Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Jonesin’ untimed (Jenni) [3.13 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
LAT 3:57 (Erin) [3.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 6:17 (Eric) [3.23 avg; 13 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker 6:49 (Eric) [2.67 avg; 9 ratings] rate it
Universal untimed (Eric) [3.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Sophia) rate it
Xword Nation tk (Ade) rate it
WSJ 6:49 (Jim Q) [2.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Here’s a Quarter” — it’s anniversary time! – Jenni’s write-up

The puzzle comes with a message: “Since May 2001, Jonesin’ crosswords have featured fresh topical clues. As Jonesin’ celebrates 36-Across, here are actual fresh-at-the-time clues from my prior puzzles, one per year from 2001-2025!  Thank you to all the editors, publishers and solvers over the years!–MJ” Congrats! That’s quite a run.

This one was a real challenge for me. I got almost all of the throwback answers. Unfortunately some of the fill hit my pop-cult blank spots and I had a true Natick in the NE. It’s a long list of theme clues, so let’s dive in.

Jonesin’, April 28, 2026, Matt Jones, “Here’s a Quarter” – it’s anniversary time!, solution grid

• 1 [*2018 documentary about a Supreme Court justice {#887, June 2018} {As Jonesin’ celebrates 36-Across, we’re revisiting one clue from every years since 2001!}] is RBG.
• 4d [*2021 U.K. award for “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” actor Toby Jones {#1030, February 2021}] is OBE.
• 12d [*Patriots defensive back who scored during the 2002 Super Bowl {#38, March 2002}] is TY LAW.
• 13a [*___ & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming” {#1139, April 2023}] is BONO.
• 14a [*Amanda who came back to the US in 2011 {#542, October 2011}] is KNOX.
• 20d [*”The ___” (podcast hosted by Michael Barbaro and Sabrina Tavernise) {#1086,  March 2022}] is DAILY.
• 21a [*Moises who missed the ball destroyed 2/25/04 {#139, March 2004}] is ALOU. I know Moises ALOU. I have no idea what the rest of the clue refers to. Someone please enlighten me!
• 26a [*”The Grand Budapest Hotel” director Anderson {#678, June 2014}] is WES.
• 30d [*Rap group with a 2013 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination {#646, October 2013}] is NWA.
• 33a [*Actor Idris of 2017’s “The Dark Tower” {#844, August 3017}] is ELBA.
• 34d [*French electronic group with the 2007 album “Pocket Symphony” {#301, March 2007}] is AIR.
• 36a [A quarter of a century] is SILVER ANNIVERSARY.
• 43a [*2012 acronym akin to “Be adventurous” {#588, September 2012}] is YOLO.
• 45a [*Emperor who abdicated on 4/30/2019 {#944, July 2019}] is AKIHITO.
• 47d [**Brosnan/Rush movie “The ___ of Panama” {#2, May 2001}] is TAILOR.
• 53d [*Amanda who retired, then “unretired” from acting in 2010 {#481, August 2010}] is BYNES.
• 54a [*2008 kids’ movie “___’s Island” {#366, June 2008}] is NIM.
• 57d [*___ Stanley Gardner (author whose Perry Mason character inspired the 2020 HBO series) {#995, June 2020}] is ERLE.
• 60a [*Eugene of “A Mighty Wind” {#106, July 2003}] is LEVY. No relation.
• 61a [*National Historic Landmark designated 3/27/06 {#249, March 2006}] is GRACELAND.
• 62d [*Show whose season finale was directed by Quentin Tarantino {#206, May 2005}] is CSI.
• 64d [*”Trap Queen” Fetty ___{#746, September 2015}] is WAP.
• 65a [*Some family speakers at a notable June 2016 funeral {#785, June 2016}] are ALIS.
• 66a [*Cookie that partnered with Coca-Cola {#1223, November 2024}] is OREO.
• 67a [*2025 Best Picture Oscar Winner {#1240,  March 2025}] is ANORA.
• 70a [*Org. that requested the Pet Shop Boys change their name to the Rescue Shelter Boys {#423, July 2009}] is PETA because of course it is.

