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Katie Hoody’s New York Times crossword–Sophia’s recap
New York Times, 03 22 2025, By Katie Hoody
Hey folks, Sophia here covering for Amy. I solved today’s puzzle with a few of my friends who aren’t generally later-week solvers. But all three of us enjoyed this one and were able to contribute answers – it really was a Saturday puzzle with something for everyone.
My favorite themeless puzzle answers are in-the-language phrases that don’t feel too modern/dated or rely on proper noun knowledge. This puzzle has four grid spanning answers, and all of them were right up my alley! CONTROLLED CHAOS, TICKING TIME BOMB, DON’T MOVE A MUSCLE, and ON A POSITIVE NOTE are all excellent, and they interlock beautifully. Some other fill highlights were: ICE PALACE, MIND MELDS, PSILOCYBIN (even though I can’t spell it to save my life).
Some clue highlights includes: [They come with strings attatched] for KITES, [Cry before a shot] for SMILE, [Angled for attention?: Abbr.] for ITAL (because the italics are angled, get it?), [Way-out fun?] for MAZE.
I was unfamiliar with DRAGON CON but it has a very fun name. There were a fair amount of names I was unfamiliar with – ELLIE Bamber, LEONORA Carrington, RAISA the wife of Gorbachev – but they were spread out from each other and gettable from crosses. Oh, and TWIN is [Royal adversary] because the Twins and Royals are both baseball teams.
David P. Williams’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 3/22/25 by David P. Williams
Do you know what my favorite kind of moment in solving a themeless is? It’s when a constructor puts in a banger of an answer — one with that elusive “sparkle,” in editor-speak — and doesn’t just let the answer be cool on its own, but rather punches it up with a kickass clue. This puzzle does that, like, a lot:
- 25A [Anti-conservative slogan?] is GO BIG OR GO HOME. Come on, tell me you didn’t laugh when you got that one.
- 40A [Pool problem?] is BRACKET BUSTER. I’m very not in the know as far as sportsball goes, but I do know that a BRACKET BUSTER is an NCAA basketball team that performs in an unexpected way during March Madness, thus screwing up the bracket that you carefully planned out for your betting pool, hence [Pool problem?]. Fantastic.
- 51A [Novels no one reads?] is AUDIOBOOKS. This clue wasn’t at all deceptive when I got to it, but I chuckled anyway. Really clever.
- 6D [Preserved jams?] is POSTER DUNKS. See above re: I don’t know sportsball, but was able to infer that a POSTER DUNK is a slam dunk so epic that it deserves to go on a poster. I didn’t understand this clue while solving, but I love it after the fact.
- 27D [Match that’s lit] is a BARN-BURNER, i.e., a sports “match” that’s very exciting, or “lit.” This clue was deceptive while solving and I appreciate that!
I almost never give star ratings to puzzles because I find them too reductive, but I’m going to give this one five stars. I didn’t want it to be over.
Gary Larson and Amy Ensz’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Cold Front” — pannonica’s write-up
WSJ • 3/22/25 • Sat • “Cold Front” • Larson, Ensz • solution • 20250322
Phrases beginning with an R have the letter B prefixed to them, to wacky effect. Usually ‘cold’ = brr but this can work too. Note that the resulting pronunciation is just ‘br’ and not ‘bər’.
- 23a. [Appendage for a snowman?] BRANCH HAND (ranch hand). A fittingly cold subject to start.
- 25a. [Intrepid group?] BRAVE PARTY (rave party).
- 63a. [Rocket science?] BRIGHT FIELD (right field).
- 98a. [Senior moment?] BRAIN DELAY (rain delay).
- 102a. [Swaggering sentry?] BRASH GUARD (rash guard).
- 3d. [Commit a no-no while fire-walking?] BRAKE OVER THE COALS (rake over …).
- 35d. [Harvesting corn?] BRINGING IN THE EARS (ringing in …).
These are all fine, but the theme itself didn’t quite wow me.
