Saturday, June 6, 2026 |

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Daniel Bodily’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap

NY Times crossword solution, 6/6/26 – no. 0606

Easier for me than the Friday puzzle was. Go figure!

This 60-worder has wide-open corners with roughly 6×8 white spaces. A grid like that will generally contain some clunky fill to get everything to hold together.

Fave fill: SCHMEARS, UHAUL VAN, stepmom MOMALA Kamala Harris, PRESTIGE, KING-SIZE, PIE FIGHT, WAYFARER.

Entries that feel a little off to me include BURN SAGE, ATE CAKE, NETTER, DEARIE ME, SNEES, GETS TAN, TSETSE. AMENDMENT I is another way to refer to the First Amendment, but does anyone call it “amendment one” rather than “the First Amendment”?

New to me: 4D. [Hindu clerk], MUNSHI. Curious to know if this is everyday vocab in India. Wonder how many constructors have this in their word list!

Three more things:

• 2D. [Mexican fried pastry often covered in cinnamon sugar], CHURRO. Technically, churros originated in Spain and Portugal and they got colonized to places the Spaniards and Portuguese invaded.
• 28D. [School memento], CLASS PIN. I don’t remember that from high school and college in the 1980s. eBay has a bunch of vintage class pins. When’s the last time you saw a school touting class pins?
• 29D. [Doc’s license plate in “Back to the Future”], OUTATIME. Eww. First, if you’re going to use that phrase, it’s “outta.” Second, the movie trilogy takes place in California, which has long had an 7-character limit for plates. They’re considering going up to 8 now, but the movie people should’ve devised a plausible vanity plate for Doc.

A feat to fill a grid that looks like this, but the fill compromises that a challenging grid generally entails make the result less fun for me as a solver. 3.5 stars from me.