BEQ tk (Eric) 
[3.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
LAT 1:54 (Stella) 
[2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 3:16 (Sophia) 
[3.57 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker 4:46 (Amy) [3.13 avg; 8 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (pannonica) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Dena) [3.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
WSJ 3:48 (Jim Q) rate it
Eric Rollfing’s New York Times Crossword — Sophia’s Review
Theme: I FEEL FOR YOU – the theme answers are all things a person may literally feel for
New York Times, 07 20 2026, By Eric Rollfing
- 17a [On/off device] – LIGHT SWITCH
- 27a [One with Q or Z is worth 10 points] – SCRABBLE TILE
- 46a [Cause of some rescreenings in an airport] – POCKET CHANGE
- 60a [“My sympathies” … or what could be said of 17-, 27- and 46-Across] – I FEEL FOR YOU
Solid theme, with a nice change of meaning for the revealer! All three things are literally “felt” for, using one’s fingers. LIGHT SWITCH was the most evocative of this for me, as I’ve been traveling recently and have spent a fair amount of time feeling around for light switches in hotels. Most Scrabble sets these days have the letters printed on such that all tiles “feel” the same so players can’t cheat while randomly drawing – pretty smart! I have actually had my bag pulled once for extra screening due to having a very full coin purse coming home from college (blame coin-op laundry), so the POCKET CHANGE clue was very accurate for me.
Given that there are only four theme answers, I’m happy that there are so many fun long downs! CHAMELEON, PAGE VIEWS, AUTOPILOT, SPACE RACE are all excellent choices. ATHEISM, SET FREE, and NEW ERA are also nice (although any fellow Survivor fans know that [Big name in baseball caps] is not what we think of when we think “new era”). The biggest trouble spot for me was towards the beginning of the solve, when I put in “A team” as opposed to ELITE for [Top-tier group]. Oh, and I also didn’t know that Thelma and Louise drove a T-BIRD.
Standout clues: [Blue state?] for WOE, [Important consideration for A.I. programmers] for ETHICS – as someone who works in tech, this is very true!
Rena Cohen’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 7/20/26 by Rena Cohen
The revealer is in the center of the puzzle at 37A [Collections with cups and saucers, or a phonetic description of 16-, 22-, 49-, and 60-Across]: TEA SETS. IMO the revealer here serves more as a way of making this more than just the ultra-simple theme that it is (ie, phrases or compound words in which both halves start with the letter T).
- 16A [Nickname for Hollywood] is TINSELTOWN.
- 22A [Sanction for running a red light] is TRAFFIC TICKET.
- 49A [“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” e.g.] is a TONGUE TWISTER. (Fun fact: In German they are called “Zungenbrecher,” or “tongue breakers,” and my favorite is “Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut und Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid,” which translates as “red cabbage is always red cabbage, and a wedding dress is always a wedding dress.”)
- 60A [“Magic Tree House” subject] is TIME TRAVEL.
When you have a theme this simple, the theme entries themselves should be extra fun and evocative, which I would say these are, and the fill should be extra-clean and, if possible, also sparkly. I would say this one gets there, with DOG TOYS, OH SORRY, and ARCHRIVAL among my favorites.
Zhouqin Burnikel’s Wall Street Journal crossword “Flipping the Record” — Jim Q’s write-up
THEME: The word SIDE can be found reversed in common phrases
WSJ • 7/20/26 • Mon • Flipping the Record • Zhouqin Burnikel • solution • 20260720
THEME ANSWERS:
- JEDI STARFIGHTER
- ICE DISPENSER
- NEED I SAY MORE?
- DESERTED ISLANDS
- (revealer) [Flip ___ (record’s back)–and what’s flipped in 16-, 26-, 48- and 64-Across] SIDE.
Simple Monday theme that I mostly shrugged off. Nothing wrong with it at all. I just found myself solving it more as a delightful themeless. I didn’t notice what the theme answers had in common until I hit the revealer, and even then it felt comparatively subdued next to the rest of the grid.
I mean, the word SIDE, whether it’s written forward, backward, upside down, or in invisible ink, is never going to be more interesting than BARE ASSED, which just so happens to cross it. NEED I SAY MORE?
Really, the fill doesn’t get much better than this. ME AGAIN!, HOTEL SAFE, DUNNO, HAIR TIE, PSST!, OOLONG… just fun entries with great energy throughout. Even the theme answers themselves were entertaining, despite my having absolutely no idea what a JEDI STARFIGHTER is.
One thing did catch me off guard, though. Based on the title and the revealer, I was expecting something a little more… musical. Maybe records? Album sides? B-sides? Instead, there wasn’t much of anything tying the theme to music, which surprised me.
Lastly, I found the clue for ICE DISPENSER oddly specific: [Fridge feature handy for parties]. Handy for parties? Sure. But also handy for stumbling out of bed at 3:00 a.m. when all you want is a cold glass of water.
4 stars.
