Wednesday, May 13, 2026

AV Club 12:31 (Amy) [3.50 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
LAT 4:13 (Gareth) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 4:29 (Amy) [3.25 avg; 16 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker tk (Jim Q) [3.94 avg; 8 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (pannonica) [3.00 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Emily) rate it
WSJ 7:29 (Eric) [2.83 avg; 3 ratings] rate it

Jonathan Raskin’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Getting Into Trouble” — Eric’s Review

Jonathan Raskin’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Getting Into Trouble” — 5/13/26 (Click to Enlarge)

It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve solved a themed crossword and had to spend some time afterwards to understand the theme. (It probably hasn’t been that long; theme detection is not my strongest suit as a solver.)

Four familiar compound nouns and a phrase that dates to at least the early years of widespread cell phone use are clued in similar fashion:

• 16A [Falling into place?] BLACK HOLE Reparse the theme clues and they make more sense: A black hole is a place you might fall into.
• 22A [Running into trouble?] FENDER BENDER
• 37A [Calling into question?] CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? I typically rely heavily on letter patterns while solving, and the EAR ME briefly had me trying TERMS OF ENDEARMENT because I hadn’t read the clue. Oops.
• 49A [Going into detail?] SECURITY CODE A detail of going into many places is entering a security code.
• 61A [Goading into action?] TRASH TALK

The puzzle’s title is so close to the 22A clue that it didn’t add much to my understanding of the theme. In any case, I solved the puzzle as if it were a not-particularly-challenging  themeless puzzle.

Other stuff:

• 25A [Cramer of CNBC] JIM I didn’t recognize that name, though looking at his Wikipedia entry, he’s not totally unfamiliar to me. I lost precious solving seconds cursing the J square because it could have been T, but then 25D [Tool for retiring] made sense. Sneaky, using probably the least common meaning of “retiring.”
• 32A [We’re currently in the Meghalayan one] AGE That word is new to me. Meghālya is a state in northeast India; the name means “The abode of the clouds.” The Meghalyan Age is the third age of the Holocene Epoch and began about 4,200 years ago.  (So much for my initial assumption that the “Megahalayan age” is a reference to the cloud computing that affects so much of modern life.)
• 6D [Poorly made] SHODDY That’s a nice little word that I don’t use as often as I could. It goes back to about 1832, but linguists apparently don’t know where it came from.
• 31D [Quaint alternative to “For crying out loud!”] BY THUNDER “For crying out loud” was one of my dad’s stock exclamations of frustration (and one of the few that wasn’t obscene or blasphemous). Never heard him use BY THUNDER, though, which seems to me more a statement of disbelief that something has happened.
• 35D [All alternative] NONE Not SOME.

Brian Keller’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap

NY Times crossword solution, 5/13/26 – no. 0513

This one’s easier to solve on a computer than with a pen or pencil since the theme relates to the keyboard keys that show two options.

• 17A. [*Peers], PLUS SIGN. Peers are equals, and SHIFT KEY with = gets you the + sign.
• 24A. [*Number of years between Summer Olympics], DOLLAR SYMBOL. 4 years, shift-4 gets you $.
• 37A. [*Number of Supreme Court justices], OPEN PARENTHESIS. Shift-9 gets you (.
• 47A. [*Guns N’ Roses guitarist], QUESTION MARK. His stage name is Slash, and shift-/ gets you the ? punctuation.
• 60A. [What you’d need to press to make the starred clues and their answers match], SHIFT KEY.

That revealer clue at 60a feels off kilter to me. The starred clues are not =, 4, 9, or /. Those are the symbolic answers to the starred clues. The SHIFT KEY is applied to the answers you want for the clues, and that generates the crossword entry. I don’t think it’s going to make sense for every solver. Maybe this should have been a Thursday puzzle.

8A. [Hosp. triage specialists], ER DOCS. Been watching The Pitt tonight, the show that takes place in a city ER. So they did have Dr. Langdon working triage, but it seemed to feel like a punishment to him. In my experience as a patient, the people you see in triage at the ER are nurses, not doctors. Anyone with ER experience here who can attest that the clue works for you?

47D. [Ice cream purchase], QUART. I only wanted a SCOOP. And then I like the premium ice cream that comes in pints (or 14 oz tubs). Looks like what used to come in a half-gallon container is now 1.5 qt. Anyone out there buying ice cream by the quart?

3.5 stars from me.

Bob Weisz’s AV Club Classic crossword, “Can You Rephrase That?”–Amy’s recap

AV Club Classic crossword solution, 5/13/26 – “Can You Rephrase That?” – Bob Weisz

I usually dread the slog through a 21×21 crossword, but this one turned out to be entertaining, with fun clues throughout. Cool theme, too, reinterpreting various familiar spoken phrases with different contexts:

• 23a. [“Lend me a hand?”], CAN I GET YOUR DIGITS? Use your fingers/hands to help me out, rather than a request for a phone number.
• 40a. [“Make it a double!”], GIVE ME A SECOND. “Gimme another,” rather than “I need a moment.”
• 50a. [“Take a number!”], KNOCK YOURSELF OUT. “Give yourself an anesthetic,” rather than “go crazy, suit yourself.”
• 68a. [“Preach!”[, I’M AT YOUR SERVICE. “I’m attending your church service,” rather than “How can I help?”
• 87a. [“I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her…”], BE STRAIGHT WITH ME. “Let’s be a heterosexual couple,” rather than “give me the unvarnished truth.”
• 95a. [“Where do you get off?”], COME HERE OFTEN? “Does this make you orgasm,” rather than “Do you come to this location a lot?”
• 116a. [“Happy Mother’s Day!”], THANKS FOR HAVING ME. “Thanks for birthing me,” rather than “I appreciate your hospitality.”

The theme works really well, with a little surprise for each entry and nothing being too stretchy. It’s R-rated at times, which we rarely see in Sunday-sized puzzles.

New to me: 85a. [Not quite a BFF, on TikTok], OOMF. Guessing it’s short for “one of my friends,” no idea how it’s pronounced. Also: 109a. [___ flag (quirky quality that’s neither attractive nor repulsive)], BEIGE. Ha!

Among the many fun clues: 71a. [Article designed to keep your nipples and belly warm (I guess?)], VEST.

4.5 stars from me.

Ricky J Sirois’ LA Times Crossword – Gareth’s summary

Ricky J Sirois’ puzzle is one of those puzzles where the theme answers are vertical not horizontal, except for the explaining answer: TABLETOP. This answer crosses two of the theme answers, which adds a level of intricacy. Otherwise, each of five answers’ TOP satisfies “___ TABLE” – some are table varieties, while TURNTABLE and PRIZETABLE are a little looser. So:

[Purse at a boxing match], PRIZEMONEY
[One who switches sides], TURNCOAT
[Brewery vessel?], COFFEEPOT
[Soccer pitch boundary?], SIDELINE
[Basic flotation device?], POOLNOODLE

With five theme entries, the rest of the puzzle doesn’t have too many surprising entries. I didn’t know DEE was [Kaitlin’s “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Role”] nor who this Kaitlin is – OLSON apparently. I’m not sure MERINO is always [Fine wool] – it’s wool from a merino sheep, and can be fine? [Easter egg need], DYE is a phenomenon I don’t think I’ve ever seen in real life – here they’re exclusively confectionary?

Gaeth