LAT tk (pannonica) 
[2.50 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 6:45 (Amy) 
[3.08 avg; 18 ratings] rate it
Universal 4:24 (Jim P) [3.00 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (tk) [2.50 avg; 1 rating] rate it
A week ago, we plugged the series of minis celebrating Asian Pacific Islander Heritage month called APIHMinis.com. I (Amy) just saw last week’s plug when starting tonight’s post, which reminded me to visit APIHMinis and do the latest couple puzzles that I’d missed. I’m enjoying these! Note that today’s is a 9×7 midi by Hoang-Kim Vu, meater than the typical mini. Joon Pahk bylined yesterday’s. Enjoy!
Rafael Musa & Geoffrey Schorkopf’s New York Times crossword — Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 5/8/26 – no. 0508
I always dive into a Musa (et al.) themeless enthusiastically, but this one challenged me more than I was expecting.
Fave fill: HATES ON, TAX EXILE, SORE SPOT, TED TALK, ICE STORM (so glad it’s May!), SINKHOLE, TO DIE FOR, “WHEN IN ROME …”, MED SCHOOLS, SEX MANUALS (envisioning these being set up like Ikea assembly instructions), STARTER KIT, ANTICOMEDY (tell me some good examples of this), and my favorite of all, SKIP STONES.
Five things:
- 31A. [One of two in Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna”], CHERUB. Sometimes there’s just a single cherub in art, yeah? They don’t have to travel in pairs?
- 41A. [Second City district, with “the”], LOOP. Wow, to a Chicagoan, that clue sounds weird. First of all, We mainly use Second City to refer to the improv establishment, not to the fill city. Second, nothing in Chicago is called a “district” except the Illinois Medical District. We have the Chicago Park District and police districts, but neighborhoods are neighborhoods.
- 48A. [Mammoth’s home, for short], NHL. I wanted SLC, the Utah home of the Mammoth hockey team.
- 53A. [Many a Chilango], SEÑOR. Today I learned that Chilango is Mexican slang for a resident of Mexico City.
- 9D. [All slam dunks], TWOS. If you’re close enough to slam dunk, you’re too close to score 3 points for it.
4.25 stars from me.
Jim Heane’s Universal crossword, “Noodling Around”—Jim P’s review
Theme answers are familiar(ish) names and phrases that hide scrambled types of pastas within. The revealer is PASTA SALAD (53a, [Chilled side dish, and a theme hint]).
Universal crossword solution · “Noodling Around” · Jim Heane · Fri., 5.8.26
- 15a. [Brenda Meeks portrayer in “Scary Movie”] REGINA HALL. Angel hair.
- 21a. [Overcontrolling supervision style] MICROMANAGEMENT. Macaroni.
- 33a. [“SOUR” singer] OLIVIA RODRIGO. Ravioli.
- 42a. [Phil Collins hit with a renowned drum solo] “IN THE AIR TONIGHT“. Rigatoni.
I vaguely recall the first actress’s name, but you have to admit that’s pretty impressive to use all but one of her letters to spell “angel hair”. In fact, given the lengths of all the pastas here, these are all impressive finds. And to get everything to fit symmetrically? Many kudos (much kudos?) on that front.
Of course there was no way I was going to try to unscramble the words during the solve, but once I finished after having gotten the revealer, it wasn’t hard to figure them out without the need of any anagram solver. That was gratifying as well.
Moving on to the fill, those large stacks in the corners are absolutely lovely with highlights “I HAVE TO GO,” BACONATOR, SPECTRE, ROAD NOISE, “DARN IT ALL“, and ELM STREET. I even like HELLA COOL though HELLA GOOD sounds more natural to me.
Clue of note: 31d. [“… yes ___ no?”]. OR A. Meh. No one would naturally add an A in that blank.
Impressively long scrambles in solid theme answers. Fun long fill. 3.5 stars.
Like Amy, I also found the New York Times enjoyable but challenging. Unlike Amy, it took me five times as long to complete it. 😬
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
This was a challenge for me too, but it didn’t feel very rewarding to get through it. Nothing really wrong with the puzzle (maybe a few too many clues in quotation marks) but I thought it lacked some sparkle.
