Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Jonesin’ untimed (Jenni) rate it
LAT 3:42 (Erin) [3.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 5:16 (Eric) [3.11 avg; 9 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker untimed (pannonica) [3.42 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
Universal 6:15 (Eric) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Sophia) rate it
Xword Nation tk (Ade) rate it
WSJ 5:23 (Jim Q) [3.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Rom For Development” — gotta know where to look – Jenni’s write-up

before I start: I had a great time at Westwords yesterday – what wonderful puzzles! While I was there a little birdie told me that I made a mistake when I first started writing about Matt’s puzzles. They are not subscription puzzles. He sells the puzzle to alt-weekly typ papers (the few that remains) and we can all download them for free! Check out the Today’s Puzzles link at the top of this page, or find them on Crossword Nexus. My apologies for the error.

I think I figured this one out after some cogitation. Let me know if you agree in the comments. I noticed that there were a lot of currency entries and assumed that had something to do with the theme. When I looked for the first one to start my write-up, I realized they are all clustered in the center of the grid. They’re ten consecutive Down answers and they all cross the central entry.

Jonesin’ puzzle, Matt Jones, June 16, 1016, “Room for development” – gotta know where to look, solution grid

• 15a [Euros replaced them in Greece] is DRACHMAS.
• 17a [Spanish currency before the Euro] is PESETA.
• 20a [Costa Rican currency (or, without the accent, a punctuation mark)] is the COLÓN.
• 28a [Former German currency, for short] is the DMARK.
• 30a [Swiss currency used in Lichtenstein] is the FRANC.
• 32a [Currency of Libya, Jordan, or Algeria] is the DINAR.
• 34a [Base unit of U.S. gold coins prior to 1933 (equivalent to $10)] is ONE EAGLE.
• 36a [Venezuelan money units (in the English plural)] is BOLIVARS.
• 37a [Peruvian currency in the plural (or bottoms of shoes)] is SOLES.
• 38a [Canadian $2 coin, informally] is the TOONIE.

They all cross 36a [Beachside establishment where “there’s always money,” on “Arrested Development”] is BANANA STAND. For added themery, we have 47d [Fictional family who owned the 36-Across]: the BLUTHS. The whole word is made up of money and I think that’s the point. Quite a feat of construction! I have never watched “Arrested Development” so I probably didn’t enjoy as much as I could have.

Amazingly enough given the constraints of the theme, the fill is quite solid. The only thing that stopped me was 41a [Yogurt brand founded in Colorado]. I had to look it up to make sure NOOSA was one word. Apparently it is

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: see above re: NOOSA. I had also never heard of wrestler TRISH Stratus.

Brad Lively’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s Review

Brad Lively’s New York Times Crossword — 6/16/26 (Click to Enlarge)

I’m a bit tired this evening, but this went pretty quickly all the same. A bunch of fathers get together, as indicated by the circled letters:

• 17A [Pontiff’s emblem with three horizontal bars] PAPAL CROSS
• 29A [Amigo] COMPADRE
• 36A [Hemingway tale about an elderly fisherman, with “The” … or a phonetic hint to four sets of circled letters in this puzzle?] OLD MAN AND THE SEA
• 42A [Crustaceans sometimes called “mudbugs”] CRAWDADS Mmm. I love Louisiana cooking. We can’t get good ingredients for it here in Southwest Colorado, but there’s always the internet.
• 57A [Open some bubbly with a bang] POP THE CORK

We’ve seen this sort of theme many times. The “SEA” to “C” correspondence doesn’t seem particularly novel, but I don’t expect that much novelty from early week puzzles. It’s a serviceable theme, competently executed.

Other stuff:

• 5A [Dessert that wiggles] JELL-O My old man hated Jell-O passionately. I’ll spare you my story of the Jell-O cake, as it’s apparently not as entertaining as I thought.
• 50A [Where the rubber meets the road] TREAD It took me much too long to get that one.
• 44A [Test for a future Ph.D.] GRE/4D [Exam for a future J.D.] LSAT By far the worst test-taking experience I ever had. The Texas and Illinois bar exams were a breeze by comparison (though the prep for those was worse).
• 61A [Cleveland’s lake] ERIE My dad’s hometown.
• 28D [Like an image just begging to be captioned and shared] MEME-WORTHY I like that better than MEMEABLE, which was in the Brendan Emmett Quigley puzzle I reviewed yesterday.
• 38D [Obstacle to overcome] HURDLE Like the GRE or the LSAT?

