Wednesday, July 1, 2026

AV Club 6:41 (Amy) rate it
LAT tk (Gareth) rate it
NYT 4:46 (Amy) [3.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker tk (Jim Q) rate it
Universal tk (pannonica) rate it
USA Today tk (Emily) rate it
WSJ tk (Eric) rate it

Jeffrey Martinovic’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap

NY Times crossword solution, 7/1/26 – no. 0701

Fun twist here! Your PARALLEL UNIVERSE, your ALTERNATE REALITY, is represented by the NW and NE corners, which are connected by (in the circled squares) a WORMHOLE. 1a TUBER is 10a REBUT backwards. 15a ENOLA is 17a ALONE backwards. 18a SPRAT is 20a TARPS in reverse. 21a LIEN and 24a NEIL are also thus paired. And 25a AND is the reverse of 28a DNA. To further mess with your mind, 1d to 5d and 10d to 14d are dupes: two clues for TESLA, two clues for UNPIN, two clues for BORED, two clues for ELAN (but really the same sense for both, whereas the other four dupe pairs had different clue angles), and animal and human RAT clues.

I was hoping addition sections would have had wormhole repeats, but that would have been an insanely tough feat.

Fave fill: WHITE LIE, SUSHI RICE, CON ARTIST. To have some zippy fill in a puzzle with this many constraints–two mirror corners, four answers containing the circled WORMHOLE letters, and two 15s? Whew.

Three more things:

• 44D. [Taiwanese president ___ Ing-wen], TSAI. Yay, I remembered her name! She left the presidency in 2024, which the clue should have reflected, no? Glancing at her Wikipedia page, I learned that she has indigenous Taiwanese ancestry, and I had not known that Taiwan had so many indigenous peoples, dating back 15,000 years. Indeed, it’s thought that they’re the origin of the Austronesian languages. So my in-laws’ native tongues have roots on Taiwan.
• 58D. [“Phooey!”], NERTS. Nobody much has said “nerts” in probably 60 years. But how much more recent is “phooey”? A 1970s cartoon was called Hong Kong Phooey. Feel like “phooey” was gone by the 1980s for my generation?
• 60D. [Site of the Ten Plagues], EGYPT. Per the Old Testament, that is. Egypt has advanced to the knockout round in the World Cup, so they’re not currently plagued.

A rousing 4.5 stars from me. I liked the switcheroo gambit.

Matthew Stock’s AV Club Classic crossword, “You’ve Got Mail”–Amy’s recap

AV Club Classic Crossword solution, 7/1/26 – “You’ve Got Mail”

Let’s say you’re writing an email. You’ve got the SUBJECT line, your SALUTATION, the BODY of the message, and perhaps a SIGNATURE line. Those words are at the ends of the theme answers:

• 19a. [“Fwd: Re: honey and molasses”?], STICKY SUBJECT. A subject line about sticky stuff.
• 27a. [“Dear brilliant center of the Solar System, whose warmth shines down on us from the heavens each day,”?], SUN SALUTATION. A greeting to the sun.
• 44a. [“I’m writing about our proposed constitutional amendments and the upcoming election …”?], GOVERNING BODY. The body of the message is about governance.
• 53a. [“Sincerely, Chronos”], TIME SIGNATURE. Signature line from the personification of time.

Fave fill: DOVETAIL, GO GRAY (I’m trying!), PINT-SIZE.

I’m not much for Instagram, so I had to look up the meaning of FINSTA, 5d. [Secondary social media portmanteau]. It’s a secret or incognito Instagram account, portmanteau of “fake” and “Insta.”

New to me: 6d. [First Nations people of present-day Newfoundland and Labrador], INNU. No, they’re not Inuit. Read up. Today is, apparently, Crosswords Teaching Us About Indigenous Peoples Day.

Four stars from me.