Rena Cohen’s New York Times crossword— Sophia’s write-up
Theme: The end to each theme answer is a word associated with drawing
New York Times, 01 06 2025, By Rena Cohen
- 17a [Theatrical description] – CHARACTER SKETCH
- 27a [Dog crossbreed known for its teddy bear appearance] – GOLDEN DOODLE
- 43a [Track exposures to a disease, as an epidemiologist might] – CONTACT TRACE
- 57a [Use deductive reasoning … or a hint to what 17-, 27- and 43-Across all have] – DRAW CONCLUSIONS
Great Monday vibes here! There’s a solid revealer (bonus for it being grid-spanning; those always look very elegant to me) and the wordplay with each of the answers works great. Each of them uses the drawing-related word in a unique way. GOLDEN DOODLE is of course the standout here, there’s no better way to make folks like your puzzle than to put a dog right in the middle of it :)
Standout fill: TEEN DRAMA (love the “XO Kitty” shout-out!), CATHEDRAL, HOT SEAT, Amy POEHLER
Standout clues: [Kids might be given these with crayons] for MENUS, [One layer in a seven-layer dip, informally] for GUAC. Not a ton of wordplay clues today, which I guess is expected on Monday.
Places I got tripped up: SCAD – I had “a ton” for [Whole lot] at first. I personally dislike this word in the singular – did the presence of BAMA mean it couldn’t be clued as the college? I also had “snob” instead of SNOT for [Arrogant sort].
New to me: That BUSAN is the second largest city in South Korea
Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Clincher”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar(ish) phrases that feature the letters DEAL, spread out at first but getting closer together until we reach the revealer.
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Clincher” · Mike Shenk · Mon., 1.6.25
- 20a. [Carrier of “Big City Greens” and “Hamster & Gretel”] DISNEY CHANNEL.
- 24a. [Medieval fortification on England’s southeast coast] DOVER CASTLE. Overlooking the white cliffs.
- 44a. [Setting for a card game] BRIDGE TABLE. There are specific tables for bridge?
- 49aR. [Has successful negotiations, and, in a way, what this puzzle does] CLOSES THE DEAL.
Very nice. Good choices of theme answers and I like the consistent spacing between the letters. It would be ideal if all the circled letters were symmetrical in the grid like the first answer, but clearly that’s not possible given the revealer.
DOVER CASTLE above the white cliffs
NEWS FEEDS, LIMA BEANS, and TIGER CUB lead the way in the long fill. KEEN-EYED and CHASES AWAY are strong as well. I’m less excited about giving a 10-letter slot to GRASPING AT, but it does allow for smooth fill in the NE corner.
Clue of note: 55d. [TV mother of Little Ricky]. LUCY. From I Love Lucy, in case you didn’t know.
Solid Monday outing. 3.5 stars.
Brian Callahan & Jess Shulman’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 1/6/25 by Brian Callahan & Jess Shulman
Given that this puzzle runs on a Monday, I think circled squares would have been a kindness to beginning solvers; I definitely had to squint a bit before I realized what was going on. The revealer at 58A [Vice presidential hopeful, and what the first part of the answer to each starred clue can be] is RUNNING MATE. Usually this would mean “the first word of each theme answer can be paired with RUNNING to make a new phrase,” but in this case it’s only part of the first word in each theme answer:
- 17A [*New job that’s hardly a promotion] is LATERAL MOVE. The LATE in LATERAL can follow RUNNING, leading to RUNNING LATE.
- 28A [*Honking collective] is GAGGLE OF GEESE, leading to RUNNING GAG.
- 45A [*Phenomenon of collective false memories] is MANDELA EFFECT, leading to RUNNING MAN.
I liked three out of the four long Downs (AISLE SEAT, GOODNESS ME, HULA HOOPS) and could’ve done without the ONE’S in TIP ONE’S HAT.
Dennis McCartney’s Universal crossword, “Edge Cases” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 1/6/25 • Mon • “Edge Cases” • McCartney • solution • 20250106
Late start for me today.
- 58aR [Utmost extremes, and a theme hint] OUTER LIMITS. Letters in the theme answers are circled, or otherwise brought to our attention.
