BEQ 12:07 (Eric) 
[3.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Fireball untimed (Jenni) 
[2.50 avg; 1 rating] rate it
LAT tk (Gareth) 
[3.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
NYT 9:08 (ZDL) 
[4.21 avg; 17 ratings] rate it
Universal 5:43 (Eric) [4.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
USA Today 11:27 (Emily) rate it
WSJ 9:39 (Jim) [3.71 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
Peter Gordon’s Fireball Crossword, “Themeless 178” – Jenni’s write-up
This puzzle gives us the sort of chewy enjoyment we’ve come to expect from Peter’s themeless offerings. There’s a bit of obscurity, some misdirection, a nearly matched pair of answers to start and end with, and a lot of material for my “what I didn’t know” segment.
Highlights:
Fireball, May 14, 2025, Peter Gordon, “Themeless 178,” solution grid
- The bookends in the NW and SE that I always look for are there today. 1a [Like some tomatoes] is SUN–DRIED and 62a [Oddments] is SUNDRIES.
- 17a [Phrase that may cause you to shake] is IT‘S A DEAL.
- A younger friend who teaches the literature of playwriting told me how he approaches Margaret EDSON‘s “Wit” with his students. He pointed me toward this play-reading and panel discussion presented by UC Irvine Medical School.
- 37d [“Stop right there”] is DON‘T EVEN. I enjoy answers that have an inflection in my head, and because I’m a child of the 1970s it also made me think of this
- I found the crossing of Ronnie MILSAP and Jimi Hendrix’s LA WOMAN amusing.
What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: did not know that Agnes means CHASTE. Had never heard of NIAMEY so I didn’t know it was the most populous city in Niger, and I have only heard ELLY De La Cruz’s name on the radio, never seen it in print, so I had to run the alphabet (or at least the letters that have the same sound) to get the answer to that one.
Christopher Youngs’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Utter Hogwash”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases that feature the bigram IT two times each. Every instance of IT is squeezed into a single square as hinted at by the revealer FULL OF IT (50a, [Spouting nonsense, like 10 squares in this puzzle]).
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Utter Hogwash” · Christopher Youngs · Thu., 5.15.25
- 18a. [Mandarin, e.g.] C(IT)RUS FRU(IT).
- 20a. [Capital midway between Doha and Baghdad] KUWA(IT) C(IT)Y.
- 34a. [Financial cap] CRED(IT) LIM(IT).
- 39a. [Mulberry Street’s neighborhood] L(IT)TLE (IT)ALY.
- 54a. [Component of some domestic coverups] K(IT)TY L(IT)TER.
It’s always a surprise to stumble upon a rebus puzzle in the WSJ since they don’t run very often. This one’s fairly standard as far as they go although having two instances in each theme answer ups the game a fair amount and puts additional constraints on the crosses. But the execution here is excellent and everything flowed smoothly. (Although Thursday-level cluing and having to input the rebuses took a toll on my time.)
I’m impressed with the smooth fill despite six theme answers and all those IT crossings. And we still get highlights like TREADMILL, LAND ROVER, and especially Boris KARLOFF. I needed all the crossing with SCHMOS because I just couldn’t parse it, not because it’s bad fill.
Clues of note:
- 1a. [Small denominations]. SECTS. Tricky start to the grid. Thinking money, I went with FIVES. I bet a lot of other solvers did too.
- 37a. [Heads up]. SOARS. No hyphen in the clue means this isn’t a noun.
- 1d. [One might not come out in the wash]. SOCK. Good misdirection here. Couldn’t think of anything but stains, not the ubiquitous singleton.
- 9d. [Artless nickname?]. STU. I enjoyed this cryptic-style clue.
- 49d. [Balance providers]. ATMS. Anyone else try ARMS here? Just me?
Good puzzle. Four stars.
Annemarie Brethauer’s Universal Crossword Puzzle “Split Jump” — Eric’s Review
Annemarie Brethauer’s Universal Crossword Puzzle “Split Jump”
There’s a bit of wordplay with the revealer that I like. Three pairs of answers begin or end with circled letters:
- 17A [Cinematographer’s concern] CAMERA ANGLE/19A [Donkey Kong or King Kong] APE
- 28A [Classic tough guy role] RAMBO/30A [Not cooked all the way] UNDERDONE
- 44A [Genre that blends samba and jazz] BOSSA NOVA/49A [Extremely: Prefix] ULTRA
The revealer 59A [Certain school vacation … and a hint to this puzzle’s theme] SPRING BREAK ties it all up; the circled letters all spell synonyms of “spring” in the jumping sense: respectively LEAP, BOUND and VAULT. I liked that SPRING BREAK refers to the season, not the motion.