Amy – Andy Kaufman’s entire act, more or less, was ANTICOMEDY.
WSJ: Possibly the worst Patrick Berry puzzle of this decade. Names galore, slightly off clues. Ugh.
I thought it was a nicely constructed meta. It took me a while to grok what the title was hinting at.
NYT seemed like a misplaced Saturday puzzle. But it was a good challenge. My only objection is to EARLAP, which I have seen in NYT crosswords and nowhere else.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
NYT: is it just me, or are many of the entries just random uncommon phrases/compound words? EARLAP, TAXEXILE, PANSEAR, SKIAREA, SEXMANUALS, ANTICOMEDY, ELFHAT, MEDSCHOOLS (plural), SKIPSTONES. That’s a lot. None of them were impossible to get from crosses, but still…
TAX EXILE killed me dead.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2 stars
Same here. DNF.
That NE was tough. My nemesis was having SKIM STONES, instead of SKIP
As an accomplished stone skimmer myself, that one almost did me in, too. Until I finally checked the cross and ran the alphabet.
Felt a bit like I had stumbled into a Saturday Stumper or a Monday TNY on Friday. Made it to the end with no errors, but the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze IMO.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
I had KPH instead of MPH but caught it at the end. Over double my average Friday solve time but I liked it and thought every cross was fair. Good challenge
Mofi Annan would like a word.
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 3.5 stars
Jim quibbles about the answer “OR A (NO)”, claiming that normally the “A” wouldn’t be used. I think that the phrase “Is that a yes or a no?” is more in the language than “Is that yes or no?”.
I agree that the pasta diagramming is impressive, and the crossings made it possible to easily solve despite the two obscure thematic names.
I probably wasn’t clear enough in my quibble. The clue leaves out the “Is that a” part (presumably not wanting to duplicate the “a”). Given that the clue is merely [“… yes ___ no?”], it seems unlikely to me that we’re expected to assume the ellipsis represents those words. If I see “yes ___ no?” I’m always going to think “or” regardless of the presence of an ambiguous ellipsis. Maybe that’s just me. But in 690 other clues for ORA in the Cruciverb database, not one has done this with yes/no. They’ve done it with man/mouse and boy/girl but not yes/no.
More Rita!
A globe traveling salesman finds that his duties have taken him to the most remote destination yet. After many stops, he arrives at a tiny middle eastern airfield, only to discover that the only transport to his intended destination is by rented camel. Traversing parched deserts for several days, he finally reaches the end of his journey. If anyone ever needed shelter from the blazing sun, and an ice cold beverage, this was our man, so he ties his weary camel to a post, and heads into the only local café. The food was exquisite, the beer was cold and cheap, and time passed.
When the traveler finally took his leave, he stepped outside, only to find that his rented camel was now legless. Gaping incredulously, he soon caught the attention of a local man, but the traveler was too stunned to speak – all he could do was point, silently, at his camel. The elderly local squinted, but eventually offered “That would have to be the work of the Camel Leg Thief.”
“Where can I find this Camel Leg Thief?” The old man replied “The Camel Leg Thief lives far across the desert,”, and points vaguely off into the distance. The traveler walks back into the café, purchases several bottles of water, and then sets off to demand answers from the Camel Leg Thief.
After walking for most of the day, the traveler finally encounters another man, walking towards the town. The traveler explains his quest, and asks how close he is to reaching his destination. “Oh, you still have many miles to cover; you’ll absolutely need a car if you hope to reach the Camel Leg Thief. I would recommend that you walk with me back to the village, where I can help you find a car to rent ”
The salesman has no choice – happy for the company, he spends many more hours returning to the village, in order to rent a car. Car procured, he sets out again the next morning, making much better time retracing his steps from the day before. Soon he is traveling beyond his prior path, and, as the villager had warned, he drove on for several more hours.