- 17a. [Led] SPEARHEADED (speed).
- 25a. [Enclosure for plants] TERRARIUM (term).
- 36a. [Voting, for example] CIVIC DUTY (city). A significant majority of eligible voters in the US … did not, in 2024.
- 48a. [Succeeded impressively] CRUSHED IT (credit).
Each of those end-words can precede ‘limit’ in common phrases.
- 37d [Water-free port] USB. Clue confused me until I saw the answer via crossings.
- 50d [Drinks with FlaMango and LlamaNade varieties] ICEES. Never a fan of this as fill, and especially so as a plural.
- 6a [Bookcase buildup] DUST. Hey!
- 35a [Cards that can be wild] ACES. But any card can be, right? So I’d prefer ‘often’.
- 64a [Inspiration for the Beatles’ “Day Tripper”] LSD. I didn’t quite know that, but am inclined to take the word of a guy named McCartney.
Natan Last’s New Yorker crossword–Amy’s recap
New Yorker crossword solution, 1/6/25 – Natan Last
Short on time today.
Struggled with the SEA SALT / TIKKA / SKY / HALA corner. It hurt that I guessed JAR instead of SKY for the Plath clue.
Faves: RETCON, BEST DRAMA, WELCOME TO MY LIFE, “ME THREE!”, BITTORRENT.
New to me: [Poet and novelist Alyan], HALA, and [“The Last Samurai” author], HELEN DEWITT.
3.5 stars from me.
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1746 — Eric’s review
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1746 — 1/6/25
My apologies for the late review. I spent the day skiing and while I’m not 23D [Totally exhausted] DRAINED, I am more tired than previous ski days this season have left me.
Aside from the NW corner, this was not overly challenging. But that corner was crammed with vague clues and proper nouns that I didn’t know:
- 1A [UI/UX concern] DISPLAY I have no tech background, so it took me longer than it should have to realize that UI was “user interface” and UX was probably “user experience.” But there are potentially lots of seven-letter words that describe such concerns.
- 15A [Be buttinsky] INTRUDE I tried INQUIRE, then PRY INTO.
- 17A [Stereotypically cringey folks on your socials, say] THE OLDS I had absolutely no idea what this might have been.
- 19A [Justin of “Tracker”] HARTLEY I don’t remember ever hearing of that show, and Justin THEROUX is the only actor named Justin I could think of.
- 21A [Medicine Nobelist Metchnikoff] ELIE Off the L in INHALED, I tried OLGA as a common Russian name.
- 1D [State of indecision] DITHER
- 2D [Sucked] INHALED I didn’t know whether this was literal or figurative.
- 3D [Uncreative] STERILE
- 4D [___ shake] PROTEIN
- 5D [Break in the action] LULL When I tried this the first time, none of the crosses seemed to work.
- 7D [“No, the other guy I’m pointing to!”] YES YOU I missed the sarcasm and originally had NOT YOU.
I’ve no complaints about any of those answers. They were just hard for me to figure out.
I also ran into trouble with 35A [Speak fast, incoherently, and incessantly] GABBLE ON, where I had JABBER ON. It didn’t help to have 43D [Fiji rival] EVIAN crossing 28D [Window opening command] CTRL-N. I don’t normally drink bottled water and didn’t remember Fiji, and while I knew instantly that 28D was a MS Windows thing, I tried CTRL-O.
Stuff I liked:
- 31A [Magazine shops?] ARSENALS Nice misdirection.
- 61A [Character assassinators?] ERASERS
- 34D [Singing style that sounds raspy or croaky] VOCAL FRY
I would quibble with 56A [FAIR SHARE] ONE HALF If something is being split between three or more people, and one of them gets half, that doesn’t seem fair to me.
I’m not fond of 42D [Villain making faces] SNEERER. Yes, it’s in the dictionary, but does anyone ever use that word?
I found the NYT hard for a lowly Monday. Finishing the first two themers, I couldn’t imagine what they had in common, in no small part because I didn’t know the dog breed and tried POODLE. (The P doesn’t give a messaging app crossing, but I figured there’s always another less familiar to me. PMs could be for sending messages to British heads of state.) The only GOLDEN species, retrievers, gave only an R, which didn’t look promising either.
