Saturday, April 11, 2026 |

LAT 2:50 (Stella) [3.25 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
Newsday 22:11 (Amy) [4.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
NYT 5:50 (Amy) [4.13 avg; 15 ratings] rate it
Universal 4:52 (Adam S) [3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Matthew) rate it
WSJ 14:58 (Eric) rate it

According to WordPress, this is the 8,000th published post here. Thanks for reading and writing!—Amy

Kareem Ayas’s New York Times crossword — Amy’s recap

NY Times crossword solution, 4/11/26 – no. 0411

A 12/13/14 stack on the top and the bottom, with a 15 in the middle, lots of fresh phrases. And not too hard overall!

Fave fill: “THAT SAYS A LOT,” “WHAT HAVE I DONE?”, “WHY THE LONG FACE?”, AVOID AT ALL COSTS, NO MEAN FEAT, DIGITAL SHORTS (videos), and CRASH BLOSSOM. Do you know crash blossoms? The Language Log blog has long collected headlines that lead you hither and yon and make the meaning hard to ferret out. Fave fill in the Downs: Sam SHEPARD, MASERATIS, soccer ATTACKER.

Not so familiar to me: 51A. [Flip remark?], “CALL IT IN THE AIR.” Something said to the person calling heads or tails?

Did not know: 28A. [Arboreal symbol in Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”], POPLAR TREE. I didn’t know that “strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees” was in the lyrics.

Four stars from me.

Willa Angel Chen Miller’s Universal Crossword “Freestyle 218” – Adam S’s write-up

Willa Angel Chen Miller’s Universal Crossword “Freestyle 218” – April 11, 2026

This excellent puzzle is a great illustration of how Universal freestyles play a valuable role in the puzzle world. This grid would not be published in the NYT or LAT – at 74 words, it’s outside themeless specs for both, and I’m guessing they’d also find it a little more segmented and black-square-heavy than they are looking for.

However, as a solver, I’m extremely glad there are outlets that do take puzzles like this as it was a ton of fun to solve thanks to :

• Outstanding longer entries. I loved I’LL BE DARNED, GAME NIGHT, BANANA BREAD, I HAVE NO CLUE, GO FOR BROKE, ARE WE ALONE, and COUNT SHEEP. I also liked BLOOD ORANGE, LONG JOHNS, and ONE AND DONE. The puzzle is literally 10 out of 10 on the longer stuff.
• Real care with the shorter fill. Some strong mid-length entries like MR BEAN, HOTRODS, NO LESS, REDEYE, SUNTAN, and SINBAD are complemented by squeaky clean shorter fill, with only a few dabs of crossword glue (and none that caused me to wince).
• Clear attention paid to getting cluing, while keeping the difficulty level Universal appropriate. Some examples:
  • There were a good number of conversational clues that landed well, such as the always fun phrase [“Heavens to Betsy”] for I’LL BE DARNED and the shouted [“OBVIOUSLY!”] for DUH.
  • Some fun facts to enliven entries that could otherwise have been dry, such as [Music holders first sold in ’82} for CDs]. That clue may not look like much on the surface, but the last part of that serves Triple duty as: a non-clunking shortened form indicator; an aid to the solver in distinguishing from LPs; and a fun fact.
  • [The first “A” in Michigan’s A2] for ANN gave me that very satisfying feeling of the click where the brain goes directly from ‘what on earth?’ to ‘aha!’, while having unimpeachable crosses for any solver for whom it doesn’t click

At Crossword Con yesterday, Brooke and Zach both talked about the importance Puzzmo places on making puzzles that appeal to both new and experienced solvers. That’s obviously not what every crossword needs to do – there are other niches to be filled – but it’s a good yardstick. And by that measure, this is a puzzle I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to both those just starting on solving themelesses and experienced solvers.

