I know what one under par is. A little birdie told me. (No ifs, ands, or putts about it!)
Mike, You're a diamond in the rough.
@Mike Holy moly, Descartes' the way to get around of golf, now that you're no longer so green as to wind up just another a debunker.
@Mike Those of us in 2-under land are glad you teed this one up.
@Mike I don't play golf, I don't watch golf, and you can't make me! Well.... Unless, maybe you show me the Golf of Mexico is still there....
My five favorite original clues from last week (in order of appearance): 1. Give a makeup test? (5) 2. Coat on a tip? (6) 3. T-slots? (8) 4. Lofty pitches (4)(2) 5. Help in a pinch? (4) ASSAY POLISH ARMHOLES HIGH C'S ABET
My favorite encore clues from last week: [Grocery stores?] (8) [Ce n'est pas du fast food] (8) PANTRIES ESCARGOT
@Lewis I'm surprised #5 is original!
@Bill in Yokahama -- I was too. That's an answer that has appeared more than 600 times in the major outlets, never punning on "pinch"!
Perfect Monday. No constructor notes? Apparently Tom McCoy has been pretty prolific, looking him up, but I don’t remember his name. My only comment—my wife can testify to my driving ability, PARALLEL PARKING is not just a challenge for student drivers. Sorry, friends, I’d like to end this quickly but I just can’t figure out how to do it (Pardon, partners, parsimonious parting’s particularly paralyzing [6])
Oh, another completely off topic comment, but I can't help myself. The two brightest objects that are neither the sun nor moon are fairly close together in the sky. Venus and Jupiter are about a degree and a half apart, about three times the apparent diameter of the moon. Their closest approach is June 9. They are both in the evening sky. You'll be able to see them much sooner than any thing else in the western-ish sky. They're unmistakeable. I think they're even visible in New York City--I think I saw Vega from Manhattan, and these are much brighter. And, to a certain type of mind, wonderfully beautiful.
@Francis It also seems powerfully productive of growth and expansion. A quick search found this excerpt from an article in The Hindustan Times: "Jupiter and Venus may meet regularly, but this particular pairing is far less common. Jupiter is considered exalted in Cancer, meaning it is believed to express its most beneficial qualities in this sign. With Venus joining Jupiter in the same part of the sky, astrologers see this as a highly auspicious event."
@Francis Many people don't realize that Venus goes through phases, like the Moon. However, it appears brightest not at full phase, but at crescent phase (approximately 26%) because it is then closer to Earth.
@Francis thank you! I was gazing at those two beauties the other evening (also easily visible here in brightly lit Toronto), wondering if they were both planets. Now I know and I'll be looking up into the west again tonight 😊,
@Francis Saw them two nights ago. I waved my hello.
@Francis I was told the two planets would form a smiley face with last month's crescent moon. The internet lied to me.
@Francis I got excited and announced to DHubby that "Junus and Veepiter" are gooing to be close tpgether tomorrow. It's always a thrill when new planets are formed....
Tom McCoy is all about theme. This is his 37th puzzle for the Times, covering every day of the week except Friday and Saturday. His themes are wordplay-based and often strikingly unique. (Spoiler alert from one of his puzzles five years ago): For instance, in one of his Thursday creations, theme answers such as HUBBUB, RUMPUS, and FRACAS were loop-shaped in the grid, and in the puzzle’s solution, the squares inside those circles were empty. That’s right, to get the puzzle right, you had to leave a good number (9) of squares blank. The revealer? MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. I’ve always loved the sense of play in his puzzles, and I’m not surprised that one day he came across the word “paramount” and proceeded to conceive of this wacky theme. Once again, Tom, you’ve left me smiling with one of your “and now, for something different” puzzles. Thank you, and please, keep ‘em coming!
Maybe it is PLSD (Post Last Sunday’s Distress). I was unsure of even the straightforward answers and took my time. 🫤 A nice Monday puzzle. Thanks.
Just popping in to say I love the KNAVERY answer.
