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Jeffrey Lease and Jeff Chen’s New York Times crossword—Sophia’s write-up
Theme: TEN TO ONE ODDS – each theme answer starts with the string “ten” and (almost) ends with the string “one”. Also, each of the theme answers is placed at a spot marked with an odd number in the puzzle.
New York Times, 04 07 2025, By Jeffrey Lease and Jeff Chen
- 19a [Court summons?] – TENNIS ANYONE?
- 27a [Having a benevolent goal in mind] – WELL INTENTIONED
- 45a [Instruments for John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins] – TENOR SAXOPHONES
- 53a [Big payout potential … or a hint to the words in the shaded squares (and the clue numbers on which they begin!)] – TEN TO ONE ODDS
Coming to you from immediately post-American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, where I had an incredible weekend meeting/reconnecting with so many lovely puzzle people! This also means that my brain is a little fried after nearly 48 hours of nonstop crosswords, so forgive me if this writeup is a bit loopier than most.
I liked this theme concept, and the extra touch of all of the theme clues having odd numbers added a needed extra layer. The clue of [Court summons?] for TENNIS ANYONE is so good that at first I thought the theme was just going to be jokes like that, and I wouldn’t have even been upset about it. WELL INTENTIONED is also a great 15-letter find.
I have two minor complaints on the theme: first, I wish that each theme answer had actually ended in “one”, like in TENNIS ANYONE. It would make the theme a little more elegant. And secondly, I wish the revealer had been clued with something that actually has 10:1 odds rather than the vague “big potential payout”… is there anything obvious with those chances? Is 10:1 actually a big payout??? I’m not a gambler, please enlighten me.
General highlights: UNEARNED RUN, NPR NEWS, clueing LIAM Neeson via “Love Actually” because that is legitimately the main film I associate him with… well, that and “Taken”.
Tricky spots: I had “translation” instead of TRANSLATING for [Interpreter’s job]. I also had “tell” instead of BLAB, and I’ve never heard of PENTIUM. If the clue didn’t point towards an “-ium” ending by saying it “sounds like an element on the periodic table”, I might still be stuck there (although my dad, solving in the same room as me, was incredibly surprised that I had never heard of it. So this might just be a me thing.)
Happy Monday all!
Gary Cee’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Park Yourself”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases whose second words can also be things you can sit on. The revealer is SIT ON IT (39a, [Hold in abeyance, and what you can do to the ends of 17-, 27-, 46- and 61-Across]).
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Park Yourself” · Gary Cee · Mon., 4.7.25
- 17a. [Advantage for a basketball team] DEEP BENCH.
- 27a. [Poultry dish in a creamy sauce] CHICKEN DIVAN.
- 46a. [Member of Nirvana or Soundgarden, e.g.] GRUNGE ROCKER.
- 61a. [Shift from euphoria to misery, say] MOOD SWING.
Nice Monday theme. I feel like “bench” doesn’t quite change meaning as much as the others do, though. The chicken dish is named for the Divan Parisien restaurant in which it was created, and the last two have completely different meanings. Other than that, a breezy Monday theme to get our week going.
But I am shocked—SHOCKED—there’s not a single Happy Days reference here. What is the world coming to?!
Some fun long fill in the corners: EPIC WIN, “BELIEVE ME!,” and GO NUCLEAR. In short, I LIKE IT. On the tougher side, never have I ever seen REBBE [Yeshiva teacher] which I assume is an alternate spelling of “rabbi”? Help me out here. Other tough-for-Monday fare: ACTE, SOGS, LOEWE.
Clue of note: 5d. [Watery part of milk]. WHEY. Huh. I never knew that. Wikipedia says it “liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained.”
Jill Weiskopf Brufsky & Rachel Fabi’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 4/7/25 by Jill Weiskopf Brufsky & Rachel Fabi
First of all, it looks like this might be Jill Weiskopf Brufsky’s debut; congratulations!
I was surprised to look up and see a 2:02 time at the end of this solve: I thought it would be longer. There was a bit more trivia knowledge than I expect on a Monday: AFRIN, THERESA May, GOOD EATS, PEEPER clued with reference to a tree frog rather than as slang for an eye.
The theme, on the other hand, wasn’t terribly hard to get. The revealer at 62A [Dish that may accompany a main course, and what can be found at the start of 17-, 25-, 38-, or 53-Across?] is SIDE SALAD, because on the left SIDE of each theme entry, you find a type of SALAD:
- 17A [Permanent resident’s document] is a GREEN CARD. (Soapbox: Immigrants are awesome. We should let more of them in. Signed, daughter, sister, cousin, niece, etc. of immigrants.)