Samuel A. Donaldson & Doug Peterson’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Los Angeles Times 4/11/26 by Samuel A. Donaldson & Doug Peterson

Thank gawd this puzzle was in the LAT and not a crossword tournament (hi from ACPT!), because I bet I’m not the only one who stepped into the IMO very intentionally placed pothole to be described below. Otherwise, I liked if not loved this puzzle:

• 1A [Orange belts found in some flutes] is MIMOSAS, where “belts” is used to mean “drinks.” M-W does list “belt” as a noun meaning “drink,” but I wonder when the last time is that anyone used it that way outside of a crossword puzzle. I don’t really buy it.
• 18A [Holds down the couch] is LAZES. This one made me laugh.
• 19A [Some fans of The Cure] is GOTHS. Not this fan of The Cure, thankyouverymuch.
• 28A [“Your Friend & Jeweler” company] is SHANE. Seems a little obscure, even for Saturday; I Googled after the fact and see that the company has 22 stores and revenue of $210 million. (Compare with Kay and Jared, whose annual sales are in the billions.)
• 32A [Constant figure in quantum theory?] is PLANCK, as in Max PLANCK, who has a constant named after him. I did enjoy this mix of trivia and wordplay, which is a lot less common than it used to be.
• 46A [Durham sch.] Here’s that pothole! It’s UNH, not UNC! Today I learned about Durham, New Hampshire. At a tournament, I’d have had a mistake in my solve and been really, really mad about it. (But honestly, I also would not be right to be mad at anybody but myself; this is mean but fair.)
• 52A [Black aces and black eights] is THE DEAD MAN’S HAND, in which I didn’t love the THE, which feels extraneous.
• 11D [Silly response to “Is that your horse?”] is NAY. Tee-hee!
• 41A [Helping for the hungry] It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that this was THIRDS.

Matthew Sewell’s Newsday crossword, “Saturday Stumper”–Amy’s recap

Newsday crossword solution, “Saturday Stumper” – 4/11/26 – Sewell

This one’s a toughie. I think I used “check puzzle” four or five times to highlight wrong letters, and only once did it tell me everything was right. Nary a google, though, so I’ve got that going for me.

Fave fill: TECHNOBABBLE ([Forward-facing bunk?]), FEELERS, BRIC-A-BRAC, SWEAT OVER, JITTERY, JOHNNY CARSON, LEVEL UP, SPACE STATION, LONGNECK, BREAKOUT STAR, RHUBARB, last one in’s a ROTTEN EGG.

A dozen or so clues:

• 23a. [Modest proposals], FEELERS. Swiftian vibes.
• 35a. [“If nothing else…”], “ALL I ASK …” Not keen on this clue.
• 40a. [Outlaw TV staple], OATER. Westerns are “outlaw TV”? Is that a genre? Never seen those words together.
• 43a. [__ oil], SUNTAN. I tried SESAME first. “Suntan oil” is such a dated term, back when people tried to concentrate the UV radiation hitting their skin.
• 49a. [Yusuf, Ibrahim, or Al-Isra], SURA. Books of the Quran?
• 50a. [Wayne copied his walk], EARP. John Wayne and Wyatt Earp? What, based on a written description of how Earp walked? I don’t think film existed in Earp’s day.
• 59a. [Large assortment], REGAL. I just now figured out this clue, having initially tried ARRAY here. It’s a cryptic-style clue, REGAL being an anagram of “large.”
• 1d. [Ultimate stroke of genius], ESS. Ultimate – last, stroke = pen stroke, ESS is the spelled-out last letter of “genius.” Nice mislead with “stroke of genius.”
• 10d. [Stalk of the buckwheat family], RHUBARB. Huh. Here’s the family that includes buckwheat, rhubarb, and sorrel.
• 11d. [Advanced, or far from advanced], EARLY. The first space flights were quite advanced, but early compared to today’s capacities. Stone Age toolmaking skills were early and not too advanced.
• 32d. [“The man with __ for verbal delicacies”: Mencken], AN EAR. I foolishly tried A NAME and A NOSE first.
• 41d. [What Toto can be a sobriquet for], ANTOINE. I’ve never heard of anyone called Toto besides Dorothy’s dog and the “Africa” band.
• 53d. [Alternate abbr. for the ENT specialty], ORL. I worked on an otolaryngology book series back in my medical publishing days, but I don’t recall seeing ORL as an abbrev for otorhinolaryngology.

