LAT untimed (pannonica) 
[3.10 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
NYT 6:21 (Amy) 
[4.00 avg; 18 ratings] rate it
Universal 5:25 (Jim P) 
[2.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (tk) [3.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
Gene Louise De Vera’s New York Times crossword — Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 5/22/26 – no. 0522
This 16×15 grid accommodates a trio of Across 16s that are great, plus a pair of Down 15s. “ASKING FOR A FRIEND,” KILL WITH KINDNESS, ALL BARK AND NO BITE, plus MOONLIGHT SONATA and I-guess-that’s-a-thing EARTHLIKE PLANET.
Other fave fill: BICEPS, CALL a place HOME (I’d be fine with a “check in with your mom, say” clue for CALL HOME too), Val KILMER, OPEN OFFICE.
New to me:
- 16A. [Sherwood, e.g.], OAK FOREST. Didn’t really know that “oak forest” passed muster as a term but here it is. Oak Forest is also a south suburb of Chicago where my mom worked towards the end of her career.
- 3D. [“Sticky” birthday treats?], CAKESICLES? Slice of cake on a popsicle stick? Maybe dipped in a candy coating? Google shows me that they’re shaped like ice cream bars rather than cake wedges. Like cake pops, made from cake crumbs wadded together. Isn’t cake’s lightness one of its key appeals? You can have my cakesicle and cake pop.
- 61A. [Infamous chess trap that ends the game in two moves], FOOL’S MATE. Seems like the kind of term that might get used in geopolitical analogies regarding the Iran situation.
Been awhile since I’ve seen LOESS in a crossword, your [Rich soil deposit]. Any of you use the word in your lives, or do you consider it crosswordese?
Four stars from me.
David P Williams’ Los Angeles Times crossword — pannonica’s write-up
LAT • 5/22/26 • Fri • Williams • solution • 20260522
By the time I encountered the revealer in the center of the grid, I had no idea what the theme was supposed to be. After seeing the revealer, but not really pausing to parse it (or even read it closely), I just assumed that the entries were missing the bigram PB.
But no, that wasn’t it.
- 34aR [“Move it!,” or how to make this puzzle’s starred clues match their answers] GET THE LEAD OUT.
- 18a. [*Misleads in an alley] GUTTER BALL.
- 23a. [*Wordle ad collection] DICTIONARY.
- 50a. [*Storied Gilead locale] OMAHA BEACH.
- 57a. [*Plea deal venues] BELL TOWERS.
- 3d [Director’s cut?] … AND SCENE. Nice one. Lil tricksy, dispensing with quotation marks.
- 6d [Old-fashioned farm apparatus] CHURN. Was thinking about the fields rather than the homestead.
- 30d [Entertainment medium, for short] POD. Ya, not my thing.
- 32d [Fabric named for a French city] DENIM, de Nîmes.
- 39d [Early wheels] TRICYCLE. Might have benefited from a question mark.
- 43d [Bridle suite?] STABLE. Cute-ish.
- 45d [Spanish English] INGLÉS. 53a [ __-Latin: medieval language] ANGLO.
- 46d [Chambers of commerce?] MALL. Maybe too much of a stretch.
- 11a [Tango number] TWO. Instinctively went with DOS. 21a [Of two minds] TORN.
- 14a [Mother of Beyoncé and Solange] TINA. Is this something that a lot of people know?
- 16a [Fresh] RAW, not NEW.
- 32a [Summer music?] DISCO. Donna Summer.
- 41a [Icy response] BRRR with three Rs, hmmm.
- 47a [The __ Brothers: blue-eyed soul band] DOOBIE. The Michael McDonald years.
- 60a [Sashimi’s lack] RICE. 49a [Tsukiji market buy, perhaps] TUNA.
- 62a [Carry too far] OVERDO. “If something is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.” –Nile Rodgers
- 64a [Northern limits?] ENS. The termini of the word northern.
- 65a [Speed up] HASTEN.
- 66a [Some bees] DRONES. With mechanical drones so much in the news lately, this constitutes a good misdirection.
Perhaps too many clever/cute clues?
Desiree Penner and Jeff Sinnock’s Universal crossword, “What a Snooze”—Jim P’s review
Theme answers are the first twelve Down answers which are all missing Zs from their beginnings. In other words, the solver is meant to imagine a row of Zs above the grid. The revealer is SLEEPOVER (23d, [Slumber party, or a theme hint]).
Universal crossword solution · “What a Snooze” · Desiree Penner and Jeff Sinnock · Fri., 5.22.26
- 1d. [*Letter-shaped beam] (Z)BAR.
2d. [*”Titanic” actor Billy] (Z)ANE.
3d. [*Alternative to one-on-one coverage in sports] (Z)ONE DEFENSE.
4d. [*”Quiet!”] “(Z)IP IT!”
5d. [*Utah national park] (Z)ION.
6d. [*Clever retorts] (Z)INGERS.
7d. [*Titular Nintendo princess] (Z)ELDA.
8d. [*Two, in German] (Z)WEI.