You know how there are some words that are tongue twisters, and that once you can pronounce perfectly it means to yourself that you're finally a big kid and oh-so-smart? This puzzle made me think of one of those words in Portuguese. Cobblestone: Paralelepípedo. pah-rah-leh-leh-PEE-peh-do. It takes a while for kids to get it right. Pah-lah-leh...pah-rah-reh...pah-lah-reh... Then they get the first half right but leave out the "pee" or the "peh." Finally, one day they run to their parents, full of pride, and can't wait to say it. Pa-ra-le-le-pí-pe-do. It comes out slowly, tentatively, each syllable thought out, and brows furrowed as they concentrate so as to get it right. They keep practicing until it rolls off the tongue without glitches. Every single kid goes through it, and it's adorable. This puzzle was very cute and fun as well, and very appropriate for the day. You can say that T'WAS a Monday puzzle PAR excellence. Thank you, Mr McCoy!
@sotto voce super. The kind of comment I come here for 😀 it’s quite easy to say in the original… Παραλληλεπίπεδο but it’s just a geometric shape rather than a particular object.
@sotto voce Also in English as /parallelopiped/, with a geometrical definition.
@sotto voce Oh, how I LOVED this!! I had a similar difficulty (but with a much less-challenging pair of words)-- SOLDIER and SHOULDER I thought that Dad was a 'SHOUL-jer"... which explained why he was far, far away for a long time. (And since our dyslexic+ mother had auditory/speech issues, she wasn't really able to help.... Ah, the challenges of childhood!)
Felt pretty good about this one today! I beat my average Monday solve time, and had fun with the theme and spanners that happen to be two of my most impressive skills. Really liked the cluster in the top right corner, it felt a bit like solving a poem with the repeated phonics for some reason. My gold-star streak now stands at 120, and while I haven't been as good at doing the archives more regularly I'm still closing in on a lifetime 2600 solves. Happy solving everybody!
Methinks the clue for 50A should have ended with a [1]. Hung up briefly on BUCK/BOAT vs STAG/SHIP.
Deer sir is one of the cutest clues I've seen in a hot minute!
I've gotten used to beating my Monday average every week, but not today. I found it more challenging than usual, although I could have saved myself some time if I hadn't been in such a hurry to fill in bEta instead of DEMO for 5A. That, plus my unfamiliarity with Apple features, held me up. Thanks for the challenge to start the week!
SP, EB is not alone. <a href="https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2026-06-08" target="_blank">https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2026-06-08</a>
@EB So, Barry, if the median solve time of 6:04 is “very hard” and 14 percent slower than average, that means it took these solvers less than 1 minute longer than usual. I don’t think that qualifies as “way too hard for a Monday”.
SP, With this detail, I'm not going to argue with commenters who found this "way too hard for a Monday." ⚡23% of users solved faster than their Monday average. 4% solved much faster (>20%) than their Monday average. 🐢77% of users solved slower than their Monday average. 41% solved much slower (>20%) than their Monday average.
@EB Barry, I’m still not buying it. Outside of, maybe, the clue for SPELL, show me another clue or crossing that was remotely obscure or misdirecting. Maybe there were fewer absolute gimmes than an average Monday, but are you really telling me the editors should have looked at this grid, this theme, and these clues and said “guys, we need to push this to Tuesday or Wednesday, this is way too hard for a Monday”?
@SP This took me Tuesday time, and that of a slow Tuesday, too 🤷🏽
@EB Ok everyone, I give up, UNCLE! I wasn’t trying to say that this may not have been harder than the average Monday. I was just saying I wouldn’t have been critical of the editors for running it today, or the clues they chose, because they seemed pretty reasonable to me and the theme seemed pretty Monday-ish. It was the “way too…” that seemed a little harsh to me. But if everyone or most really feels this was too hard for a Monday maybe I was just on this constructor’s wavelength or whatever. And by “not buying it”, Andrzej, that wasn’t a personal comment, I just meant I wasn’t buying that the data from xwords was really valid for representing the majority of solvers. But it looks like many casual solvers also had the same experience so I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong.
@EB It never has bothered me much when the puzzle's difficulty isn't dialed in exactly to expectations for the day of the week it's published, especially when it's a little more difficult than expected. And on a Monday... that just seems like a bonus. And yes, that makes it a bit more difficult for those just starting out, but I think this one was still doable for a beginner.