Okay, I’m just going to collect the nastiness: 11d [Sci-fi writer Orson Scott __ ] CARD, 45d [Objectivist author Ayn] RAND, 38a [Talk show physician] DR OZ (he’s a quack) … okay it felt as if there were more while I was solving. Admittedly, there are several other marginal ones, but that’s a lot more subjective and even questionable.
Moving on:
- 1d [Round Table tunic] TABARD. Back when I used to travel to DC for work, my favorite place to stay was the Tabard Inn.
- 6d [Words at the altar] I THEE WED. Much more commonly we see I DO in crosswords.
- 54d [Mix] BLEND.
- 75d [Protein-synthesizing molecule in cells, briefly] RRNA. The first R stands for ribosomal. Crossed by 80a [Not for the youngest] R-RATED, for a flashy starting double-R pairing.
- 84d [Family divisions] GENERA. This is biological taxonomy.
- 85d [Goat-related] CAPRIC rather than the more common caprine. cf. 73a [Like yaks and oxen] BOVINE.
- 32a [Been livid] SEEN RED. >side-eye<
- 65a [Buss on a double-decker bus, say] SNOG. Nice, cute.
- 74a [Ready for the dog show] GROOMED. I just rewatched Best in Show (2000) a couple of nights ago.
Matthew Sewell’s Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up
Newsday • 3/22/25 • Saturday Stumper • Sewell • solution • 20250322
Whew, toughest Stumper in recent memory!
It was slow going everywhere, and the northeast corner was the last to fall.
- 5a [Passionfruit product] CURDS. If you say so.
- 10a [Raiders run for it] AFC, American Football Conference.
- 13a [Tangle or disentangle] RAVEL. My first entry, practically a gimme and a rarity in this puzzle.
- 15a [MIT built a machine to twist them (2022)] OREOS. Now that’s a different clue for an old standby.
- 16a [Compunction] RUE, as a noun, but not in the botanical sense.
- 17a [“Seems believable”] I CAN IMAGINE, not I CAN BUY THAT.
- 20a [Despotic descriptor] BENEVOLENT. Unexpected, but certainly valid. We haven’t seen a BENEVOLENT dictator for quite some time. If there truly was ever such a thing.
- 21a [Heavy going around Victorian London] HYDE. Heavy in the noun sense, as per m-w: b: a character in a story or play who opposes the hero : VILLAIN; c: one blamed for a particular evil or difficulty : VILLAIN
- 25a [Where to swim in the sea] LIDO DECK. On a cruise ship, The less I think about cruise ships, the better.
- 31a [Buck back] -AROO. 9d [Course with dessert] SSE. 35d [Big business leaders] BEES. 52d [Towel tip] -ETTE. Four of these is a lot for a Stumper.
- 32d [Pleasing to pollsters] RANDOM. Specifically, random sampling. Ouch.
- 36a [Generation gap in Taylor Swift videos] MILLENNIAL PAUSE. I don’t really understand this answer.
- 40a [Poses for] LIES TO. Oof, tough.
- 41d [One may be ultimately stumped] TREE. Reverse psychology! Too easy for a …Stumper clue. See also 21d [Went underground] HID and 45d [Miller’s creation] GRIST.
- 44a [Advocates for different values] HAGGLERS. Tricksy, and ICONOCLASTS certainly wasn’t going to fit.
- 46a [Marked by glaciation] STRIATE. Found myself wondering if MORAINE could be an adjective.
- 60a [Illustration on Jungle Book covers] TIGER, namely Shere Khan.
(featuring Bagheera; Shere Khan must be hiding - 63a [Cellar dweller] CASK. Lot of work being done by “dweller” here.
- 1d [Certain stream, for short] TRIButary. Was not expecting a geological answer.
- 2d [Boat __ ] RACE. Extremely generic.
- 5d [What much ancient vegetation became] COAL. Almost a gimme. If only I’d made the OREOS/twist connection sooner.
- 8d [“No offense” phrase] DON’T APOLOGIZE. In this case the phrase is spoken by the recipient of a potential slight (“no offense [taken]”) rather than the instigator (“no offense [intended]”).
