Jeffrey Martinovic’s New York Times crossword, “I Think Knot” — Dave’s write-up
01.12.2025 Sunday New York Times Crossword
First order of business is to let those of you who don’t already know that Nate, who regularly reviews the Sunday NYT puzzle, and his husband Ben have lost their home and belongings in the ongoing LA wildfires. A friend of theirs has set up a gofundme page, which at last check has raised over $65,000 that will help them start over again. Please consider donating if you have enjoyed his commentary here and all his other contributions to the Crossword Community.
Today’s puzzle features mirror symmetry and 3 groups of circled letters that represent various types of string “intertwined” (or ALL TIED UP, clued as [Even … or like three pairs of answers in this puzzle] at 94A):
45A: MUST R/EADS crossing 9D: GROWTH R/ING – STRING takes a 90 degree turn when meeting THREAD
92A: PLAY/ABLE crossing 48D: QUEEN OF C/ARNIVAL – YARN takes a 90 degree turn when meeting CABLE (my ear wants a definite article in the latter entry)
104A: BAR /ORDERS crossing 44D: SPACE TELESC/OPES – ROPE takes a 90 degree turn when meeting CORD (been loving the images coming back from the James Webb Space Telescope recently)
A couple of other bonus entries:
3D: [Devices worn by informants … and what can be found inside three pairs of answers in this puzzle] is HIDDEN WIRES
15D: [Bit of embroidery … or what’s depicted literally three times in this puzzle] is CROSS STITCH
I like how the 3 “knots” pretty closely follow the mirror symmetry and two of them feature long down entries. We’re currently watching Britain’s famous DIYERS’ Escape to the Château, and last night’s episode featured Angel making a seat which hung from the ceiling by macraméd cords, so this puzzle quite timely arrived in my solving queue!
A few other things of note:
- Parsing 23A: MODEL UN ([H.S. club with student “diplomats”]) was a bit “knotty” at first
- 79A: [Oxford institution, familiarly] was not Oxford, England but Oxford, Mississippi or OLE MISS (recent victors over Duke in the Gator Bowl)
- 102A: [Foe of the SAXON] wasn’t PICT but our local b-ball squad member CELT
Until next week, and please keep Nate and his family in your thoughts.
Aidan Deshong’s Universal Sunday crossword, “One-Offs”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases that that all describe something as being almost something else. These phrases are used orthographically to describe other words that are one letter off from the word in the entry.
Universal Sunday crossword solution · “One-Offs” · Aidan Deshong · 1.12.25
- 23a. [*Like “runny” and “sonny”?] MOSTLY “SUNNY“.
- 34a. [*Like “hisses” and “masses”?] NEAR “MISSES“.
- 48a. [*Like “fight” and “sight”?] NOT QUITE “RIGHT“.
- 64a. [*Like “sneaking” and “spearing”?] ROUGHLY “SPEAKING“.
- 86a. [*Like “curtain” and “pertain”?] ALL BUT “CERTAIN“.
- 100a. [*Like “dine” and “dose”?] ALMOST “DONE“.
- 114a. [*Like “dome” and “hose”?] CLOSE TO “HOME“.
I enjoyed this quite a bit. Each entry is well in the language, and even though you can pick up on the theme with the first entry, it still took a little brain power to sort out the correct answer. Fun theme.
Plenty to like in the long fill, too: POST-SEASON, SLAPSHOT, DRAGON ROLL, HOT TAMALES, Toni MORRISON, “OH, IT’S ON!,” and ASSOCIATES. “HEAR ME?” and “AIN’T SO” feel a bit contrived but they’re minor quibbles.
Clues of note:
- 99a. [“Final” video game enemy]. BOSS. Not sure why “Final” is in quotation marks. Could be because “Final boss” is a phrase or because there’s often plenty of game content after said BOSS.
- 122a. [“___ it ironic?”]. ISN’T. If this is referring to the Alanis Morissette song, then no it isn’t.
- 29d. [What takes the L in a famous board game?]. KNIGHT. Good clue referring to the piece’s pattern of movement.
- 50d. [Artist who said, “Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling?”]. ESCHER. Fun quote that makes an excellent clue.
- 80d. [Dipper Pines’ real name]. MASON. No idea on this one. It’s for the younger crowd I guess since the character is from Disney’s Gravity Falls.
- 100d. [Chance to get away from home?]. AT BAT. Another good clue.
- 113d. [“___ Drives Me Crazy” (1988 hit)]. SHE. And here’s one for us olds.
Very good puzzle. Four stars from me.