The grid seems a little choppy, with 23 three-letter answers (if I counted correctly). It’s rare to see the eighth row (in the middle) divided into four three-letter slots; maybe it’s just my sense of grid aesthetics that’s mildly offended.
I lost a bit of time with 43D [Largest African country] ALGERIA, where I too confidently had NIGERIA for a while. (By area, Nigeria is nowhere the largest African country; it is the largest African country by population.) I realized my mistake when 42A [Civil rights advocate Roosevelt] had to be ELEANOR.
There’s some fresh-feeling fill that I liked: 4D ICE CUBE, 11D PAPUAN, 45D ORNATE, 47D OH CRUD.
Simeon Seigel’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up
Difficulty: Easy (9m08s)
Simeon Seigel’s New York Times crossword, 5/15, 0515
Today’s theme: DOUBLE NEGATIVE (Statements that can be seen as positive … or a hint to interpreting 17-, 26-, 49- and 62-Across)
- TIED(YES/[NO+NO])HIRTS
- R(YES/[NO+NO])EED
- L(YES/[NO+NO])OAP
- HAWKE(YES/[NO+NO])TATE
Figured out the vertical NO rebus angle pretty quickly, but took me a minute to realize you need to string two of them together to make it a YES. Ironically, a NO–NO is always understood to still mean “ixnay”.. the second NO reinforces, rather than reverses.
Cracking: EVES DIARY, once banned for depicting the titular character in the buff (presumably her ficus leaves were at the dry cleaner’s)
Slacking: MEAT EATER, take advantage of being the first creature in history capable of surpassing your biology
Sidetracking: I’ve basically been waiting this entire write up to post the definitive take on DOUBLE NEGATIVES
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1783 “Slap Stick” — Eric’s review
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1783 “Slap Stick” — 5/15/25
Understanding today’s theme was a three-part process:
- Part One: Notice that there are three areas in the grid with four circled letters atop four other circled letters.
- Part Two: Realize that the upper circled letters are always STEP and the lower circled letters are always RAKE.
- Part Three: Contemplate the puzzle title and the placement of the circled letters to see that we’re STEPping on a RAKE, in a classic slapstick gag.
The STEPS and RAKES are stuck in some interesting words, few of which I remember seeing in other puzzles:
- 21A [Frozen pie choice] CELESTE PIZZA As much as I enjoy pizza, this took me a bit to get because to me, “pie” suggests a sweet dessert. Also, since most of the pizza we eat is homemade (it’s not that hard to make!), I’m not up on frozen pizza brands. (Until I googled it, I thought Celeste was a type of pizza like “Pizza Margherita,” not a brand.)
- 24A [Short-billed rail] CRAKE I appreciate the “short-billed” in the clue, since without it, I wouldn’t have expected the answer to be a bird.
- 38A [Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bret] STEPHENS The name is vaguely familiar; he’s a commentator for NBC News and has a column in The New York Times. His 2013 award was for commentary when he wrote for The Wall Street Journal.
- 42A [Some nightshades] MANDRAKES The New Oxford American Dictionary says these plants have “a forked fleshy root that supposedly resembles the human form and was formerly widely used in medicine and magic, allegedly shrieking when pulled from the ground.”
- 53A [TV junkies’ “holy grails” that weren’t archived] LOST EPISODES
- 61A [It may be pulled in a car, for short] E-BRAKE “E” as in emergency. I’ve never heard it called that before; maybe it’s a train thing? (I’ve ridden subways and commuter trains many times, but never lived anywhere where either was a commuting option.)
It’s a nice theme that helped me solve the puzzle. I prefer the two answers where STEP is split across two words, even though those were a bit harder to parse.
Other stuff:
- 18A [Cowboy’s rope] RIATA Will Sam Ezersky ever accept that in Spelling Bee?
- 29A [Leatherneck] MARINE Someday I will remember that a “leatherneck” is not something like an oil field worker. But not today.
- 34A [Chinese brew] OOLONG TEA I had TEA and couldn’t get the first part because I expected it to be something less familiar to me. I much prefer coffee to tea.
- 8D [___ und Pfeffer] SALZ I recognized the German for “pepper” but either didn’t know or didn’t remember the word for “salt.” Now I’m curious as to why the Austrian city Salzburg, which I know as Mozart’s birthplace, is named after salt.
- 11D [Piggies that go “whee whee whee” all the way home] LITTLE TOES It’s always nice to have a longish gimme.
- 28D [“Shameless” star] JOAN CUSACK As wonderful as she was in that show, I’d hesitate to call her the star. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences seems to agree, as she was nominated five times (and won once) for that role, in the category of Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
- 30D [Saison alternative] ALE “Saison” is French for “season” (as in spring or summer), but it’s also a type of beer that I’ve not tried.
