Prohibited in Islam / TUE 5-5-26 / MLB stadium demolished in 2009 / Flightless bird from South America / Intermittently offered fast-food pork sandwich / 2016 Ariana Grande love song / Motorcyclist's invitation / Figure in a school pep rally / Media misinformation

Constructor: Max Schlenker

Relative difficulty: Challenging (***for a Tuesday***)

THEME: It's a snap, a cinch, etc. — phrases meaning "it's easy" that follow the [It's a ___] pattern are meant to be taken literally, so that the answer is a literal example of whatever fills in the blank in [It's a ___]:

Theme answers:

• LADYFINGER (18A: It's a piece of cake)
• SIMON SAYS (27A: It's child's play)
• HEADLESS HORSEMAN (42A: It's a no-brainer)
• TRADEWIND (52A: It's a breeze)
• NATURE HIKE (67A: It's a walk in the park)

Word of the Day: RAMBO (53D: Title role for Sylvester Stallone) —

Rambo is an American media franchise centered on a series of action films featuring John J. Rambo. The five films are First Blood (1982), Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Rambo III (1988), Rambo (2008), and Rambo: Last Blood (2019). Its titular protagonist is a United States Army Special Forces veteran played by Sylvester Stallone, whose Vietnam War experience traumatized him but also gave him superior military skills, which he has used to fight corrupt police officers, enemy troops and drug cartels. First Blood is an adaptation of the 1972 novel First Blood by David Morrell.

Though critical reception was mixed, the film series has grossed $819 million in total, $300 million of which is from the most successful film, Rambo: First Blood Part II. Sylvester Stallone is the only actor to have appeared in all five films in the franchise. Stallone co-wrote the screenplays of all five films, and directed Rambo (2008), the fourth film of the series. The franchise also spawned an animated series, as well as comic books, novels and video games. (wikipedia)

• • •

I think the theme is actually fine. Tougher than the usual Tuesday theme by its very nature—the actual answers don't have anything in common and you have to think figuratively every time, finding a single element inside a very broad category each time—but clever. Would've been right at home on a Wednesday, I think, but I'm not mad about the above-average Tuesday difficulty of the theme. What I am mad about is ... well, two things, and if you can't guess what those two are, then you must be new here, welcome, hello, this is a crossword blog that I write every day. So, firstly, the fill—this may be the worst-filled puzzle I've seen this year, not because any one answer is so bad (well ... there's one, but we'll get to that), but because once the crosswordese avalanche gets going, it never ever ever stops. It just picks up steam, rolling all over the grid, from top to bottom, and seemingly getting bigger along the way. Usually if the fill is so weak that I stop to take a grid picture early, that's a bad sign. Today, I stopped not once, not twice, but three times, because I couldn't believe that every single nook and cranny of this puzzle was going to be stuffed with tired repeaters, and yet ... the puzzle kept surprising me. I could've stopped very early, in the NW corner, where ORAL ARAL TADA LLAMA were already crowding the grid with their mustiness, but I decided to let it ride. But then, after HOOHA and then, on the other side of the grid, ODESSA and SKEE, I'd had enough.

Later, after the NARC ONCD and the ASHY RHEA, I re-had enough:

And then re-re-had enough down below, where the avalanche finally buried me alive, such that I couldn't even see the theme any more. The theme didn't matter because the short fill had suffocated me.

They brought back the IKEA MCRIB for this thing!? And an EPEE? And this is before the puzzle closed out with a NEATO ETUDE at the REN fest, not to mention the EMCEE ETS. And that middle. TSO THY LOOS. Ruthless. This puzzle was ruthless with its short gunk. How is anyone supposed to enjoy the interesting theme when the (oversized!) grid has not been properly attended to and cared for? 

But the real dealbreaker today was FAKE NEWS (26D: Media misinformation). F*** that guy and his stupid f***ing catchphrases and the whole right-wing project to discredit journalists and destroy journalism as a resource in this country. F*** him and SARAH Palin and Sylvester f***ing Stallone and his RAMBO bullshit. There is no neutral way to clue FAKE NEWS. That is a phrase popularized by one dude—one singularly amoral and incompetent dude—and then amplified by the worst bunch of sycophants this country has ever seen. As for Palin: there are many many SARAHs out there, and so few of them are national embarrassments, why not use one of those? I was gonna let that clue slide, though, until I hit FAKE NEWS, which I will never let slide. And then at the end of the puzzle, to run across one of the most famous megafans of the current White House resident—and in his stupid fake-he-man RAMBO costume no less—too much. I normally wouldn't have given RAMBO a second thought, but today? After the intentional rightwing boosterism? No. All too much. Hard no. I don't solve the puzzle in a vacuum. I solve it as an American citizen alive and kicking in 2026, so yeah, smearing that guy and his lackeys all over the puzzle does in fact make a difference as to how I feel about the puzzle. Overreacting?Too sensitive?  Great. I'm fine with those accusations. Someone should be sensitive.

