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Stacy Cooper and Ken Cohen’s New York Times crossword—Sophia’s write-up
Theme: Each theme answer starts with something that can be cracked.
New York Times, 04 14 2025, By Stacy Cooper and Ken Cohen
- 20a [Rules on how to behave] – CODE OF CONDUCT
- 25a [Baba ghanouj, e.g.] – EGGPLANT DIP
- 45a [Goofball] – KNUCKLEHEAD
- 51a [Slangy greeting … or a hint to the starts of 20-, 25- and 45-Across] – WHAT’S CRACKING
Cute Monday theme today – you can crack a CODE, crack your KNUCKLES, or crack an EGG(plant). I liked how many different meanings of the word “crack” were used for the answers. My constructor brain immediately noticed the interesting black square placement on the two 13 letter answers – there’s one on each side of the answer, putting the answer in the symmetric middle of puzzle. It looks cool!
Some nice longer fill in the puzzle, like GODFATHERS, MOSCOW MULE, IPAD APPS, LAH DI DAH. There were also some more esoteric answers (for a Monday at least), with Abe VIGODA, Joan MIRO and LACUNA for [Gap]. These were all clued pretty fairly, but I’m curious if they will play harder for some folks. I also got held up by “ding” instead of DENT for [Blemish on a car]. Finally, some clue highlights for me were the back-to-back repetition of [Word repeated in “Que ___, ___”] and [Word repeated in “___, ___, gone!”] for SERA and GOING, and [Roller coaster exclamation] for WHEE.
Happy Monday all! Congrats to Stacy and Ken on a great NYT debut.
Jeanne Breen’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 4/14/25 by Jeanne Breen
Sorry to say I didn’t love this puzzle — the theme is inconsistently executed, which would have flown in the early aughts when I started constructing, but has justly fallen out of favor nowadays, especially for a Monday puzzle when having multiple consistently executed theme entries might be the difference between a beginning solver figuring out the theme or not. On top of that, the fill has a couple of difficult spots you wouldn’t expect on a Monday (more on that below).
Anyway, the revealer at 62A [Classic David Bowie song with the lyric “Put on your red shoes,” and an apt title for this puzzle] is a great song: LET’S DANCE. That’s because each theme answer contains the name of a dance, but some answers have it at the beginning and some at the end:
- 17A [Unexpected development in a story] is a PLOT TWIST. The dance, TWIST, is at the end.
- 24A [Textile pattern with round spots] is POLKA DOTS, with the POLKA dance at the beginning.
- 38A [Hubbub] is HUSTLE AND BUSTLE; HUSTLE is the dance at the beginning.
- 50A [Youth-oriented fashion magazine] is TEEN VOGUE, with VOGUE, the dance, at the end. Given that TEEN VOGUE hasn’t been in print since 2017, I would have added “online” to this clue.
So: At least the themers are evenly split between dance at the beginning and dance at the end, but I probably would’ve asked the constructor to try again to get a consistent set. TWIST TIES comes to mind as a replacement for PLOT TWIST if you wanted to have the dances at the beginning, for example.
I also thought there were some tough entries for Monday, especially in the NW corner where it’s common to start solving. TOPPS and ECLAT, plus TERCEL that I knew only because I am “it was my first car” years old. Didn’t love ISO, SSE, and U.S. ONE in the NE either.
All this is to say: I think this puzzle is a good idea that needed some refinement.
Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Carried Away”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are feature the letters VAN which appear to make their way down and across the grid.
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Carried Away” · Mike Shenk · Mon., 4.14.25
- 17a. [2010 Winter Olympics site] VANCOUVER. Just got back from our first ever trip to this lovely city. The weather was gorgeous, and we had a fabulous time checking out Granville Island, eating good food, and seeing Canadian Jesse Cook in concert (pro tip: go see him live if you can!).
- 25a. [Prepared to attack] ADVANCED ON.
- 37a. [Country singer Morgan] EVANS.
- 43a. [Celebration of a holiday] OBSERVANCE.
- 57aR. [Mayflower vehicle, and a hint to the circled letters] MOVING VAN.
I’m surprised at the reappearance of this theme. I don’t have a problem with a theme showing up in different venues; after all many minds trying to come up with puzzle themes are bound to hit upon similar (or even the same) ideas at the same time. It first appeared in the NYT in 2012 (here’s pannonica’s write-up). But it arrived at the WSJ in 2017 (here’s my write-up). It then went to the LAT the next year (Gareth’s write-up—and look for some interesting comments below) before dropping off the grid until today. I’m sure the vast majority of solvers aren’t looking at past puzzle themes to compare with the grid in front of them, but still, I don’t recall ever seeing an exact theme re-appearing in the same venue before.
