Sunday, April 5, 2026 |

LAT 6:59 (Kyle) [2.83 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 17:35 (Eric) [3.38 avg; 12 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Darby) rate it
Universal (Sunday) 9:56 (Jim P) [4.50 avg; 1 rating] rate it
Universal 5:19 (Adam S) [3.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
WaPo 521 (Matt G) [3.30 avg; 5 ratings] rate it

Samuel A. Donaldson’s New York Times Crossword “Badvertising” — Eric’s Review

Samuel A. Donaldson’s New York Times Crossword “Badvertising” — 4/5/26 (Click to Enlarge)

Common phrases get reimagined as advertising slogans that don’t make the advertised product or service very appealing:

• 23A [We’re literally giving away our rental cars!] FREE ENTERPRISE
• 30A [It hurts how much we’re overcharging for this detergent!] NO PAIN NO GAIN
• 57A [Our planes don’t have seats!] UNITED WE STAND
• 80A [Our tech products fall apart easily!] APPLE CRUMBLES
• 105A [Our cable channel is devoted to censorship!] LIFETIME BANS
• 115A [Go ahead and shoplift one pair of our jeans!] JUST TAKE A GUESS
• 2D [Our soap is deadly!] DON’T TOUCH THAT DIAL
• 34D [Our magazine hates everything and everyone!] US AGAINST THE WORLD

These are goofy but mildly amusing; I especially liked UNITED WE STAND. And I appreciated that the answers were all phrases I was familiar with, because a few of the other answers slowed me down a bit.

Other stuff:

• 77A [First college in the modern era to boast a 15-0 football team] CLEMSON I had no idea here, especially since “modern era” in terms of college football doesn’t mean much to me. I assume it has something to do with the College Football Playoff National Championship. In any case, the Clemson Tiger managed that feat in the 2018 season. I was  amused that this crosses 77D [Sax player Clarence] CLEMONS (an absolute gimme for a Springsteen fan from way back).
• 78A [Bump on the head, say?] ZIT Ugh.
• 95A [Like a wrung-out mop] DAMPISH/109A [Dripping, say] WET
• 110A [White’s longtime co-host] Pat SAJAK and Vanna White were on Wheel of Fortune for decades. I stopped watching that show years ago and in my memory, Ms White did little other than spin the wheel.
• 121A [Bolts (down)] SCARFS This could have been SNARFS. Wait for the cross!
• 123A [Monkey’s place, maybe] BARREL Not MIDDLE.
• 9D [Two-year periods] BIENNIA Another gimme, as I worked for 30 years for the Texas Legislature, which has regular sessions in the spring of each odd-numbered year.
  

  Portrait of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1846

• 13D [Nickname for Britain’s King Edward VII] BERTIE Not quite a gimme, but easy enough with a cross or two. His birth name was Albert Edward, so I guess he was named after his father, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
• 26D [Creature with a signature whistle it can use to identify itself] DOLPHIN I didn’t know this.
• 52D [Natl. economic yardsticks] GDPS I hate stuff like this because it could easily be GNPS — and who (in the context of a crossword) gives a hoot?
• 59D [Something well-taken?] WATER Cute. Maybe too cute.
• 69D [“No cause for alarm!”?] I’M UP Not I’M OK.
• 103D [Statistics tool used to find significant differences] T-TEST That’s new to me. Just glancing at the Wikipedia entry for this should cure my insomnia.

Brian Callahan and Matthew Luter’s Universal Crossword “Spring 2026 Themeless Week, Puzzle 7” – Adam S’s write-up

Brian Callahan and Matthew Luter’s Universal Themeless – 4/5/2026

Universal’s themeless week concludes with a fun grid highlighted by the intersecting conversational spanners MESSAGE RECEIVED and I’D BETTER BE GOING. Always nice when you can imagine the spanner being used in close proximity in the same conversation. With a bit of creativity, it’s possible to work THIS IS TRUE and I RESPECT IT into the same conversation, too, which gives the puzzle some good coherence.

Other fun fill includes TIMESAVERS, UP TO ELEVEN, SCRAPPY DOO ROCK GARDEN, and KARAOKE BAR. The last comes up a lot – surprisingly for a 10-letter entry with a couple of Ks, this is its 20th appearance in the Crosserville database. But at least for me, it remains fresh, perhaps because it has so many good cluing angles.

A few other things:

• 11d VCRS [Media players last manufactured in 2016]. Good example of how to enliven a marginal piece of fill. I enjoyed learning this.
• 24d TREE [What a breadfruit grows on]. Weirdly specific bit of cluing, but I like it. Of 1,121 previous clues for TREE recorded by Crosserville, only 6 have used the letter string “fruit”. I’d have taken the over on that one.
• 57d ONTO [“Hold ___ your butts” (“Jurassic Park” line)]. Nice way to enliven a common short word
• 66a YEET [Chuck, in slang]. Is there a more divisive short entry than YEET? It’s the Rorschach test of short fill. I like it, but it gives some solvers hives.

Evan Birnholz’s Washington Post Crossword “Turn of Phrase” — Matthew’s Review

Evan Birnholz’s Washington Post Crossword “Turn of Phrase” solution, 4/5/2026

“Turn of Phrase” this week invites us to see things from a different direction: we have to reverse the last word in each theme clue to get a fair pointer toward our answer

• • 23a [*Soft tops] AFFECTION
  • 30a [*Cash drawer] PRIZE MONEY
  • 37a [*Getting desserts] UNDER PRESSURE
  • 61a [*Movie featuring Harpo] THE COLOR PURPLE
  • 69a [*Source of spam] RAND MCNALLY
  • 81a [*Pirate’s tool] BURIED TREASURE
  • 104a [*Remains in the pool] KEEPS UP TO DATE
  • 112a [*Where people go to get some sleep] HEALTH SPAS
  • 125a [Some gymnastic maneuvers, and a hint to the how the final word in each starred clue must be read] BACKFLIPS

So [*Soft tops] becomes “Soft spots,” and so on. I’m usually not a fan of marking theme clues with asterisks, but even with them I was puzzled until about halfway through here. Particularly early in the puzzle, the disguised phrases still read quite naturally. I appreciate that.