Phew. 25 years of consistently entertaining and well-constructed puzzles – quite an achievement! I love that we have the option of supporting constructors directly through subscriptions like this. It’s the Golden Age of crosswords!

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: I did not know that the SAJA Boys are the antagonists in “K-Pop Demon Hunters,” I didn’t know the JODY Watley sang “Looking for a New Love,” and I’ve never heard of EVAN DANDO of the Lemonheads, so that was my NE Natick.

Kevin Christian and Andrea Carla Michaels’ Universal Crossword “Crunch Time” — Eric’s Review

Kevin Christian and Andrea Carla Michaels’ Universal Crossword “Crunch Time” — 4/28/26 (Click to Enlarge)

I have to wonder if Lebron James wants a cut of the constructors’ payment for this puzzle. There’s some tasty stuff going on here:

• 17A [Cuban mover and shaker, in a way] SALSA DANCER
• 26A [Super corny] CHEESEBALL
• 36A [Physical world, in cyberpunk] MEATSPACE I don’t read much science fiction, but I picked up this term from an AV Club crossword I did a few years ago.
• 50A [Reaction to a traumatic  experience] SHELLSHOCK I’m not too crazy about seeing SHELLSHOCK in a grid; what we now know as post-traumatic stress disorder is real and serious, and including it here seems a bit trivializing. But I do appreciate that the constructors and editors didn’t get jokey with the clue.
• 59A [Promotion at some Mexican restaurants, or a hint to this puzzle’s theme] TACO TUESDAY

The theme answers are all pretty good, with that one exception. Ideally, perhaps, the taco ingredients would appear in the grid in an order closer to how one assembles a taco in real life (for me, that would be shell, meat, cheese and finally salsa). But the dictates of a crossword grid sometimes interfere with such ordering.

Other stuff:

• 15A [Walsh who wrote “Divided Lives: The Public and Private Struggles of Three Accomplished Women”] ELSA I’d not heard of that book or its author. Walsh has worked as a reporter for both The Washington Post and The New Yorker. Her book is based on  interviews with 60 Minutes reporter Meredith Vieira, orchestra conductor Rachael Worby, and breast surgeon Alison Estabrook and the women’s families.
• 29A [Rodent companion] PET RAT I misinterpreted the clue as “companion of a rodent,” not “companion who is a rodent.” PET CAT seemed like a dumb answer, but that’s what I had for a while.
• 57A [Iron Butterfly’s “___-Gadda-Da-Vida”] IN-A A gimme for me; some substitute teacher I had in the fifth or sixth grade once had my class analyzing the lyrics to that 17-minutes-long song.
• 1D [“Dang!”] AW SNAP Is that how people use AW SNAP? I always thought it was more like “You’ve been burned!” But I suppose one could use “Dang!” in that context, too.
• 5D [Like Felix Unger in “The Odd Couple”] NEAT The sitcom based on Neil Simon’s play was part of my 1960s childhood TV diet, but I wonder if younger solvers know who Felix Unger (Ungar) is. There’s lots of other ways NEAT could have been clued.
• 25D [Song feature that Ringo dislikes] DRUM SOLO Well, that makes two of us.
• 51D [Unpleasant aromas] ODORS On behalf of my fellow Fiend reviewer pannonica, I will note that the dictionary definition of ODOR does not limit it to an unpleasant smell.

