(1.70 avg; 5 ratings) rate it
(2.88 avg; 36 ratings) rate it
(3.00 avg; 2 ratings) rate it
Andrew Colin Kirk’s New York Times Crossword “Where’d You Go?”— Eric’s Review
Andrew Colin Kirk’s New York Times Crossword “Where’d You Go?” — 3/23/25
Congratulations to Andrew Colin Kirk for his New York Times debut!
This took me a bit longer than I expected, mainly because the first theme answer gave me the impression that the theme was puns. It’s really just a simple letter switch, built around a great revealer:
- 23A [Stay in one’s lane?] RESIST THE MERGE Resist the urge
- 36A [CliffsNotes version of Holmes and Watson stories?] MEN SOLVED MYSTERIES Unsolved mysteries
- 47A [“When do you need this patched up?,” “Do you have the missing button?,” etc.?] MENDER LINES Underlines
- 67A [Best impression of a Springfield patriarch?] FINEST HOMER Finest hour
- 86A [Headline about a falsely incriminated person casting a ballot?] VOTER FRAMED Voter fraud
- 93A [Delivered a nasty insult with perfect timing?] NAILED THE DIS MOMENT Nailed the dismount
- 115A [Classic breakup excuse … or a phonetic hint to 23-, 36-, 47-, 67-, 86- and 93-Across] IT’S NOT YOU IT’S ME (Don’t believe that; it is you.)
The theme answers are all fine, and it could not have been easy to find words with U’s that could be replaced by ME’s.
For the most part, this was an easy puzzle for me. But I didn’t think of “Finest Hour” and was convinced that 49D [Ecosystem for an estimated 25% of all marine species] was DEEP. When I finally hit on REEF, I was done in seconds.
The rest of the grid has some amusing (or at least interesting) clues and answers:
- 20A [Higher in rank?] SMELLIER A cute clue, if a bit stinky.
- 51A [Hockey player who wears #1, traditionally] GOALIE I don’t follow hockey, but I sometimes pay attention to association football a/k/a soccer, and I know that the first-string soccer goalkeeper usually wears the #1 jersey.
- 56A [Figure on a Wyoming license plate] COWBOY I tried COYOTE first, though I can now picture a Wyoming plate.
- 77A [Temporarily banish, as a college roommate] SEXILE
- 35D [It might have “-GUEST” in its name] FREE WIFI
- 57D [Darts or billiards] BAR GAME I got caught by the misdirection and tried making PUB work first.
- 89D [Impressive array] PANOPLY An underused word.
Rafael Musa’s Universal Sunday crossword, “Mega Freestyle 1”—Jim’s review
Pretty sure Universal has run themeless grids on Sundays back when David Steinberg was editor, so I’m not sure why this is labeled as “Mega Freestyle 1”. Regardless, we have a fun freestyle grid with no pesky theme to get in the way.
Universal Sunday crossword solution · “Mega Freestyle 1” · Rafael Musa · 3.23.25
Lots of meaty highlights to choose from: ZOOM ROOM, HALO HALO (the Filipino dessert which I’ve heard of in the distant past), CAVE PERSON, LAST RESORT, TAKE-HOME TESTS, MOUNT DOOM, “SEE YA SOON,” HIT ROCK BOTTOM, “I CAN’T STRESS THIS ENOUGH,” “IT DOESN’T ADD UP,” “I HAD NO IDEA,” NEW NORMAL, ALIEN RACE, UMPTEENTH, THE SCREAM, FOSTER CARE, RUMOR HAS IT, “I OWE YOU ONE,” ROBOT ARM, and a COOLING FAN (from a computer). Good gravy, that’s a lot of sparkly fill!
On the more challenging side, DS LITES might have caused some solvers trouble. TD PASSES looks a little iffy but it’s fine. I wanted STEAL A PEEK to be “steal a glance” but I supposed a peek can be stolen as well. New to me is chef SOHLA El-Waylly, though she does videos for the NYT Cooking channel, so that definitely gives her some crossword cred.
RHINE (mostly in Germany) and Rhone (within France). Image taken from Viking Cruise Lines website.
Clues of note:
- 21a. [Nickname that drops “An”]. DRE. That’s a little bit of a tough clue considering the R is crossed by Spanish brand name ZARA (which is new to me). Still, R made the most sense given the other crosses.
- 69a. [France-Germany border river]. RHINE. Only for a short stretch of the river, though. In case you get your RHINE mixed up with your Rhone, see image at left.
- 102a. [“The math isn’t mathing!”]. “IT DOESN’T ADD UP!” Ha! Love this modern clue.
- 6d. [Washed (down)]. HOSED. I thought this was about swallowing liquid after eating some food, so I found the actual answer to be a humorous surprise.
- 8d. [Secondary social media accounts]. ALTS. Another modern clue that I confess I don’t think I’ve heard, probably because I’m not modern enough.
Lovely puzzle. Four stars.
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post Crossword “You Are Surrounded!”— Matt’s Review
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post Crossword “You Are Surrounded!” solution, 3/23/2025
A meta this week, where we’re asked to find “a landlocked country.” I’ll say up top that I think this would be an excellent meta to try if you’re or someone you know is a meta skeptic.
Helpfully, a handful of clues draw have enumerations after them, helping us along in a first step.