***Puzzle is labeled on WSJ Website as 7/19, which is the online release date. Not sure if that’s wrong or if we’re just going with that from now on… it’s been like that since the new interface debuted, and seems like an easy fix. Someone must’ve noticed, right?***
Natan Last’s New Yorker crossword—Amy’s recap
New Yorker crossword solution, 7/20/26 – Natan Last
Easier than expected for a Monday New Yorker puzzle, even with a new-to-me poet in the middle. That is ARTHUR SZE, [Ada Limón’s successor as Poet Laureate]. You can read some of his poems here.
Also new to me, a Midwesterner: TIDE MARK. And [Claire who won the Democratic primary for New York’s Seventh Congressional District], VALDEZ. She’s one of the DSA candidates who had Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders’s backing.
Fave fill: “YOU RANG?,” THE BORG, WALLOP, SMART HOUSE (surprisingly clued via [1999 Disney Channel film about a boy who programs his computerized home to be a surrogate mother], Disney foretelling AI), “TOLD YA,” GALLERY-HOP, Dante’s PURGATORIO, E-BIKES.
Four stars from me.
Puzzle: The New Yorker; Rating: 1 star
A “see how smart I am” [aka “see what I was able to dig up”] trivia contest is not a crossword puzzle.
Natan Last is a trivia guy. Always has been. Not sure why he got into crosswords as he doesn’t have the knack for it.
Puzzle: The New Yorker; Rating: 3 stars
I thought the puzzle was fine, not bad. I’d be curious to know which clues you thought went too far with esoterica. I didn’t know the first name for the bloomer pants woman, but I thought that was a cool tidbit. SMARTHOUSE clued as a Disney TV movie was weak imo. Maybe that landed for some solvers. I’d not come across 23A before, but it was fair given the downs.
I’ll offer ILLEGAL, clued as a Sumo move, VALDEZ, clued as someone who won a Democratic *primary* for a random NY Congressional District, Poet Laureate ARTHUR SZE (how many poets laureate can you name off the top of your head?), PUPUSA, clued as the national dish of El Salvador (I’ve heard of the dish, but how many national dishes can you name off the top of your head?), TIE, clued with the name of a knot (I was never a Boy Scout, in either sense of the phrase, but this seems pretty obscure), THE BORG, which I got because I have occasionally seen an episode of Star Trek TNG (not to be confused with Star Trek), the random SIMPSON reference – shall I go on?
And TACO MIX sounds suspiciously like GREEN PAINT.
PUPUSA? In California, pupusas are as common as hamburgers.
I eat twice a year, or so at a Salvadoran restaurant in Pelham, AL (!). Always have the pupusas
PUPUSA – the national dish of California!
There’s some nice wordplay in this puzzle – IDS, GALLERY HOP, RELOS, PANT. But to Norm V’s point, a lot of the cluing is trivia-based.
I’d list them, but I circled 28 clue numbers as Last territory. They don’t include the Dante clue, which I got pretty easily by looking for an epic in Italian. I eventually got all but the SE, where PUPUSA doesn’t looking familiar to me at all and some definitions felt not quite right.
It does look in online listings that all the Salvadorian restaurants in NYC feature papusas. I’m an adventurous eater but hadn’t heard of any of them, of which there seem few and not at all central in location, although one is near where I used to live in Queens. Looks like somehow the country hasn’t caught on yet the way it has in LA. A shame.
It’s advertised as a challenging puzzle, a certain amount of obscurity is expected. I thought it was fair and not especially difficult for a TNY Monday.
Last is certainly not my favorite constructor but I thought today’s was fine, for a Monday NYT. I’ve heard of ARTHURSZE, so got him after a sufficient number of crossings. No idea about VALDEZ but again crossings made it fairly easy to see. Ditto on SMARTHOUSE. PUPUSAs I know from my time in the DC area — lots of Salvadoran restaurants and food trucks.
GALLERYHOP was the entry I liked least — seems like a word that would appeal to the sort of cognoscenti that Mr Last evidently wants to be thought part of.
You were doing just fine until that completely unnecessary insult in your final sentence.
Eh, don’t be so damn patronizing.
I pretty much shrugged off both the WSJ and NYT themes. For the NYT, maybe it’s just that I don’t play scrabble.
Puzzle: The New Yorker; Rating: 4 stars
My time on this one was high “Moderately Challenging” I don’t speak French or Italian but still figured out 3D and 27D. My biggest language challenge was the “E in 24D. Anything else I didn’t know came from crossings or just figuring out
Someone please explain the 59A clue “Come-hither” and answer “SEXY.”
A little awkward for sure but a come-hither look is a sexy look.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
Wonderful theme, fill, and cluing. Highest compliments to the chef.
LAT: TSP (teaspoon) crossing TEASETS in the dead center of the puzzle should have been caught in editing, imo. PSP (has been in LAT before)/SPUN is one potential fix that doesn’t involve a major rebuild.