NYT Crossword Answers for April 4, 2025

Jump to: Tricky Clues

FRIDAY PUZZLE — This weekend hundreds of solvers will descend on the Marriott Hotel in Stamford, Conn., to attend the 47th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the competition that was immortalized in the 2006 documentary “Wordplay.” The tournament is hosted by Will Shortz, the editor of the New York Times Crossword. Many of the constructors whose bylines you see on Times puzzles attend either to compete or help with the judging. I’ve always thought of the A.C.P.T. as a kind of Coachella for puzzle lovers, a place to get your cruciverbal groove on with people who have a similar mind-set.

If you are intimidated by the thought of solving against hundreds of other minds, please don’t worry: The weekend includes entertainment, a market displaying all sorts of puzzle paraphernalia and a chance to make new friends. There’s something for everyone.

Registration is now closed, but you can still sign up to be part of the virtual tournament. And if you would like to attend next year, the registration page on the A.C.P.T. website will be published in January 2026.

Karen Steinberg has had six crosswords published in The Times, three of them collaborations with her son, David Steinberg, and her husband, Paul, who died in 2023. Ms. Steinberg returns today with her first solo themeless puzzle in The Times, and I love her grid design. Constructors call it a “basket weave” because the six grid-spanning entries cross each other at multiple points in the puzzle. That’s not easy to pull off: The constructor has to make sure those long entries cross well and are the liveliest answers in the puzzle, and then to fill around them with interesting entries that are not “junky.”

Ms. Steinberg has definitely pulled it off. The 15-letter entries that weave themselves into the basket really floated my boat. No spoilers here, but I think you’ll enjoy them too.