9d. [*One-named star of “Dune: Part One”] (Z)ENDAYA.
10d. [*Low-tier group of celebrities] (Z)-LIST.
11d. [*Fan-made publications] (Z)INES.
12d. [*Spicy] (Z)ESTY.
Nice little trick at the start of the grid there. Once I figured out what was going on, those first twelve Down answers fell pretty quickly. My next thought was, “I wonder what’s going to happen at the bottom of the grid.”
Answer: Nothing.
Even after uncovering the revealer, SLEEPOVER, I was still expecting something at the bottom of the grid. Yes, I get that the revealer is hinting at the Zs that are “over” the grid. But still, as a solver, I wanted more.
So in the end, the theme felt on the lighter side. I’m sure it was a challenge to construct that top portion of the grid with each column being constrained by the theme. But once the solver gets past that (and the revealer), there’s just no more theme for most of the grid.
The rest of the puzzle solves like a themeless then, but I would’ve liked more liveliness since there are far fewer constraints down there. SWEATER VEST is great and I love the pairing of MOBSTER and LAWYERS, but the rest just isn’t as evocative: RESERVATION, IMPEDIMENT, RETAINS. It’s all serviceably solid, but after feeling let-down by the theme, it wasn’t quite enough to bring me back.
Clue of note: 41a. [Oscars grp.]. AMPAS. We don’t see this in puzzles very often, so I couldn’t put the initialism together without a lot of crossings. It stands for Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
It’s a well-made puzzle, but the theme feels like it only covers half the grid. Three stars.
NYT felt tough for a Friday, but finished in a plausible Friday time. Couple of run-through-alphabet letters e.g., in OPA and ONED. LOESS is a real rare word for me. Good puzzle.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
Thought today’s puzzle played in between a Tuesday and Wednesday difficulty, but the fill was smooth and quite impressive to fit 5 grid spanning clues.
But in the clue for the Millennium Problems, one of the problems is actually solved, the Poincare conjecture. So the clue is technically inaccurate.
I had no problem with the clue for UNSOLVED. All seven problems were UNSOLVED when they were designated Millennium Problems.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Loved the clue for 1D.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
NYT: so many random phrases/things! ITSNOTHING, CAKESICLES (?!?), OPENOFFICE, LOSTLUSTER, EARTHLIKEPLANET. I guess it’s kind of cool they are all pretty long, and were all gettable with decent crosses/fill, but still.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
What a fun Friday puzzle! The cluing and fill were varied and refreshing. Gotta love EARTHLIKEPLANET (definitely a thing!) and MOONLIGHTSONATA paralleling each other down the middle.
Agreed; pretty fun and fast Friday!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
NYT – Loved it! Some terrific long answers. A good Friday offering.
I liked the long acrosses in the NYT but the puzzle overall was mid-week easyish. LOESS is a reasonably familiar word to me, but I’m surprised no one has commented on ‘catamounts’ as the clue for PUMAS — it was in the dark recesses of my memory somewhere, but it’s hardly an everyday word. CAKESICLES seemed wrong, but I double-checked the crosses and the figured out how to pronounce it.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
I knew that the University of Vermont’s atheltic nickname is Catamounts and their logo is a green V with some kind of cat jumping through it, so that fell in place with a couple crosses.
A lot of good stuff in here. I think ASKINGFORAFRIEND was my favorite. Not sure how many guys use NAIR to manscape unless they’re a swimmer or something and they need it all gone.
I lived in Burlington, Vermont, for about eight years as a kid, so catamount has long been in my vocabulary.
There are mountain lions in my area — a neighbor just a few blocks away caught one on a security camera — but we have yet to see one after almost two years here.
As someone whose only interest in the NCAA March Madness is filling out my annual Mascot bracket, I know all the names for the North American mountain lion — wildcat, panther, puma, cougar, and catamount (which are evidently only the most common ones). I remember a few years back where basically all the teams in one of the 4 regional brackets had some form of “mountain lion” as their mascot.
Don’t forget the Nittany lion
Don’t sleep on painter.
Also: ‘wildcat’, really?
We’ve got a road here called Wildcat Ridge. A neighbor there had a mountain lion with a cub camped out on his lawn for a while. Beautiful but scary. Next town over is Los Gatos, named for them. This is not a good area to leave small pets out.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Amy asked if people use LOESS in everyday life – I don’t, but I see it regularly in descriptions of the soil that wine grapes are grown in. This puzzle was a worthwhile challenge on a Friday.
NYT: Is having a non-15×15 grid on Friday or Saturday a rare event or am I just not remembering? I don’t know if I just don’t notice, but I don’t recall any other Fridays or Saturdays that had non-15×15 grids.
2/13/26 was the most recent 15×16. Friday the 13th count?
Saturday, 10/11/25 was the most recent Saturday 15×16.
There have actually been quite a few.
Am I the only one who doesn’t like the word catamount because it’s too close to catamite? Probably.
You probably aren’t the only one but it didn’t bother me. I’ve been familiar with the Western Carolina Catamounts for years
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
Easy for a Friday but loved all the 15s and 16s!