Adam Levav’s New York Times crossword— Sophia’s write-up
Theme answers:
New York Times, 01 13 2025, By Adam Levav
- 17a [Quality of a statement that feels plausible] – TRUTHINESS
- 24a [High school or college seniors, usually] – FOURTH-YEARS
- 47a [Feel relief from anxiety] – BREATHE EASY
- 57a [Aid in preventing a shipwreck] – LIGHTHOUSE
- 36a [Tongue of Chaucer … or what’s literally shown in the shaded squares?] – MIDDLE ENGLISH
So, the middle of each phrase has a literal middle-english pronoun highlighted within. Nice! I don’t know enough about middle english to know if there are other words strongly associated with it besides these pronouns. I like that THEE and THY span the gap of their two-word phrases. I fully associate TRUTHINESS with Stephen Colbert, so I was surprised he didn’t get a shout out in the clue. Oh, also OLDE crossing MIDDLE ENGLISH felt theme adjacent too.
Today’s puzzle felt a little trickier to me than the average Monday. I struggled with some of the longer answers, notably LAB MICE and BRO DATES (I had “lab rats” and “bro times” first, and I fully admit the latter is not a thing). But I liked that the difficulty came from the clues and the longer, more interesting answers, as opposed to hard bits of trivia – in fact, there are very few proper nouns in this puzzle. I think that’s a great way to give Monday solvers a challenge without creating a huge barrier to entry.
Other answers I liked today: BAR GRAPH, MICRODOT (new to me), INHERENT
Slang that already feels dated: BAE, the clue of [Chillaxes with friends] for HANGS
Clue highlights: [Restaurant that offers a Mexican Tres Leches stack] for IHOP, the clue of [Football holder in “Peanuts”] for LUCY leading into [Pigpen] for STY – I refuse to believe this was not a second “Peanuts” reference.
Happy Monday all! Congrats to Adam on a great NYT debut.
NYT: I agree, nice Monday, great debut, fun theme.
Also felt a little trickier than an average Monday, but only sporadically, and i wound up with a fairly average Monday solve time.
TRUTHINESS was coined about 20 years ago by Steven Colbert. I remember watching that show and loving that segment. Is it used commonly enough and accepted well enough that it no longer needs to be identified as slang or neologism?
NYT: I liked that all of the MIDDLE ENGLISH words were in the middle of the theme entry. (THOU should be one square over to be in the exact middle, but close enough.) It feels a little weird, though, that all the examples of MIDDLE ENGLISH are pronouns, but there’s no mention of that anywhere, especially on a Monday.
I think there’s a pretty limited roster of words that fell out of use between Middle English and Modern and that people would recognize. “Whan” is the first word in Canterbury Tales and even Maleska never used it.