Saturday, June 20 2026, Katie Hoody

When I'm not on blogging duty, I do the NYT puzzles online, which is a faster but somewhat less satisfying experience; solving with pen and paper lends itself to a better appreciation of theme, clever clues, and overall construction.  Today, as I worked my way through the grid and put little tick marks beside my favourite clues, I felt like my cup runneth over - such great cluing today!!

My entry point was Soprano RENEE Fleming, right in the middle of the grid.  Immediately below that, the grid-spanning "'I've done better" was obviously NOTMYFINESTHOUR, except, as it turned out, it was actually NOTMYFINESTWORK - my only misstep today.  

Back up at the very top, the high-quality clues began immediately.  1A "Dad's pop, perhaps" (CREAMSODA) took me a while to "get" - I thought it was a questionable generational reference, but no, it's a branding thing.  Right below that, I needed most of the crossers to figure out 15A "One might be used to launch promotional materials" (AIRCANNON - brilliant!!).  And right below THAT, 17A "That's not the whole story!" (PLOTPOINT) was very clever.

I could narrate practically the entire grid like this.  7D "Bulb that becomes translucent when heated" (ONION).  23D "Stories of college students?" (DORM).  34D "Man's name whose first four letters spell a word describing its last letter" (RINGO) - also very clever!  31D "Fair weather followers" (SNOWBIRDS) - indeed - a whole contigent of Canadians can be classified this way...

The only thing approaching a "nit" for me is Hall-of-Fame football coach WEEB Ewbank at 43A. A tiny bit of a reach, no?  

A fitting finale at 61D "Sound made when something snaps into place?" (AHA) - a suitable anagram for AAH, the sound I made upon completing this puzzle.  Well done Ms. Hoody, well done indeed!

It's been a slice this week!  And now, over to Horace's capable hands.....

-philbo

Friday, June 19 2026, Jack Hatchett

A really nice construction today, with eight long Across entries and four long Downs, with nothing spanning the entire grid.  This led to a pleasant, steady solve, all the way to the very end where I failed in the SE corner and FWOE'd.  More on that later.

Things were promising from the very get-go, with 17A "Chef's complimentary bite" (AMUSEBOUCHE).   After such morsels, I like to sit back and announce "Well, my bouche is amused", to the amusement of nobody.  Right above that was a nicely oblique QMC "Field trip", whose answer HOMERUNTROT definitely did not jump out at me. 

 

Lavish use of contractions was in evidence; e.g. 20A "Dish often served with tartar sauce, informally" (FISHNCHIPS) and 35A "___ Green (Kermit the Frog song)" (BEIN).  I don't necessarily object, but it did stand out a little bit.  

What's the deal with SHOWERBEER ("Cold one enjoyed during a hot wash")?  Never heard of such a thing.  BEERSHOWER, on the other hand, in my younger days, yes maybe...

My very last entry was the diabolical QMC at 32A "Off-grid connection?".  I thought it had to be IRL (you know, "in real life") until getting the real answer from the crossers : THE.  Brilliant!  When was the last time you saw this word in a crossword?

Finally, the very last Across clue "Chinese revolutionary Sun ____" was lost on me.  I guessed YATSEE but it's actually YATSEN.  I should have known - my guess was too similar to the dice game Yahtzee to really be plausible.  If anybody asks, I'll say I ATECROW on this one, hoping for the response OHCOMEONNOW...

See ya on the weekend!

-philbo

Thursday, June 18 2026, Scott Hogan

A pleasant, gentle stroll through Crosswordland today, with a fun, somewhat cryptic-y theme distinguished by its super-short clues, which then appear in the answers in a self-referential way.  I'm having difficulty using my words, here, so I'll just write them out..

• "Bro?" is BROADWAYOPENING
• "Sit?" is VISITORCENTER
• "Ale?" is FAIRYTALEENDING

See how the answers describe the clues!  This is standard cryptic crossword fodder, which I've never seen in a "regular" crossword before.  Once I got the first one, the last two were very easy to write in; hence, this was a bit less challenging than a typical Thursday puzzle.

Regular readers of the blog may recall my comment yesterday babout the word MANEUVER, which appeared in a clue, and here it is again today as an answer to "Skillful move", right beside COINCIDE ("Occur at the same time")!  I fnd that ever so slightly eerie.  

The term FMRI, clued as "Mind-reading scan, in a way", was new to me.  "Functional MRI", it is, measuring brain activity via tracking blood flow.  The clue raises questions about what the "mind" really is.  If our neurologist Colum were blogging this, I'm sure he'd have plenty to say on the matter.

