REX "Howards End" daughter / WED 6-10-26 / Landon who ran against F.D.R. in 1936 / Cousin of a flugelhorn / Notes of app
Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2026 9:56 am
Constructor: David J. Kahn and Ethan Quigley
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: WORLD CUP WINNERS (7D: Global "club" with only eight members, each of which appears in circled letters with its country code) — just like it says: the country codes for the only eight countries ever to win the World Cup can be found in the eights sets of three circled squares inside today's grid:
Theme answers:
Alfred Mossman Landon (September 9, 1887 – October 12, 1987) was an American oilman and politician who served as the 26th governor of Kansas from 1933 to 1937. A member of the Republican Party, he was the party's nominee in the 1936 presidential election, and was defeated in a landslide by incumbent president Franklin D. Roosevelt. The margin of victory in the electoral college was the largest of Roosevelt's four elections to the office of president, as Landon won just 8 electoral votes to Roosevelt's 523. Landon died on October 12, 1987, becoming the only presidential candidate from either of the major parties to live to the age of 100 until Jimmy Carter in 2024, and is to date the only Republican candidate to do so. [...] The 1936 Republican National Convention selected Landon as the Republican Party's presidential nominee. He proved to be an ineffective campaigner and carried just two states in the election, neither of which was Kansas despite him being the sitting governor of that state. After the election, he left office as governor and never sought public office again. Later in life, he supported the Marshall Plan and President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs. He gave the first in a series of lectures, now known as the Landon Lecture Series, at Kansas State University. Landon lived to the age of 100 and died in Topeka, Kansas, in 1987. His daughter, Nancy Kassebaum, represented Kansas in the United States Senate from 1978 to 1997. (wikipedia)• • • 
Timely. The 2026 World Cup officially starts tomorrow, all over North America (Canada, US, Mexico). Timeliness is this puzzle's one big virtue. The grid, because of its extremely chopped-up structure, doesn't allow for much in the way of interesting fill (just two answers over six letters long, outside the revealer), and an overwhelming amount of that fill is really short: three and four letters. Also, there are no really interesting theme answers. ESPYS is not interesting. It's crosswordese. See also NARITA. Sometimes circled-letter strings require real ingenuity in the choice of the answers that contain them, but today ... well, ESPYS is not likely to set anyone's heart aflutter. Further, the revealer (WORLD CUP WINNERS) isn't really a great standalone phrase. If you saw it in any other puzzle, where it wasn't an explanatory revealer, you'd think "I dunno..." But I did like this puzzle as a historical curiosity, and I liked learning that in the entire history of the World Cup, there have been only eight winners to date. I did not know that. Seems low. But I guess if you play only once every four years, and Brazil and Germany keep hogging the trophies, then it's kinda hard to grow the "club." So despite the fact that the fill is a little dull and stale in many places (lots of ASTA UTES TET ELY ENC ENC -INE REINA-type stuff), I still had a pretty good time hunting down all the country codes, and thinking about all the football I'm going to watch in the coming weeks (despite not being a regular fan, I always get immediately sucked into World Cup matches, although, I'm pretty sports-susceptible in general—keep anything on screen for more than ten minutes and suddenly I find I am an expert with a vested interest in the outcome. I was very briefly the world's leading expert in Nordic Combined earlier this year, for instance (when will JENS Christian Lurås Oftebro finally get his crossword recognition!?)
https://www.youtube.com/embed/csvW_W3hL ... P_Zwz-lL7A
The puzzle was easy except for the north, which was also less pleasant than the rest of the grid largely because they decided to get cute with the cluing and double it up ([Big dust-up] for two clues, both in the same tiny section, both themers). The real problem is AFFRAY, a word no one uses ("fray," sure, but "AFFRAY" sounds almost Victorian). I probably wouldn't have gotten AFFRAY with any kind of clue, but somehow I resented struggling to get an answer and having to endure a doubled-up clue. There was something suffocating about it. It's trying to be cute, but it muddies things too much, esp. since you're doing your little cutesy clue-doubling thing with theme answers. You wanna play little duplicate-clue games, use the regular fill, not the themers. This tiny section included not only two themers with duplicate clues (one of which is not an everyday word), it also had two annoyingly ambiguous clues for three-letter answers. I wrote in UMP for REF (5D: One making calls, informally) and DEA for ATF (6D: Antismuggling grp.). So that whole section felt airless and fussy and ultimately not that rewarding. Who wants trouble from three-letter answers? I should add that I wrote in BLAIR at first for 4D: ___ House, residence for visiting dignitaries in Washington, but then pulled it when it ended up clashing with UMP and DEA. Which is to say that clearly I'd heard of BLAIR House, but did not trust that I had it right. Also, LUSTS is something (much) stronger than 22A: Longs (for), and TYS aren't "notes" (15D: Notes of appreciation, in online parlance). You might write "TY" in a "note" (or text) (short for "thank you"), but TYS are not themselves "notes of appreciation." They are, at best, expressions of appreciation. At worst, they're a terrible plural abbr. that you'd never use irl and should never use in your grid.
