Monday, March 16, 2026 |

BEQ untimed (Eric) [3.00 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
LAT 1:54 (Stella) rate it
NYT 3:41 (Sophia) [3.44 avg; 8 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker 5:20 (Amy) [4.50 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
Universal untimed (pannonica) [2.67 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (?) rate it
WSJ untimed (Jim Q) [3.50 avg; 1 rating] rate it

Jamey Smith’s New York Times crossword — Sophia’s recap

Theme: Common latin phrases that are used in everyday speech

New York Times, 03 16 2026, By Jamey Smith

• 17a [*Forever] – AD INFINITUM
• 25a [*One of a kind] – SUI GENERIS
• 31a [*Masterwork] – MAGNUM OPUS
• 46a [*After the event, as an analysis] – POSTMORTEM
• 51a [*Reciprocal exchange] – QUID PRO QUO
• 64a [Stereotypical charmers … or those charmed by the answers to the starred clues?] – LATIN LOVERS

Wow, there’s an impressive amount of thematic material in this puzzle! 6 theme answers that are all 10+ letters long is a lot to squeeze into a Monday crossword, but this one did it easily. I was able to pick up on all the latin as I solved, but the revealer did still get a smile out of me with its LATIN LOVERS angle. I had a few friends who studied latin in college, and I’m sure they would enjoy this puzzle 🙂 I was familiar with all of the latin phrases except for SUI GENERIS, which was new to me.

There are some fun pieces of fill here – PUNTS ON, GATE AGENT, BAD PR. But- all that thematic material probably led to there being a bit more crossword-ese than I would normally like to see in a Monday puzzle due to the grid constraints – NAIFS, OLLAS, INAPT, ORONO. Speaking of that last one, there was almost a collegiate mini-theme between the University of Maine, NYU, and SDSU.  The biggest issue I had in the puzzle was putting in “ovo” instead of OVI for [Prefix meaning “egg”], which led me to “mother” instead of SISTER for [Term of address for a nun].

Notable clues: [Locales for the late news?] for OBIT PAGES, [“Talk turkey” or “eat crow”] for IDIOM.

Happy Monday all!

Erica Hsiung Wojcik’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Los Angeles Times 3/16/26 by Erica Hsiung Wojcik

Me! Me! Me! Or, rather, M.E.! The revealer at 64A [“I’m quirky like that,” or, when parsed differently, what can be said of 17-, 30-, and 48-Across] is IT’S A ME THING, because each theme entry has the initials M.E.:

• 17A [Test whose results may be posted in MyChart] is a MEDICAL EXAM.
• 30A [Current stretch of human history] is MODERN ERA.
• 48a [Boxing night highlight] is MAIN EVENT.

I didn’t love this theme — the revealer phrase feels a little contrived, and when I Googled it in quotation marks it got fewer than a million hits, which I think validates that it’s not quite in-the-language enough to build a Monday puzzle around it. I also could’ve dealt with one more theme answer — not counting the revealer, there are only 29 thematic letters. Even MY EYE in the center of the grid would’ve been nice.

The fill is mostly fine. (Mostly. REL. and SYM., I’m looking at you.) I especially liked the cluing of SKINNY with respect to SKINNY jeans; as a lover of a body-con pant, I decry the current trend toward stovepipe legs on pants. Plenty of found-in-everyday-life stuff throughout the grid, which is just what you want on Monday.

Zhou Zhang and Mallory Montgomery’s Universal crossword, “Under Pressure” — pannonica’s write-up

Universal • 3/16/26 • Mon • “Under Pressure” • Zhang, Montgormery • solution • 202603116

• 62a^R [Intense stretch, and a theme hint] CRUNCH TIME. The other theme entries are things that involve crunches.
• 17a. [62-Across for big trucks] MONSTER JAM. Automobiles get crushed under the wheels of the mutant vehicles.
• 27a. [62-Across for abs] PILATES CLASS.
• 46a. [62-Across for Tex-Mex] TACO TUESDAY, if you prefer hard tacos rather than the superior soft version.

