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Victor Schmitt’s New York Times crossword—Sophia’s write-up
Theme: ALL OVER THE MAP – each theme answer ends with a word for something found on a map.
New York Times, 03 24 2025, By Victor Schmitt
- 20a [Something you might step on before or after a shower] – BATHROOM SCALE
- 33a [Set of ethical standards] – MORAL COMPASS
- 41a [Person who has reached near-mythical status] – LIVING LEGEND
- 57a [Here, there and everywhere … or where to find 20-, 33- and 41-Across’s ends?] – ALL OVER THE MAP
Cute theme, and a relatively tight one – Off the top of my head I can’t think of something else found on a map besides a SCALE, COMPASS, and LEGEND. MORAL COMPASS and LIVING LEGEND are such fun answers – I especially like how the meaning of the word “legend” is changed. I had a hard time seeing BATHROOM SCALE – I had “BATHROOM S_AL_” and kept wanting “bathroom stall” for some reason.
Quick thoughts on the rest of the puzzle:
- As a child of the XBox Live era, GAMER TAG was a highlight and a gimme answer. Curious if it will play as well for folks less well-versed in video game culture.
- Hey, NYT – “The Bear” is rather famously not a TV DRAMA – it’s classified as a comedy, at least for Emmy terms. A somewhat controversial take on a Monday!
- I did not know that Odysseus’ dog was named ARGOS – the Christopher Nolan Odyssey adaptation can’t come soon enough!
- Overall the fill here is very good. Besides answers already discussed, I liked the midlength slots of GOALIE, CROONER, POMADE, MAI TAI. The only thing I didn’t love was ROLD Gold pretzels, which is a name unfamiliar to me even though looking at the package online, I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten them before.
Congrats to Victor on a great NYT debut!
Karen Steinberg’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Digital Divide”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases that feature the letters T, O, and E spaced with one other square between each letter. The revealer is TOE SPACERS (62a, [A podiatrist might recommend them for crowding, and a hint to this puzzle’s theme]).
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Digital Divide” · Karen Steinberg · Mon., 3.24.25
- 17a. [Time-consuming tangent while searching for a solution] RABBIT HOLE.
- 24a. [Forcefully make an idea clear] RAM IT HOME.
- 39a. [“It’s hopeless–don’t make me explain any further”] “WHAT MORE CAN I SAY?”
- 49a. [Ingredient in Passover soup balls] MATZO MEAL.
Ha! That revealer was unexpected and worthy of a chuckle. Fun theme answers and a great title as well. Nicely done.
Big corners in the NW/SE anchored by double stacks of 9s. Highlights include GO BANANAS, AS A FRIEND, and FLAMENCO dancing. Some tougher-than-usual Monday fill slowed things down: SANTE, HOSEA, NEUF, and MAPO tofu.
Clue of note: 14d. [Spirited Spanish dance]. FLAMENCO. The clue’s about the dance, but this gives me a chance to highlight guitarist Jesse Cook who I’m looking forward to seeing in concert next month in Vancouver. Olé!
Nice puzzle. 3.5 stars.
Janice Luttrell’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 3/24/25 by Janice Luttrell
The revealer is in the center of the puzzle, not the lower right as is more common, at 37A [Successfully start a new project, and a hint to the starts of 18-, 23-, 52-, and 58-Across], which leads to GET OFF THE GROUND. That is, the first word in each of the theme entries is a way to GET OFF THE GROUND:
- 18A [Completely recover from a hardship] is BOUNCE BACK.
- 23A [Seasonal cause of some flooding] is SPRING THAW.
- 52A [Play hooky] is SKIP SCHOOL.
- 58A [Buddy cop action franchise starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, familiarly] is JUMP STREET.
I really wasn’t crazy about JUMP STREET as a themer, given that the “familiarly” tag has to be used to get around the fact that the name of the franchise is actually 21 Jump Street in the old TV show and the first of the two movies. I guess since there is in fact a 22 Jump Street movie one can argue that it’s fine, but it’s still not my favorite.
There are no nontheme entries longer than 7 letters, making for a pretty easy solve. I liked BONSAI, BODEGAS, BOSTON, ALANIS. Wasn’t into S-CORPS and PARERS as adjacent entries in the top left.
CJ Tan’s Universal crossword, “Spring Themeless Week, Puzzle 1” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 3/24/25 • “Spring Themeless Week, Puzzle 1” • Tan • solution • 20250324
The standouts here are the 11- and 12-letter double stacks at the pinwheel peripheries.