Noelle Griskey’s USA Today Crossword, “Tall Tale” — Emily’s write-up
Sit a spell and listen.
USA Today, May 15, 2025, “Tall Tale” by Noelle Griskey
Theme: each downs themer contains —TALE—
Themers:
- 9d. [Astronomical event that can be seen with solar viewers], TOTALECLIPSE
- 18d. [Severely costly mistakes], FATALERRORS
- 21d. [Resources available for cognitive efforts], MENTALENERGY
A variety of themers in the set with TOTALECLIPSE, FATALERRORS, and MENTALENERGY.
Favorite fill: REDEYE, NOLIE, and STROLL
Stumpers: EASYAS (needed crossings), CRUDER (needed crossings), and FIDGET (needed crossings)
A more challenging puzzle for me today. How’d you all do? A lovely grid with lots of fantastic fill, though I found the cluing trickier but everything was fairly crossed.
4.0 stars
~Emily
I figured out fairly quickly that it was a rebus with yes/no somehow embedded, but it took me a while to get the NONO (= yes) gimmick. Very clever and enjoyable.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
v cute nyt. loved the theme; took a minute to suss out the YES vs NONO. disagree that MEAT EATER was slacking though. sort of wish that it and DINO had both been clued as “T. rex, for one”
did feel like the puzzle skewed older with BYRD clued via a 60-year old song, a Mark Twain story, a basketball star who retired 30 years ago (although did coach until 13 or so years ago), “I’M HIP”, the ALOU baseball players of the last century, etc. Heck most 20-somethings have probably never FAXED something. Only reasonably “modern” slang i saw was BFF.
That said I think it’s fine for some puzzles to skew older just as others do younger, etc. but this one is probably approaching (although not over) the limit for me.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Some of us ARE older. 😊
Maybe, but I hate when “you have to be older to remember this” becomes instead “only old people give a damn about something that happened in the past.” I don’t think any of us will remember the Alou brothers from life rather than crosswords or, for dedicated sports fans, the record books. So it’s trite, not old. And Mark Twain? This one’s a bit obscure for my taste, but interesting all the same, and I swear I’ve read and returned often to Huckleberry Finn because it’s a more than a classic, really the one essential work of American fiction and the key to American writing’s history (and we debated a long time at work about what to include in an American lit anthology when we came to it), not because it was a best seller when I was 20. I suspect younger people do know what a fax is or what hip means, and bars sure play a lot of oldies from the time of the Byrds, but there I’ll leave it to you whether they’re plain boring. But please, a plea for the past. Without it, there’s no such thing as literature as opposed to best sellers and pod casts. Are you sure, regardless of your age, you want that?
“I don’t think any of us will remember the Alou brothers from life rather than crosswords or, for dedicated sports fans, the record books.”
My guy, I’m a Cubs fan who watched Moisés Alou play for them. Just because he isn’t familiar to you beyond crosswords doesn’t make it true for everyone else.
And we got him next in San Francisco.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
Loved the theme and revealer…
As a fellow Cubs fan/freak, Moises Alou is also forever tied to an infamous figure in Cubs history: Bartman.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
Loved the Alou brothers.
“My guy.” Nice to know, thanks. I realize my sports knowledge is deficient, and I was mostly going by age. The surviving (eldest brother) is 90, and I was thinking a fan would be close to that age. If someone dissing a puzzle thinking it solvers in their 80s would, I think, be kinda silly.
But if he is remembered, all the more reason to think it’s not a fair criticism. But then I do realize they’re probably used a lot for the same reason Yoko Ono is, vowels. (Another legit motive that shouldn’t have people complaining about age, for that matters.)
To put it another way, I’m sorry if you were ticked off, but bear in mind that my point wasn’t in the least to dismiss the Alou brothers. Quite the opposite. It was that some things are worth remembering, even if I don’t remember them in the same way, just as I don’t have to have been alive in the late 16th century to think Shakespeare is worth remembering. And forgetting that wouldn’t make better crosswords.
+1
A brief Alou family history in baseball:. The three brothers (Felipe, Matty and Jesus) played between 1958 and 1979. All three were in the major leagues from 1963 through 1974, all three briefly played the outfield for the Giants in 1963 and all were distinguished players. You’d pretty much have to be at least in your 5os to have seen any of them play (as a 65-year-old lifelong baseball fanatic, I remember all of them very well). Felipe’s son Moises was a Rookie-of-the-Year runner-up, a 6-time All-Star and had a couple of MVP-caliber seasons between 1990 and 2008. 30-something baseball fans should definitely know him from personal experience. Another son of Felipe’s (Luis Rojas) managed the Mets in 2020 and 2021.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming
Yeah I’m not sure how this skews older. Nobody would be mad about including LINCOLN even though he died over 150 years ago.