DATUM!? Rueful LOL. Sorry, the fill, it just hurts so much. DATUM is one of those "words" that will occasionally (recently?) trip me up when I play Quordle because I forget that it is, in fact, a "word." I didn't struggle much with DATUM, but I did struggle elsewhere a bit. FAVE for GOTO (1A: Tried-and-true choice, informally). I balked at both OLYMPIAD and HARAM, the former because OLYMPIAD didn't seem particularly mathy-sciencey—aren't the regular Olympics called an OLYMPIAD?—and the latter because even though my brain wanted HARAM, I didn't trust it. "Are you just making up a word that kinda / sorta sounds like HALAL, brain?" Apparently not. HOMERUNS was a bit of a toughie as clued (23D: Undeniable successes). Took me several crosses to get the MASCOT part of TEAM MASCOT (31D: Figure in a school pep rally). KETTLES, also tricky (35A: Ones always blowing off steam?). These clues, and the oversized grid, made sure that my time was much slower than usual today (I don't actually time myself anymore, I could just tell).

Bullets:

• 10A: Motorcyclist's invitation ("HOP ON!") — one of the few breaths of fresh air among the short fill. A nice, zippy, colloquial phrase. "HOP ON! We're going to IDAHO!" (a beautiful place—where my mother grew up and where my grandmother lived her whole life)
• 46A: 2016 Ariana Grande love song ("INTO YOU") — another thing that slowed me down. If I've heard this song, I've forgotten it. What I know about ARIANA GRANDE is that both halves of her name appear in crosswords a lot, particularly the shortened form of her first name (ARI). 

• 72A: "OMG, same!" ("TOTES!") — are people still saying this? Did they ever? Real "IT'S LIT" energy here. 
• 73A: About 50.7% of all Americans (WOMEN) — reflexively started writing in ASIAN here until I looked at the clue a little closer. Subset of "Americans" + super-common five-letter answer = ASIAN. Or so says brain, anyway, when brain is on autopilot.

That's all for today. Happy Cinco de Mayo. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Traditional circular dwelling / MON 5-4-26 / Culinary personality Lakshmi / Suddenly feels repulsed by a romantic partner / Slogan encouraging the use of seatbelts / Simple game requiring steady hands / Fasten, as a ship's rope / 2017 Pixar film set in Mexico

Constructor: Kate Schutzengel

Relative difficulty: Easy? (I once again failed the Downs-only solve bec. wtf is an AMENITY KIT lol)

THEME: GETS THE ICK (58A: Suddenly feels repulsed by a romantic partner ... or a hint to 17-, 23-, 37- and 48-Across) — there are two "ICK"s in each theme answer

Theme answers:

• CHICK FLICK (17A: "Sleepless in Seattle" or "Legally Blonde," informally)
• BRICK BY BRICK (23A: Methodical way for something to be built)
• CLICK IT OR TICKET (37A: Slogan encouraging the use of seatbelts)
• PICK UP STICKS (48A: Simple game requiring steady hands)

Word of the Day: SKYE terrier (56D: Scottish terrier breed) —

 

Skye terrier, breed of dog that was originated as a hunter on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, and has remained relatively unchanged for about 400 years. In the 19th century the Skye was one of the most popular terriers and was used as a working dog as well as the pet of the nobility. It is characterized as sturdy, alert, and good-tempered. It has a large head, long body, and short legs, and its ears are either erect or hanging. The long, straight coat ranges from black to pale yellowish brown. Adult height is 9.5 to 10 inches (24 to 25 cm); weight is about 24 pounds (11 kg). (britannica.com)