- 14a [“Against all odds!”] IT’S A MIRACLE.
17a [“Who would have guessed?!”] IMAGINE THAT. - 11d [“Consider this …”] HERE’S AN IDEA.
12d [“There’s no stopping me!”] I CAN’T RESIST. - 22d [Switching jobs and asking for a raise, for two] CAREER MOVES.
23d [One on the dean’s list] STAR STUDENT. - 58a [“Easy as pie!”] NOT A PROBLEM.
- 65a [Road paving material widely used in ancient Rome] COBBLESTONE.
Overall, the puzzle was smooth and early-week easy. I felt pretty confident about things when 1-across was a gimme: 1a [Wish to, informally] WANNA.
- 2d [Put a PIN in it!] ATM.
- 7d [Doesn’t cook] EATS RAW. I first had EATS OUT, thinking I would have something to complain about, but was pleasantly surprised to see a more precise and appropriate answer.
- 13d [Playthings] TOYS.
- 21d [Seer’s “skill,” for short] ESP. Thanks for the quotation marks!
- 38d [Before long] SOON.
- 60d [K-pop band supposedly reuniting in 2025] BTS. Pretty sure some if not all of the members did mandatory military service for a number of years.
And there we have it.
Brooke Husic’s New Yorker crossword–Amy’s recap
New Yorker crossword solution, 3/24/25 – Husic
Short on time this afternoon! So squiblets only.
Difficulty: As billed. Tough, but not “Stumper”-level challenge.
Fave fill: DONGLE, SPOTIFY WRAPPED, “YOU GAME?”, PHONE ALARM.
New to me: “WADE IN THE WATER,” [Spiritual heard in Alvin Ailey’s “Revelations”]. Also, that the OLIVE PIT is the [Medium for a three-centimetre-long carved boat held in Taiwan’s National Palace Museum].
Four stars from me. No hard crossings.
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1768 — Eric’s review
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1768 — 3/24/25
This seemed like the easiest BEQ themeless puzzle in months; except for the NW corner, I filled in the answers quickly and steadily. But I think my first entry might have been halfway into the grid, at 37A OWEN [“Dulce et Decorum Est” poet Wilfred ___]. Either the preceding clues didn’t immediately suggest anything or the Fill-in-the-Blank clue caught my eye. Having long ago read the novel Regeneration about Siegfried Sassoon and some of the other WWI poets, OWEN was a gimme.
Notable stuff:
- 14A [Actress Haddock of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films] LAURA I’ve never seen any of those movies, and though I’ve seen Ms Haddock in Downton Abbey: A New Era, her name didn’t stick. Not knowing that one slowed me down in that corner, as most of the other clues in that area had multiple possibilities. But eventually, I had enough letters that LAURA was the most logical choice.
- 15A [Insurance that covers a long span] WHOLE LIFE I’m not sure how I feel about this clue; one’s life might not be all that long.
- 17A [___ Fells, New Jersey] ESSEX It’s a borough of a little over 2,200 people. I’m sure it’s a fine place to live, but having skimmed the Wikipedia entry about it, I don’t see anything remarkable about it. It would have taken me a lot longer to get if I hadn’t decided that 5D [Kamasi Washington’s instrument] was SAX; the X meant the town name was almost certainly ESSEX.
- 18A [Story tellers?] NEWS MEDIA Nice misdirection; that kind of clueing usually points to an answer like LIARS.
- 22A [Clip of someone hearing something for the first time] REACTION VIDEO I’ve probably heard that term before, but it didn’t come immediately to mind.
- 28A [Hot stuff] MOLTEN LAVA I like seeing that viscous flow on TV. I’m not sure how much I would enjoy seeing it in person.
- 43A [Ready to lose it] AT ONE’S WIT’S END Despite having solved thousands of crosswords, the use of “one” where some other pronoun is more common continually throws me for a second. This phrase is, of course, almost always heard with “my.”
- 3D [Country originally named New Holland] AUSTRALIA I probably knew this once, but I didn’t remember it until I had a few letters in place.
- 24D [Close call] NEAR MISS That’s something of an oxymoron, no?
