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Adam Vincent’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Sweet Spot”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar(ish) two-part phrases where the word “sticky” might be applied to each half. The revealer is STICKY / SITUATION (50a, [With 58-Across, predicament, and a description of both halves of the starred answers]).
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Sweet Spot” · Adam Vincent · Wed., 4.9.25
- 17a. [*Munchkin, e.g.] DONUT HOLE. Apparently, “Munchkins” are what Dunkin’ calls their donut holes, but as I’ve never set foot in one of their establishments, I had no idea.
- 25a. [*Common peanut butter go-with] STRAWBERRY JAM.
- 45a. [*Veggie brined in a fruity drink mix] KOOL-AID PICKLE. First off…umm…what? Second off, see first off.
Not sure about this one. I was totally thrown off by the Munchkin clue because I only know the word from The Wizard of Oz or the line of board games. But getting past that, yes I can see that being in a hole, in a jam, or in a pickle is a STICKY SITUATION. But we don’t immediately associate strawberries or Kool-Aid with stickiness. And not even all donuts are necessarily sticky, if you’re partial to the plain cake variety as I am. I guess if you’re a sloppy strawberry eater or Kool-Aid drinker, then you’re liable to make a sticky mess, but it’s just not an essential aspect of those items.
A lacrosse player wearing a PINNY
In the fill, SPARK JOY sparks joy, and I liked seeing ALHAMBRA, though I mostly know the name as the water distributor in Northern California. I had to raise my eyebrows at PINNY [Sleeveless garment worn in gym class scrimmages ] which is new to me and which I just surmised comes from the word “pinafore”. Apparently in the States we’ve taken the word and applied to certain pieces of sportswear.
Clues of note:
- 25d. [“This is the quiet car!”]. “SHH!” Is this a thing young parents are saying these days? Oh wait, is it a train thing?
- 35d. [Hammers home?]. TOOLKITS. Good clue. Assuming we’re talking about multiple hammers and therefore no apostrophe is necessary.
3.25 stars.
Karen Lurie’s AV Club Classic crossword, “Challenge Accepted!”–Amy’s recap
AV Club Classic crossword solution, 4/9/25 – “Challenge Accepted!”
The theme in this 17×17 puzzle is “LET’S DO THIS!” The theme entries are made by inserting DO into familiar phrases to create entirely different things:
The U.N. summit goes noodle with UDON SUMMIT. A con artist decorates time-shares as a CONDO ARTIST. Minions become MID ONIONS (“mid” is a newer equivalent of “meh”). Dark brown becomes a [Goth fraternity gathering?], DARK BRODOWN. (Here’s the Wiktionary definition and synonyms for brodown. I don’t think I’d seen the word before.)
The grid’s got spacious corners, and the fill is fairlysolid throughout. Fave fill: SPLASHY and PLUMCOT. Mmm! Stone fruit season is maybe two months away. Can’t wait for cherries and plumcots (aka pluots, aka dinosaur egg plums).
3.75 stars from me.
Aidan Deshong & Oren Hartstein’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 4/9/25 – no. 0409
I have a bone to pick with the theme clues here. Each theme phrase is clued as if these phrases could headline three-star reviews, but they’re all so lackluster that these things would be 2.5 out of 4 stars at best. Is this puzzle going with a 5-star rating system?
- 19A. [Three-star review of a cocktail shaker?] MIXED RESULTS. Or is this a rave review of a mixer that really gets results?
- 25A. [Three-star review of Battleship?], HIT OR MISS. In Battleship, each guess is either a hit or a miss, and there’s nothing that’s a rave in “hit or miss.”
- 40A. [Three-star review of a no-stress class?], PASSABLE. I guess if you’re looking for a class you don’t have to work in, you want it to be passable … but wouldn’t an easy A get a better review? “You won’t flunk this” doesn’t merit three stars.
- 51A. [Three-star review of Tulsa?], IT’S JUST OK. Entirely neutral. Tulsa is in Oklahoma, factual. Where’s the rave?
- 60A. [Three-star review of the Friday before Easter?], GOOD, NOT GREAT. If you’re saying that Good Friday wasn’t great, that’s not a three-star review.
So the theme feels poorly presented in the clues. If it said “mediocre review” or “two-star review,” I think it would work better for me.
Fave fill: MILLET (my favorite little birdseed in multigrain bread), TWIDDLE and DWINDLE and WIGGLE, TONE IT DOWN, SWEETIE PIE, CALYPSO, and CON ARTISTS. Could do without the Starbucks olive oil drink OLEATO. The name just makes me think of Olestra .. and anal leakage.
3.25 stars from me. As clued, good, not great.
Dan Kammann and Zhouqin Burnikel’s Universal crossword, “Crew Cut” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 4/9/25 • Wed • “Crew Cut” • Kammann, Burnikel • solution • 20250409
The letters at the beginnings and ends of the theme answers, when reunited, spell a synonym for ‘crew’.
- 17a. [Apt unit for lawn size] SQUARE YARD (squad). Good job avoiding duplication with 54d [24, for a 4×6 rectangle] AREA and 37a [Farmland measures] ACRES.
- 27a. [Device used on the Enterprise] TRACTOR BEAM (team).
- 44a. [Tall order at an ice cream parlor] TRIPLE SCOOP (troop).
- 57a. [Samsung device worn on a finger] GALAXY RING (gang).
Simple, solid.
- 10d [Salsa ingredient with a thin neck] PEAR TOMATO, which I have never encountered.
- 24d [Word on all U.S. coins] GOD. Only since the Red Scare of the 1950s, when ‘patriotic’ zealots sought to contrast the nation against the ‘godless Communists’. (34a [Complained bitterly] RAILED.)