Hal Moore’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s Review

Hal Moore’s New York Times Crossword — 4/28/26 (Click to Enlarge)

I don’t remember my father solving crossword puzzles, though he was a merciless Scrabble player. He’d definitely have appreciated the theme here:

• 17A [Handles a few unresolved issues] TIES UP LOOSE ENDS
• 32A [Not perfect, but acceptable] CLOSE ENOUGH When I worked for the Texas Legislature, one of my bosses absolutely hated the phrase “Close enough for government work.” We took a fair amount of pride in the quality and quantity of work we did.
• 40A [Station set up in a kitchen] MISE EN PLACE That strikes me as an odd clue for that culinary term, which to me means having all your vegetables chopped and spices measured before you actually start throwing things in pans. I’m not sure how “station” figures in, unless you’re talking about a restaurant kitchen.
• 58A [Like children, ideally, in an old adage … or a hint to a four-letter word hidden in 17-, 32- and 40-Across] SEEN AND NOT HEARD I remembered this as “Seen but not heard,” which didn’t work well with the certainly-correct 53D ODES. The word “hidden” in the other theme answers is SEEN (but you figured that out, I hope).

This isn’t the sort of theme that helps you solve the puzzle, but it’s solid enough. I liked that SEEN is broken between two words.

Other stuff:

• 

  Paolo Veronese, Self-Portrait (1558–1563)

  8A [Some cantina fare] TACOS Appropriate for Tuesday, si?

• 24A [Welcome at the door, say] ASK IN Not SEE IN.
• 6D [Painter Veronese] PAOLO That’s the second time in about a week that I’ve seen the Italian Renaissance painter born Paolo Caliari in a crossword. I’m ready for that name to be clued as [Crossword legend/Jeopardy champ Pasco].
• 10D [Script supervisor’s concern] CONTINUITY It seems like excessive attention to minor stuff, but errors in continuity can pull the viewer right out of the world a movie or show has been working to create.
• 16D [Council ___ (British equivalent of a housing project)] ESTATE
• 30D [Mexican wrap] SERAPE Well, TORTILLA wasn’t going to fit.

Robert E.L. Morris’ Los Angeles Times crossword — Erin’s write-up

Los Angeles Times solution, 4/28/26, by Robert E.L. Morris

Hello lovelies! There’s a lot to “do” in this grid, in which each them entry ends in a different spelling of the sound “doo,” or /duː/ in IPA.

• 17a. [Total left to pay] BALANCE DUE
• 26a. [Farmer’s wake-up call] COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO
• 45a. [“Any suggestions for my next move?”] WHAT AM I GONNA DO
• 59a. [Water on the grass at dawn] MORNING DEW

Other things:

• 5d. [Acorn producer with a pyramid-shaped crown] PIN OAK. These trees can reach 60-70 feet tall.
• 10d. [___ gobi: vegetarian curry dish] ALOO. Aloo is potato and gobi is cauliflower. Delicious.
• 18d. [Party snack] CANAPÉ. It’s from the French for sofa, because the toppings sit on bread like a person sits on a sofa.

Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal crossword “Mouthpieces” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: Choral “voice parts” can be found split between two entries.

WSJ • 4/28/26 • Tue • “Mouthpieces” • Mike Shenk • solution • 2026042 8

THEME ENTRIES:

• MILKSOP / RAN OVER = SOPRANO
• HAPPY MEAL / TO WAR = ALTO
• CASTE / NOR‘EASTER = TENOR
• PERTURB / ASSUAGE = BASS
• (revealer) [With 36-Across, what can be found in this puzzle’s circles] VOICE / PARTS

This is one of those theme types that’s difficult to fully appreciate as a solver because of just how much thematic material is packed into the grid. It feels like there are five themers, but there are actually ten, which puts a lot of pressure on the fill. The result here is a grid that’s perfectly solid, but noticeably tougher than I expected for a Tuesday.

A lot of the fill also carried a distinctly old-fashioned vibe for me. I’d never encountered MILKSOP before, but it immediately sounded like the kind of insult someone would sling in a 1920s newsreel: “See here? The guy’s a real MILKSOP! Won’t even do the Charleston!” [lights Lucky Strike] 

That same quaint energy ran through much of the solve: SNOOKERS, CHEMISE, ALAIN, PERTURB, PICOTS, SHANE, SABENA, ARTIE… all perfectly valid entries, but collectively they made the puzzle feel pleasantly dusty around the edges.