As a Canadian, 45D "$2 coin, eh?" was a write-in (TOONIE).  I don't mind the stereotyping.  I'm used to being pegged as a Canuck within two minutes of meeting any English-speaking foreigner.  Fun fact - our $1 coin features a loon on its Tail side and is called a LOONIE.  When the $2 coin was introduced, there was a bit of a movement to have it named a DOUBLOON, which for my money is a much better name.  But duller heads prevailed, ultimately. 

Are inert gases really referred to as NOBLES?  Is that some sort of chemistry insider thing? Noble gases, sure, but really?

Not a huge fan of the two pluralized beverages near the top:  3D "Absolut alternatives" (STOLIS) and 9D "Colas in the 'cola wars'" (PEPSIS).  Surely STOLID and SEPSIS could have somehow been worked into those positions?

I liked the in-your-face-ness of CLASSAMORON ("Bona fide numbskull")!

Well, I've managed to WINGIT through another blog.  Nice puzzle today!

-philbo

Wednesday, June 17 2026, Jonathan Raksin

 

Today's crossword features a really neat device, revealed by the central Across answer RIFFLESHUFFLES ("Casino maneuvers (*) carried out three times in this puzzle?").  In a properly done riffle shuffle, a deck of cards is cut into two equal piles, and then shuffled so that the cards from each pile are exactly interleaved, the cards from pile 1 now 1st, 3rd, 5th, etc. from the top and those from pile 1 now 2nd, 4th, 6th and so on.  Somehow, Mr. Raksin has come up with three different eight-letter words/phrases, which can be split into halves and riffle-shuffled letter-wise and still be valid English :

• CONSOLES --> COOLNESS
• STONEPITS --> SETPOINT
  ...and my favourite for its absolute cheekiness:
• GOOFOFFS --> GOOFOFFS

If you're like me, this is the first NYT puzzle you've ever solved with an answer appearing twice in the grid.  It was even clued the same ("Slackers")!!  What chutzpah!  But of course it works here - and I fully approve.

Amazing!  I can only imagine how these pairs were discovered.  If it were me, I'd have used software somehow.

Incidentally, if you perfectly riffle-shuffle a deck of cards 8 times, you restore it to its original order! A neat and not necessarily intuitive outcome.

Despite a bit of an odd grid configuration, with the NE and SW corners almost completely isolated from the rest of the grid, it was a smooth, midweek-appropriate solve.  I was nearly done in right at the start by a couple of intersecting clues in the NW corner that I had no idea about : Paul MESCAL, who played Shakespeare in "Hamnet", and the Disney film ENCANTO.  I also thought Tom Cruise was ILL-CAST, not MISCAST, as Jack Reacher, and that the Complete Works of anything would be CANON, not TOMES.  But it all worked out with a lucky guess or two, and no damage done.

I liked the little Supernatural Corner at the bottom, with "Telepathy, e.g." (PSI) in close proximity with "'Ability' that's hard to believe, for short" (ESP).  Popcorn TOFU sounds terrible.  Well, regular popcorn ain't all that either.  I was not familiar with the term SHORTCON for a fast-paced scam. I love Osso BUCO.  Maybe I'll make it this weekend, in between bike rides...

And with that, on to the "turn"!

-philbo

(*) known in these parts as "manoeuvres"

Tuesday, June 16 2026, Brad Lively

I must kick off today's review by perpetuating the Canadian stereotype and saying "sorry" - sorry that Tuesday's puzzle didn't really do it for me.  The four theme entries are distinguishable by their circled letters - a short consecutive string and an extra circled letter on its own.  I didn't pay much attention until hitting the revealer clue spanning the middle of the grid : "Hemingway tale about an elderly fisherman, with 'The'...", at which point OLDMANANDTHESEA was an easy write-in.  And sure enough, the theme answers all contain some form of OLD MAN (in the fatherly sense), plus an extra 'C', as indicated by the circles.  To wit:

17A "Pontiff's emblem with three horizontal bars" = PAPALCROSS
29A "Amigo" = COMPADRE
42A "Crustaceans sometimes called 'mudbugs'" = CRAWDADS (I did not know this!)
57A "Open some bubbly with a bang" = POPTHECORK

All makes sense but I felt a bit "meh" about it.  To be fair, none of the embedded "old men" have a fatherly connotation in the context of the words/phrases in which they're embedded, which is a plus.  