Solid theme, but I don’t care much for the title, which to me addresses the revealer per se more than the connotations of the theme.

Speedy solve, no obscure or particularly tricky items.

• 3d [Bug} ANNOY.
  
• 5d [Mat found in a ryokan] TATAMI. I didn’t know that a ryokan is a traditional Japanese inn, but it registered as Japanese, so the answer was obvious. 7d [Peak seen in “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa”] FUJI. The famous ukiyo-e woodblock print by Hiroshige Utagawa.
  
• 27d [Enters the picture unexpectedly?] PHOTOBOMBS. Nice clue, but the question mark made it easy to get.
• 32d [Provide immoral support?] ABET. Ditto.
• 47d [Bike securers named for their shape] U LOCKS. Yes indeed.
• 6a [Execs who work with balance sheets] CFOS. 48a [One may work for H&R Block] CPA.
• 10a [AI-generated junk] SLOP. Yes indeed, glad to see this formulation gaining ground among the hoi polloi. On balance it’s a very bad technological development.
• 20a [Polluter’s payment] ECO TAX. Too often it’s just a slap on the wrist and written off as the cost of doing business. 52d [They’ve been enacted] LAWS; stronger ones need to be enacted, but meanwhile we see restrictions being lifted or otherwise done away with.
• 23a [Not bold] SHY. 57a [Not bold, perhaps] ITALIC.
• 24a [Coffee holder] MUG. Did you try URN? I probably would have, had there not already been a letter or two in place. Nifty as it’s next to 26a [Milk, at a cafe] LAIT.
• 52a [Rhyming Hawaiian dish topped with gravy and a fried egg] LOCO MOCO. New to me.

Jay Silverman’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Vexing” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: Phrases with words that are associated with crossness found at the end.

WSJ • 3/16/26 • Mon • “Vexing” • Jay Silverman • solution • 20260316

THEME ANSWERS:

• PARK RANGER
• MARC CHAGALL
• ON AVERAGE
• AU CONTRAIRE
• (revealer) [Popular pastime, or what can be found at the ends of the theme answers] CROSSWORDS

Ah! The good ol’ navel-gazer of a revealer! But a good one nonetheless.

I got all kinds of gunked up in the NW during this solve. Not knowing MARC CHAGALL‘s name definitely did not help. But I confidently plunked in ALADDIN for ALI BABA [“Open sesame” speaker] and SLYNESS for STEALTH [Good quality for a cat burglar]. But the hardest for me was CO–PILOT [Worker who’s not fully in control?]. My mind simple couldn’t parse the word. I read it as COPI-LOT or something. Great clue though. My mind is just elsewhere I suppose.

[Generally speaking] doesn’t feel like an on-the-nose clue for ON AVERAGE to me, but I suppose it works. Same for [Fighting] for WAR. I suppose you could sub “fighting” in a sentence like “The fighting in [insert 4-letter country here] seems unnecessary to me.” “The WAR in [insert 4-letter country here] seems unnecessary to me.” I suppose that works, though WAR carries more heft as a word imo.

Fun puzzle! No crossness here!

3.75 stars.

Patrick Berry’s New Yorker crossword—Amy’s recap

New Yorker crossword solution, 3/16/26 – Patrick Berry

When I saw the byline, I was excited to get a tougher set of Berry clues than we see with Tues/Wed New Yorker puzzles. Alas, the puzzle still played easier than the typical Monday New Yorker. The gorgeous flow through the 64-word grid probably helped speed things up, harder to get stuck in a section when toeholds are easier to build on. Maybe some anti-pop-culture folks got hung up where fictional British sitcom character David BRENT crosses Hugh LAURIE?

Fave fill: LASER POINTERS, TAILGATE PARTIES, RAN AGAINST (tomorrow is Illinois’s primary election, we have tons of competitive races with a zillion candidates), PORTRAIT GALLERY, Bob Marley’s WAILERS.