I solved this in 14% less time than my Monday average, so you’ll find me in the “not so hard” camp. Then again, it always comes down to what you know and what you don’t, and that is not a judgment. We all have different wheelhouses. And apparently in my wheelhouse, it’s nonstop PARTY PARTY PARTY.
As a golfer I’m ashamed to say I missed the theme. I read it as “PARA MOUNT” as in a Pair of Mounts. I’m like huh? 🤦♂️ Oh well. Perhaps that helps to explain my 20 handicap. 🤪
@Mike I never even noticed the numbers in the brackets.
Nice revealer! Judging by her absence today though, I'm guessing #CLM didn't enjoy it. Guess she was hoping for a catamount puzzle.
@ad absurdum: You’re close. The catamount should include a categorically cathartic catalpa.
Nice one. Now off to commit some KNAVERY.
@John Carson Skulduggery has been committed.
PARCHEESI--great game for any age. PARALLEL PARKING--not as scary as people seem to think. (At my driver's test--63 years ago--I failed to stop at a (painted) railroad crossing. The official was going to flunk me, but I then parallel-parked so unhesitatingly and flawlessly that he granted a Pass. We don't need no stinkin' automatic-parking-feature! Oh, the rest of the puzzle was fine, I guess, but I've never been the type to PARTY PARTY PARTY ...unless it's a meet-up with Crossworld Friends...
@Mean Old Lady I came to say the same thing. While I have the world’s worst sense of direction and can barely tell left from right on a good day, I have always been able to PARALLEL PARK, reverse around a corner (they’ve even dropped that from the UK test) and perform a perfect three point turn with ease. The human brain is an odd creature.
@Mean Old Lady I was never taught how to parallel park beyond the explanation in the driver's manual, and in Oregon it isn't on the test (or wasn't a couple decades ago, anyway). I was terrified of it until backup cameras came along. Being able to see directly behind me makes me much more confident!
A very sweet Monday puzzle. Now, for crying out loud NYT, will you sort out this hideous new layout?! It’s ugly, clunky and is destroying my enjoyment of the Wordplay column and comments. Thank you
Tougher than usual for a Monday (for me!). Enjoyed it!
The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,All on a summer's day;The Knave of Hearts, he stole the tarts,And took them clean away.
Lewis Carroll had fun with that Mother Goose rhyme... <a href="https://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/resources/chapters-script/alices-adventures-in-wonderland/chapter-11" target="_blank">https://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/resources/chapters-script/alices-adventures-in-wonderland/chapter-11</a>/
Overall not super hard but for a Monday that was kinda tricky! Knavery almost stumped me.
Another great Monday puzzle, thanks.
PARTYPARTYPARTY strikes me as an easy cheesy SPANner designed just to grant a Monday gimmick. Whatevs.
@Matt So, see, there’s a political organization putting up a candidate for president, whose platform is everyone should just have a good time all the time. But there’s a lawsuit against them saying they can’t be on the ballot. So in the lawsuit, of course, they are considered the Party Party Party.
@Matt While you're here: I don't think I've seen any posts from Becky since before the Champions League final. Have you? Hope that she didn't take losing in Penalty Kicks too hard.
@Al Well, I took Arsenal's loss pretty hard. I hate penalty kicks.
You know what else fits at 41 Across? PARTY All the Time, which is what I had before I got to the clue for the theme at 50 Across and completely understood the assignment. And can anyone of a certain age forget this song from Eddie Murphy? Yup, that's Rick James, too. <a href="https://youtu.be/iWa-6g-TbgI?si=DrvP6YjCbN7jcH98" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/iWa-6g-TbgI?si=DrvP6YjCbN7jcH98</a> I fell asleep while solving so my time is not helpful with the difficulty level, but I didn't find this any more difficult than the usual Monday. I found it fairly lively.