• • •

Two problems. One is a me problem, I guess: I have never heard of this expression. It's so ... depressing, somehow. People get suddenly repulsed by their romantic partners??? I mean, I get that things can go sour, but sudden repulsion? When did people start saying this? It's awful. Anyway, I'll just assume that everyone's been saying it for years and I am hopelessly old and happily married and therefore out of the loop, fine. But there's the second problem, which is much, much more of a problem: how does the revealer work, exactly? I mean, there are two "icks" in each theme answer, I see that, but how does GETS THE ICK "hint" at that fact, exactly. You aren't adding "ick" to anything; the icks are just ... there. In the words that they are in. There's no "getting" of anything. And there are two icks ... why? The revealer is GETS THE ICK, singular. But there are two. For no particular reason that I can see. So it's off on two counts: the "gets" part makes no sense, and there's more than one "ick." If the phrase were GETS THE ICKS ... well, we'd be closer to a functional revealer, but still not there. It's honestly bizarre to me that this puzzle was accepted, as it simply doesn't ... work. The theme answers themselves are colorful enough, with CLICK IT OR TICKET being particularly lively, and definitely middle-of-the-grid-worthy. But conceptually, this thing is D.O.A. 

Also D.O.A.—my attempt to solve this thing Downs-only. I laughed out loud, and continue to laugh out loud, at AMENITY KIT, a phrase I am learning Just Now, despite my having literally spent Thursday and Friday nights in a hotel! I was mentally scanning the hotel room and bathroom while trying to imagine what ___ KIT could be. The only KIT I could think of was a SHAVING KIT. Also, I (wrongly) inferred LUMEN instead of LUMET at 30A, and that "N" really added to my troubles. There finally ended up being too many letters that I had to infer that weren't clearly inferable, and none of them were helping me see AMENITY. G-PS, A-AT, L-NA, LUME-, -RS ... I couldn't fill any of these GAPS (!!!) confidently enough to begin to get a handle on AMENITY. Ah well. That's the danger of Downs-only solving; sometimes you crash and burn. I just wish I'd crashed and burned on something more interesting than AMENITY KIT (a debut answer, unsurprisingly). [validation!—I went downstairs and saw that my wife, also a Downs-only Monday solver, had the entire puzzle finished ... except AMENITY KIT]

SKIPS SCHOOL sounds more natural to me than SKIPS CLASS (29D: Plays hooky), but ... maybe I'm just responding to the alliteration. SKIP(S) CLASS is definitely a thing. Way more of a thing than AMENITY KIT. Besides AMENITY KIT, I didn't have any trouble with the Downs-only solve. Just little stuff. BLAST for BLARE (25D: Play loudly, as from a speaker). MCAT saved me from inferring POP TOP instead of MOP TOP (47D: Exam for a future doc), which would not have occurred to me. Not much left to talk about in this grid besides the short overfamiliar stuff (of which there is a lot). Oh, and IT'S LIT, an expression that somehow already sounds dated. LIT on its own, in this modern sense of "exciting" or "excellent" ("fire"), seems fine on its own, but somehow "IT'S LIT" sounds contrived, like a parent trying to convince their teenager to go to church because the pastor plays guitar or something. "You'll love it, honey. All the kids say that it's really lit!" Now that we've established that it sounds corny, I really want to teach an introductory literature course called "IT'S LIT!" We will read exclusively about things that are on fire (Fahrenheit 451!), or else people who are drunk (Gatsby!). Or maybe, ironically, we'll read "The Little Match Girl." Too morbid? Possibly.

Bullets:

• 17A: "Sleepless in Seattle" or "Legally Blonde" (CHICK FLICK) — still not the hugest fan of this term, which sounds like a derogatory thing guys say about movies that they wouldn't be interested in because they're "for girls." Sleepless in Seattle and Legally Blonde are both good movies. It would not occur to me to call either a "CHICK FLICK."
• 26D: Traditional circular dwelling (YURT) — "Traditional" not really giving you a lot. Maybe add an adjective or something ("Mongolian!"), if only for color.
• 64A: Fasten, as a ship's rope (BELAY) — it gets a little nautical down below, with BELAY following hard on the heels of MAST (62A: Pole on a sailboat). BELAY is obviously the much more technical term. I think it's a rock-climbing term, too, isn't it? Yes.
• 1D: 2017 Pixar film set in Mexico (COCO) — I'm learning that COCO is by far the dominant four-letter animated film in crosswords. You'd think it would be ELIO, but ... I guess that movie wasn't popular enough. 

