LAT tk (pannonica) rate it
NYT 5:09 (Amy) 
[4.50 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Jim P) rate it
USA Today tk (Ben P) rate it
Willa Angel Chen Miller’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 7/10/26 – no. 0710
Nice to be back to a Friday difficulty level for the Friday puzzle!
Everything’s anchored by six 15s that span the Acrosses and Downs. They’re a nice batch: ESPRESSO MACHINE (husband loves his), NOISE COMPLAINTS, “I CAN ONLY IMAGINE,” FAN INTERFERENCE (Bartman!), SPILLED THE BEANS, and LINE OF REASONING.
Fave sub-15 fill: WET BAR, WISE-ASS, TUBE TOP (I remember the 1980s), “SRSLY,” SEA BASS, WHAT IFS.
Three more things:
- 36A. [Creator of the Detroit Industry Murals], Diego RIVERA. I’ve only driven through Detroit on the way to Toronto, didn’t stop at the art museum. Here’s the room with Rivera’s murals. Gorgeous!
- 58A. [“No cap”], SRSLY. If you’re over 45, you might want to visit the Merriam-Webster page for the term “no cap.” Got a laugh out of the “example sentence” culled from the internet, where “no cap” is used in a sentence about financial institutions in the not-slang sense.
- 4D. [Things that come with waffles?], ERS. Not a fan of pluralized interjections in crosswords. Emergency rooms can absolutely take a plural. (Here, it’s that you say “er” while waffling.)
Four stars from me.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
This was excellent. Perfect difficulty, lively grid spanners, and some outstanding clues for the shorter fill, like BOAS and especially HUNT.
NYT was a fun puzzle. Challenging enough to get things wrong here and there as one works through it, but with a ‘right’ answer in each case that makes sense.