Monday, May 25, 2026

BEQ tk (Eric) [2.83 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
LAT 1:57 (Stella) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 5:45 (Eric) [3.65 avg; 13 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker 6:55 (Amy) [3.72 avg; 9 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (pannonica) [2.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (?) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
WSJ tk (Jim Q) rate it

Anthony Grubb’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s Review

Anthony Grubb’s New York Times Crossword — 5/25/26 (Click to Enlarge)

I wasn’t that familiar with the song that’s the revealer in this puzzle, even though I watched too much MTV back in the late 1980s and early ’90s. I don’t think that knowing it would have made much difference in my solving, but it’s a nice theme idea for the unofficial start of summer:

• 17A LOVE SCENE When I saw that SEX SCENE was too short, I briefly griped that the answer was going to be the not-in-the-language SEXY SCENE. I’m happy that it wasn’t.
• 30A GHOST PEPPER
• 48A DEATH VALLEY
• 65A [1980s hit with the lyric “Me mind on fire, me soul on fire” … or how one might describe 17-, 30- and 48-Across?] HOT HOT HOT 1987, by Buster Poindexter, a pseudonym for David Johansen of the 1970s band The New York Dolls. RIP, Mr. Johansen. (I think I must have missed his obituary in February, 2025.)

This is a fine theme for a Monday “holiday” (the way Americans celebrate Memorial Day has always baffled me). Even novice solvers (like someone with the day off and a little time to kill) can see the connection between the revealer and the first three theme answers. GHOST PEPPER might be the least familiar of the first three theme answers, but both words are fairly common, so even those who like their “spicy” foods 5A MILD shouldn’t have trouble with it.

Other stuff:

• 19A [Fruit that makes your lips pucker] LEMON A few months ago, we bought a lime that was tarter than any lemon I can remember using in a while.
• 27A [De-tension center?] SPA I can’t believe how long it’s taken me to get the pun on “detention.”
• 71A [Most watches have three of these] HANDS Hmm. Are analog watches maybe retro chic? It’s been so long since I’ve worn mine that I can’t remember if it has a second hand; I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.
• 73A [An estimated 25% of modern phone calls] SPAM I don’t know if it’s my iPhone or my carrier, but I am much less bothered by telemarketers now that my phone warns me that most of my incoming calls are “Potential spam.”
• 49A [Dried poblanos used in mole sauce] ANCHOS Much milder than GHOST PEPPERS (a poblano rates 1,000–2,500 Scoville heat units). The pedant in me will just observe that the Mexican Spanish word mole (from the Nahuatl mōlli) literally translates to “sauce.”

Janice Luttrell’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Los Angeles Times 5/25/26 by Janice Luttrell

The revealer at 52A [Stack heading to the post office, or what 20-, 27-, and 44-Across all have?] is OUTGOING MAIL, because the last, or OUTGOING, word in each theme answer is a type of MAIL:

• 20A [Metaphor for a plan that may collapse at any moment] is a HOUSE OF CARDS.
• 27A [Empire State NFL team] is BUFFALO BILLS.
• 44A [Features of easy-to-read signs] is BLOCK LETTERS.

I found the design of this grid a little confusing, because there are two Across answers (HITCHHIKER and NAMES NAMES) that were long enough that I thought they were theme answers at first. The puzzle is already at the max word count of 78, so I get why the constructor didn’t just add another black square where 18D starts (and its mirror image). But I do think the grid could have been designed to avoid this potential confusion, especially on Monday when newer solvers who are just getting to know how themes work are doing the puzzle.

The fill is otherwise fine; I liked BIG TOP and SCHOLAR the best among the nonthematic fill.

Kameron Austin Collins’s New Yorker crossword–Amy’s recap

New Yorker crossword solution, 5/25/26 – Kameron Austin Collins

This one’s reminiscent of Kameron’s Saturday NYT, except with a staircase of nine 7s rather than seven 9s. Only six 3s, too; I think the Sat NYT had eight.

Fave fill: “I’M A HUGGER,” BABY FAT, GELCAPS, KICK ASS, STRIKES OIL, AMARETTO, cell phone DATA PLAN, THE GOAT, POLKA DOTS, the ROMANTASY portmanteau for a literary genre, HATERS, FREE RIDE.

A few entries felt a bit on the green paint side. BAD TWEET, SOME RANDO (though this one is firming up as a phrase), MEN’S TEES? And I don’t know that I’ve heard people say “LATER, GATOR” rather than the longer original, “see you later, alligator.”