Just noticed the caption for the picture, Sam. Very nice. This Bob's for you. <a href="https://youtu.be/8NfDUn4Cy4I?si=IncJfAmPHr0Q07Uy" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/8NfDUn4Cy4I?si=IncJfAmPHr0Q07Uy</a>
For a less-than-a-year newbie, I'm glad I finished this one without lookups. Easy peasy and breezed right through it with few changes! Yay! For me, the best thing about today's column was the photo. Nice dyed yarn, drying in the sun. Among the knitterati, they all know that the newest thing in yarn is hand-dyed yarn--each skein in a rainbow of different colors. I also did a visual search and found out that those fruits on the trees were pomegranates; I had thought they were limes. I have actually grown pomegranates here in the Northeast on my dwarf, winter hardy pomegranate tree. You can even grow them indoors in a sunroom. I recall a story called "The Pomegranate Trees" by William Saroyan that I read in university--about trying to get those trees from Armenia to produce fruit in a "deserty" California. Good story. <a href="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/archives/1938/02/161-2/132444838.pdf" target="_blank">https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/archives/1938/02/161-2/132444838.pdf</a>
@lucky13 My cousin dyes and creates her own yarns. When she found out I crochet, she sent me several skeins of yarn in a beautiful blue. Unfortunately, they were wool. I can't even touch it without an allergic reaction. At the time, I worked in a senior living residence. I was able to gift the yarn to one of our residents who was an excellent needle-worker, and at that time, working on blankets for a women's shelter. So they went to a good cause, and a happy ending.
Very clever! One wonders at the hamsters running the treadmills in puzzle composers' brains; how they stumble across an idea, stop the treadmill, and hop off to explore it. Do they grab a towel, wipe their brows, toss it around their tiny necks, suck some water from their feeding tubes as they toss that idea in their minds? Then hop back on the treadmill and spin that idea around some more while the human hands start working it out on a grid? It surely takes some combination of luck and brain to claim the nugget of a theme and create the grid that will bring us here to either chew the inside of our cheeks or breeze through it with a chuckle. Today, a Monday, I'd say the puzzle was, PARdon me, PAR for the course.
@Justin Monday, Monday, can't trust that day Monday, Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way Hope Tuesday treats you better.
Were you thinking it was a horrible Monday just in America or everywhere?
@Justin sorry you're having a bad day. at least there was a really good puzzle to distract you. hoping for all good things tomorrow. Which as someone recently pointed out is a day for dreams to come true. It's also always/only a day away.
Why does wordplay open in the app now instead of the browser? This makes it so that we have to repeatedly open and close wordplay if we are filling in the hard clues. At least have a button to open in browser.
@Ryan: Paste this into your browser and bookmark it. Then go there instead of clicking the “i” etc. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords</a>
Nice Patrick Berry offering today at The New Yorker: <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-games-dept/crossword/2026/06/08" target="_blank">https://www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-games-dept/crossword/2026/06/08</a>
Definitely gonna PARTYPARTYPARTY after that one!
@B "Properly" so in English, and definitely so in their native language, but in English, we tend to "misuse" words until the misuse becomes accepted. Although a lot of sources will continue to insist that Inuk is the only correct singular, my friend Norma Loquendi (Google her!) says otherwise: <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Inuit" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Inuit</a> English, among many languages, has a tendency to regularize foreign words to fit its own orthography and grammar. Welcome to the Tamale Trap, founded by the lowly "tamal," who resented the adding of an E to its end because English thought (because the Spanish plural is "tamales") that the singular needed an E as well. Make yourself at home and have "a panini."
You can always learn something in a crossword puzzle. Every puzzle is like a different lesson. Today, class, welcome to Advanced Pars Ed. It’s like Intro to Parsing, but parsed differently.
@JohnWM One should be parsimonious, however, about spending time puzzling during work hours.
Cute theme and a fun puzzle! A gramamtical correction, though: the clue for 34D should use the singular "Inuk", not the plural "Inuit".
@David I'll repeat what I just said to B in an earlier post: "Properly" so in English, and definitely so in their native language, but in English, we tend to "misuse" words until the misuse becomes accepted. Although a lot of sources will continue to insist that Inuk is the only correct singular, my friend Norma Loquendi (Google her!) says otherwise: <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Inuit" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Inuit</a> English, among many languages, has a tendency to regularize foreign words to fit its own orthography and grammar. Welcome to the Tamale Trap, founded by the lowly "tamal," who resented the adding of an E to its end because English thought (because the Spanish plural is "tamales") that the singular needed an E as well. Make yourself at home and have "a panini."
