Thursday, June 11, 2026

BEQ 10:48 (Eric) [3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Fireball untimed (Jenni) [3.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
LAT 4:21 (Gareth) [3.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 9:43 (ZDL) [3.87 avg; 15 ratings] rate it
Universal 5:55 (Eric) [3.50 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today 6:31 (Emily) rate it
WSJ 11:23 (Jim Q) [2.75 avg; 6 ratings] rate it

Rebecca Goldstein’s Universal Crossword “The Beast in Me” — Eric’s Review

I got about halfway through and noticed that the circled letters held animals and thought, “Is that all there is?” But of course, there was more; as the title hints, each theme answer begins with M and ends with E:

• 16A [“Who Wants To Be a ___?”] MILLIONAIRE I haven’t watched game shows in a long time, but this title was a gimme.
• 27A [Dictation machine insert] MINI-CASSETTE Can you even get a dictation machine anymore?
• 42A [Localized weather conditions] MICROCLIMATE
• 55A [Frantic rush] MAD SCRAMBLE

The theme answers split between the first two, which I found so-so in terms of interesting grid entries, and the last two, which were more fun for me.

Other stuff:

• 5A [Airship used to promote “Marty Supreme” in 2025] BLIMP I don’t remember reading about this, but really, what other airship would it have been?
• 15A [National dish of Vietnam] PHƠ/5D BÁNH MÌ Yum and yummier.
• 38A [“Jump” duo ___ Kross] KRIS That’s a name I hadn’t heard in a long while.
• 46A [One parent of a mule] DONKEY An extraneous animal? A duplicate of sorts of ASS?
• 49A [Singer and actress Janelle] MONAE The extraneous M____E word bothers me a tiny bit; I wonder what kind of beast an ONA is.
• 14D [Trig ratio] COTAN I’ve long since forgotten what a cotangent is. I have also forgotten what a cosecant is, but I remembered COSEC (which slowed me down a bit).
• 32D [Times spent out before time spent out] DISCO NAPS I hadn’t heard that term before and got it from the crosses. I never was much of a bar-goer.
• 44D [Celebrity chef Samuelsson] MARCUS That’s a new name for me.

Michael Drusedum & Jason Reuben’s USA Today Crossword, “Kick Off” — Emily’s write-up

Ole! Today is the opening game for FIFA World Cup–Mexico vs South Africa.

Theme: the last word of each themer can be appended with “kick” to form a type of soccer (or football) kick

Themers:

• 17a. [Charge for filing late with the IRS], TAXPENALTY
• 35a. [Diagonally across the street], KITTYCORNER
• 59a. [Like a diet that avoids wheat], GLUTENFREE

The themer set includes TAXPENALTY, KITTYCORNER, and GLUTENFREE. With the theme, we get PENALTY KICK, CORNER KICK, and FREE KICK. The title hint is perfect, not just for this puzzle but also today with the timing–nicely done!

Favorite fill: IMPRINTS, DOLMA, and CHITOWN

Stumpers: MATINEES (I was thinking small screen, so “cartoons” and “daytime talk”) and GMAIL (needed crossings)

A smooth solve for me today with great cluing and lots of fresh fill. Loved the grid design as well and the lengthy bonus fill. The themer set and theme, especially today, make this a fun one!

4.0 stars

~Emily

Nikhil Bailey’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up

Time: 9m43s

Difficulty: Breezy (<8m)  |  Easy-ish (8-9m30s)  |  Working on it (9m30s-11m)  |  Rough going (11+m)

Today’s theme: 🎵 Rome if you want to.. 🎵

• II CAPTAIN
• C LEGS
• XL SHEETS
• IV LEAGUE

Fantastic.  Really enjoyed this one.  Had no clue what was going on, then had half a clue, then had the whole clue.  That probably sounds like the normal progression but it was satisfying internally.

This flips standard Roman numeral themes on their head by having you imagining the phrase first, say it out loud (insert the cryptic homophone indicator here), then spell out the numeration.  Very gratifying.

Cracking: the clue on OPERAGOER (Met someone?)

Slacking: Nothing.  I don’t even care.  Okay, I care a little, SER will never not be bad.  Also, at the risk of being pedantic (too late, rewind 50 L years), it’s the OCCIPITAL LOBE, no one in the history of medicine has called it the OPTIC LOBE.

Sidetracking: there really hasn’t been a better TV pairing than Richard Ayoade and John HAMM

George Jasper’s Wall Street Journal crossword “Water Hazard” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: Different types of water vessels can be found in the grid in a U shape

THEME ANSWERS:

• BARGE
• YACHT
• SLOOP
• CANOE
• FERRY
• LINER
• (revealer) [WWII vessel that hints at each group of circled letters in this puzzle] U BOAT.

Homage to the U-Boat wasn’t on my bingo card today, but there you have it! Odd, especially so close to D-Day.

Never an easy task, to build a grid around unusual letter placement like this, which might help explain why there are boats missing from the NW and SE corners. That would feel more balanced to me if they were there instead of, say, the central N/S spots.

Got hung up in that little NE Santa Clause-y corner (if you look closely, you can see HO HO HO!) and the theme helped get me out of it, which is the benefit to a theme like this as I neither knew THOR as clued or LAHORE at all.

ERRATA:

• [French equivalent of the Academy Award] CESAR. New to me? I think? Feels like something I should know.
• [1980s surgeon general] KOOP. Feels like a nickname for one of those turtles on Super Mario Bros.
• [It really sucks] SIPHON. Heh heh. Sometimes we bottom feeders need these sophomoric clues.
• [MVP QB in 1967’s “Ice Bowl”] STARR. New to me.
• [Forgets the sunblock, maybe] BAKES. Hmmm… I feel like one still BAKES regardless of the amount of sunblock. They’re just protected whilst in the oven.
• [Tweaker] METH HEAD. Wow. That’s a choice for an entry!