Bullets:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/BFDzsm78e ... ma9xZ9L-EB
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. yesterday I learned that Ricky Martin and Shakira have both recorded official World Cup songs, but Marc Anthony has not. (Thanks, WFMU! Specifically, Tuesday Music Trivia on "Wake N Bake" with Clay Pigeon!).
https://www.youtube.com/embed/pRpeEdMmm ... JdXbXTm_Da
[2010!]
[1998!]
[1999! Not a World Cup song, but certainly a better song than the other two ... and hey, any song can be a World Cup song if you want it to be! Just put it on while you watch and bam, instant anthem!]
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
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Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: WORLD CUP WINNERS (7D: Global "club" with only eight members, each of which appears in circled letters with its country code) — just like it says: the country codes for the only eight countries ever to win the World Cup can be found in the eights sets of three circled squares inside today's grid:
Theme answers:
- BRAWL (4A: Big dust-up [1958, 1962, 1970, 1994, 2002])
- AFFRAY (18A: Big dust-up [1998, 2018])
- WAR GOD (24A: Mars, notably [1978, 1986, 2022])
- TAURUS (36A: Cinco de Mayo birth, e.g. [1930, 1950])
- GERWIG (43A: "Lady Bird" director Greta [1954, 1974, 1990, 2014])
- NARITA (50A: Japan Airlines hub [1934, 1938, 1982, 2006])
- AVENGE (61A: Get back for [1966])
- ESPYS (69A: Awards for Shohei Ohtani and Caitlin Clark [2010])
- (bonus answer) PELE (56D: Only player on three victorious teams in this puzzle)
Alfred Mossman Landon (September 9, 1887 – October 12, 1987) was an American oilman and politician who served as the 26th governor of Kansas from 1933 to 1937. A member of the Republican Party, he was the party's nominee in the 1936 presidential election, and was defeated in a landslide by incumbent president Franklin D. Roosevelt. The margin of victory in the electoral college was the largest of Roosevelt's four elections to the office of president, as Landon won just 8 electoral votes to Roosevelt's 523. Landon died on October 12, 1987, becoming the only presidential candidate from either of the major parties to live to the age of 100 until Jimmy Carter in 2024, and is to date the only Republican candidate to do so. [...] The 1936 Republican National Convention selected Landon as the Republican Party's presidential nominee. He proved to be an ineffective campaigner and carried just two states in the election, neither of which was Kansas despite him being the sitting governor of that state. After the election, he left office as governor and never sought public office again. Later in life, he supported the Marshall Plan and President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs. He gave the first in a series of lectures, now known as the Landon Lecture Series, at Kansas State University. Landon lived to the age of 100 and died in Topeka, Kansas, in 1987. His daughter, Nancy Kassebaum, represented Kansas in the United States Senate from 1978 to 1997. (wikipedia)• • • 
Timely. The 2026 World Cup officially starts tomorrow, all over North America (Canada, US, Mexico). Timeliness is this puzzle's one big virtue. The grid, because of its extremely chopped-up structure, doesn't allow for much in the way of interesting fill (just two answers over six letters long, outside the revealer), and an overwhelming amount of that fill is really short: three and four letters. Also, there are no really interesting theme answers. ESPYS is not interesting. It's crosswordese. See also NARITA. Sometimes circled-letter strings require real ingenuity in the choice of the answers that contain them, but today ... well, ESPYS is not likely to set anyone's heart aflutter. Further, the revealer (WORLD CUP WINNERS) isn't really a great standalone phrase. If you saw it in any other puzzle, where it wasn't an explanatory revealer, you'd think "I dunno..." But I did like this puzzle as a historical curiosity, and I liked learning that in the entire history of the World Cup, there have been only eight winners to date. I did not know that. Seems low. But I guess if you play only once every four years, and Brazil and Germany keep hogging the trophies, then it's kinda hard to grow the "club." So despite the fact that the fill is a little dull and stale in many places (lots of ASTA UTES TET ELY ENC ENC -INE REINA-type stuff), I still had a pretty good time hunting down all the country codes, and thinking about all the football I'm going to watch in the coming weeks (despite not being a regular fan, I always get immediately sucked into World Cup matches, although, I'm pretty sports-susceptible in general—keep anything on screen for more than ten minutes and suddenly I find I am an expert with a vested interest in the outcome. I was very briefly the world's leading expert in Nordic Combined earlier this year, for instance (when will JENS Christian Lurås Oftebro finally get his crossword recognition!?)
