous crossword and was able to bring it up with some key letters in place.
• 15A [Epoch when Homo sapiens emerged] PLEISTOCENE This is something that I should’ve known immediately. But there’s lot of such things.
• 19A [“The Silence of the Lambs” director Jonathan] DEMME I missed this early on; it would have been a useful gimme.
• 37A [Low, continuous sound] WHIRR Not WHINE.
• 39A [Grp. associated with Romeo and Juliett] NATO I’ve read that the NATO alphabet doesn’t spell it “Juliet” because Francophones would likely pronounce it “Jul-ee-ay.”
• 42A [“The Death of ___” (2018 political satire)] STALIN It’s a very funny movie.
• 52A [___ modo (approximately)] GROSSO I don’t recall ever seeing that before.
• 62A [Indigenous people of the Northeast] LENNI LENAPE I’d heard the name LENAPE before, but the first bit was new to me. They inhabited an area more or less encompassing New Jersey, the southernmost parts of New York and Delaware.
• 3D [Krasner who was the subject of a MOMA retrospective shortly after her 1984 death] LEE A lengthy clue for a short answer. [Painter Krasner] would have been enough for me.
• 10D [People far from shore] INLANDERS I foolishly had ISLANDERS for a while, making it hard to see PLEISTOCENE.
• 12D [Speaking in tongues] GLOSSOLALIA I think I got that completely from the crosses.
• 23D [Protection against digital contact?] LATEX GLOVES Nice, somewhat misdirecting clue.
• 28D [Growth hormone, for one: Abbr.] PED Performance-enhancing drug.