Saturday, July 18, 2026

LAT tk (Stella) rate it
Newsday tk (Kyle) rate it
NYT 6:11 (Amy) [4.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Adam S) rate it
USA Today tk (ZEB) rate it
WSJ tk (Jim Q) rate it

Ryan Judge’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap

NY Times crossword solution, 7/18/26 – no. 0718

Nice Saturday puzzle, no real tricky spots for me.

Fave fill: TERM LIMIT, STUDY DATE, EMOJI KEYBOARD, “I JUST WORK HERE,” AUTOSAVES (remember all the terrible years before autosave came around? A little glitch would wipe out all your work), STRIKE OUT, “EXCUSE ME?”, Klimt’s THE KISS, WRITE-UP, WIDE BERTH, DIEGO LUNA (I’m partway through season 1 of Andor), and a gross little Cadbury CREME EGG.

Bad fill: None. Quite smooth!

• Five more things:
• 49D. [Race of supernatural spirits], FAE. Fairy types.
• 13A. [Nairobi-based collection of NGOs], OXFAM. Here’s their website.
• 43A. [Digs up by the roots], GRUBS. I did not know this verb sense. The noun, yes. Hideous, big grubs have been infesting Chicago’s Welles Park for three years, wrecking the ballfields and metamorphosing into junebugs.
• 55A. [Titular animated dog of children’s TV], BLUEY. It’s an Australian show, and anyone with little kids or grandkids probably knows it. I hear parents enjoy the show as well. I’ve never seen it.
• 4D. [Super man?], MARIO. As in the Super Mario video games.

Four stars from me.