The southwest corner was especially rough for me. PERTURB, SNOOKERS, SABENA, IRMA, SNOBBY, CPLS, and the particularly awkward OARED [Like sampans and triremes] all piled together to create a section that felt closer to late-week WSJ difficulty.

The theme itself helped smooth things out, though. Unlike yesterday, when I confidently jammed the word BALL into the wrong circled squares, I immediately filled in ALTO, TENOR, and BASS once SOPRANO appeared. Helpful for the solve, though it did mean the theme revealed itself very early and then mostly stepped aside.

I enjoyed this one the way I enjoy a lot of Tuesdays: not necessarily because it was smooth, but because it was pleasantly strange. This time, the weirdness lived in the fill.

3 stars

Adam Wagner’s New Yorker Crossword — Eric’s Review

Adam Wagner’s New Yorker Crossword — 4/28/26 (Click to Enlarge)

Instead of the usual themeless Tuesday puzzle, we get a red, white and blue grid with a theme that feels a bit dated:

• 15A [Immigrants who hope to find refuge from persecution] ASYLUM SEEKERS
• 22A [Gourd whose shape resembles a certain nut] ACORN SQUASH
• 33A [Waterway known by the Mohicans as Mahicannituc] HUDSON RIVER I know the Mohicans lived in what is now New York State, so my first guess was ERIE CANAL. That wasn’t in the grid long (if at all).
• 44A [Fusion genre for Mahalia Jackson and Blind Willie Johnson] GOSPEL BLUES I hadn’t heard that term before, but it fits. Years ago, a good friend gave me a Blind Willie Johnson CD for my birthday, then decided that his style might be a bit rough for my refined sensibilities. So she gave me a Son House disc, too. (I liked both.)
• 52A [Product-origin label represented by this puzzle’s circled letters] MADE IN AMERICA Here’s where the theme feels dated to me. It’s still possible to find things manufactured in the United States, but it often feels like everything sold in this country was made in Asia. The representation in the circled letters is that MADE is spelled from the center letters of each theme answer’s red, white and blue U_S.

It’s a good-enough theme. My gut feeling is that there are lots of words with the U_S pattern, but I could easily be wrong. The more words that fit a pattern like that, the easier it is to fill a puzzle neatly.

Other stuff:

• 1A [Presidential subject of the “Hamilton” song “I Know Him”] ADAMS I’ve never seen Hamilton and assume this song is about John Adams, not John Quincy Adams. My first thought was AARON Burr, but I quickly remembered the helpful “presidential” in the clue.
• 19A [Actress Seehorn or Perlman] RHEA One for younger solvers, one for older ones. I’m sure I’m not the only older solver who would have gotten the answer with just Ms Seehorn. We enjoyed her in Better Call Saul, but we stopped watching Pluribus after four or five episodes. And of course, Ms Perlman was quite funny as the sharp-tongued server on Cheers.
• 26A [“The King and I” Tony winner ___ Ann Miles] RUTHIE I don’t pay much attention to Broadway theater and didn’t recognize that name. It looks like she was in the 2015 revival of that show.
• 29A [Trashy TV star?] OSCAR the Grouch from Sesame Street. Cute clue.
• 37A [Wear a cape, for example?] ERODE “Cape” as in “a headland or promontory.” Clever clue that slowed me for a bit.
• 60A [Jerk] SPASM That wasn’t the sort of “jerk” I first thought of.
• 1D [Best Picture winner told from the perspective of Antonio Salieri] AMADEUS It may not be historically accurate, but it’s one of my favorite movies. Of the other 1984 films nominated for Best Picture, only The Killing Fields is anywhere near as good.
• 17D [Halal-cart offering] GYRO I came close to putting in LAMB.