Away from the theme, not a lot of long fill, but good bang for the buck with BACONATOR, CARL ORFF, ERIK SATIE’s full name, and the lovely clue [Social activity where some participate in silence] for CHARADES.

Specific highlights: “pua kenikeni” in the clue for LEI literally means “ten-cent flower,” referring to the onetime cost of a blossom. After a few years of living in Hawai’i, I was able to take a few lei-making classes recently. It’s a lovely craft and worth a Google to know more than as a crossword Pavlov // Fun to see ALFA and BETA in the same word puzzle // I always interpreted the red circle in the 7Up logo as a hyphen, but I guess it’s not. Here, that’s not relevant in the clue for UNCOLA, but it caught my eye anyway

Cheers! If you’ll be at ACPT this coming weekend, I’ll be wearing Aloha Chic. Say hi! 

Zhouqin Burnikel’s LA Times crossword “MAKE SOME NOISE” – Kyle’s write-up

LA Times solution grid “MAKE SOME NOISE” – Zhouqin Burnikel – Sunday 04/05/2026

Thanks Zhouqin for today’s LA Times crossword. I found this puzzle’s theme on the trickier end of the spectrum for LAT Sunday difficulty.

• 102D [Holler, or when parsed differently, an alternate title for this puzzle] SHOUT – sh out. I like the different layers in play here: to shout is to make some noise; sh out precisely describes the thematic wordplay. Sh out also could be interpreted to mean the opposite of “silence!” or “sh!”, which is pretty cool.
• 22A [Corn?] KITCHEN EARS (shears)
• 24A [“Naked Lunch” in a lunchroom, say?] TRAY NOVEL (trashy). This is an outlier in that it’s the only themer where an internal sh is deleted.
• 39A [Bailing out of a storied couples’ cruise?] JUMPING THE ARK (shark). This is the entry that tipped me off to the theme. I then went back to 22A and 24A to confirm. I could see kitchen shears pretty quickly, but needed to think a few moments about trashy novel.
• 54A [Toymakers who really help with the holiday rush?] STORE ELVES (shelves). I didn’t realize at first that this was a theme entry until I got its symmetrical entry at 81A (see below), since store elves are very plausible as characters one would see at stores at Christmastime.
  

  By IMDb, Fair use,

• 81A [King Kong after his glow-up?] CHANGED APE (shape)
• 94A [Unwilling to lace up skates?] RINK RESISTANT (shrink). I liked this one.
• 112A [Material used to make Nuggets uniform tops?] JERSEY ORE (shore). I’m afraid the logic of this clue/answer pair falls short for me. Denver Nuggets NBA team > Nuggets players wear jerseys > the Nuggets name refers to Colorado’s historic mining industry. But then why would the jerseys be made of ore?
• 114A [Missions to obtain keepsakes?] SOUVENIR OPS (shops). Strong finish.

Notes on fill and clues:

• • 2D [Beethoven dedicatee] ELISE. It would amuse me to someday see this clue yield something like RASUMOVSKY or ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH.
  • 29D [Theme park opening ritual] ROPE DROP. New for me.
  • 44A [Scotland’s national dish] HAGGIS. I love haggis for breakfast when I’m visiting Scotland.
  • 44D [Shade-loving plant] HOSTA. Hostas are beginning to sprout in my neighborhood.
  • 67A [Silence a growling belly] is a fun clue for EAT.
  • 92D [Very low woodwind] BASS SAX. I put in BASSOON first. Tricky! Bass saxophones are rarely seen.

Adrian Johnson’s Universal Sunday crossword, “Mega Freestyle 4”—Jim P’s review

You’d expect some really sparkly long fill in a themeless 21x, and here we get EXACTLY WHAT YOU’D EXPECT in the very second row. Stacked along with that is the superb NOT ALL HEROES WEAR CAPES, and later on we find ONE FOR THE HISTORY BOOKS. I don’t know that this puzzle reaches those heights, but it’s quite enjoyable.

Universal Sunday crossword solution · “Mega Freestyle 4” · Adrian Johnson · 4.5.26

Other lively long fill includes HOME THEATER, BEST OF THREE, SILENT DISCO, AFRO-LATINAS, EXOTIC PET, TATER TOTS, SAVE HAVENS, NOODLE BOWL, and REPTILIAN. Plus plenty of good, solid shorter stuff all around.

Any crosswordese or unusual proper names are easily gotten with the crossings, with the possible exception of Joan MIRO whose M comes from TIMTAM [Alliterative Aussie biscuit brand]. If you don’t know either, that could be a tough get.

Clues of note:

• 57a. [Dries, like boiled pasta]. STRAINS. I hardly equate straining with drying, so was surprised at this answer.
• 2d. [Ball python in a bedroom, e.g.]. EXOTIC PET. Just this morning I was reading the Sherlock Holmes story, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”. Spoiler alert: The murder weapon was a fictional swamp adder which its owner kept in a safe. My PSA: Don’t keep your pets in a safe (and don’t murder people with them).
• 15d. [Lodgings that don’t offer a warm welcome?]. ICE HOTELS. The only one in North America is in Quebec.

Good puzzle. Four stars.

If you’re going to the ACPT next weekend, I’ll be sitting in the hallway with Dave Sullivan helping manage the Virtual Tournament. Stop by and say hello.