https://www.youtube.com/embed/csvW_W3hL ... P_Zwz-lL7A
The puzzle was easy except for the north, which was also less pleasant than the rest of the grid largely because they decided to get cute with the cluing and double it up ([Big dust-up] for two clues, both in the same tiny section, both themers). The real problem is AFFRAY, a word no one uses ("fray," sure, but "AFFRAY" sounds almost Victorian). I probably wouldn't have gotten AFFRAY with any kind of clue, but somehow I resented struggling to get an answer and having to endure a doubled-up clue. There was something suffocating about it. It's trying to be cute, but it muddies things too much, esp. since you're doing your little cutesy clue-doubling thing with theme answers. You wanna play little duplicate-clue games, use the regular fill, not the themers. This tiny section included not only two themers with duplicate clues (one of which is not an everyday word), it also had two annoyingly ambiguous clues for three-letter answers. I wrote in UMP for REF (5D: One making calls, informally) and DEA for ATF (6D: Antismuggling grp.). So that whole section felt airless and fussy and ultimately not that rewarding. Who wants trouble from three-letter answers? I should add that I wrote in BLAIR at first for 4D: ___ House, residence for visiting dignitaries in Washington, but then pulled it when it ended up clashing with UMP and DEA. Which is to say that clearly I'd heard of BLAIR House, but did not trust that I had it right. Also, LUSTS is something (much) stronger than 22A: Longs (for), and TYS aren't "notes" (15D: Notes of appreciation, in online parlance). You might write "TY" in a "note" (or text) (short for "thank you"), but TYS are not themselves "notes of appreciation." They are, at best, expressions of appreciation. At worst, they're a terrible plural abbr. that you'd never use irl and should never use in your grid.
Bullets:
- 34D: Motivator, of a sort (NUDGER) — what are we doing here? Come on.
- 31A: Little dust-up (SPAT) — still with the "dust-ups"?! Why?!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/BFDzsm78e ... ma9xZ9L-EB
- 54D: "Howards End" daughter (EVIE) — this is where the puzzle gets whatever difficulty it has: in proper nouns of obscure origins. Kinda dicey to cross a two fictional women at a vowel (EVIE / MIRIAM), but I supposed that "I" was eventually inevitable (I thought maybe Mrs. Maisel was a MARIAM, but I've yet to meet or hear of an EVAE, so "I" it was!
- 50A: Japan airlines hub [1934, 1938, 1982, 2006] (NARITA) — weird to have ITALY hidden in a clue that is explicitly JAPANESE. I think it's better when the country-containing answers have nothing to do with specific countries. These are the minute aesthetic considerations I think about when I look over puzzles. This particular issue may not, in fact, be worth fretting over, but it's something that would irk me a little if this were my puzzle. But what do I know? I'm just a dog (70A: Stereotypical dog's name).
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. yesterday I learned that Ricky Martin and Shakira have both recorded official World Cup songs, but Marc Anthony has not. (Thanks, WFMU! Specifically, Tuesday Music Trivia on "Wake N Bake" with Clay Pigeon!).
https://www.youtube.com/embed/pRpeEdMmm ... JdXbXTm_Da
[2010!]
[1998!]
[1999! Not a World Cup song, but certainly a better song than the other two ... and hey, any song can be a World Cup song if you want it to be! Just put it on while you watch and bam, instant anthem!]
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
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