Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Jonesin’ untimed (Jenni) rate it
LAT 3:42 (Erin) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 4:44 (Eric) [3.56 avg; 8 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker untimed (pannonica) [4.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Universal 9:40 (Eric) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Sophia) rate it
Xword Nation tk (Ade) rate it
WSJ 9:15 (Jim Q) [2.25 avg; 2 ratings] rate it

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “You’re Too Wise” — well, close enough – Jenni’s write-up

I didn’t catch on to the theme until the very end. Overall I found it a smooth, enjoyable solve although a couple of the theme entries raised an eyebrow.

Each theme answer has two Y’s (get it?).

• 18a [Sorting hub for train networks] is a RAILWAY YARD. The train nut in my house says “rail yard.” Google Ngram Viewer agrees with him – RAILWAY YARD peaked in 1915 and was passed by rail yard in 1971.
• 20a [Formative period] is EARLY YEARS.
• 35a [Dairy product that may contain seeds] is RASPBERRY YOGURT. Feels a little green paint-y to me.
• 54a [She was Maid Marian in “Robin Hood: Men in Tights”] is AMY YASBECK. Potential Natick alert: the first y crosses Diana NYAD. The theme helps you here. I knew NYAD which made up for not knowing YASBECK.
• 58a [It’s extremely high-priced and seaworthy] is a LUXURY YACHT. No notes.

All in all a solid theme with a lot of theme material for a 15×15. The fill was smooth despite that.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: see above re: AMY YASBECK. I also did not know that the FEIJOA is sometimes called a “pineapple guava.”

Matthew Luter and Brian Callahan’s Universal Crossword “What a Slog!” — Eric’s Review

I may have set a personal record time for a Universal crossword. Unfortunately, it would likely be my slowest performance on one of their puzzles. But speed-solving is overrated, right?

It takes some nerve to title your puzzle something like “What a Slog!” You’re just inviting solvers to agree with you. This wasn’t a slog by any means; I mostly moved through the grid at a steady (though slow) pace, except for the middle top section where nothing seemed to work.

But for once the theme — a scrambled six-letter word mostly split between the component words of the theme answers — helped me out:

• 20A [*Minor epiphanies during mundane moments] SHOWER THOUGHTS I backed into THOUGHTS, getting the last four letters before anything else. I made the foolish decision that the G must be preceded by an I, and having that I there slowed me down a good bit. That’s where the theme bailed me out, because I belatedly realized that the I needed to be a U.
• 31A [*Caused a major disruption] WROUGHT HAVOC My dictionary’s Usage Note: “The phrase wrought havoc, as in ‘they wrought havoc on the countryside’, is an acceptable variant of wreaked havoc. Here, wrought is an archaic past tense of work. It is not, as is sometimes assumed, a past tense of wreak.” I did not know that about WROUGHT, though of course that tense shows up in the familiar “wrought iron.” In any event, I lost even more time trying to get WREAKED to work.
• 39A [*Cause championed by organized labor] EIGHT-HOUR DAY When I worked for the Texas Legislature, I put in many days that were much longer than eight hours. At least we got one for one compensatory time and my bosses were good about letting us use it when the legislature wasn’t in session.
• 55A [Clumsily succeeded at … or a hint to the word scrambled in each starred clue’s answer] MUDDLED THROUGH Yeah, that kind of describes how I solved this puzzle.

Despite my struggles with some of the fill, I enjoyed this puzzle.

Other stuff:

• 1A [Lowest poker pair] TWOS The epitome of my difficulties with the fill: I was confident that 1A had to be TWOS, but at some point, I was equally sure that 2D Andy WARHOL should be Keith HARING.
• 24A [Sleeveless top] VEST It took me an unreasonably long time to see that one.
• 50A [Radio ___ (“Do the Right Thing” character)] RAHEEM Spike Lee’s masterpiece is one of the best movies about race relations in the United States — and sadly still as relevant today as it was in 1989.
• 63A [“DJ Play a Christmas Song” artist] CHER It’s from 2023, which explains why I had no idea here. The last Cher song I remember clearly is “If I Could Turn Back Time” (which, coincidentally, is also from 1989).
• 5D [Month between enero and marzo] FEBRERO I lived in Texas long enough that this should have been a no-brainer. I knew it was some cognate of February, but I needed a lot of crosses to get the whole thing.
• 8D [Pixar flick set in the Communiverse] ELIO I feel like that’s one of the few Pixar features that I haven’t seen. They’re often pretty funny and occasionally touching.
• 9D [Like the Sears catalog, after 1993] DEFUNCT Has it really been that long? I spent many hours as a kid leafing through the Sears Wishbook making my Christmas list.
• 34D [Stark child hidden in “literary agent”] ARYA I’ve neither read nor seen any of the Game of Thrones series. At least this weird Universal name clue kept me from my perpetual mistake of thing the character’s name is ANYA.

