Wednesday, February 11, 2026 |

AV Club 6:00 (Amy) [4.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
LAT tk (Gareth) rate it
NYT 4:25 (Amy) [3.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker tk (Jim Q) rate it
Universal tk (pannonica) rate it
USA Today tk (Emily) rate it
WSJ 6:15 (Eric) [3.50 avg; 1 rating] rate it

Lynn Lempel’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “X Factor” — Eric’s Review

Lynn Lempel’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “X Factor” — 2/11/26 (Click to Embiggen)

Add TEN (for which X is of course the Roman numeral) to some common compound nouns and crossword wackiness results:

• 20A [Cuddly therapy animal?] FIRST AID KITTEN
• 26A [How TV reaches the North Pole?] SANTA ANTENNA That double A threw me for a bit; “antenna” didn’t seem like it would fit.
• 43A [Mighty pungent entrees?] POTENT ROASTS
• 52A [Highly successful evaluation?] HEARTENING TEST As someone who’s undergone almost every cardiac examination around (I’ll see your stress EKG and raise you a transesophageal echocardiogram), “heart test” seems uselessly vague.

None of the wackified theme answers much amuse me, but they also don’t irk me, which makes this theme moderately successful for me. It helps that despite the X/TEN dichotomy, I grasped the theme immediately. That’s also a plus.

Other stuff:

• 14A [Civic-minded company?] HONDA Cute clue.
• 34A [Audiophile’s collection] LPs I left this blank until I had a cross on the off-chance that it might have been CDs. I’ve still got both and rarely listen to either.
• 49A [Volcanic output] GAS Not ASH.
• 8D [“The Devil in the White City” author Larson] ERIK The author’s name is vaguely familiar; the nonfiction book’s title isn’t. According to Wikipedia, “The book interweaves the true tales of Daniel Burnham, the architect behind the 1893 World’s Fair [in Chicago], and H. H. Holmes, a serial killer who lured his victims to their deaths in his elaborately constructed ‘Murder Castle’.” Except for this one, all the proper names were gimmes.
• 55D [Paper patcher] TAPE I considered GLUE first.

Adryel W. Robles Ojeda’s AV Club Classic crossword, “AV Classic Themeless #86”–Amy’s recap

AV Club Classic crossword solution, 2/11/26 – “AV Classic Themeless #86”

Fun themeless, not as easy as billed. Maybe in part because I needed lots of crossings for 19a. [Intuitive, as it were], VIBES-BASED.

Seven things:

• 33a. [Old-timey aesthetic trope similar to saying YOLO], MEMENTO MORI. Huh? Merriam-Webster says that’s a “reminder of death,” while “you only live once” isn’t screaming death at you.
• 25a. [“___ des fleurs” (Stravinsky piece)], VALSE. A concert waltz, it means. I needed crossings.
• 34a. [What one might use to pay for a tour of Machu Picchu], SOLES. Plural of the Peruvian sol.
• 35a. [Imagine Dragons track featuring JID], ENEMY. Needed crossings to know it wasn’t “Enema.” A top-10 hit five years ago. Never heard of JID; Wikipedia says he’s known for the wordplay in his rap.
• 33d. [Room where a parent might invite her friends to hang out], MOMCAVE. Haven’t seen this one before.
• 49d. [Web language concerned with presentation: Abbr.], CSS. New to me.
• 7d. [“___ Don’t Dance” (1997 animated musical)], CATS. Came out before I was a parent, and they didn’t market it well enough for me to have heard of it.

3.5 stars from me.

Joseph Gangi’s New York Times crossword–Amy’s recap

NY Times crossword solution, 2/11/26 – no. 0211

This 16×15 grid features the lyrics “GOODNESS GRACIOUS” and “GREAT BALLS OF FIRE,” with the circles in the midsection spelling out FIRE in four different clockwise layouts. The fill in the middle is surprisingly smooth given the constraints of crossing the balls of FIRE; EEO and CEE are the worst bits there (25D. [It’s for “cookie,” to Cookie Monster], CEE? No. C is for cookie. Sesame Street does not use crosswordese letters!). It’s a catchy song, but the singer married his cousin when she was 13, eww.

Fave fill: “YOU LOST ME,” BEST OF ALL, CAPS OFF. Not a lot of space for juicy fill with the FIRE balls locking things down.

Three things:

• 7A. [Something you might leave at the front door when entering a house], SHOE. If you’ve only got one leg, maybe. Otherwise you’ll be leaving two shoeS.
• 32D. [What pants come in that shirts don’t], PAIRS. Not loving this clue. Single pairs of pants are sold like single shirts are. Yes, I know “pair of pants” is a thing.
• 51D. [Pride Month letters], LGBT. Feels incomplete without a Q.

3.5 stars from me.