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John Kugelman’s New York Time Crossword “Both Sides Now” — Eric’s review
NY Times crossword solution, 4/13/25 – “Both Sides Now”
My husband and I spent the first part of the day driving across Central Texas to attend a memorial service for our dear friend Margaret, who died last fall. It was a nice gathering of Margaret’s family and friends, and I saw a lot of people who I hadn’t seen in a few years or longer. But I’m tired and trying to do this on my iPad, which is not ideal.
It’s a slightly oversized grid — 22×21. I was probably two-thirds done when I realized that the wacky theme answers are all paired pros and cons, each member of a pair ending with the same string of letters:
- 23A [Popcorn and pretzels at a parade?] PROCESSIONS CONCESSIONS
- 42A [Someone who might excel at a Bible trivia game?] PROTESTANT CONTESTANT
- 67A [Tools of the trade?] CONTRACTORS PROTRACTORS
- 86A [Police interrogator or priest?] CONFESSION PROFESSION
- 110A [Angry words at a school assembly?] CONVOCATION PROVOCATION
This theme seems a bit light, especially in comparison to recent NYT Sunday puzzles. The theme answers are all solid finds given the pro and con limitation, but none is particularly amusing.
On the plus side, the fill is for the most part interesting and feels fresh to me: AUDIO JACK, KID FLASH, IGNORE IT, TAO OF POOH, DRINKY-POO, TONY STARK, SWOOP IN, LAY IT ON, IT’S A SIN.
I liked seeing 81D [Coleridge’s “The ___ of the Ancient Mariner”] RIME. Margaret may have been the only person I know who ever read that poem.
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post Crossword “Sure Thing” — Matt’s review
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword solution, “Sure Thing,” 4/13/2025
Six long down themers pair up into two movies, two professional wrestlers, and two songs, and a revealer later on ties it all together:
- 3d [Blue Oyster Cult song memorialized in the SNl sketch “More Cowbell”] DONT FEAR THE REAPER
- 8d [WWE wrestler whose finishing move was the Tombstone Piledriver] THE UNDERTAKER
- 9d [2016 thriller about a man hunted by the Treasury Department for sanitizing the financial records of criminal organizations] THE ACCOUNTANT
- 14d [The Notorious B.I.G. rap classic with the lyric “Federal agents mad ‘cause I’m flagrant” MO MONEY MO PROBLEMS
- 55d [1971 black comedy featuring a pair of people with a morbid interest in attending strangers’ funerals] HAROLD AND MAUDE
- 57d [WWE wrestler whose three initials spell out the federal agency that inspired his gimmick] IRWIN R SCHYSTER
- 108a [Either one of life’s two certainties, per Benjamin Franklin] DEATH / TAXES
The revealer is a Schrodinger entry, crossing DAUNT/TAUNT, DATE/DATA, SET/SEX, SALT/SALE, and SAPPY/HAPPY
The title and clues are well done to get us towards the theme before the revealer, as the clues in particular emphasize DEATH and TAXES. I had a fast start transition into a slower wrap-up, as by chance I was progressively more and more unfamiliar with each themer, but I recognized each with enough crossings. I realize now that it’s tax weekend in the US. I don’t think it’s a notable date for death, on the other hand.
I enjoyed the medium-long fill in this one. In particular NO SILLY, CUTSCENE, and COPYPASTA each felt fresh and current. As I review, I also feel more trivia-style clues and proper-noun entries than feels typical, but I’m not about to dive into data, nor was it overly evident during my solve. Cheers.
Paul Coulter’s Universal Sunday crossword, “Letter Drops”—Jim’s review
Sorry for the late, abbreviated post. We went away for the weekend and I realized too late that I left my laptop at home.
Anyway, today’s theme answers are all phrases of the form xLESS y, where x indicates where in the clue some letters are missing and y is a synonym for the clue as it should have been written. The revealer is A LITTLE LOST (71d, [Somewhat confused, or an alternate title for this puzzle]). A little bit was lost from each clue, so that explains the revealer.
Universal Sunday crossword solution · “Letter Drop” · Paul Coulter · 4.13.25
- 3d. [*Kitt_?] ENDLESS POOL. A kitty (when gambling) is a synonym for a pool. I was thrown off by the fact that an “endless loop” is also a thing.
- 7d. [*Chas_?] BOTTOMLESS PIT. Chasm.
- 14d. [*_orc_?] BOUNDLESS ENERGY. I think this is meant to be force?
- 29d. [*Cri_ _ers?] HEARTLESS BEASTS. Critters.
- 45d. [*_earful?] HEADLESS CHICKEN. It’s clearly meant to be fearful, but “tearful” is the word that comes to my mind first.
- 58d. [*Ave_?] BASELESS CLAIM. Aver.
Not sure how I feel about this one. Most of the words with missing letters seemed like they could be any of various words (kitty/kitten, chasm/chaste/chasten, torch/porch…). It wasn’t until I got to the fourth one that things started to make more sense. Of course, each blank stands in for one letter, but I didn’t know that during the solve. Also, the two that seem to be the reason the entries are written vertically (BOTTOMLESS PIT and BASELESS CLAIM) don’t really work, do they? For example, BOTTOMLESS PIT is referring to chasm missing its last m, but the clue itself is not written vertically, so doesn’t exactly have a bottom. Unless I’m missing something…which is certainly possible.
Three stars.
The NYT was tough going for me. I might not have finished without the theme entries as a guide. While none of them was terribly amusing in itself, they were at least ingenious.
NYT: that connector on the end of your headphone cable is an audio plug. The connector that you plug it into is the jack.
“A connector in a fixed location is a jack, and a moveable connector is a plug. The distinction is relative, so a portable radio is considered stationary compared to the cable from the headphones; the radio has a jack, and the headphone cable has a plug.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_of_connectors_and_fasteners
Quite true, but I interpreted the clue a bit more loosely. The end of a power cord is the wall outlet. It sounded ok to me but I can see your point. In any case, I don’t think the editors meant to confuse plugs and jacks.
There’s a reviewer’s time listed for Universal Sunday, but apparently no posted review.
Not sure why there was a solve time there but it was probably mistakenly pasted there as a holdover from last week. I just put up a short review. Sorry for the lateness…but at least I had a blog-free weekend. :)
The AcrossLite version of the Post puzzle would only accept DEATH, not TAXES. C’mon, WAPO, you can do better.
If you hit Reveal on those squares in Across Lite, you should get DT in the first one, EA in the second, AX in the third, and so on. You should be able to enter the squares that way, too.
Across Lite is limited in how you can program Schrödinger squares. All you can do is put in both letters as rebus pairs and then select one as the first letter which will be accepted while the second one by itself doesn’t work. This isn’t an issue of “come on WaPo, you can do better.” It’s that Across Lite doesn’t allow you to enter either answer and have both counted as correct.
WaPo: Clever puzzle, but I missed the Schrodinger aspect, and instead fruitlessly hunted for the word DEATH concealed somewhere. My bad.
I felt like I should’ve noticed the Schrödinger aspect too; I figured it *had* to be TAXES because it’s almost April 15 :-) Very clever, Evan!
This might be overly obsessive.
For the Letter Drop by Paul Coulter… does anyone think the missing letters should make some type of jumble?
YMFETTFR… and obviously with a letter dropped?
Universal: For me the answer is the last word at the bottom of each answer: a Pool is a Kitty, a Pit is a Chasm, Energy is Force, Beasts are Critters, to Claim is to Aver and Chicken is Fearful. Good one.