- 45a [Canadian $1 coin] LOONIE, named for the loon (Gavia immer) depicted thereon.
- 50d [BLT condiment] MAYO. >shudder<
- 59d [Cry at a Real Madrid game] GOL. Of course I automatically filled in OLÉ here.
- 48a [“A Man Called __”] OTTO, the Tom Hanks remake of a Swedish film whose title character is OVE.
- 49a [Gradient technique at a nail salon] OMBRE. This answer, typically clued with reference to hair, often gets “huhs” in the comments.
- 53a [Servings of ribs] SLABS. Well!
- 63a [“Fiddling” Roman emperor] NERO. Because if the story is even true, it was probably an instrument such as a lyre. 15d [City on the Rhone] LYON.
Patrick Berry’s New Yorker puzzle – Kyle’s write-up
The New Yorker solution grid – Patrick Berry – Wednesday 04/09/2025
Thanks Patrick for today’s puzzle. I am not going to highlight any particular entries or clues, in part because I am short on time, but also because Patrick’s quality and style has been so consistent for so long, that what is there to say? I encourage you to just sit with this grid for a few minutes, and put any thoughts that it evokes into the comments.
Matthew Stock’s USA Today Crossword, “We Are the Champions (Freestyle)” — Emily’s write-up
Take a victory lap!
USA Today, April 09, 2024, “We Are the Champions (Freestyle)” by Matthew Stock
Favorite fill: CINDERELLATEAM, HERESWHY, EDUCATOR, SPICERUB, and GUKESHDOMMARAJU
Stumpers: ALMOSTCERTAINLY (needed some crossings), EVER (“stat” or “asap” felt more fitting to the cluing so this took me a bit longer to get), and SCAT (also needed crossings)
Lots of fantastic fill in this freestyle today! Loved the grid design and cluing. My only tricky area was the S and SW due to the spanner and a few crossings but I got there still fairly quickly in the end so not too tricky after all.
4.0 stars
~Emily
Catherine Cetta’s LA Times crossword – Gareth’s summary
LA Times 09 Apr 25
Catherine Cetta gives another “rearrange words and hide them across two parts of long across entries” theme, this one with a direct, but clever revealing entry of MADSCRAMBLE. Each of four other entries conceals a scrambled synonym for mad as in cross: SUPERSOAKER {SORE}; FIREDRILL {RILED}; DIGITALDIVIDE {LIVID}; BABYGRAND {ANGRY}.
Favourite entries; DEMERARA, GLAMPS and the inter-x-ion of XANADU and UPNEXT; if you’re going to use an X use it like that!
Gareth
NYT: I like this puzzle a lot. I don’t know exactly why it tickled my fancy, but it did.
Had not known that FISCAL means tax-related; I just thought it meant money-related.
i too really liked the Times. it felt oddly old-school although not in the fill which was solid. it was just a good, tight theme not trying to outdo itself—just cute reinterpretations of phrases as mixed reviews. very Wednesday-ish. was nice to have a solid themed puzzle that was easy but not Monday/Tuesday easy. AND that wasn’t trying to be too flashy. sometimes you just want really good meat and potatoes.
The rating system is meant to be out of five stars, not four
I assumed it was meant to be out of 5 stars. Seemed clear from the context to me. It was a fun puzzle with an entertaining theme!
Five stars seems to be the default for user ratings on the Internet. It’s used on Amazon, Yelp, and this very blog. I thought it was pretty clear that that’s what the NYT puzzle was based on.
Amy, I too was confused by the rating system. I assumed that a three-star review indicated a glowing assessment, such as a restaurant awarded three stars by Michelin. I eventually realized that that wasn’t the rating system the puzzle creators had in mind. I wish they hadn’t simply assumed a five-star rating system.
I think the ratings are meant to be three out of three stars possible. The surface meanings are so-so, but context is everything and the clues make these raves. IT’S JUST OK, taken as a tag line for Oklahoma tourism, for instance, can mean “nothing better.” What better can a cocktail shaker do than create mixed results?
You may not find the theme compelling, but don’t complicate it by imagining anything but a three-star rating system.
I feel that the point is the uncertainty between two systems. It sounds like a 3 out of 5 but in fact it’s a 3 out of 3. So keeping the scale obscure is part of the concept.
For me, GOOD BUT NOT GREAT was key. “Good” is such an essential descriptor of that day, and saying “Great” would be totally confusing–that encapsulated the intent.
So, generally agreeing with you Martin, but I think imagining a 5-star system is what we are meant to do at first.
I don’t understand how imagining a different rating system than 3 stars is complicating things.
Constructor Aidan Deshong at 10:26 PM writes “The rating system is meant to be out of five stars…”
Thanks, Doug.
A five-star scale made the most sense to me. What’s more middling than 3 out of 5?
NYT – I took 40a as referring to a course taken under a Pass/Fail grading system. Definitely lower stress
The reviews were seemingly judgmental but actually merely descriptive. Not really a rating
NYT: 18a [Magritte’s “Ceci n’est pas ___ pipe”] UNE. For clarity’s sake, that’s just the text component of the painting, whose actual title is La Trahison des images (“The Treachery of Images”).
I thought the NYT theme was entertaining, especially ITSJUSTOK. I didn’t know OLEATO (and it sounds horrible) and I don’t know the meaning of REPO as clued here.
And 54D — a cryptic clue, of a sort, in the NYT puzzle? Whoa Nelly!
I liked the puzzle, as I said above, and assumed out of five stars (like this site!); that said after reading the comments I think a better clueing system would have been:
“★★★☆☆ rating for XXXXXX” (or ★★☆☆☆ if you’re Amy)
now you’ve got the meaning clear, it’s cute, etc.