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

It’s not often that I break five minutes on any crossword (I just make too many typos to ever be a speed solver). I zipped through this without seeing the theme, but that quickly became clear after I was done.

We get four toasty, furry combinations here, with a revealer to tie them together:

• 20A [*Surfer girls, in old lingo] BEACH BUNNY
• 28A [*Frankfurters] HOT DOGS
• 36A [*Relative of a grizzly that’s named for its bright chest patch] SUN BEAR
• 45A [*Internet browser borrowing a nickname for the red panda] FIREFOX
• 50A [Like a feeling of tender happiness … or how you might feel after reading both halves of the answers to the starred clues?] WARM AND FUZZY

A BEACH is often WARM, a BUNNY is usually FUZZY . . . You get the idea. A theme like this, where seeing the theme is not likely to be essential to one’s ability to solve the puzzle, relies a lot on whether the theme answers are inherently interesting. I like them all, even HOT DOGS (a food that generally doesn’t appeal to me, and a personality type that never appeals to me).

Other stuff:

• 15A [Combustible rock] COAL I’m chagrined that I needed three letters to come up with the answer there.
• 32A [Subject of Weird Al Yankovic’s “The White Stuff”] OREO As far as I can tell, that’s a novel clue for crosswords’ favorite barely-edible cookie.
• 43A [Accessories pointed at the North Pole?] ELF HATS That answer makes me think of the Will Ferrell movie (which I’ve never seen), which makes me think of the leathery-looking guy who’s shilling for Frito-Lay during the World Cup. Today I Learned he’s a part-owner of Los Angeles FC and a minority shareholder in Leeds United.
• 61A [Fresh powder, e.g.] SNOW I’m trying to be hopeful that the 2026–2027 ski season, at least in the Southern Rockies, will be better than the last two. It’s not too early to light some Mexican prayer candles (or whatever) for snow!
• 4D [Fruit from a tree that can self-pollinate] AVOCADO Free cooking advice: Buy your avocados a few days before you plan to use them and get ones that are hard. Stick them in a bag with a banana. When they reach the right degree of ripeness, put them in the refrigerator. Eat the banana, because it’s difficult to get too much potassium.
• 6D [Hole foods?] DONUTS Cute clue. I remember the original Whole Foods in Austin, a tiny little place that was almost nothing like a contemporary Whole Foods store.
• 9D [Last words on a pinball machine] GAME OVER The few times I tried playing pinball, I saw those words within about 30 seconds.
• 36D [Monty Python musical with a portmanteau title] SPAMALOT Shout out to my Fiend friend Jim Q, whose high school students recently staged that show.
• 47D [Yellow card wielder] REF We saw quite a few yellow cards in today’s World Cup matches. I’m kind of sorry to see the USA go out, if only for the selfish reason that Belgium will be a tougher opponent in the quarterfinal for my guys (Spain) than the USA would have been.
• 52D [Number of years that George Washington lived in the White House] ZERO That’s not particularly surprising, given that the first capital of the United States was New York and the second was Philadelphia. John Adams was the first president to live in the White House.
• 53D [Last U.S. national park alphabetically] ZION That’s one of my favorite parks. It would be nice to someday hike through the Narrows of Zion Canyon, but I don’t really see that happening.

Matthew Luter’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Erin’s write-up

Hello lovelies! This Tuesday’s LA Times puzzle celebrates an almost 60-year-old song:

• 20a. [Question, as the opposing side’s witness] CROSS-EXAMINE
• 34a. [Settings that reinforce personal biases] ECHO CHAMBER
• 41a. [Tool for monitoring blood sugar levels] GLUCOSE METER
• 55a. [Classic Beatles song, or an apt description of the progression of this puzzle’s circles] COME TOGETHER. The letters COME start off with eight letters between them, then five, then two, before they finally meet in the revealer.

Other things:

• 5d. [The Electric Mayhem bandleader] DR. TEETH.  Disney+ released a series on the Muppet band’s recording of their first album in 2023.
• 59d. [Bird in Tootsie Pop ads] OWL. Paul Winchell voiced the owl, along with many other cartoon characters. He was also a ventriloquist and was involved in medical inventions, including an artificial heart.