• 39D: Reassurance after a loud crash, say ("I'M OK!") —maybe the best clue I've seen for "I'M OK." Paints a vivid picture.
• 48D: Culinary personality Lakshmi (PADMA) — "Culinary personality" is such a weird phrase. "Hey, I met this new woman and I really like her! She's beautiful!" "What's her personality like?" "Uh ... culinary?" "Is she a chef?" "... maybe?" Lakshmi is the creator, host, and executive producer of Taste the Nation with PADMA Lakshmi.

• 7D:  Sound effect for a bop on the head (BOINK!) — maybe my favorite part of the puzzle. I have a smiley face drawn next to it. I'm also fond of YOINK!

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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"Why, why, why?!" / SUN 5-3-2026 / Org. for J. Robert Oppenheimer / World Golf Hall-of-Famer Mark / Chewy chocolate candy brand / German actress Berger with a career spanning eight decades

Constructor: Mark Diehl

Relative difficulty: not hard, especially if you've seen all the terrible fill before and recognize the cluing angles from older puzzles



THEME: "What Are The Odds?" — some entries spell out words / phrases with their odd letters, and those are then used to clue nearby entries

Theme answers:

• [Moisture barrier supplies] for PLASTIC SHEETS, odd letters spell out PATCHES, which is used as the clue for GIVES A DARN
• [A hard job] for NO EASY TASK --> NESTS --> STICKY PADS
• [Fictional diary writer] for BRIDGET JONES --> BIG TOE --> LOW DIGIT
• ["One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" author] for KEN KESEY --> KNEE --> CHILD SUPPORT
• [Conan and others] for BARBARIANS --> BRAIN --> THINKPIECE
• [Client's sales agent, in brief] for ACCOUNT REP --> ACUTE --> NOT QUITE RIGHT

Word of the Day: SENTA (German actress Berger with a career spanning eight decades) —

Senta Verhoeven (née Berger; born 13 May 1941) is an Austrian-German actress. She received many award nominations for her acting in theatre, film, and television; her awards include three Bambi Awards, two Romys, an Adolf Grimme Award, both a Deutscher Fernsehpreis and a Bayerischer Fernsehpreis, and a Goldene Kamera. [I briefly got excited when I saw Wikipedia listed her father-in-law as Paul Verhoeven, but it's not the "RoboCop" director, just another dude that happens to share his name.]

• • •

Hard to tell where to begin with this blog; so many things I could complain about, and a much smaller, non-positive number of things that I enjoyed. Christopher Adams here, filling in for Rex, and really hoping that the wish from past me for a good Sunday was actually fulfilled. Instead, we get this puzzle, which, I honestly cannot say if any part of this proves that this puzzle wasn't made twenty years ago—so much of this gives off that vibe, and the solving experience sure felt like the slog of picking a random archived puzzle from back then. 

Maybe the closest we get to a modern thing in this puzzle is BROCODE, which isn't great and feels pretty dated and icky as is. I'm not counting the clue for WINONA as a modern thing from a constructing viewpoint, btw; you could easily imagine that entry put in a puzzle that's older than I am, with that clue being an edit to try to make it feel more modern. Even if that's the case, attempt failed—so, so much terrible fill that I will inevitably miss some in the following list: OKED, HOR, OSE, INRE, PHYS, TENHUT, AEC, TASS, RET,  SENTA, IS AT, PARI, CIRC, THE RAP (as far as I'm concerned, this is essentially a six letter fill in the blank clue even if not formatted as such). Plus clue/entry pairs that felt like Eugene T. Maleska was back in the land of the living: ERIN, ELIA, TAU, KEEN (especially bad, and especially when juxtaposed with the "how do you do fellow kids" feeling from ROFL—which, now that I think about it, might beat BROCODE for the newest thing in this puzzle, but also feels old and outdated).

[a clip from "Bridget Jones", mostly chosen because at 0:22, there's a brief cameo of Mark Goodliffe, of "Cracking the Cryptic" fame, and if you're interested in sudoku, I make those too]

But this is all to bury my biggest problem with this puzzle, which is that the words/phrases spelled out by the odd letters are being used as clues, when they fit much better as answers. In a way, I'm reminded of those old-timey themes (that you don't see much these days, for a good reason) where all the theme clues are [Spot] or something equally dull and boring, and the entries in the grid aren't really answers, but clues, and everything feels backwards. Same feeling here—[Gives a darn?] would be an excellent clue for the answer PATCHES, but that works because you're putting the slippery, fun part in the clue, and alerting the solver that something tricky is afoot with the question mark; on the other hand, having [Patches?] as a clue for GIVES A DARN as an answer does not work as well, and similar for the rest of the theme entries.