- 25A [Patch for some squash, say] is GARDEN PLOT. Not much difference between a GREEN SALAD and a GARDEN SALAD in real life, but for puzzling purposes they can generate different theme entries!
- 38A [Part of many a sorority’s name] is GREEK LETTER. The quality of oregano used to season your GREEK SALAD really matters, and I wish I had access to stuff as good as they use at this place in my neighborhood.
- 53A [Divisive political topic] is a WEDGE ISSUE. WEDGE SALAD is just a delivery mechanism for bacon bits and ranch dressing. Change my mind.
Suzanne Oliver’s Universal crossword, “Pregame/Postgame” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 4/7/25 • Mon • “Pregame/Postgame” • Oliver • solution • 20250407
I didn’t pay attention to the theme while I was solving, and it took me a few beats to understand it after the grid was complete. For each two-part theme answer—each a well-known word or phrase— the first word can precede ‘game’ and the second can follow ‘game’.
- 17a. [*Final goal] ENDPOINT (endgame, game point).
- 25a. [*Respect for the rules, in sports] FAIR PLAY (fair game, gameplay). I had FAIRNESS at first.
- 39a. [*Praise for a poodle, perhaps] GOOD BOY (good game, Game Boy).
- 50a. [*Gloomy expression] LONG FACE (long game, game face).
- 62a. [*Dance sit, or a type of dance] BALLROOM (ballgame, game room).
Nicely conceived and executed. As for the rest of the puzzle, the grid was smooth and the cluing on the easy and straightforward side. I had a couple of hiccups, but those were entirely my fault and not due to any trickery.
- 5d [“Criminal Minds” org.] FBI. On autopilot, I filled in CSI, since it’s in so many crosswords.
- 9d [September celebration of U.S. workers] LABOR DAY. Most of the rest of the world celebrates their workers on May 1st.
- 10d [Brings about] PROMPTS. Maybe a slightly tricky clue? The PR— had me thinking about the comically too-long PRECIPITATES and a far easier clue for the intended answer could be something like [Cues].
- 13d [Also] AND. 23a [As well] TOO.
- 58d [Palindromic supermodel] EMME. I forgot and thought her name was ELLE, like the magazine.
- 5a [Opposite of masc.] FEM. One could quibble and say that they aren’t opposites so much as complements, but that take isn’t unassailable either.
- 8a [Llama relative whose baby is called a cria] ALPACA. In fact, all four species in the camelid genus Lama —llamas, alpacas, guanacos, and vicuñas—have offspring referred to as crias.
- 31d [Submit] SEND IN. 29a [“My package arrived!”] IT’S HERE.
- 67a [“That’s So True” singer Abrams] GRACIE. New to me, and certainly more current than actress/comedian GRACIE Allen.
Anna Shechtman’s New Yorker crossword–Amy’s recap
New Yorker crossword solution, 4/7/25 – Shechtman
In short—
Fave fill: EVEN BETTER, ANDRE LEON TALLEY, PETER PAN COLLARS, PATTI SMITH, CHEMICAL PEELS, BANDS TOGETHER.
Could do without: DEP, BEV, ERTE, IN E, -GON, GENII, SLA, EER, AYS. Many of those are the crossings gluing the central triple-stack together. If you didn’t know the name ANDRE LEON TALLEY, you may have flailed here. The IPS crossing of PATTI SMITH wasn’t so hot, either; if you didn’t guess the plural of an abbreviation for internet protocol, and you weren’t sure if she was PATTI or PATTY …
Three stars from me.
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1772 — Eric’s Review
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1772 — 4/7/25
This was tougher for me than some recent BEQ themeless puzzles. I got to 19A MIEN before I found something I had enough confidence in to put in the grid. Most of the answers I got immediately after that were also short words, which didn’t help much.
But bit by bit, the grid came together. I should have known 63A ANDY KIM [First Korean-American senator] (he’s the junior senator from New Jersey, elected last year), but I’ve don’t pay as much attention to the news as I used to. I figured 12D [Laundry pen] was some sort of MARKER (INDELIBLE, as it turned out), and with the K__, KIM seemed likely as a Korean surname.
The rest of my solving experience was like that, with guesses that sometimes turned out to be right opening up sections of the grid.
Notable stuff:
- 8A [Lawless] MOBBISH I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that word.
- 16A [State clearly] ENOUNCE I would probably use “enunciate” instead.
- 17A [Prison guarded by Dementors] AZKABAN I wouldn’t have had any idea about this Harry Potter answer had J.K. Rowling not used the name in one of her titles. I knew it had several A’s, a K and a Z, but the actual spelling eluded me for a while.