Mostly enjoyable today with only a couple spots feeling a bit sloggy.

3 stars.

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1895 “Unsound Alikes” — Eric’s Review

Today, we get a breezy little tour of some of the words that make English a difficult language to learn:

• 17A [Listens to the “Super Bowl Shuffle”?] HEARS BEARS
• 24A [Hurts dogs?] WOUNDS HOUNDS
• 36A [With 38-Across, works at a pedicure salon?] DOES/38A [See 36-Across] TOES
• 44A [Cuts trumpet parts in two?] HALVES VALVES
• 54A [Really desires slacks?] WANTS PANTS

I found the theme answers moderately amusing, except for WOUNDS HOUNDS, which conjures some unpleasant images. Picking up on the pattern quickly helped me fill in some blanks. I do wish the theme answers included my favorite example of facially nonsensical English orthography, the “ough” combination (“The rough bough fell through the trough.”) Maybe [Hacks up tree limbs] COUGHS BOUGHS?

Other stuff:

• 1A [Disney movie with the line “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all”] BAMBI No idea here; if I ever saw Bambi, I was too young to remember it. My first thought was MOANA, and then the M made me think of DUMBO.
• 14A [Smartphone setting] ALARM Not ALERT. When it comes to Brendan’s puzzles, I seem destined to guess the wrong setting every time.
• 32A [Easter marshmallow treats] PEEPS I wish crossword clue writers would abandon the idea that those artificial marshmallow birds are some sort of “treat.” How about [Cheap Easter basket filler?] (Or even “Cheep . . .,” if you want to be punny?)
• 33A [“Let’s talk in a while,” for short] HMU “Hit me up,” I guess. I don’t text enough to stay up on all the shorthand.
• 48A [1986 sci-fi movie that takes place on the exomoon LV-426] ALIENS Kinda scary to realize that’s a 40-year-old sequel.
• 53A [Winter pajamas material] WOOL I’m trying to imagine sleeping in wool PJs. Flannel, sure. But then, I have some merino shirts that are soft enough for sleepwear, so why not?
• 5D [“You’re scaring me!”] I’M SHOOK I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say that.
• 28D [It may be character-driven] PLOT One of the few things I remember from my college course in writing short fiction (which was longer ago than Aliens) is that the plot of a story should reflect who the characters are and why they make the choices they do.
• 32D [Sequel of a sequel of a sequel of a sequel] PART V I guess that would be Alien: Covenant (2017), which I don’t think I’ve seen.
• 34D [Clueless reporter or dramatic chipmunk, e.g.] MEME I haven’t seen either (so far as I remember), but it was a pretty safe guess.
• 42D [Lean and graceful] SVELTE Neat word that looks like what it means.
• 52D [Letters on some social media that aren’t X-rated?] BSKY I know what Bluesky is, but I don’t follow anyone on it. But I never followed anyone on Twitter, either.

David Karp’s Fireball Crossword “Exciting AF” – Jenni’s write-up

This is the better-late-than-never edition of the Fireball review brought to you by Jenni’s utter lack of knowledge about 21a.

Peter and David us bring us a timely puzzle chock-full of theme entries with a little twist. 21a tells us we are in WORLD CUP land, which means I needed extra time (yes, I do know that!). 21a is cross-referenced by 54a [Only two-time 21-Across Golden Ball winner], LEO MESSI. I thought OK, fine, it’s a WORLD CUP  theme. Except it didn’t quite work – many of the entries made no sense. Then I got to 63a [21-Across org…or when parsed differently, a hint to this puzzle’s Down answers vis-à-vis its Across answers] which is, of course FIFA. So OK, I have a little knowledge. Anyway. F IF A means that if the Down answer has an F, the Across answer has an A. Aha. Or fhf, if you prefer. Here’s Peter’s grid with the As highlighted.

• 18a [Mo. for Vietnam’s Reunification Day] is APR and 9d [Alert state] is DEFCON.
• 19a [Title character in “The Merry Wives of Windsor”] is ALICE; 2d [Burning at the beach] is BONFIRE.
• 24a [Fresh quality] is SASS. 14d [Chin feature] is CLEFT.
• 35a [Jocular nickname for 2026’s 21-Across cohosts] is the THREE AMIGOS and 40a [Draft-ready] is ON TAP; crossing both is 34d [Lifelong bud], BFF.
• 44a [Gets high] is ASCENDS crossing 44d [Silver sliver, e.g.] for FILING.
• 48a [Crack under stress, in a way] is LASH OUT and 49d [Poutine component] is FRIES.
• 69a [Like some kitchens] is EAT–IN. 56d [Common mirror image] is SELF.

Phew. Lots of theme material and a really good puzzle which would have been challenging even without the trick.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: had no idea which THREE AMIGOS they were referring to. Until I looked it up I assumed they were TV co-hosts. Nope. The three countries co-hosting the tournament are the US, Mexico, and Canada. I knew there were World Cup matches scattered around the US (I live between Philadelphia and NYC so there’s no escaping that) and hadn’t realized it was a North American thing.

Guilherme Gilioli’s LA Times Crossword – Gareth’s theme summary

I’m always a sucker for song-based crossword themes. This one is brief, but elegant on a number of levels. The revealer is THEVOICE, and each of three entries end in a level of VOICE, and they are sorted from soft to loud:

• [Wham! hit on Make It Big], CARELESSWHISPER. Actually, George Michael’s first solo hit, but credited to Wham! in the US for marketing reasons.
• [No Doubt hit on Tragic Kingdom], DONTSPEAK
• [The Beatles hit on Please Please Me!], TWISTANDSHOUT. I wish this had given credit to the Isley Brothers…

Gareth