- 14d [Last verb in “Little Red Riding Hood”] LIVED … happily ever after?
- 18d [Auteur’s work] MODERNIST FILM. Clue sure could have used a qualifier such as ‘say’ or ‘maybe’.
- 27d [Derisive symbol substitution for S] DOLLAR SIGN. Needed rather a lot of crossings before the clue even made sense.
- 29d [Potato product from Poland] KNISH. Obviously a VODKA misdirection.
- 38d [Continental divide] ATLANTIC. More tricksiness, especially without a question mark.
- 54d [Navajos’ foes] UTES. What else would fit?
- 55d [Shortened fringe] PERK. ‘Benefit’ is implicit. Short of course for perquisite. etymology: Middle English, property acquired by means other than inheritance, from Anglo-French perquisit, Medieval Latin perquisitum, from neuter of perquisitus, past participle of perquirere to purchase, acquire, from Latin, to search for thoroughly, from per- thoroughly + quaerere to seek (m-w.com)
NYT: I enjoyed this one! I managed to fill the east side of the puzzle and then worked on backfilling. The long answers offered some cool AHA moments.
I was proud to remember RAISA, mostly because in Arabic it means “boss lady”, which seemed fitting.
Thanks for explaining TWIN, Sophia. I entered it but had no idea why it was there.
Last letter to fall was the K in KITES- I had MITES, then LITES then semi ran the Alphabet. (since I don’t know sports ).
THAT DOES IT…
Fun Saturday! Decidedly fine-arts feel with DADA/DECO right there 1-Across/Down, artist LEONORA Carrington, Oscar WILDE; an African-American feel with AAVE, ICE-T, ODE clued via Ashanti Anderson’s Ode to Black Skin, ITOO; and a feminine feel with Carrington, Anderson, ANTOINETTE of Bourbon, ELLIE Bamber, MADRE, RAISA Gorbachev, ESSIE Davis. Hawaii and Russia get two entries each as well. Oops accidentally rated it a 3 instead of a 4 as intended—can admins fix it?
NYT: The crossing of PSILOCYBIN and ZYNGA at the Y seems like a textbook definition of a Natick to me. That Y square could be any of the vowels. There’s no root form of ZYNGA or CYBIN that would help here, and I think both of those words are going to be unfamiliar to an awful lot of solvers.
This is the most Natick-y Natick I can recall seeing in the Times for a very long time.
It’s pretty obscure, but -cybin and cyber- are etymologically related. Psilocybin is extracted from mushrooms of the genus Psilocybe. That means “bare headed” (because of the way the cap is formed). Cyber- comes from cybernetics, which derives from the Greek term for pilot or governor, head of a crew or a city. It’s a little late for this entry, but it could help you win a future bar bet if the topic is shrooms.
I know this is natickpicking, but I would love to see the word “natick” in this context written without capitalization, since it is neither a proper noun nor a town in Massachusetts.
And I’d like to see the term disappear altogether.
Psilocybin isn’t a proper noun. It’s a word that’s been around for decades! Not knowing something isn’t the same as “the constructor screwed me over with a bad crossing.”
Agreed! it’s a tough crossing i’d agree but a term that’s been in general use for a long time plus a multi billion dollar company is fair.
Amy — I emphatically agree with your last sentence, but I’ve always understood someone’s calling some crossing a natick as just saying they didn’t know either of the two answers (typically proper nouns, but not imo necessarily) … rather than blaming anyone else. (Unless they do.)
https://www.natickma.gov/
I was not familiar with either psilocybin or Zynga and just couldn’t work out maze—hence my two mistakes. Otherwise, it was a pleasantly challenging puzzle.
Stumper: So so hard, but finally got through it. Which I guess is exactly what I want in a Stumper! Don’t love “Poses for” for LIES TO. Last to fall was top right: how is a ball a FUNDRAISER, RUE as a noun, “heavy” in that usage is meaningless to me, “Lay off” for END I’m just now understanding as I write this.
I didn’t care for “Poses for” either, but to dissemble can be to pose.
