LAT tk (pannonica) 
[3.00 avg; 8 ratings] rate it
NYT 7:14 (Amy) 
[3.50 avg; 16 ratings] rate it
Universal 4.35 (Jim P) [3.21 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (tk) [3.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Kelly Morenus’s New York Times crossword — Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 6/5/26 – no. 0605
Back in the day, my Friday NYT times were generally in the range of 4-5 minutes. Of late? More like 7. This is what happens when you stop doing multiple crosswords every day. I’m doing 1-2 puzzles a day and skipping Sundays altogether. Rusty!
Fave fill: “MAKE IT MAKE SENSE” (a thing people say these days in response to various stupidities), “THE WAY I LOOK AT IT…,” FLIES SOLO, RUN INTERFERENCE, “I DON’T WANT TO KNOW” (the duplicated “I” and “IT” in the 15s didn’t bug me this time), PARASAILING, POTOROO.
Clues of note:
- 20A. [Coat on a tip?], POLISH. As in a coat of nail polish on a nail tip.
- 26A. Grocery stores?], PANTRIES. As in your pantry at home with its stores of groceries.
- 40A. Something you can see right through], IRIS. Eye action!
- 5D. [Attire that may snap on], DIAPERS. Huh? The last time I was changing diapers was almost 25 years ago and there were no snaps. Cloth diapers were pinned on. What’d I miss?
- 27D. [I I I], IOTAS. The puzzle’s font being sans serif, I wondered if the clue said | | |, which I just learned were called PIPES in coding.
- 37D. [Small marsupial whose name is spelled using only the letters of TROP], POTOROO. A couple of the crossings might not have gotten the solvers all the way there in 37d, so a lettery clue addition.
Four stars from me.
Tarun Krishnamurthy’s Universal crossword, “Strike Three”—Jim P’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases that feature a letter that appears three times. The solver must mentally remove all instances of that letter to arrive at another word or phrase that satisfies the clue. The revealer is TRIPLE TAKE (60a, [Exaggerated response of disbelief … or a hint to which letters you should ignore in each starred clue’s answer]).
Universal crossword solution · “Strike Three” · Tarun Krishnamurthy · Fri., 6.5.26
- 17a. [*Beautiful, in Spanish] THERMOSTAT – Ts = HERMOSA.
- 25a. [*Reimbursed expense for a commuter, maybe] MIDDLE-AGED – Ds = MILEAGE.
- 36a. [*Rather eccentric] SCARE AWAY – As = SCREWY.
- 50a. [*Pumpkin patch activity] HAPPY PRIDE – Ps = HAY RIDE.
This is absolutely lovely! I was confounded by the theme throughout, so I ignored it and resolved the theme answers by their crosses. The revealer seemed to promise a cool gimmick, and I was thoroughly satisfied to be proved right when I saw HAPPY PRIDE become HAY RIDE. What a gorgeous find! And I used to live in Hermosa Beach, CA, so I should’ve known that first one. D’oh! The others weren’t quite as fun as those, but it seems like a pretty tall order to find enough phrases to work with, let alone make them all just as lively. In the end, I was very pleased to have an inscrutable theme resolve itself so elegantly. And the title is 🤌😚. Very nicely done!
On top of that, we’re given some fun fill in “WHAT’D I SAY?”, “LET’S EAT!”, WET NOSE, ERROR-FREE, and CHATBOT. And all this in a symmetrical grid. Impressive. I didn’t know BHANGRA [Punjabi music genre] nor KATSEYE [Girl group whose name sounds like a feline organ], but they resolved themselves pretty quickly.
Clue of note: 41d [Up-to-date connections?] HYPHENS. Good one.
Excellent puzzle. 4.5 stars.
Amy, I do find it amusing that you’re bemoaning your 7:14 Friday time (which would be a nice Monday time for me). It’s a bit like Novak Djokovic complaining that his serve speed had dropped to a mere 125 mph.
But at least this Friday, it may be more the content than you. I thought it was really tough, more like a challenging Saturday.