Brian Keller’s Wall Street Journal crossword “Playing Around” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: Olympic… terms… associated with “rings.”

THEME ANSWERS:

• BOXING VENUES
• ARCHERY BULLSEYE
• GYMNASTICS EVENT
• (Revealer) [Sporting logo, and an alternative description of 20-, 28- and 50-Across] OLYMPIC RINGS

Before I begin: I updated yesterday’s post with a write-up of Monday’s puzzle. I mistakenly thought the WSJ had skipped it because the page I landed on loaded the old interface and the puzzle wasn’t there. Turns out the internet gods were simply messing with me.

Okay…

This is definitely a rings puzzle, but I have a few reservations about the set.

I can’t be the only person who’s never said ARCHERY BULLSEYE, can I? It’s always just… bullseye, right? It struck me as an oddly specific phrase, though I admit I’m not exactly William Tell.

BOXING VENUES works nicely, and the clue, [Round containers, in a way], is clever. I do think it deserved a question mark, though.

The last themer is where I got hung up.

GYMNASTICS EVENT [Competition that dropped the “perfect 10” scoring in 2006].

Is this supposed to be referring specifically to the RINGS event? It has to be… right? But if so, the answer feels awfully broad. Or is it simply saying that RINGS is one of several gymnastics events, all of which abandoned the perfect-10 scoring system in 2006 while I was apparently not paying attention?

A quick search informed me that every elite gymnastics event adopted the open-ended scoring system in 2006.

So…

A) Mind blown. I was this many days old (16,790 to be exact… birthday today), when I learned that a perfect ten hasn’t been a thing in 20 years.

B) That answer doesn’t actually seem to refer specifically to RINGS.

C) I have now spent an unreasonable amount of mental energy on this.

The theme ultimately felt a little shoehorned to me. I understand what it was going for, but the set never quite clicked.

OTHER THINGS:

• [Gas station with a red “spark” logo] ARCO. Is this regional? I don’t see them here in the Northeast, and despite traveling a fair amount, the name barely rang a bell.
• [Statistician’s stuff] DATA. I confidently entered MATH, which gave me the delightful non-answer BHMHIwhere BAMBI should have been because I also had HEAD instead of BEAN [Noggin]. Am I the only one who can convince myself that almost anything is a legitimate crossword answer if I’m confident enough?
• [Riz of “Sound of Metal”] AHMED. Everything about this clue-answer pair was new to me except the word “of.”

2.75 stars from me today.

Lastly, I don’t want to open a can of worms, but I seem to be in the minority when it comes to the new WSJ solving interface. From what I’ve experienced, it’s a massive improvement. There’s essentially no latency, switching directions feels natural, completed entries jump to sensible locations, and overall it feels much more in line with modern crossword interfaces.

So… what am I missing?

Why is there such strong pushback? The reaction has been intense enough that the comments were apparently disabled. I’m genuinely curious what features people miss, because my experience has been almost entirely positive.

Patrick Berry’s New Yorker crossword — pannonica’s write-up

Short on time this morning.

This was a relatively easy crossword with some unusual words in the fill that didn’t feel as if they were shoehorned there. Mark of an experienced crossword maker, I’d say.

Talking about entries like 11d AMELIORATE, 36d PERUSE, 54a ASSAILANT, 43a ALTRUISM.

• 1a [Things designed for dry eyes?] SWIM MASKS. Nice.
• 16a [Getting an early start] UP AND AT IT. UP AND AT ’EM is more common.
  
• 24a [Newspaperman with a triply alliterative name, in Marvel comics] J JONAH JAMESON. Minor dupe with 12d [They’re typically chosen by parents] GIVEN NAMES.
  More J-name action: 24d [Actress who plays Johanna Mason in the “Hunger Games” films] JENA MALONE, 45d [49ers quarterback who was the first player to win three Super Bowl M.V.P.s] JOE MONTANA, 26d [Jackson who led the S.C.L.C.’s  Operation Breadbasket program] JESSE.
• 34a [Stay out all night?] CAMP. Nice again.
• 56a [Common people] THE MASSES.
  
• 8d [Put in stitches?] KNIT. Tried SEWN first.
• 13d [Wield, as power] EXERT. 52d [Play for a fool] USE.
• 31d [Speaker in a car, briefly?] GPS. Not as impressed by this as I was for 1-across and 34-across.
• 41d [Anna of the “Scary Movie” films] FARIS. Didn’t know this, didn’t see it during the solve. All crosses.

Must run!