FUNDRAISER: Think of a charity ball.
RUE: regret, sorrow. “With rue my heart is laden” (Housman), sez Merriam-Webster.
Heavy: “a character in a story or play who opposes the hero : VILLAIN” (M-W).
I found this to be the most difficult Stumper in a long time. 41-A: “One may be ultimately stumped.”
killed me, if they were all like this i would probably throw in the towel
nah, i said that how many years ago when i completed my first nyt saturday??
now i regularly get a clean slate on the stumper, but this was really not in my wheelhouse
i usually do well with sewell, but not this time
I’m completely baffled by “You might sit for one” for KID.
Babysit
Oh my god, duh. Thanks!
I was, too — for the longest time! But then I remembered the word “babysitter”.
(The other response was not here when I began to write the above.)
Yeah, it’s a little off in my opinion. The presence of “for” seems wrong. You babysit a kid FOR their parents.
NYT: At first I didn’t like this puzzle at all, because of the many know-it-or-not clues depending on specific information. So it took me a long time to fill the diagram, but while doing so I admired the several unusual starting letter combinations that made it harder to see what the answers were, like AAVE, CD, PS. And especially the four very cool 15-letter entries … but also many interesting words like ZYNGA, SAMOVAR, MIND MELDS, ICE PALACE. Plus enjoyed many deceptive clues that took a while to grok.
In the end I had lSU instead of KSU at 46, with luTES crossing uMS at 51, and could not understand why ums had anything to do with PC discourse, so after checking for typos I gave up and checked this page for the answer. Ultimately the know-it-or-not clues did me in. So my ultimate impression is mixed.
This took me much longer than my average Saturday solve these days!
PS I notice that the review of this puzzle was after an untimed solve, which reminds me: I’m curious to know why a reviewer might typically decide to submit an untimed solve versus a timed solve.
It could be since she mentions solving with friends, her time isn’t reflective of her own solving experience.
For myself, I report as ‘untimed’ because I am not a touch-typist. My fast-ish solves would be markedly faster were that the case. Conversely, I give a time for the Stumper write-ups because they’re more drawn-out affairs.
I opt for “untimed” in several situations:
1) Didn’t notice that timer didn’t start automatically
2) Watching TV or talking on the phone while solving
3) Nodding off to sleep periodically while solving (not the constructor’s fault!)
I solved the Saturday NYT puzzle a few weeks ago in 45 minutes, which is a much longer time for me than normal (especially with contemporary puzzles).
I was questioning that time a few days ago, and then I realized that I was very sleepy when I started the puzzle. I stopped midway through and picked it up the next morning, only to see that a third of my answers were gibberish.
I fell completely asleep when solving a Wednesday puzzle once and when I woke up, my time was well over an hour. I probably should have asked the Times IT people to void the time but I guess it probably doesn’t matter in the long run.
I sometimes forget to check whether the timer is running. If it is, I will always report my time, however unimpressive it is.
I switch between my iPad and my iMac for solving puzzles. A lot of crossword apps eliminate keys that are typically not needed, like punctuation marks; on the iMac, I’m constantly hitting those keys.
I used to be a decent typist on a full-size keyboard, but I have never been that fast with either the iPad or the iMac. Add in my addiction to auto-complete/predictive text, and my typing skills are a big hindrance to speed-solving easy puzzles.
Thanks for the comments on why a solve might be untimed! I’ve wondered that for ages.
Is the NYT constructor a Fiend reader? Is ZYNGA a nod to Amy?
I’m out of the loop. Why is ZYNGA a nod to Amy?
I believe she works for them.
NYT: First time in I can’t remember how long that I’ve had to resort to the “reveal letter” function. D in some random poet (crossing some random religious figure no less), Y vs I in PSILOCYBIN, and both the K and I in KITES (I had LUTES, forgetting that LSU are the Tigers, after starting with ASU because who even knows which teams are in which conferences anymore, and then decided NMS/ANTES didn’t make sense). Fun puzzle ruined by a bunch of random junk, IMO.