Pretty good NYT, on the tough side. Slow work, some unfamiliar words, but steady progress. Last entry was fixing BOOSTS/GOOSES.
That was a tough sector of a tough puzzle for me, too, but because foolishly I started with “haveth” for my Biblical verb and stuck to it way too long. Good puzzle, though, with long entries that pretty much work.
Tough for me, too, but enjoyable.
Our youngest is almost done with diapers (only at night now). I have never seen a snap on a diaper. Maybe if they’re cloth/reuseable?
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Adult diapers sometimes have snaps, and baby cloth diapers can as well. We had a bunch with snaps for our kiddo – Bummis or something.
Loved POTOROO. GOOSES and DEALERSSHOE was a tough crossing for me as I have no idea what a DEALERS SHOE is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe_(cards)
I think I learned the term from puzzles edited by Peter Gordon, who strives to never repeat a clue so you encounter less-familiar meanings of common words.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
Great, great NYT! I’ll even forgive POTOROO since everything else was so good (and difficult). I especially liked how several of the long across entries had multiple versions that fit (e.g., I started with THEWAYITWORKSIS for 17a).
I found the NYT unusually tough, especially for a Friday. The whole upper right hand area was hard to get into, especially because MAKEITMAKESENSE is not a phrase that came easily to me.
I have to object strongly — for the second time — that the puzzle has clued MEWS as “Row houses, to Brits.” This is just flat out wrong. Row houses in the US are what Brits would call terraced houses. Here’s an explainer with an illustrative picture.
Whoever came up with this clue appears to have been misled by the Wikipedia article, which starts off with ‘A mews is a row or courtyard of stables and carriage houses…’ OK, it’s possible to have a small row of similar houses in a mews, but it’s not a defining characteristic by any means. My youngest brother once lived in a mews in London. It had a few small houses, converted from stables, around a courtyard. The houses were all different, as best I recall.
Bottom line: a mews might have a short row of similar houses, but it might not, and no Brit, seeing what Americans describe as row houses, would call the arrangement a mews.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
That was a good challenge. Really nice double stacks (I enjoyed MAKEITMAKESENSE and I’m surprised it’s a debut entry). The POTOROO/HOGANS cross seemed like it was imported from a 2010s Saturday.
Amy – cloth diapers still SNAP on but otherwise it’s mostly a Velcro-like adhesive.
NYT: I don’t believe the clue for 40A is correct. In a camera, the iris controls the size of the aperture; the aperture is what controls the amount of light that comes through the lens; in an SLR you also see through the aperture. In the eye, the iris has the same function – it makes the pupil larger or smaller, but it’s the pupil you see through. I suppose you could make the case that you see through the iris like you see through a hole in a wall – but you don’t see through the wall, you see through the hole.
Which is why my original answer for 40A was LENS. The crossing entries are all not-obvious, making that a tough spot. Not obvious, but not really incorrect, IMO.
+1
NYT: Tough Friday and surprised I got there, but I did. Nice puzzle!
As an IT tech guy, loved RUN INTERFERENCE. Since (IMO) managers don’t do much, it is the one thing they can do to help.
I I I looked like ‘the THIRD’ or maybe THREE in Roman numerals. But finally saw IOTAS.
Finally, surprised no one called out RED APPLE as GREEN PAINT. Is there a better example?!??
Red Apple is the name of a food store chain, which seems also to be part of a larger conglomerate also called Red Apple, so I guess it’s a good example of a contrast to the crossword phrase “green paint.” Cute comparison.
I also found the crossword quite difficult and used Christina Iverson’s Easy Mode for half of it. I did not rate it.
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 4.5 stars
UNIVERSAL: Also the removed letters are TDAP which is a triple vaccine.
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 4.5 stars
Smoothdean: Good catch!
And I’m also rating this puzzle very highly because constructor Tarun K created a brilliant crossword!
Puzzle: LAT; Rating: 4 stars
I thought this puzzle by Jess R and Andrew K was very original & inspired!