Wednesday, June 10, 2026

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Peter Gordon’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “A House Divided” — Eric’s Review

Peter Gordon’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “A House Divided” — 6/10/26 (Click to Enlarge)

I suppose it’s a sign of just how long it’s been since divorce was a taboo that a theme like this gets published. I’m old enough to remember when many states didn’t have no-fault divorce, and being raised Catholic certainly colored my perception of what’s now a fairly common thing.

But anyway, various styles and types of house get split across two answers, as indicated by circled letters:

• 17A [Caesar’s accusation] ET TU/ 18A [Golden-bodied fish] DORADO
• 21A [Goal in certain rooms] ESCAPE/22A [App makeup] CODE
• 36A [Tribal healers] SHAMANS/38A [“Rhinoceros” playwright] Eugène IONESCO
• 53A [Persia, today] IRAN/54A [Church groups] CHOIRS
• 58A [With 59-Across, byproduct of divorce, and a clue to each set of circled letters] BROKEN/59A [See 58-Across] HOME 

This was an easy enough puzzle, and getting the revealer halfway through allowed me to fill in some of the circled letters without reading the clues. It seems somewhat inelegant that three of the theme answers are specific architectural styles but a “mansion” is just “a large, impressive house.” And there’s also the question of whether people still use “broken home” to refer to a marriage that ends in divorce; to me, it’s pretty musty-sounding.

Other stuff:

• 1A [Cutter or clipper] SHIP That clue didn’t fool me at all.
• 25A [Hound in the heavens] CANIS Imagine my befuddlement when I got the last three letters before I’d read the clue.
• 27A [Los Angeles suburb] EL MONTE I’ve heard of it, but didn’t know where it is. It’s in the San Gabriel Valley, east of LA proper.
• 44A [Consumes without enthusiasm] PECKS AT I tried “picks at” first; I could have been the poster boy for picky eaters. I’m happy to say that my palate has broadened over the years.
• 5D [Team that had an 86-year World Series championship drought] RED SOX Boston went from 1918–2004 without winning the series, though they one four American League championships during that time. My first thought here was the Chicago Cubs, and even when I was pretty sure 26A was LEX Luthor, the Red Sox didn’t come to mind.
• 7D [Colorful wraps] SERAPES Not SARONGS.
• 46D [Trumpet’s cousin] CORNET I need to work harder at noticing the cornet’s “mellower tone quality.” Every time I hear one on a recording, I think it’s a trumpet.

David J. Kahn & Ethan Quigley’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap

NY Times crossword solution, 6/10/26 – no. 0610

At first I saw the circled letters with country abbreviations and a 15 starting with WORLD and fretted it would be something dry like the World Economic Forum. Okay, it’s more topical and entertainment-oriented, with WORLD CUP WINNERS (maybe slightly green-paint?). The circle countries are BRAzil, FRAnce, ARGentina, URUguay, GERmanu, ITAly, ENGland, and ESPaña, using the standard three-letter country abbreviations. Just eight teams have one in the first 22 Cups. While the embedded countries aren’t what’s clued, their World Cup title years are in brackets in the clues.

PELE is a bonus themer, 56D. [Only player on three victorious teams in this puzzle]. That means three Brazilian teams, not three different countries.

Fave fill: FOOT WARMERS, JIGSAW (I think some people strictly call them jigsaw puzzles, since the jigsaw is what can be used to cut the pieces, but I call them jigsaws), KICKSTARTER. I’ve bought jigsaws via Kickstarter but my foot-warming socks come from other places. Oh! FOOT WARMERS and KICKSTARTER both begin with soccery words, so quasi-thematic when only two entries are acutely theme-related.

To get the central 15 crossed by entries containing the eight country codes in rows 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15 required some compromises in the fill. Not so keen on SKAT, ASKA, -INE, ELY, GET WET, TYS, NUDGER.

3.5 stars from me.