Evan Birnholz’s Washington Post crossword, “Bywords” — Matt’s write-up
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword solution, “Bywords,” 1/12/2025
A striking initial view of this week’s grid, with blocks of circled squares and a clear mirror symmetry aspect. Nothing too complicated, though: each block of eight circles is simply two adjacent four-letter words, and each is illustrated by another entry in the grid, a common phrase of the form “X by Y”:
- 45a [Rapidly achieve success in, and a description of the juxtaposed circled words at the top of the puzzle] TAKE BY STORM, referring to GRAB of BETTY GRABLE and RAGE of SLEEPER AGENTS
- 68d [Pressure-filled ordeal, and a description of the juxtaposed circled words on the left side of the puzzle] TRIAL BY FIRE, from TEST (of DONATES TO) and SACK (of BASS ACKWARDS)
- 69d [Labels on grocery store products, and a description of the juxtaposed circled words on the right side of the puzzle] SELL BY DATES, from VEND (of V FOR VENDETTA) and SEES (of LICENSEES)
I enjoyed this. Each “X by Y” phrase was a nice little find, and most of the longer entries lending the four-letter words were pretty colorful in their own right. The solve didn’t feel as segmented as I feared on first glance, in large part thanks to those longer answers. One can imagine the same theme concept, but the four-letter words contained on their own in each corner, with larger areas of the grid containing no theme content. I’m glad that’s not how this played out.
Other highlights: Partials can be inelegant, but [Start of a football announcer’s field goal call] is spot on for ITS UP // I can’t put words to why, but I quite liked [We the people] for PUBLIC // I think this is not quite the first time I’ve seen BASS ACKWARDS in a grid, but it’s a highlight all the same
The print NYT magazine has, for its weekly Patrick Berry contribution,
“HEX NUTS”. There is an error in the 3rd hexagram where “role model”
crosses “doodle.” The “el” and “le” only jibe phonetically. Either one
or the other is incorrect.
Unless I’m missing something (and I still think I am), this seems to be an outright error – and by Patrick Berry no less. I’m thinking perhaps Mr. Berry had 6 of
these on a page in one of his puzzle pamphlets with the instructions:
“each of these HEX NUT’s contains an error. Find these errors and combine
them appropriately to get the theme for this section (the “EL” and
“LE” suggest the magazine “ELLE”.”)
He was facing a deadline and, rooting around hurriedly, dashes this off to the Times.
On the NYT end of things, if you were also in a hurry, one might just this one time skip editing a Patrick Berry puzzle.
It should work if you read it counterclockwise, I think.
Jeffrey is correct: read DOODLE counterclockwise.
And I add my thoughts to others’ words: will use the GoFund Me link. Our son is in L.A. also, so far ok and we pray it stays that way for him.
I am so sorry to hear about Nate’s loss of his home. I have a friend/colleague in a similar situation. I can’t imagine how hard it must be. I wish them strength, resilience and a soft place to land.
The NYT theme was admirably constructed. although it felt more like a meta, what with its sparse occurrence, three spots in a Sunday-size grid. It was just something I looked at after I was done.
And then, I’m sorry to say, it was difficult because once again I had largely buried the circles in ink. My own fault, I guess. More substantively, the overall fill had too much trivia.
My sympathies to Nate.
The NYT played as a themeless, in that I paid no attention to the circled letters until I was done. I don’t see the point of having a trick in a puzzle’s construction that doesn’t enter into solving it.
Are CVS really “big letters in the pharmaceutical industry”?
WaPo: I would love to do the puzzle but the newspaper website will only give me the daily puzzle, even when I click on ‘Sunday crossword.’ They laid off a bunch of tech and support staff recently, and it shows.
I downloaded the correct .puz file from the “Today’s Puzzles” tab on this site.
The pdf version is the correct version, too
“Pharmaceutical” means relating to pharmacies as well as to medical drugs.
That is true about the word “pharmaceutical”, yet almost nobody is familiar with that usage.
I agree with Dan. In ordinary parlance, the ‘pharmaceutical industry’ refers to drug manufacturers, not drugstore chains.
“Pharmaceutical industry” is fairly recent usage, due to “drug” becoming something you declare war on.
In any case, after maybe Tuesday, limiting clues to the most common sense of a word makes for boring puzzles, IMHO.
Yeah, but Martin, since you confessed yesterday that you can’t bring yourself to refer to an 1.5V battery because it’s a single cell, I am henceforth going take your admonitions on English usage with a wheelbarrow full of salt :)
I took it to be a punning clue, quite in the style of a crossword, so eminently legit. It took me a while to hit on it and was amused. Of course, if it’s also now common usage, all the more valid.