Four more things:

• 20a. [Emulative, as behavior], MIMETIC. Is that what that means?
• 1a. [Reason for being ratioed], BAD TWEET. For those who haven’t used Twitter or Bluesky, being “ratioed” is what happens when someone posts something outrageously wrong or dumb, and the ratio of retweets and likes to comments is weighted heavily towards comments. Nobody wants to click to “like” the post, nobody wants to share it on their own feed. They just want to pile on with their own rebuttal. (Typically, a popular post will have a lot of likes, an intermediate amount of reposts, and a smaller number of comments.)
• 8d. [Banh ___ (Vietnamese New Year treat)], TET. I know of the banh mi sandwich, but the Lunar New Year holiday is called Tet in Vietnamese.
• 23d. [Places to train for a few rounds?], BAR CARS. A few rounds of drinks while you’re on the train, using “train” as a verb for riding the train. I’ll allow it–it is in Merriam-Webster as an intransitive verb with that meaning.

4.25 stars from me.

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1890 — Eric’s Review

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1890 — 5/25/26 (Click to Enlarge)

Except for a few spots, this one seemed on the easier side for one of Brendan’s themeless puzzles. Because I’m late-ish getting to the puzzle and have other things to do, I checked a few answers even thought I was pretty confident about the crosses.

Highlights, lowlights and in-between-lights:

• 4A [Features of some swinging ’60s pads] SHAG CARPETS They didn’t die out in 1970; our house was built in 2005 and has shag carpeting in the bedrooms. But not for long; we’re waiting on new hardwood floors.
• 16A [Bird with a two-feathered tail in Dr. Seuss’s “Gertrude McFuzz”] LOLLA LEE LOU Wikipedia tells me that story is in Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories. I remember reading the title story as a kid, but I have no memory of “Gertrude McFuzz” and couldn’t easily plug in that answer.
• 18A [Constituting a legal accompaniment] APPURTENANT Ugh. It’s words like this one that make me glad that I’m no longer practicing law.
• 24A [Nigeria’s largest city] LAGOS A gimme, though the Nigerians had moved the capital from Lagos to Abuja about 35 years before I knew of it.
• 37A [It’s big in online sales] BANNER AD Cute clue. Every time I have to disable my ad blocker to use a website, I’m reminded why I installed it in the first place.
• 43A [Rolls dealer?] DELI Oh, that kind of “rolls.”
• 48A [Sports analyst Pablo who won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting] TORRE Crossing that with 37D [The Mighty Mighty Bosstones singer Dicky] BARNETT was just mean. I had BARRETT and didn’t really notice that TORNE was a somewhat unlikely surname. Of the four proper nouns in those two clues, I recognized “Pulitzer” and “The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.” I’m not up on my ska punk bands of the past (or the present, for that matter).
• 50A [Sport played on an oval track] ROLLER DERBY I used to work with a woman who participated in roller derby, possibly as a semi-pro. I haven’t thought of Jennifer in a long time.
• 56A [Bearded middle-aged fellow a little too into ’90s indie rock (I feel seen)] PAVEMENT DAD I will take the bearded middle-aged fellow’s word for it that this is not green paint. Pavement is one of those 1990s bands that I probably should have listened to more 30 years ago.
• 3D [Composer Salieri] ANTONIO A gimme; Amadeus is one of my favorite movies.
• 7D [Selfless player that holds a team together] GLUE GUY Not a term I knew, thought it shouldn’t have take me as long to figure out as it did.
• 14D [1979 Cormac McCarthy novel] SUTTREE I think I’ve read No Country for Old Men and  The Road and know a few other McCarthy titles, but not this one.
• 24D [Actress Prepon] LAURA I guess she’s best known for That ’70s Show (which I’ve never seen), but I should have remembered her from Orange is the New Black.
• 25D [Los Angeles neighborhood on the Pacific] SAN PEDRO In Chinatown, Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) pronounces it with a long E. Any Angelenos care to confirm? (I used to live in Austin, where “Guadalupe” is pronounce “Guadaloop,” so anything is possible.)
• 35D [Big copper producer] ARIZONA Interesting; I think of other Four Corners states as mining country, but not Arizona.
• 39D [Country whose national animal is the fennec fox] ALGERIA I mention this only as an excuse to find a photo of a fennec. And now I’m wondering if they make good pets, because apparently some people do that.