Joe Rodini’s Universal Crossword “Travel Advisory” — Eric’s Review

Joe Rodini’s Universal Crossword “Travel Advisory” — 6/16/26 (Click to Enlarge)

As so often happens, I didn’t see the theme until I was done filling in the grid. Some common traffic warnings lead off the four theme answers:

• 17A [Bond statistic] YIELD TO MATURITY Yeah, my first thought was “Bond, James Bond.”
• 23A [Swim team?] SCHOOL OF FISH This was the first theme answer I got, and I
• 51A [Volleyball sequence] BUMP SET SPIKE I was probably in junior high the last time I played volleyball. I remembered “set” and “spike” but not “bump,” though I sort of remember that the rules require (at least?) three contacts with the ball for a point.
• 62A [Rumor … or what the start of 17-, 23- or 51-Across can be] WORD ON THE STREET

I don’t know if the idea here is that these words are literally painted on the pavement in some places. Most of these “advisories” I see are on signs, which I suppose are “on the street.” It doesn’t really matter; SCHOOL OF FISH and BUMP, SET, SPIKE are sort of fun grid entries. (YIELD TO MATURITY is about as interesting as a mutual fund prospectus.)

Other stuff:

• 5A [New York team that won Super Bowl III] JETS I appreciated the inclusion of the city in the clue; off the top of my head, I can think of one other three-letter NFL team (the Los Angeles Rams), but I know the other NYC team is the Giants. The “New York” turned it from “Wait for the crosses” to a gimme.
• 16A [Name found in “retaliation”] TALIA These clues keep getting weirder and weirder, don’t they? (Though is there a better example of cinematic retaliation than Connie Corleone (Talia Shire) poisoning Don Altobello in The Godfather Part III? Holy cannoli!)
• 58A [Tech support whiz] IT PRO When I worked for the Texas Legislature, a different division of my agency provided the computer equipment for the entire legislature (181 members, say an average staff of five — that’s a lot of people, and that’s not everyone). It was really nice to be able to call the Help Desk 24 hours a day and actually get a good answer to whatever computer problem you had. Kudos to you, TLC IS!
• 2D [Pint-size growlers?] TOYS I would have guessed that “toy dog” had some sort of weight limit, like classes in combat sports. Apparently not, and apparently not all toys are lap dogs.
• 11D [Courtroom excuse] ALIBI I’m beginning to think the Universal editors keep using this clue just to irk me. I’m willing to concede that “alibi” may be equivalent to “excuse” in a non-legal context, but trust me — in a courtroom, the two are very different.
• 51D [Really, really laments spilled milk] BAWLS Easy enough clue, but I kinda like it.
• 54D [“Fo sho!”] TOTES Which is more cringe-making?

Daniel Hrynick’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Erin’s write-up

LA Times solution, 6/16/26

Hello lovelies! This Tuesday’s LA Times puzzle has things under control…remote control.

• 19a. [Build a snow fort or catch frogs] PLAY OUTSIDE
• 27a. [What a deeply regretful person may wish to do] REWIND THE CLOCK
• 44a. [Stop mid-story to add suspense, say] PAUSE FOR EFFECT
• 55a. [Convenient car feature on a cold winter morning, or a feature of 19-, 27-, and 44-Across?] REMOTE START. The theme entries begin (start) with different buttons found on a remote control: play, rewind, and pause.

Other things:

• 67a. [Mets’ div.] NLE, or National League East for folks not into baseball.
• 65a. [Ancient city in modern Turkey] TROY. It’s located in Çanakkale Province, Turkey, which is very close to Greece.
• 1a. [Pizza crust option] THIN. What is the point of having pizza if there’s barely any crust? Just put some cheese and sauce on a cracker.

Erik Agard’s New Yorker crossword — pannonica’s write-up

New Yorker • 6/16/26 • Tue • Agard • solution • 20260616

This one put up a little bit of resistance, but still isn’t what I’d call ‘moderately challenging’.