- 32D [“Hmmm …”] I WONDER IF
MASSIVE controversy on whether or not the plural of LEGO is LEGOS. Did not foresee that lol
Thanks for sending me to the Wordplay comments. Pretty funny stuff. The company wants “Lego” or “Lego bricks” for the plural, and so do folks from the UK, but so far most commenters from the US prefer “Legos.” Hey, it’s you, Victor. Fun puzzle, thanks!
It’s a trademark thing. Pluralizing a trademark is abuse of the intellectual property and can wind up converting Lego to lego if not objected to by the holder.
Thanks. I never knew.
Strange, though. If all it took to get around a trademark were to the put it in the plural, I’d have guessed that some inventors less wary of the law would have lost millions by now.
It’s the first thing their IP lawyers tell them. “Never use your trademark as a common noun.” Search the Oreo site for “Oreos.” All you’ll find is verbiage like “Oreo sandwich cookies.”
“Kleenex” and “aspirin” are on the long list of trademarks that have suffered genericide due to lack of going after citations that used them as common nouns.
To be clear, you can’t get around a trademark by pluralizing it. You can be sued for it. And if the company fails to sue enough people for doing it, they can be found to have abandoned the trademark.
I liked the theme — needed the revealer to get it.
As someone from England, I was accustomed to Lego as both singular and plural, and it still jars slightly to hear ‘Legos.’ I don’t know that UK usage is guided by trademark law. It was treated colloquially as a mass noun, not a count noun, for reasons I couldn’t say. Maybe the company pushed strongly for it back in the day, but that was before my time.
Has anyone else noticed a shift in Monday puzzle difficulty since the editor switch or is my cognitive ability declining? Maybe both? My Monday puzzle solve time is averaging longer than usual – I used to be able to zoom through.
Which puzzle?
Just in case anyone else does TNY in pdf, me with Crossword Scraper, the graphic in 46A prints there as an outlined rectangle. I’d tell you what it really is, but onscreen the yellow image is a bit small for me to read.
Otherwise, well, it’s TNY, so at least for me simply off the usual Mon-Sat scale. In a Saturday NYT, if I work a bit longer, I’ll finish. As so often, here I’ve been staring for a long time now and am barely started, even with some guesses regarding the what’s likely to interest her. You’re in her territory or you’re not.
It’s
Thanks! I got an answer from crossings without understanding it, but that’s a clear picture.
In time (over 2 hours), I’ve done better than I expected, but still for now with holes in the NE extending to the long across entry — and with educated guesses as to her likes.
I did the puzzle online and could barely make out the graphic. I thought that’s what it was, but I don’t see how it corresponds to the answer in the grid.
I managed to complete the puzzle, which is not always the case with Husic’s.
Similar experience. Had to “Control/scroll” to make out the image. I appreciate that in this puzzle even an ancient solver like myself had enough breadcrumbs to find his way.
I believe it’s a peace sign like we would sometimes use 50 years ago or so to say goodbye. I gather that’s come back among young folk. CYA is text speak for “see ya.”
I didn’t have any sort of graphic in AcrossLite – just [?]. Got the answer from crosses and wasn’t sure if it was “see ya” or “cover your ass.”
husic speaks a different language than i speak
when i finish one of hers i feel like i am mastering a new tongue
definitely getting more fluent in husic, but there is so much more to learn
i like the challenge, but don’t expect to master it
I thought the emoji was either a V for Victory sign, a la Winston Churchill, or else fingers crossed for good luck.
And the only CYA I know is ‘cover your ass’ (I spent too much time adjacent to DC bureaucracy), which didn’t fit at all with my understanding of the emoji.
That was my experience with the symbol, too. I sure ran into trouble with her puzzle (yet again) and still don’t know what the missing NE and first long crossings could be. I have a wild guess for catch and pass.
What is everyone talking about regarding this image? I don’t see anything in Nexus solver, in AcrossLite, in the actual New Yorker puzzle page, or in the review’s screenshot.
46-Across
Thanks – I was looking the grid, not the clue list. For me, the scraped puzzle clue showed it as a question mark within square brackets “[?]”, but I see it now in the online puzzle.
TNY: Don’t know what my solving time was – I was interrupted and forgot to pause the timer – but it felt a little on the easy side for a Husic Monday. Seemed like there were fewer names than usual, and all of them were at least vaguely familiar.
EIR, ELS, EST and CYA (because I didn’t have graphic) all had to come entirely from crosses, but the crosses were reasonable. I’m still not sure I understand EST – is that Latin?
Generally enjoyed the puzzle, but a little light on fun wordplay.