I’m even a sports hater and I don’t mind ALOU or HART or ISIAH Thomas being referenced. I live in a society surrounded by this knowledge, it’s perfectly fair to reference things I’m disinterested in, or too young to have witnessed firsthand, or whatever.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
For 22D (“With an air of haughtiness”), I had SNOTTILY and couldn’t figure out how TOTT was a movie dog.
A couple of months ago, I noted here that Kyle hadn’t reviewed a TNY puzzle at all in many weeks. Before that, he’d sometimes posted late in the day, by which time I’d no longer saved the puzzle and couldn’t use the review, but now he’d seemed unlikely to contribute at all. So I felt I had to ask whether we were simply imposing on him, which is unfair.
I didn’t add that it also imposed on those here who solve that puzzle and rely on this Web site for its accustomed purpose and practices, since I didn’t want to be dumping on the poor guy. Honest.
Amy wasn’t convinced, and a week later Kyle did post a review. But it was really just an apology for not having time that week for more than the completed grid. Now it’s been another 5 or 6 weeks with nothing at all, with “t/k” at least as late as the next day. So you sure this is fair to him, us, or Crossword Fiend itself? And why bother with “to come” if it’s never coming?
FWIW, I’m not a big fan of Wednesday TNY puzzles, with their leap from early-week cultural references to a “beginner’s puzzle” that most of us can fill in without thinking. But this week’s was unusually lively, a convincing case that an easy puzzle can have virtues, too. It’ll never be a fave of mine, but then TNY never is.
I agree that this one had teeth. And the minis are sometimes really tough lately! Maybe Kyle would be interested in writing about those.
NYT: BFF, ERA, ESP, DEA, PEDI, DINO, DAS, SSN, HSN?
Just a single “NO.”
Not sure what’s especially wrong with any of those.
Nothing especially wrong with any of those. But nine of them in one puzzle?
Mr. Shortz was running out of ways to say “abbreviation for …”
(But I did think the theme was fun.)
I’m fine with nine abbreviations in one puzzle if they’re fairly common abbreviations that people use, and I think these all qualify. At most maybe DAS could have been clued as the German word, but whatever, the plural of DA didn’t bother me.
It’s outdated abbreviations or initialisms that don’t show up often outside of puzzles (like LST or NLER) that bother me more.
NYT: Very nice Thursday with little resistance.
Not sure why the MEAT EATERs are always judged by the carniphobes here. I don’t criticize your kale shakes and plant-based patties of whatever.
Enjoy your food!
All of us have our share of opinions and convictions—both significant and trivial—and it’s ok to express them.
Really nice theme and execution at the NYT. I didn’t remember that this was the HAWKEYE STATE and didn’t know that slow pokes were also POKES, and maybe the grain source was a bit out there, but totally fair to push me a wee bit on a Thursday. Nice one!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
Clever theme.
I don’t find the 3-letter entries particularly bad, but I don’t want to see SETAE in a crossword. Random Latin words should not be in a grid, like you can’t put ATROX in a grid and then clue it as “Atrocious in Ancient Rome”. That would be atrocious. SETAE is atrocious.
Setae is listed in the abridged, M-W 11 desk dictionary. It’s an English word. Atrox isn’t.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
Sorry to disagree about setae, but along with being a clever twisty theme, I learned a new word which doubles (no negative) my enjoyment of this puzzle. I did not know that word, and I love geckos.
You can also read up on Van der Waals forces!
Thx… I did read up. Will have to read again to fully grasp, but AI does mention geckos as an example :) .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_der_Waals_force#Use_by_geckos_and_arthropods
Geckos *are* cool. We occasionally had them inside our house in Austin.
I wasn’t sure SETAE was correct, but I know what “seta” means and SETAE seemed like a reasonable guess, especially as it gave me SHOP (which I would have expected to be WOOD SHOP).
BTW, “seta” is Italian for silk. In Latin, it meant bristle or hair, and morphed in Italian to the word for silk. I knew that because of the Rossini opera, La Scala di seta, The Silken Ladder. Here’s the lovely overture.
Puzzle: WSJ; Rating: 4 stars
Nice puzzle with some good cluing misdirection.
BEQ: There are salt mines near Salzburg. Fun tour.
Thanks! I did not know that, and if the Wikipedia article about Salzburg mentions the mines, I missed it.
Puzzle: WSJ; Rating: 3.5 stars
Can anyone explain 23A to me? Clue: Role-players bagful. Answer: Dice.
Does this refer to a role-playing game where you roll dice? Thx!
Yes. Lots of role-playing games use special dice sets. Here are some examples.
TY for the quick reply Martin, and I can always count on you to clarify things for the great unwashed like me, lol!