AV Club 5:58 (Amy) 
[3.50 avg; 1 rating] rate it
LAT tk (Gareth) rate it
NYT 3:41 (Amy) 
[4.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
The New Yorker tk (Jim Q) rate it
Universal tk (pannonica) rate it
USA Today tk (Dena) rate it
WSJ tk (Eric) rate it
Emet Ozar’s AV Club Classic crossword, “Glitterball”—Amy’s recap
AV Club Classic crossword, 7/14/26 – “Glitterball” – Ozar
There are a few levels to the theme. The revealers are SILENT DISCO, 23d. [Rave where dancers wear wireless headphones, or what you’ll find in this puzzle’s circled squares], and THE SOUND OF MUSIC, 55a. [Iconic 1965 film, or what you wouldn’t hear walking into a 23-Down]. Being solidly middle-aged, the SILENT DISCO concept is only faintly familiar. There are silent letters in five crossing pairs: BRIDGE and EDGERS, SUITED and FALSE FRIEND, French LES and ISLES, SCYTHE and SCENE, and COLONEL (is that a silent O when the L turns into an R sound?) and PEOPLES. Those silent letters spell out DISCO, and the center of the grid is grid art, a dangling disco ball. Twelve theme entries, circled letters that spell a word counterclockwise, and grid art, all in a 15×15 grid? Impressive!
Fave fill: DRAGONS, STEEL MILL, and the longer theme entries.
Three clues:
- 14a. [Fliers with bad breath?], DRAGONS. Fire breath!
- 20a. [Org. which, under Lee Zeldin, has essentially done the opposite of what it was created to do], EPA. Yessir.
- 60a. [Escape room?], SAUNA. A brief escape from the world, sure.
Four stars from me.
Jonathan Raksin & Jeff Chen’s New York Times crossword–Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 7/15/26 – no. 0715
Rubik’s Cube is the name of the game here. TURNING PRO, competing for money in speed-solving the Rubik’s Cube. MAD SCRAMBLES, turning the layers of cube around. FLYING COLORS, whoosh. SPEED CUBER, one of those competitors. A feature you don’t get in .puz format is that after you solve, the center 9 squares move around, until they unscramble into three same-color rows spelling out ERN/O RU/BIK. Neat trick! The ORB of ORBIT, RUI of FRUIT, and KEN of TAKEN.
I like that TURNING PRO, MAD SCRAMBLES, and FLYING COLORS are clued with no hint of what’s to come. SPEED CUBER’s clue is 56A. [Competitor suggested by 17-, 23- and 45-Across … or by the name of the inventor jumbled in the circled letters].
Erno Rubik!
Fave fill: POETRY SLAM, NAIL ART, BORSCHT, and the new-to-me bicycle PEDAL POWER. Overall, really smooth fill despite the central section that needed to have those specific nine letters in it.
4.5 stars from me.