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USA Today tk (?) rate it
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Alex Eaton-Salners’s New York Times Crossword — Sophia’s Recap
Theme: VOICE PARTS – each theme answer contains a voice type hidden in circled letters
New York Times, 07 06 2026, By Alex Eaton-Salners
- 17a [Event that might include juggling, singing and magic tricks] – TALENT SHOW (contains ALTO)
- 24a [Looks of total confusion] – BLANK STARES (contains BASS)
- 36a [Three-part fire safety technique] – STOP DROP AND ROLL (contains SOPRANO)
- 46a [2009 comedy about a bachelor party and its aftermath] – THE HANGOVER (contains TENOR)
- 56a [Sections of a choir …. as hinted at by this puzzle’s circled letters] – VOICE PARTS
As a former choir kid I caught onto what was happening in the circled letters immediately! It’s a solid Monday theme. It would have been super cool if the voice parts were “in order” from highest to lowest, with soprano as the first answer and bass as the last, but I think it’s much more important to pick cool theme answers than to have them in a particular order.”Soprano” hidden in STOP DROP AND ROLL is a particularly nice find – that’s a long word to have to contain! I also like TALENT SHOW for “alto”. Does THE HANGOVER hold up? I’ve never seen it.
A lot of geography going on in the long downs today! There’s the GALAPAGOS, COPENHAGEN, and TEHRAN, IRAN. I’ve been watching a bunch of World Cup games all week, so having a lot of world-spanning content felt very apt to me (even though none of these countries are still in competition at this point). HEAT and HUMID in the grid is also apt – I’m located in the Pacific Northwest, which may be the only part of the USA that’s not getting hit by the current heat wave. Ironically given the heat, there are also two characters from “Frozen” today, ANNA and SVEN.
Oh, and for anyone unfamiliar with ELMO’s feud with a pet rock, here’s an explainer:
Happy Monday all!