Crossword blog for June 4 2024 by Sally Hoelscher with answers

Contains spoilers. You might want to try solving today’s puzzle before reading on! I can’t explain it (freestyle)

constructor: Carolyn Davis Lynch

Editor: Jared Goodmitt

Comment from the creator of Today’s Crossword

Carolyn: Hello solvers! I hope you enjoyed this puzzle. This is actually version 12. I have previously solved 11 versions of the same puzzle, but none of them worked. These include:

• Here’s the version I liked…until you notice the word “YOU” across it (as part of both “YOU HAD TO BE THERE” and “YOU DO”) – that’s way too much redundancy for one small part of the puzzle, don’t you think?
• Another version I was digging into…until I realized it had both ME DAY and PAYDAYS, as well as CLASS ACT and ACT. This version had a lot of accidental duplications along the way. It took a lot of changes to fix them.
• Eventually, the version I liked enough about it was submitted to an editor at USA Today, who liked it overall but made some suggestions, like swapping out plant-based milk for a plant-based meal.
• This version responded to the feedback, but accidentally included some words that crossed in a way that was difficult for solvers, such as LHASA crossing TLDR. They were either both known or both not known. So either entry was fine on its own, but the crossing seemed too difficult. I reworked that corner, added a black box to try and find a better way to fill it in, and ended up with FRYER crossing FDR.