Me too on the problem with that corner of the NYT. Too many choices for too many entries, even if you look stuff up. Otherwise, not a bad puzzle.
This puzzle took me a while, too. And I finished with an error at the crossing of PSILOCYBIN (which I’ve heard of, but don’t know how to spell) and ZYNGA (which I haven’t heard of).
University nicknames/mascots are always going to be problematic if you don’t follow college sports – and there are quite a few “Wildcats” out there. ASU and Arizona are both in the Big-12 now, but ASU is the Sun Devils and Arizona is the Wildcats.
I think of Oscar WILDE more as a playwright than a poet, but that “D” seemed pretty inferable.
Challenging, but “random junk” sounds like “sour grapes” to me.
If you think Oscar Wilde is ‘some random poet’ you are simply calling attention to your own ignorance. The Ballad of Reading Gaol is pretty darn famous.
DaveL: There is no upside to comments like yours. Please be nice.
yeah, not here, please
this is not the place
I certainly know who Oscar Wilde is, but I had no idea he was a “poet” (I have never cared for poetry, and avoid it whenever possible). I think of Wilde as a playwright/author/humorist, similar to Mark Twain. Any “poet” (other than Poe) is just going to be “some random poet” to me. Given the fact than the D in Wilde crossed the D in Deva, unless you were familiar with that particular poet and/or that particular Buddhist rando, it could be any number of letters (I picked L).
DEVA, AAVE, KSU, IMS = random junk. It isn’t a ton of it, but it still kind of ruined what could have been a much better experience (IMO).
Funny that I still got ASU and UofA confused with the mascots! So many cats!
I’m sorry. I’ve been sick for over a week with bronchitis and am feeling crankier than usual.
NYT: Mixed feelings… slowest solve in a long while. The four spanners were great, but felt like a lot of short entries in the mix (65 clues!). Mixed in with a number of proper names… made for some rough solving in parts. The clues and answers that were good were really good though, and I learned a few things along the way, so that’s fun too :-)
I’m with you on “mixed feelings”.
I loved the grid-spanners, and thought the cluing on non-PPP fill was very good.
But this puzzle was also dense with names and trivia, which I thought contributed more to its Saturday-level difficulty than the clever clues did.
I was pleased with myself because I finished slightly under my Saturday average time, but it still felt like kind of a slog.
encountering the 54d clue in the stumper was interesting because, just a few hours earlier, i had seen a Navajo dude i follow on social media post about his [54d] relatives gifting him some elk meat. doesn’t sound like very foe-like behavior to me
Stumper hard. Me now brain-dead.
You and me both!
me three
Re Stumper: I had to look up “millennial pause” to figure that one out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennial_pause
I, for one, was glad to learn that the millennial generation has its own “ok boomer” quirks.
Thanks for looking that up! So…. Taylor exhibits this trait? Seems to be the implication.
Thanks…maybe I sorta understand it now
Just skimming the Wikipedia article, it sounds like the “millennial pause” is akin to the tendency of some older people, when typing, to put two spaces following a period.
It’s beyond a “tendency.” It’s what we were taught in typing class. I also find it MUCH easier to read with two spaces.
LAT: NE corner got me.
10D Salaam? unknown to me.
19A. Green party briefly? To be fair should have clued “Green group” or “Green org.” LPGA is not a party.
Except that a party is a group, such as seating a party at a restaurant.
Stumper: Oh my! This was a hard one! Agree with everything said above. I will add that I hated “sse” for 9D “course with dessert” and “data” for 33D “a use for intelligence” — data, for me, is the basis for information/intelligence.
I always fall for those cryptic-style embedded word clues. So I always get a fresh aha. So I sort of like them in a perverse way.
At least I got it from the across entries, so I just stared at it a second, going “What??” and then the penny dropped, as they say. :)
It works somewhat better if you consider it as intelligence gathering.
YES! To me, it was improperly worded.
Stumper 2d: don’t know if that was what was intended, but “boat race” to gamblers used to mean (maybe still does?) a fixed horse race.
Who knows what was in the Creator’s mind? :)