As he drove into the sunset, the road came to my an abrupt end, at the shore of a mighty river. Seeing a man fishing along the banks, the traveler shouted “Are you the Camel Leg Thief?” “No,” came the reply, “the Camel Head Thief lives across the far side of the river. I must warn you that the river runs rapidly, and there is no way to reach that other side without a strong boat. I would gladly lend you my own, but, sadly, the craft is wrecked, and it would be of no use to you. Pretty much the only thing you can do is to return to the village and rent a strong boat.”
Our weary traveler spends the night, enjoying the hospitality of the kind fisherman, and then leaves the next morning, to make the long drive back to town for the necessary vessel. Renting a boat, he hitches it to the rented car, and, once again, drives back across the dusty and rutted desert road. When he arrives at the river, he uncouples the rented boat, and begins to row across the mighty river. He strains against the current for hours, and just when he feels he can row no further, he sees the other bank approaching.
He reaches the land, climbs from the boat – only to be presented – impossibly – with a mighty mountain. He’s hailed by another traveler, coming down from the mountain, and, once again, demands to know if this traveler is his target – the Camel Leg Thief. “Do I look like the kind of man that would steal legs from a camel? The man you seek lives on the other side of this mountain. But I must warn you; the days are scorching, and the nights are frigid, and you will need both gear and clothes to take on this mountain. I would suggest that you return to the village and purchase what you need. You won’t find those things out here.”
The traveler sighs. He spends uncountable hours rowing back across the raging river, stripping away his every ounce of energy. When he gets to the other bank, he hitches the boat to the car, and, yet again, retraces his path across the desert, back to the village. Arriving at last, he spends another night in the inn, and arises the next morning to purchase mountaineering gear.
Setting off across the desert, he drives well into the afternoon, but when he arrives, he wastes no time unhitching the boat for the slog across the river. Rowing and rowing and rowing finally brings him to the other side, where he summons up still more improbable energy, and begins an ascent up the steep mountain. The sun sets and the air grows arctic. Without the warm jacket that he had purchased, he would have quickly succumbed to hypothermia, but he presses on, eventually finding a reasonable place to camp for the night.
Continuing from early the next morning, he reaches the peak, and finds the descent somewhat faster and less grueling. Yet – when he reaches the foothills, he’s faced with the vision of a visually endless plain, stretching well beyond the horizon. Finding no one to ask, he realizes that the plain is far too expansive to cross by foot, and with no vehicle in sight, he concludes that his only option is to return to the village to rent a horse.
He traverses the icy mountain, rows the river, drives across the endless desert, and reaches the village at last. Buying a horse, he leads it onto the hitched boat, drives across the desert, perches the horse precariously at the prow of the boat, rows the river, carries the horse up the side of the mountain, descends the other side, and rides off into the sunset.
The next morning, a grand palace rises into view, and as he and the horse approach, it becomes obvious that this must surely be one of the largest structures ever built. By late afternoon, he arrives at the door, ties up his horse, and prepares to head inside. “Truly,” he thinks, “this must surely be the residence of the Camel Leg Thief”.
Given the apparent size of the castle, the vestibule stretches on forever, but after walking for a seeming hour from the door, the salesman sees an opulent golden throne, shining with the glow of the sun in the sky. There, on the throne, is a strange man, regarding him with great curiosity. “I can only imagine that you must have come a long way. How can I help you, stranger?”
“Are you the Camel Leg Thief?”, the traveler demands.
“That is what I have been called.”
“Did you steal my camel’s legs?”
“No.”
Other than wasting peoples’ time, was there some sort of point to that story?
In her review Amy asked for an example of anticomedy
God, I hope Amy sees that
I did! Thanks.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2.5 stars
I don’t understand 19 Across. Hollywood is on Pacific Daylight Time, so it should be PDT.
Does the Times ever issue Crossword corrections?
“Is on it” does not necessarily imply “at this very moment”. For four-plus months of the year, California is on Standard Time, specifically Pacific Standard Time (PST).
As for puzzle content, what, precisely, would be the point of a “correction”?