• 1a [Long, loose Muslim garments] ABAYAS. Right off the bat I was like, oh I know this but it’s going to take too long to remember it. Sure enough, when I returned to this spot as the solve drew to a close, there were enough letters in place to jolt it back to mind.
• 14a [Biscuit ingredient?] SILENT U. Even with many letters set up via crossings, it took a while to see this one.
• 18a [Vague feeling of unwellness] MALAISE. From French, as you might imagine: mal (bad) + aise (comfort).
• 21a [What some baking projects leave behind] MESSES.
  
• 22a [Texas city whose name consists of three musical notes] LAREDO. Loved this one because (1) I didn’t immediately know it, (2) it took just a couple seconds of thinking pointedly about it, (3) it’s a neat thing I’d never noticed before.
• 27a [ __ mountaineering (Winter Olympics event that débuted in 2026] SKI. I’m so out of touch with this kind of stuff, but it was inferable.
• 46a [See 45-Down] WILLIS. Had the answer without reading the cross-referenced clue, and I chuckled to myself that it’d be great if this was about outsider musician WESLEY WILLIS but of course there’s no way that’s gonna happen. L&B! 45d [With 46-Across, singer of the nineties cult favorites “Rock N Roll McDonalds” and “I Whipped Batman’s Ass”] WESLEY.
• 51a [Triangular geographic features] DELTAS.
  
• 54a [Genial] AMIABLE. Tried the too-long AMENABLE first.
• 1d [Course in which speaking aloud might be prohibited?] ASL CLASS. My first idea was something like dog obedience training.
• 2d [Person who engages in tech-based experimentation with their own health] BIOHACKER. Biohacking is associated with the philosophy of transhumanism (commonly conflated with transgender issues and conditions). I have mixed feelings about this stuff, because obviously certain levels are both useful and benign—eyeglasses, for example—but at higher levels there is also a sinister, dystopian element to the endeavor.
• 3d [Mineral discovered in a Canadian county named for Queen Victoria’s husband] ALBERTITE. Another one I didn’t know at all but found quite simple to think of with the prompts in the clue.
• 4d [Impatient affirmative] YES, YES. Hey, today is Bloomsday!
  

  “…and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

• 9d [Got rid of, in a way] DELETED. Tried DONATED first.
• 34d [Led an enviably full life] HAD IT ALL.
  
• 42d [Reason for recasting?] TIE VOTE. I was certain this was a fishing clue.
• 47d [TV show that runs before another show, in industry jargon] LEAD-IN. Know the term, makes sense as clued, but wouldn’t have been able to get it without crossings.
  • 49d [Creature designed by a sci-fi concept artist] ALIEN, later (?) referred to as a xenomorph. The artist was Hans Ruedi Giger.
    
• 53d [Embarrassing soccer scores, for short] OGS, own-goals. Even I knew this!

Fred Raker & Jeremy Lieberman’s Wall Street Journal crossword “Picture of Health” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: Punny “Favorite Movies” of different types of doctors.

WSJ • 6/16/26 • Tues • “Picture of Health” • Fred Raker & Jeremy Lieberman Jasper • solution • 20260616

THEME ANSWERS:

• [Favorite movie for an anesthesiologist?] THE BIG SLEEP
• [Favorite movie for a hematologist?] FIRST BLOOD
• [Favorite movie for a proctologist?] REAR WINDOW
• [Favorite movie for an obstetrician?] DELIVERANCE

You had me at REAR WINDOW. I ain’t above a good butt joke. Though DELIVERANCE is such an infamously creepy/harrowing title that it’s a bit disturbing to picture a doc who is responsible for bringing life into the world watching a DELIVERANCE marathon. I also don’t quite understand FIRST BLOOD… will any movie with blood in the title suffice?

Found the grid harder than usual, though it seems easy in retrospect. Only didn’t know REALS. 

And CESSATION strikes me as an odd word to see in a crossword.

Lastly, if only the movie were called WRECKED EM RALPH instead of Wreck It Ralph, we’d have another movie contender for the proctologist!

3.5 stars

**This may be a debut for Jeremy. If so, congrats!