- 29A [Event where many fall over at work] TRUST EXERCISE For several years, the state agency I worked for was run by an idiot who had his minion lead “team-building” sessions. Fortunately, those waste-of-time sessions didn’t extend to trust falls (the name I was familiar with). I guess it was enough to just push competent people into early retirement.
- 47A [Cocreator and star of Netflix’s “Adolescence”] STEPHEN GRAHAM We’re behind in our Netflix viewing and have only recently started on 3 Body Problem. Maybe someday we’ll get around to Adolescence.
- 3D [“I don’t understand!”] MAKE IT MAKE SENSE I can hear this in my head, in a sort of whiny voice, probably coming from someone who doesn’t get the trick in a tricky crossword puzzle.
- 14D [Home of the Rochester Institute of Technology (news to me, I woulda guessed Rochester)] HENRIETTA News to me, too; it’s a suburb of Rochester with a population around 50,000 and “one of the largest retail shopping districts in Monroe County [New York],” according to Wikipedia.
- 21D [Nirvana feeling] TEEN ANGST A reference to the grunge band of the 1980s and ’90s.
- 32D [Mononymous singer with the #1 dance hit “I’m Outta Love”] ANASTACIA I can’t dance at all and consequently don’t listen to dance music. I’ve heard of some artists in that genre, but ANASTACIA (née Anastacia Lyn Newkirk) is new to me. Her song was released in 2000.
- 55D [Winged statuettes] EMMYS A recent puzzle, either from BEQ or The New York Times, reminded me that the woman depicted in that statuette is holding an atom. The woman represents art and the atom represents technology.
NYT: I’m not sure why I finished this puzzle with the feeling that it was not my cup of tea.
Maybe it was the accumulation of small nits: I don’t like clues like [Long, long time] for EON; I don’t agree that “percent” is a unit for interest rates; and I found the theme of TEN + ONE to be way too random … plus the revealer TEN-TO-ONE ODDS to be not so good, since it contains “odds” — which as far as I can tell has nothing to do with the theme.
Signed, Oscar the Grouch.
Clue numbers are all odd.
The TEN and the ONE in each theme answer start in an odd numbered square, so the theme answers actually go TEN to ONE, but those tens and ones are also ODD themselves, so they are fittingly described as TEN TO ONE ODDS
Thanks, but I find this to be a megayawn.
Exactly.
“Megayawn” — I gotta remember that.
I didn’t understand the reference to clue numbers in the theme clues before coming here. I was trying to figure out what ‘ten to one’ had to do with 19 and 21 etc. There was nothing in the theme that contributed to solving the puzzle, so this was pretty much a dud for me.
Also, the clue for ESSEX is wrong. The Thames doesn’t flow through it anywhere. Part of the southern boundary of Essex is on the Thames Estuary, but it’s arguably not the Thames at that point since it’s well out to sea, some 25 miles west of central London.
East, west — who can keep them straight? :-)
I don’t see an east-west controversy. David is arguing that the Thames Estuary is not the River Thames, which seems unconvincing. Most maps label it as such. If the waters of the Thames are flowing here, the clue seems ok to me.
The Thames estuary is east of London, isn’t it? Contrary to what David said.
I’ve only been to London once, but from my memory, the Thames is not an estuary between Hammersmith and Greenwich (which is as much of it as I’ve seen.)
I didn’t have any issues with the clue, either.
As Eric says, I got my east and west back to front.
But my objection is that the clue is “English county through which the Thames flows,” which is wrong. The Thames does not flow through Essex, unless you’re redefining ‘through’ to mean ‘borders on.’
Is the Southend Pier in Essex? If so, is the water around it in Essex? It seems that there are certainly waters within the county. At least for a crossword clue, if not municipally. But I see your point.
And yes, I leave typos well enough alone. I’ve certainly made my share.
I generally ignore typos, too, and I hope the emoticon conveyed the gentle teasing tone I intended.
I’ve certainly made my share of errors.
Would you agree it’s at least a little ironic when someone criticizing a mistake makes one themselves?
This is Muphry’s Law, or Skitt’s Law.
Ironic? Or do you mean iconic? :)
NYT: I don’t gamble, either (at least not for money), but the odds determine the payout. If you bet $100 on something that has 2:1 odds, the payout is $200. But if you bet on a 10:1 long shot, the payout on a $100 wager is $1,000.
The tradeoff, of course, is that the wager at 10:1 is a much riskier bet than the one at 2:1.
TNY: Finished it, but it took quite a while. Liked the long entries, except for ANDRE LEON TALLEY – well outside my wheelhouse.
PATTI/PATTY SMITH always throws me – great artist, just can’t remember how to spell her name.
PETER PAN COLLAR is vaguely familiar but certainly didn’t come to mind easily.
VOCODER? Okay – if you say so.
Meh!