For the WaPo, on the app, after clicking on Sunday crossword as I always do, I had to then select “Sunday” from a dropdown list to get Evan’s Sunday puzzles. Weird…
NYT: Some fun clues to solve, though the theme left me cold and had no influence on the solve. (And YARN and CABLE seem rather different from each other.)
I have to question the clue 1A [“It’s fine, I guess”] for MEH.
In my world, MEH means “I don’t like it much” or in other words “It’s intensely mediocre”.
MEH would describe my reaction to this puzzle’s theme.
These sentiments do not translate to “It’s fine, I guess.”
“MEH would describe my reaction to this puzzle’s theme.”
+1
“Love is not the opposite of hate – indifference is.”
I think of “Meh” as (yes, indeed) a disparagement – exactly because it offhandedly shows indifference, I think? (Thinking of vibe of Gru’s mom, after he says, “Look Mom, I made a real rocket based on the macaroni prototype!”)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wBjBYT-1Do
To avoid damning with faint praise here – fwiw, personally, I did like that clue!! (And I liked that fill-plus-clue at 1-Across, too.)
NYT: Maybe it’s just me being too literal, but where are the three “hidden wires”? I see only “cable” and “cord” as possible wires. “Thread,” “string,” “yarn,” snd “rope” don’t make sense for wires. So all I can think of is that I’m missing something.
Yes, though I didn’t mention it in my commentary, I had the same concern about referring to all 6 “strings” as “wires.”
Thanks! (Relief!) So, it’s not just me being literal. :)
Universal (the 15×15, not the 21×21 Sunday): at 36D, TITANIC is clued as [1993 film with an iconic sunset scene]. The “Titanic” film with an iconic sunset scene came out in 1997. There was a movie called “Titanic” which came out in 1993, but it was a documentary and is almost certainly not the classic blockbuster the constructor/editor had in mind.
Good catch!
Hi,
I’m sort of new to crosswords. I’ve been solving them on and off for about a year, mainly because I’m terrible at them. I took a stab at the WSJ Friday Crossword for a month or so, & I don’t know if I have the hang of it.
Previously, I focused on gauging the answer based on the theme, and I now know it’s a bit of both science and art, meaning there’s rhyme and reason (what do the letters spell), even if said science is a stretch at times.
SPOILER
Long story short, is the answer to WSJ Friday Contest Panera? I can go down at least 50 rabbit holes I’ve identified, a bit extreme. It would be great if one of you would let me know if I’m correct, in the ballpark or way off because I looked up Panera yesterday based on the grid answers without rearranging the letters of the thematic entries.
THANK YOU!!!!!!
best,
~pree
They usually post the WSJ Friday post separately from the usual Friday post because there’s a contest involved. Like you, I have issues with the “meta” part of that puzzle. I almost never get the full solve — maybe four times a year at most. So, I would check back at the main home page and there will be a post that will answer your question.
-“Be It So” is awkward and corresponds with “So Soon”.
-“P(roti)p”, flanked by two Ps, contains unleavened bread, roti, and corresponds to leavened “pita” (add a letter). “BeadPita” in addition to Brad Pitt spells Pita B[r]ead
-Pita/Peter Rose (St. Peter [St. nick, St. val], Rosie, Rosa Parks
-Two “doones” intersecting at “one L”, and one at the bottom (e less), make me think of Famous Amos cookies & Rosie O’Donnell
-Changing one letter in “pox” gives us lox (bagel)
-Two Ts in the title change, and if I use that as standard, it spells Ronan, Artagnan (“Ironware”)
-AlasAldi/AlanAlda contain ALs
-Divac contain Diva
I could do this all day, but I did notice all the breads and cookies in the grid, so perhaps Panera suffices, or is it the lazy way out? Should I unjumble the “surname” ‘cos that is in the clues twice, along with a slew of first names and last names (8. Vlade divac, 8. Edward degas, 13. Albert einstein 17. Lorna doone spells: 10. Veal, an answer in the grid…I really could do this all day, as a newbie who doesn’t know the patterns in the dude’s head.)
Which puzzle is this referring to? Thanks
The meta thread is now posted, and will answer your questions. A couple of notes: there is always an elegance to the meta that helps assure you that you’re on the right path. Lots of unrelated observations are likely to be rabbit holes. And the title is always an important clue, or at least a confirmation that your solution is correct.
BTW, this site honors the embargo on any discussion of the meta until Sunday night when the solution is posted. You don’t want to provide spoilers when people are working for a prize.
I just noticed the clue [Like “dome” or “hone”] could’ve applied to both 100A and 114A in the Universal Sunday. That’d have been neat!
WaPo: fun and pretty quick Sunday from Evan. Definitely a cute bit of wordplay.