Finding their crossings, we’ve got a first nod to the puzzle title, as all theme clues cross at either a -U- or an -R- (in fact, the only Us and Rs in the whole grid).
From here, thinking back to the title, each U and R is “surrounded” by a country in the eight letters that circle it: the crossing of ADVERB and AIRBNBS has ZIMBABWE; MAUI and TUPAC has ETHIOPIA, and so on. Each of these countries starts in the upper left of its “circle,” and each is a landlocked country in its own right.
From here, it’s a matter of extraction. Turns out that crossing themers share an enumeration, so [Some alternatives to hotels (3)] crosses [Rightly or wrongly, e.g. (3)] in the R surrounded by ZIMBABWE, from which we take M, the third letter. Following that around, the meta answer is MALAWI, indeed a landlocked country.
I enjoyed this meta. I don’t have a lot of patience when the first step is hard to spot, so I appreciated the enumerations on the theme clues. Even if they weren’t used until the end, they confirmed where I should devote attention. Each realization was a clear click that it was part of the solving path, even as I found them out of order.
And there’s a consistency and cleanliness to both the meta and the grid that’s really lovely; Evan told me that removing Us and Rs from his wordlist to fill the puzzle shortened his wordlist by two-thirds.
NYT: Great revealer!
Great revealer, yes! The themers were pretty decent, too, although falling back on the crossword favorite DIS might not have been up to the others, and the switched from UN to MAN wasn’t too adventurous either (even if gendered). But really a rewarding Sunday.
Liked the revealer more than the theme. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I jumped to the revealer after it was highlighted, dropped it in, and it sped up the rest of the solve considerably. I just got slowed down in the SW corner… spent about half of my total time just trying to finish it out. Fun Sunday, and nice theme! Great debut!
“DEGERM” is not a word, unless “sanitize” or simply “clean” escapes you mid-task for some reason. “SEXILE”? Is that a thing? “OPERA” is more a genre than a setting, outside of POTO. Small nits to pick and I feel better now, thanks.
Otherwise the theme was a fun discovery. I have actually used that line (long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away) and “SMELLIER” as “Higher in rank” was definitely the highlight and a good giggle when solved.
Actually, I wondered about that [Smellier in rank] clue, because I had no idea that “rank” could be a noun in this sense.
(I just checked American Heritage and Merriam-Webster at http://www.onelook.com, and they have no listing for rank as a noun in this sense. If this holds up, I would have to consider 20 Across to be a defective clue.)
Grammatically, the clue should be “Higher in rankness.” But I enjoyed the play on “rank” as “position or grade” enough to give it a pass.
Isn’t “rank” an adjective here?
Worked for me – though I started with “stinkier.”
“Rank” is an adjective, but is used as a noun in the clue. Dan’s citation (“Smellier in rank”) is wrong in two aspects: the clue is “Higher in rank?” “Smellier” is a typo, but the question mark is important here. It indicates wordplay. Not only are we not talking about hierarchy, but this signal excuses the punny violation of grammar. Want to break a rule? Use a question mark.
Not convinced “rank” is used as a noun here. “Higher in rank” = “More rank” = “More smelly” = SMELLIER.
You wouldn’t say “higher in stinky.” You would say “higher in stink.” The phase calls for a noun. An adjective is not grammatically correct.
Yes – and thus, the question mark. Grammatically, it should be a noun. But it’s intended to be read as an adjective.
WaPo:
STUNNING, WONDROUS, FABULOUSIf you say so. I have no clue.
Oh, I tried again and got it. That is very clever.
ETA: Contrary to the review above, I don’t know that this would be a great ‘introductory’ meta. I rarely solve such puzzles, and found this one tough. First, I thought the numbers after the theme clues might refer to the position of a letter in the meta answer. Nope. Then I thought maybe they referred to a letter position in the clued answers. Nope. Then I went to the title, and saw the letter U in a few places in the grid — but only for some of the theme answers. Then I thought some more and figured the letter R in the crossings was significant too. And that led me to the answer.
But there were a lot of dead ends before I got it right.
Interestingly, PARAGUAY is the only remaining eight-letter landlocked country (there are 7 total).
And using Paraguay would have messed up his not using R and U except at the intersections of the crossing pairs.
Great meta from Evan! The puzzle itself was a pretty fast fill, but that meta was a real feat of construction on top of it. Well done!
Question for constructors: When you create a puzzle (such as today’s daily Universal) that has more than one grid-spanning entry, do you think of those first and build the puzzle around them? Or do you think of one and then find the others along with the usual fill? Either way, it’s impressive to see it all work out!
The Sunday daily is a themeless, but those 15 letter answers are essentially “themes”. In my notebooks I have lists of possible 15 letter answers. I would say the 15s came first and then he filled around them.
Thank you for the insight.
NYT: This was a fun solve because it was calibrated so that I ended up with a lot of holes all over the place that I had to revisit and slowly get the theme entries. Just a bit above my Sunday average.
But after solving, I did not understand the revealer or the title of the puzzle until coming here to read Eric’s review above. It never dawned on me that “you” means U. Entirely fair, but it totally escaped me.
Well duh, I got the answer for the WaPo puzzle, but didn’t look at the puzzle title which would have made finding the countries a lot quicker. And I know better.