Three clues:

• 30d. [Slight catch?], MINNOW. Not a little hitch in the plans, but rather a small catch in a fishing net. Just one example of the creative Berry cluing approach.
• 12d. [Man known for playing House], LAURIE. Dr. House on the long-running TV series rather than “playing house.”
• 29d. [Rigel, for example], BLUE STAR. There’s a star category of blue? Who knew? My astronomy education ended with a unit in high school physics.

Four stars from me.

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1870 — Eric’s Review

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1870 — 3/16/26 (Click to Embiggen)

Frankly, this puzzle put me in something of a bad mood. There’s hard but fun and hard just for the sake of being hard, and this fell into the second group. (So do most Saturday Stumpers, which is why I rarely attempt that puzzle.)

I’d blame my difficulties with having stayed up too late watching the Academy Awards, but the show ended well before my normal bedtime. What’s up with that? Part of the Oscar tradition is staying up until midnight on a school night to find out which picture won the big prize. (I’m slightly disappointed that Sinners lost, but Paul Thomas Anderson has been one of my favorite directors since Magnolia, and One Battle After Another is a good movie.)

I had to work the crosses to death, and that sometimes succeeded and sometimes didn’t quite, especially in the SW corner. Did I learn a lot? Yes. Did I learn anything useful? Probably not.

Stuff:

• 1A [Overflow with charisma] OOZE CHARM I’ve met a few people like that. I remember going to a party 40 years ago and meeting a friend of the host’s who I could have chatted with all night. (And I’m not normally a chatty person, despite the impression I sometimes create in this space,)
• 16A [Fruit in eliopsomo bread] OLIVE It didn’t take long to encounter a clue that meant nothing to me. It’s a Greek recipe. I don’t particularly like Kalamata olives, but at least I learned a new word here.
• 17A [1925 Ezra Pound poem] THE CANTOS Let’s hear it for someone who in 1940 wrote to a United States Senator, “I have read a regulation that only those foreigners are to be admitted to the U.S. who are deemed to be useful etc/. The dirtiest jews from Paris, Blum??” (And no, I didn’t know the poem’s title.)
• 18A [Traditional teachings] LORES I think this qualifies as a “plural of convenience.”
• 26A [Tribe that speaks Unangam Tunuu] ALEUT There’s nothing wrong with this clue, it’s just very difficult if like me you’ve never heard of that language. (So I guess I learned another new word, eh?)
• 31A [Caricature restaurant] SARDI’S It took me a minute to come up with that name. I had thought that the caricatures were by Al Hirschfeld, but the original ones were by Alex Gard.
• 35A [“Theogony” details his rise] ZEUS “Theogony” is a poem by Hesiod (8th–7th century BCE). I don’t recognize either the poet or the poem.
• 43A [Capital served by Kenneth Kaunda International Airport] LUSAKA, Zambia. I didn’t recognize the name of Zambia’s first president, but it looked like the city would be in Africa.
• 60A [Patchwork elephant of kiddie lit] ELMER The book was published in 1968, by which point I was reading stuff like Johnny Tremain.
• 64A [DJ known for throwing cakes into his audiences] STEVE AOKI Someone else I’d not heard of. Crossing 45D [Multi-course Japanese meal] KAISEKI at the K seems particularly cruel. I made an educated guess and tried K first, thanks to the frequent appearances in the New York Times crossword of golfer Isao Aoki.
• 69A [Nirvana, e.g.] POWER TRIO I immediately knew this clue referred to the band, but for some reason POWER didn’t come to mind quickly.
• 3D [1979 Masters winner] Fuzzy ZOELLER Do I care at all who won a golf tournament when I was in grade school? No. I am, however, glad that I’ve heard of Zoeller, as it’s not a common-enough name that it would be easy to get without a lot of crosses.
• 9D [Jazz pianist ___ Allison] MOSE Possibly the only name in the puzzle that I knew instantly.
• 39D [Shooter’s brand] MINOLTA My bad for thinking only of firearms when I read “shooter.” My first real camera was a 35mm Minolta SLR.
• 46D [Source of some news] AM RADIO I’d have gotten this more easily if the clue had been [Source of some right-wing bloviating].