3.5 stars from me.

Randolph Ross’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Final Assessment” — Eric’s Review

Randolph Ross’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “

This theme reminded me very much of the kinds of themes Matt Gaffney uses for his New York magazine puzzles: Take a pair of two-word phrases or compound nouns that have a word in common and string them together wackily. Appropriate for mid-April, the wackiness here plays on government assessments:

• 25A [Governor’s revenue plan opponent?] ENEMY OF THE ESTATE TAX Ok, this one is a little off, since it’s playing on “enemy of the state.” 
• 34A [1791 assessment on whiskey?] ORIGINAL SIN TAX I kind of like this one.
• 47A [Same assessment on all Chipotle franchises?] TORTILLA FLAT TAX This seems a little off, too. The only thing the first part brings to mind is John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flats, which I’ve never read. Is there something else that I’m missing?
• 65A [Huge additional assessment?] BIG SUR TAX I like this one, too.
• 83A [Repeated assessment on heirs? ] FOURTH ESTATE TAX I like this one, too, even though brings back unpleasant memories of being a first-year law student trying to understand the estate law concept of the Rule Against Perpetuities (if you know, you know; if you don’t, you don’t want to know). 
• 94A [Assessment for getting stuck on the road?] RAN OUT OF GAS TAX This one’s OK, but not my favorite.
• 102A [Proposed assessment on a new fuel source?] POTENTIAL ENERGY TAX Ditto. 

I typically enjoy this kind of verbal goofiness, and there are enough theme answers here that work for me that I enjoyed solving the puzzle. The tax phrases like “sin tax” and “estate tax” are probably familiar to most solvers, but as a former legislative attorney who knows more about those things than he would like to, I can’t really judge.

Other stuff:

• 1A [Yo-Yo strings] CELLI I tried CELLO first because even a single one of those instruments has four strings. And because CELLI is the type of plural you see only in crosswords and Spelling Bee, where things like that annoy me.
• 6A [Nyong’o of “12 Years a Slave”] LUPITA A gimme for me; she’s good in that movie and a lot of fun (though practically unrecognizable) in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens.
• 19A [Plane, at Orly] AVION Was it the four years of French classes in junior high and high school or the stamps saying “Par avion” that made this one easy for me?
• 24 [Poker ploy] RERAISE Is that really a word?
• 44A [Fancy wheel] MAG Short for “magnesium alloy.” That’s a product that appeals to 12-year-old boys and men who never matured much beyond that. (I’m sure there are practical reasons for using those kinds of wheels on race cars, but most of us don’t drive race cars.)
• 79A [Astronauts Bean and Shepard] ALANS I really dislike plural names as crossword answers, especially first names, but this one works a little better given the way it’s clued. (And the clue is timely; I was glad to see that the heat shield on Artemis held. If you weren’t around for any of the space missions that ended with several astronauts dead, consider yourself lucky.)
• 114A [Canine cousin] INCISOR I didn’t think of dogs here and I hope you didn’t.
• 3D [Waiter’s place] LINE They did get me here; my first thought was of a server in a restaurant.
• 13D [Sitcom “How ___ Your Mother”] I MET There are probably not many ways to clue that partial, but I would just note that Will Shortz was a guest on a 2010 episode of that sitcom and the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (which Shortz started) is going on this weekend. Coincidence?
• 40D [Bill dispenser] TELLER I typically see that clue used for ATM.
• 61D [Luxury bed-and-bedding brand] DUX I’m not sure I’ve heard of that brand. I ignore ads as much as I can.
• 66D [“Valley of the Dolls” novelist] Jaqueline SUSANN A gimme. That 1966 novel apparently got horrible reviews and was a best seller anyway. (But who listens to critics?)
• 104A [How some NBA ties are broken] IN OT Last I looked, a basketball game that ended in a tie went into as many overtime periods as needed. But maybe that’s changed; I’m sure those guys get tired after a while.