Olio:

• ACC [Stanford and Cal joined it in 2024] — actually, this might be the worst clue/entry in the puzzle, if only because it reminded me of the travesty that college sports is right now; I cannot wait for the Big Ten to become so big that it naturally splits into a Midwestern and Pacific division, and then back into the old Big Ten and the Pacific (pick a number), as it should be.
• TCU [The Horned Frogs of Ft. Worth] — there are much better ways to signal "abbreviation" than writing Fort Worth like that (and, imo, this clue does not need an abbreviation signal in the clue, given that the abbreviation is way, way more common than the full, unabbreviated name).
• TOOTIN ["Yer darn ___!"] — I didn't actually dislike this entry by itself, but putting this right next to GIVES A DARN was certainly a choice.
• KEN KESEY ["One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" author] — The movie based on this book is one of the many Oscar Best Picture winners with six words in its title, but that's not the most words in the title of a Best Picture winner. In fact, there's two with more than six words in their title; can you name them?
• CHOCTAW [One of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes] — There is an essay to be written about how awful the word "civilized" is here; I'm not going to write it, but I will say that it says a lot about the editing process for using a very controversial term that inherently frames things with a white superiority complex, and that is very much not used by the tribe in question because of how problematic the terminology is (and it's not like info about this being controversial is hard to find or anything).

Yours truly, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld

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Handle in a theater / SAT 5-2-26 / Rotisserie-roasted Turkish dish / Sign on a convenience store window / Three-peating N.B.A. champs from 2000 to '02 / Traditional gift for a fifth anniversary / "Full House" father

Constructor: Hannah Slovut-Einertson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: None

Word of the Day: COLOR WARS (30A: Summer camp competitions for which teammates dress similarly) —

A color war is a competition played in summer camps, schools and some social organizations (such as sororities, fraternities, or small businesses). Participants are divided into teams, each of which is assigned a color. The teams compete against each other in challenges and events to earn points. Typical color war challenges include tug-of-war, dodgeball, archery, soccer and basketball. These challenges and events vary based upon the venue for the game. The games' durations can range from a day to several months. The winning team is the one with the most points at the end of the game. Typically, color wars consist of several events that are worth insignificant numbers of points, and then one large final event that is worth enough points to win or lose the entire color war. It is usually at the end of the summer.

• • •

Hello, friends! Rex is still on his trip, so it's Rafa here as your Rexplacement du jour. It's May! How did we get here? I know I'm getting older because now I'm the kind of person who talks about how quickly time is passing. But ... New Year's was basically yesterday?! I don't know what's going on. Forgive me, I saw the date and needed to have this small spiral before moving onto the puzzle.

Here's a giraffe with its ossicones

SO ANYWAYS, I *really* enjoyed this puzzle. It's really wide open at 64 words (themeless puzzles at the NYT can go up to 72 words). Sidenote: we refer to entries in the crosswords as "words" regardless of how many actual words the entry contains. So I'LL START is one word, FLAT is one word, etc. But, yes, 64 words, and not a single bad or gluey entry. And pretty much all the long stuff is fun multi-word entries: LATEST FAD, MOONSHOTS, STAGE NAME, GO BANANAS, NO PEEKING, etc., etc. I loved the modern PERMABAN, and even the more "boring" entries were still totally legit words that can take many cluing angles: FRAMEWORK, TENANTS, SWALLOW.

This is what a BOW SAW looks like, for those who don't know

Some nice clues here, too. [Rounded up?] for DOMED was probably my favorite, and [Disappearing ink?] for TEMPORARY TATTOO was nice, too. I wish there had been a handful more clever misdirects. Oh, I also enjoyed [Residents without a title] for TENANTS. But [Call it!] for HOTLINES didn't quite land for me. Didn't feel precise enough to be a satisfying clue. The verb "call" could apply to too many things, IMO.

What else? ORA reminded me of this recent article in The Onion which was cute. I'd also never heard of COLOR WARS, but admittedly I never attended summer camp growing up. CELESTA was new to me, too ... but it has a really inferable name, and was cool to learn about. I was going to comment on difficulty but I solved this on paper (unusual for me), and I can't tell if I felt slow because I'm not used to having to hunt for the clues or because the puzzle was on the trickier side. Let me know how the difficulty played for you!