I enjoyed the long fill better: “HOLD ON A SEC,” DOUBLE ZERO, BALONEY, CRAVATS, RAZOR WIT, and IRON MAN.
Clue of note: 21a. [Soccer player tasked with slowing the opponent’s attack]. DEFENDER. We also would have accepted [1981 side-scrolling shooter video game]. This was my big brother’s game back in the day.
A fine puzzle but it’s been done before. 2.75 stars.
Desiree Penner and Jeff Sinnock’s Universal crossword, “Rise and Shine!” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 4/14/25 • Mon • “Rise and Shine!” • Penner, Sinnock • solution • 20250414
Not sure that I completely understand the theme here. We’ve got a central revealer and a bunch of circled letters.
- 35aR [One up before the sun, maybe … or what gets the 66-Across in an idiom and this puzzle?] EARLY BIRD.
- 66a. [See 35-Across] WORM.
And then, sequenced from left to right and bottom to top, there are the names of birds embedded in down entries:
- 39d. [Paragraph symbol] PILCROW (crow). That’s this fellow: ¶. You can learn about it here. I also recommend author Keith Houston’s book Shady Characters., which is significantly more expansive than the series of articles that preceded it.
- 21d. [Spanning] SPREAD OVER (dove).
- 30d. [Meadows of old Hollywood] JAYNE (jay).
- 19d. [Headwear for Laurel and Hardy] BOWLER HATS (owl).
- 13d. [Sadie __ dance] HAWKINS (hawk).
Okay, so. Are the ‘rising’ birds meant to correlate with the rising sun, and therefore the CROW gets the WORM? It seems tenuous to me, yet I don’t see anything else that seems more reasonable. OWLs are nocturnal, but it appears second-to-last, just before the dirunal HAWK. Certainly we aren’t expected to apply evolutionary timelines here (which wouldn’t make sense anyway). CROW is the first alphabetically, temptingly followed by DOVE, JAW, and OWL, but then the HAWK banjaxes that notion. I remain in the dark.
- 26d [Kind of skirt] MINI. 52d [Like a thin dress] SHEER.
38d [Ellipsis part] DOT. Pretty sure ellipsis is also discussed in that Shady Characters book. It’s been about 10 years since I read it.- 44d [20 Questions category] MINERAL. As in: animal, MINERAL, or vegetable.
- 46d [Quiche ingredient] EGG. Proximate to 56a [Ready to be scrambled, say] WHISKED.
- 16a [ __ May, comedy character created by Brenda Ferrari] ETTA. Don’t know about either, but it is a new and different clue for ETTA.
- 20a [Seasonal wind in Southeast Asia] MONSOON. Fittingly accompanied here by RAIN (7d [Wet forecast]).
- 31a [Word after “glue” or “staple”] GUN. Relatively non-violent framing.
- 49a [Loathing] HATING. Site of my one mis-fill, where I hastily entered HATRED.
- 51a [Center of gravity?] VEE. Cute.
Kameron Austin Collins’s New Yorker crossword—Amy’s recap
New Yorker crossword solution, 4/14/25 – Collins
I feel like it’s been a while since a Monday New Yorker took me 8-9 minutes rather than 6 and change. Does it feel to you like the New Yorker has eased up the Monday difficulty of late?
Fave fill: SABBATICAL, MAPLE SYRUP, POTHOLE (my first guess was CAR DOOR for the [Danger for a cyclist], and ICY ROAD, TRUCKER, and probably some other 7s could also work for that clue), CRETACEOUS, ITALIAN ICE, LOST STEAM, TRAUMA PORN (I still haven’t seen 12 Years a Slave; I googled trauma porn movies to see if I could find a list of titles commonly categorized as such … and one of the search results was for Pornhub, which is dismaying as one oughtn’t get off sexually on trauma), CLOUD ATLAS, TREE OF LIFE.
New to me: 32d. [Fourfold win, in betting], SUPERFECTA. I don’t gamble.
Also:
- 25d. [Illness caused by salmonella], TYPHOID. A particular sort of salmonella. Other salmonella strains cause other sorts of food poisoning.
- 15d. [Primordial matter], YLEM. Did we all want OOZE here?
- Spanish corner: 37A. [Luz source], SOL, the sun a source of light. 55a. [Law of La Mancha], LEY.
Really smooth fill overall. 4.25 stars from me.