All other things being equal* this was a fine Monday puzzle. *Cet PAR, for those who didn't take economics. Short for ceteris paribus, which nobody says any more.
Hard to criticize a Monday for having some disappointing answers. “A pair” — DUO would have been a more satisfying answer (and one that made more sense) than the dull TWO. “Expression of contempt” — BAH. Sure, I guess. Ugh. Arg. Fun to see OHIO in the puzzle, a proper noun with plenty of vowels that seemingly doesn’t get much time in the spotlight here. Have a good week.
@D Yeah... OHIO has only been an answer in 469 puzzles. And.. just 40 times in the last 5 years. ....
@D Wouldn’t be a Wordplay comment section without needless pedantry from the rabble. Sigh.
Fun Monday! Kind of makes up for yesterday's dreary slog
Am I the only one who doesn’t equate “mercy” with empathy? Didn’t like this clue
@Gary Where did you see "mercy" or "empathy"? Neither was in today's puzzle. In yesterday's puzzle, MERCY was an answer, clued with [Compassion].
@Gary Oops, I didn't notice I'm still on the Monday comments, so forget the comment about "today's puzzle." But my last sentence, the pertinent one, still holds.
I wonder if Tom (the constructor) is a golfer, and if so, what his handicap is.
Steve, With pars of 1, 2 and 3, I'm thinking minature golf.
13D had me scratching my head until I realized the double meaning of Characterize. Fun puzzle.
@Joy Harkin I'm still in the tall weeds. I can't see much of a link between "characterize" and "spell". But I bet I will the moment I post this.
@Joy Harkin As promised, yeah, I did get it shortly after posting--characterize, as in spelling gives us each character. Clever!
I am going to use 19D as an excuse to talk bit about one of my very favorite movies, "2001: A Space Odyssey". The HAL 9000 computer was fascinating, not for having gone homicidal--a lot of sci fi computers do that--but HAL was more interesting than that. For one thing, I'm not entirely sure he knew he did anything wrong. He *tried* to explain himself to Dave when he was being logged out, but was that real insight or was he doing whatever he had to do to try to survive and carry out the mission that he was bound to? Had Dave deferred, would HAL have tried again to gain complete control over a mission he though only he could accomplish? Why wouldn't he? That was his mandate. In "2010", we get to see HAL again, after having been in a coma for nine years. The best thing about that movie was the concern over whether they could trust HAL to do something that would destroy him/her/it (don't know what pronouns HAL preferred). (Wait, that was the second best thing--the best thing was air braking through the top of Jupiter's atmosphere.) It made for a happy ending, which I generally don't like all that much, but it was nice to see HAL redeemed.
Very clever theme, handled very well. Fine puzzle. For some reason, KNAVERY and MERCY were slow to come together for me, so this one took me longer than usual for a Monday puzzle. What the thematic entries and the revealer each have? A PARAMOUR. Okay, that's pretty awful.
@Xword Junkie "has", not "have". Good grief.
One of the great bicycles of the past: Schwinn Paramount!
I always thought KNAVE meant low-level male servant and find it intriguing that it's also means untrustworthy schemer. It's almost like the folks who produced dictionaries didn't trust their low-level male servants.
Kevin, How old are you!? <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/knave" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/knave</a>
@Kevin Before the modern word "jack" was adopted, the jacks in a deck of cards were called KNAVES---servants to the kings and queens. Of course, in pinochle and related games, we have the curious "coupling" of the queen of spades and the knave of diamonds. Probably quite scandalous in origin.
I think the answer RIOT mischaracterizes the clue “civil uprising” as a definition. Some uprisings can descend into riots though not all riots are uprisings. They may be civil unrest, characterized by disorganized, wanton destructive behavior. I see uprisings as protests against the establishment and those can be peaceful or otherwise. Disappointing cluing.
@Loopy It might help to think of the clue as a clue and not a definition. This sort of thing comes up a lot - clues lead you to the answer but aren't meant to be definitively exactly the answer.
@Loopy Civil is one of those words that can mean the opposite of itself, like cleave. A civil war is usually pretty nasty, and I've heard that civil suits can be, as well. ...and I'm seeing organized wanton destructive behavior every night, in New Jersey.
I loved today’s puzzle!! Great job today!! Go celebrate and party party party!