And then I needed the revealer to correct that and get the third themer. A West Coast brand crossing TAMA was another challenge. But it wasn’t impossible, and I’m sure there are those who much prefer cuter dogs.
I was well above my Monday average both for this puzzle and last week’s.
There are quite a few “doodle” breeds out there – Labradoodles, Aussie doodles, Boxer doodles, Irish doodles, etc. Mostly bred, I believe, for the personality of the first breed with the low-shedding/hypoallergenic characteristics of a poodle. (But I have a couple of friends who have had multiple standard poodles in their families, and they have all been sweet dogs – so why cross-breed?)
Generally agree that some of the fill was not Monday level. But the theme was clever and the revealer very cool.
I agree. I didn’t get the theme until the revealer, which is a pleasant surprise on a Monday.
I thought the puzzle was a bit tougher than a typical Monday, but not excessively so. I didn’t know RAUL Esparza, and I forgot about BUSAN until the crosses filled it in for me, but nothing else was too outlandish.
Absolutely agree that the theme was clever, and thought the puzzle was both creative and very well-constructed. But I had a different experience of the difficulty; it’s a “wheelhouse” thing, I guess. I didn’t know RAUL or TARA, but they both filled in quickly from crosses, and I finished within a just a few seconds of my Monday average.
NYT JohnH, my experience was quite similar to yours. I too had GOLDENpOODLE, but I figured that pM was short for “private message,” and therefore I felt fine with GOLDENpOODLE. It was only when I had all three theme answers and the revealer that I saw I had to change pOODLE to DOODLE. And yes, there were also a few other clues I needed to get from the crossings, something that doesn’t usually happen to me on Monday NYT. I found it refreshing (and a bit humbling).
Welcome back Will Shortz. Hope you have a great year, and that we’ll see more of your work.
Wow! I didn’t notify that! Is he back as the head or are he and Joel splitting duties? Gotta admit, I didn’t ever think I’d see Will’s byline on a Times puzzle again.
He’s back full-time. Joel is on paternity leave.
Will – welcome back!
Joel – congratulations!!
Jim: “There are specific tables for bridge?” I’m not a card player, but I believe the term can mean any table set for bridge, although in practice that often means fairly small, square tables, befitting a game with four players designated N S E and W (who do have to be able to reach the same cards).
I play a lot of bridge, and while we use tables of the kind you describe, we typically refer to them simply as card tables. A ‘bridge table’ is not really a thing, in my experience.
My parents had a “bridge table”, although never played bridge to my knowledge. It was smaller than the “folding table” and served as the “kids table” at a dinner with very few kids.
When I was a kid, our bridge table was like our other card tables, but with a felt surface. Googling “bridge table” shows lots of them with felt tops, so I guess that’s a thing, at least informally.
NYT: I hesitated a bit on the FOMO/DMS crossing, sign of my membership in an older generation!
TNY: I was cruising through the puzzle at a decent rate, thinking this was a relatively easy offering from Natan Last, but then I came to a halt in the same section that Amy struggled with. I guessed SEASALT, for no very good reason except that it fit, but I had no clue about the Plath quote and couldn’t come up TIKKA. No idea about HALA. I don’t know whether this is an old dude thing, but I haven’t embraced NYE for New Year’s Eve, so that eluded me too.
I got HELENDEWITT immediately. I haven’t read The Last Samurai but I’ve heard good things about it. I should put it on my (increasingly lengthy) reading list.
Never felt easy to me. I liked the two grid-spanners (14-A went in with no crosses!) as well as the offset stack in the middle.
I did not know HELEN DEWITT nor SUI GENERIS and found both hard to intuit, even with several crosses.
RETCON was also new to me and I finished with an error at the crossing of RETCON and LCD (I went with LED).
It was a struggle, but I’ve seen tougher puzzles from NL.
Very glad to have challenging Mondays back at TNY!
The only difference between this and the usual hateful Natan Last puzzles is that I didn’t come close to finishing, although I did get both grid spanners.
Universal
36 across – Let’s face it, there wasn’t much to vote for from either major party this time around. About all we can do is hibernate till 2028.
That’s a very blithe and rosy outlook.