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1774 — Eric’s review
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1774 — 4/14/25
For the most part, I found this to be on the easier side, though the NW and SE corners both proved to be a little sticky. But it’s a nice puzzle with nothing annoying.
The marquee answers:
- 16A [Love song] SERENADE I needed a few crosses here, as there are lots of things that could be considered a love song.
- 24A [“That’s enough out of you” ] QUIT TALKING I tried QUIT WHINING first, mostly because whiny people annoy me.
- 36A [1939 Lillian Hellman play, with “The”] LITTLE FOXES I had one of the T’s and maybe the F, which made this really easy. If you’ve never seen the film version with Bette Davis and Herbert Marshall, it’s well worth seeing.
- 47A [Drug dispensers] RITE AIDS I’ve never lived in a place where you see this chain, but I knew the name.
- 7D [Roof-top structures?] HARD PALATES The clue is just tricky enough that I didn’t catch on to the “roof of the mouth” angle until I had several letters.
- 21D [Hooch] JUNGLE JUICE
New to me:
- 15A [French physicist André-Marie with an eponymous measurement] AMPERE I knew the last name but not the first.
- 1D [Telegram or Signal, e.g.] CHAT APP Until the double P’s made me realize these were APPs, I thought they were some sort of party game. Now that I think about it, they sound vaguely familiar.
- 3D [Kind of mango] ALPHONSO I don’t know the names of any mango varieties, though I do enjoy a good mango. Between this answer and 15A, the NW corner was probably the last part to fall.
Other stuff:
- 49A [___ chops (beard)] MUTTON Are mutton chops sideburns or beard? Some of both, I guess.
Ambrose Burnside, Union general and three-time governor of Rhode Island
- 53A [Thermopylae victor] XERXES My knowledge of ancient Greek history is weak at best; I tried SPARTA and then THEBES before I decided 31D had to be AFTER TAX.
- 25D [Porcupines and prairie dogs, e.g.] RODENTS We drove around lovely Lubbock this afternoon and went right past several prairie dog towns.
NYT: Really liked the theme. My only nit is that I think of EGGPLANT as one word but I guess EGG is the start of it, so I’ll buy it.
It’s fun for me to think that Baba Ghanouj is considered familiar enough to be a Monday clue– In Arabic, Baba means dad or pop. Ghanouj is hard to translate– somewhere between ticklish, giggly, spoiled, a little picky, but in a cutesy not grumpy way. Definitely a mocking term for a grown male, more affectionate for a little girl.
Some other middle eastern dishes have interesting names. Another eggplant dish- Imam Bayildi, means the Imam Fainted in Turkish (Presumably because it’s very good). Yalanji is used for many dishes that are stuffed and cooked in olive oil (eggplant, kousa, grape leaves/dolma), and means fake or counterfeit, because it has no meat.
Most of the Turkish I know relates to food, backgammon or ways to address relatives (like Abla for older sister).
Most words for eggplant, including aubergine, baingan, melanzane, badinjan, bademjan, brinjella, brinjal and others derive from the Sanskrit “vatin-gana,” which means “curer of flatulence.” I have no idea why the ancients thought that eggplant prevented farting, but the reputation traveled throughout the world. (The story that melanzane comes from mela insana, “apple of madness,” is folk etymology. It actually comes from badinjan via Greek, where initial “b” sounds were replaced with “‘m.” The binomial name is Solanum melongena.)
At one point Elaine thought of writing an eggplant-around-the-world cookbook but she decided there were already plenty of them. I would have loved to have written an introduction about the fartless apple.
Whenever I see a Monday New Yorker puzzle created by Mr. Collins, I usually prepare for quite a workout. However, today’s went quickly and smoothly (for me, at least). A pleasing and unexpected solving experience.
Same here — surprisingly easy for a Monday. But a nice puzzle.
Agreed.
TNY: Agree with Greg. I usually skip puzzles by KAC because they are generally above my pay grade, but I took a chance on this one and I was able to finish it with only one cheat: I was not familiar with Cloud Atlas. Thanks Cameron for a very smooth puzzle!
Is “What’s cracking” really used that much?
Universal:
Cute puzzle, but I’m also at a loss for the full meaning of the theme.
Regarding
“56a [Ready to be scrambled, say] WHISKED.”,
please pardon my lack of eruditon in the culinary arts, but isn’t an egg that’s been whisked already scrambled?
Nope, you whisk the eggs to aerate them, then in the pan you move them hither and thither to scramble them. After whisking they could also be made into, for instance, an omelette.
I think I’d better just stick with hard-boiled… ;)