Notable stuff in the fill : 8A "Place for the highest-scoring golfer" (LAST) was amusing.  Interesting factoid in 55D about WHO being sung over 100 times in the WHO's WHO Are You"...  Speaking of 100, there must be that many ways of cluing ORCS (here in 36D as "Green-skinned World of Warcraft characters").  LALALA (18D "Fingers-in-ears syllables") was cute too.  I still find it an effective tool in an office context, given the right audience. 🙂

My only misstep was IMEANTO for 53A "That's my next move" - quickly corrected to IPLANTO.  

That's all she wrote!  Hoping for sunnier skies (or, maybe just a better attitude) tomorrow..

-philbo

Monday, June 15 2026, Eric Rollfing

I thought this was a great Monday puzzle, and I'll tell you why.  It wasn't so much the fill, which was quite straightforward, even for a Monday.  It was the unexpectedness of the theme - I couldn't see what the three long answers had in common until solving the revealer, which made me chuckle out loud.

• "Device that helps you make a point in class?"  (PENCILSHARPENER)
• "Toy likely to be found at a pop-up store?"  (JACKINTHEBOX)
• "Revolutionary kitchen gadget?" (SALADSPINNER)

Excellent QMC-type cluing but then the revealer "Response to a series of complaints..." turns out to be SOMEBODYSCRANKY.  So THAT's what connected those clues!  Love it!!  Not for the first time, I say "who thinks of these things?"  

As noted above, aside from that lovely surprise, not much jumps out of the grid.  ESCHEWS ("Forgoes") is a grand word.  Maybe a niggle with 30A "Wished (for)" (HOPED):  Are hoping and wishing really the same thing?  With regards to 57D "Gumbo ingredient" (OKRA) - I made gumbo for the first time just recently and that was my introduction to gumbo.  I'm not sold.  It's kinda slimy.  Maybe there's a special way to prepare it.  (Anyone?)  

See ya tomorrow!  

-philbo

Sunday, June 14 2026, John Kugelman

LIMITED RUNS

Greetings fellow Crossworders!  By the time you read this, I will have completed a weekend of bike riding to raise funds for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation here in Toronto.  Thousands of us.  Millions of dollars raised.  260+ km over two days.  (Sorry, folks, that's 160+ miles 😉 )

But enough about me.  On to the Sunday crossword!  A really fun, somewhat nerdy puzzle from Sunday crossword veteran Mr. Kugelman.  The way I like to roll when not under time pressure (i.e. not at the ACPT) is (uh - here I am, talking about me again ..), I don't look at the clues for the long answers - I fill them in with the crossers and then try to deduce the theme after the fact.  It was very quickly evident that something funny was going on - the long Across answers were composed of only a few distinct letters - four, in fact (think : "MISSISSIPPI").  And lo, the revealer in 110A, paraphrased as "What a modest play has in common with each theme answer?" : SMALLCASTOFCHARACTERS.  What a coup!!  Never mind how contrived and silly some of the theme clues/answers are; e.g. "Harsh taskmaster taken to task" = DERRIERERIDERDERIDED" (YOWIE!!) - that was a large part of the fun!  I can only imagine the smile on Mr. Kugelman's face as he came up with these...

Aside from this, there was lots to relish in the puzzle.  This was my first time seeing a reference to the OG of first-person-shooter video games, at 18D "Fireball-throwing demons from Doom" (IMPS).  Ah, the wasted hours of my younger days.. Also, what do you do when you have to clue 'GAOH' into a word? Simple!  A "measure of high resistance" is indeed a MEGAOHM.  An example of excellent cluing : "Returned to air, as an old pilot, perhaps" (RERAN).  "Modern art" (ARE) - yes!! And it took me right to the end to get CDTRAY for "It can carry a tune". 

A couple of clues threw me off.  Indeed, a PHONE is a "Bad thing to take to bed, it's said."  I thought at first it was ANGER.  "Volcanic gems found on every continent" are AGATES, not GEODES.  (C'mon, Phil!)  And although it wouldn't have fit, when I saw "Needle holder" (FIR), I reflexively thought of that old crossword standard the ETUI.  "Innocent sort" isn't NAIF - it's LAMB.  

I take minor issue with 60A "Part between the shoulders" (LANE).  Clever, but it kinda doesn't work for most roads, does it?   YOWIE  ("Hoo mama, that's hot") seems a little forced on both clue and answer side.  And I didn't love "Lunged (for)" (MADEATRY).

Great puzzle overall.  Hope y'all liked it too!  OCANADA!

-philbo