SAN Marzano tomatoes

Finally: Hannah, who constructed this puzzle, also helped organize the Midis for Minnesota charity puzzle pack, supporting mutual aid for immigrant families in the state. I have solved several of the puzzles and can vouch for their quality! It also seems like you can receive a physical booklet if you donate in the next couple of days, so do check them out.

Bullets:

• FRAGS (42D: Hand grenades, informally) — I knew this because I played a lot of Call of Duty as a child (it's what I was doing instead of being at summer camp)
• RAW BAR (45A: Establishment that might have a "buck-a-shuck" promotion) — I'm not a picky eater at all, but there's something about raw oysters that I just can't do. I've tried, but it's just not for me. I wish I could enjoy them because the people who love oysters seem to really enjoy them, but alas...
• MASH-UPS (1D: Composite numbers?) — Forgot to mention this clue above, but it was a banger!
• BAMBINA (35D: Little girl, in Italian) — I cannot explain why (I do not speak Italian), but I got this answer immediately and it made me smile
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Spongy exfoliator / FRI 5-1-26 / Myosin's partner protein / "Tom ___" (classic folk song that became a #1 hit in 1958)

Constructor: Rena Cohen 

Relative difficulty: Harder than usual (13:54)

THEME: Themeless

Word of the Day: GEMS (Baguettes, e.g.) —

The step cut's rectilinear form was popular in the Art Deco period. Antique jewelry of the period features step-cut stones prominently, and there is a market in producing new step-cut stones to repair antique jewelry or to reproduce it. The slender, rectangular baguette (from the French, resembling a loaf of bread) was and is the most common form of the step cut: today, it is most often used as an accent stone to flank a ring's larger central (and usually brilliant-cut) stone. [Wiki]

• • •

Hey squad! It's Malaika, filling in for Rex who is on a trip. I solved this puzzle on the train home from seeing Maybe Happy Ending, so am generally feeling nostalgic and plagued with a sense of romantic doom. On to the puzzle!

It is my belief that the NYT has decided the Friday puzzle should be an easy themeless puzzle, and the Saturday should be a hard themeless. No more of this "a little hard" and then "very hard." I absolutely breeze through these Fridays like they are Wednesdays. This is not a complaint, but rather to fend off complaints! Don't complain that Fridays are easy, because I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be!

"It's as easy as falling off A LOG!" said the Earl, falling off a log with a loud thump

This is a pretty intense grid shape to fill! When I see three long answers vertically intersecting three long answers horizontally, it is usually in the form of six eleven-letter answers. (Like this one, from KAC.) Here, Ms. Cohen has used a fifteen, a thirteen, two elevens, and two nines. Something a little different! 

The best entry by far in this grid was THE MUNCHIES and it's not even close. Fantastic addition to the puzzle. It does seem totally insane to clue this without referencing weed... I'm pretty sure that if you are just looking for a snack, you don't have the munchies. The term only applies when you're high, right? Chime in, fam. 

A lot of the other long entries fell flat for me.... ERADICATES and SONOROUS and CAPABLE are all just regular words, and ARMADILLOS felt less exciting to me because of the plural. SPOILER ALERTS felt a little ruined by the plural, actually, it didn't feel grammatically valid to add an S there (same with APPLE TVS). LOCK AND LOAD sounded awkward, since I'm used to "locked and loaded" and BANK AUDIT is not what I would call fresh or interesting. I did like COLD TAKES, COUPLES ONLY, and MAKE BELIEVE, though all three got boring (or I suppose I should say, easy) clues.

Bullets:

• ["WandaVision" co-star Elizabeth ___] for OLSEN — I just watched her in "Eternity," which I loved. Exactly the type of cute-but-still-interesting romcom I've been looking for.
• [Company whose name comes from a term in the board game Go] for ATARI — The term describes one of the board's potential states
• [Big name in petrol] for ESSO — I've seen this a thousand times in puzzles and I will simply never remember the final letter. Here I tried every vowel since I wasn't familiar with RKO either.
• [Dough in tamales] for MASA — I went to Mexico City over the weekend and took a class where we learned about nixtamalizing corn and made tamales. I've made tamales before, but this was the first time I used banana leaves as wrappers. (Usually I use corn husks.)
• [Home of Swansea and Wrexham] for WALES — I knew this because of the soccer club that Ryan Reynolds co-owns.

xoxo Malaika

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• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

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✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• Westwords (Berkeley, CA, Jun. 14, 2026)

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📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

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