LAT untimed (pannonica) 
[3.20 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
NYT 5:57 (Amy) 
[3.50 avg; 19 ratings] rate it
Universal 3:38 (Jim P) [3.00 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Emily) rate it
Fritz Juhnke’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s write-up
NY Times crossword solution, 7/25/25 – no. 0725
It’s an unusual grid, intentionally so. All the black squares form the shape of a T, and the last Across clue is 59A. [Abstain … as suggested by the black squares in this puzzle], TEETOTAL. Now, teetotal is a loose interpretation of that, but playful isn’t a bad thing in crosswords.
Fave fill: “I CALLED IT!”, STUDY DATE, LATE SHOW (the key words of the title of Stephen Colbert’s show), SKIN TAG, ATE LOCAL, “NO CAN DO,” AHA MOMENT, POLAR BEAR, SLYBOOTS, DIAL SOAP, OCTAHEDRA (but would rather not have OCTET in the same puzzle), HEAT WAVE, COLUMBO.
Five things:
- 1A. [Whack to the head, in slang], DOPE SLAP. I think this slang came about after I’d reached adulthood.
- 19A. [Like Queen Elizabeth, but not Queen Camilla], REGNANT. QEII ruled Britain, while Queen Camilla is married to a ruler.
- 42A. [When repeated, something often said to be “deep”], DOO. Doodoo! Not accepted in NYT Spelling Bee. See also: turd.
- 49A. [Shrub with a “staghorn” variety], SUMAC. Did not know that. You know what else has a “staghorn” variety? Ferns. Coral. Clubmoss. The fish called sculpin.
- 1D. [Region of a plane bounded by a circle, in geometry], DISC. I do not remember learning this in high school!
3.75 stars from me.
David Ding’s Universal crossword, “Show Me the Proof”—Jim P’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases whose final words could also be synonyms of “a tall tale”, more or less. The revealer is “I DON’T BELIEVE IT!” (50a, [“That’s not true!” … or what you might say about the end of each starred clue’s answer?]).
Universal crossword solution · “Show Me the Proof” · David Ding · Fri., 7.25.25
- 19a. [*What you might find interest in?] SAVINGS ACCOUNT. Good clue, but unless it’s a HYSA, you’re probably not getting much interest in there.
- 33a. [*Stereotypical toy for a cat] BALL OF YARN. We’ve found that a champagne cork with its odd shape makes for a great toy.
- 41a. [*”All of Me” singer who’s the second-youngest EGOT winner] JOHN LEGEND. The youngest being Robert Lopez, who co-wrote Frozen‘s “Let It Go” among other things), and who remains the only double-EGOT winner.
Solid, although the word “account” doesn’t necessarily imply any falsehood to me. The other two, sure, suggest some amount of exaggeration if not outright pretense, but someone’s “account” of an event is usually what they believe to be true. At least, that’s how I’ve most often heard the word used. But of course, what someone believes to be true doesn’t make it true, so the entry still works.
I enjoyed the quick solve and the long fill, especially LIP-SYNCED, GO FOR A JOG (though I opted for GO FOR A RUN first), POLARIS, and SIESTAS.
Clue of note: 5a. [“Jurassic Park” beast, for short]. T-REX. I went with DINO since the T-REX had only a small (though memorable) role in that film.
Smooth, clean grid. Three stars.
Dan Schoenholz’s Los Angeles Times crossword — pannonica’s write-up
LAT • 7/25/25 • Fri • Schoenholz • solution • 20250725
A phonetic theme. Plural words ending with an ēz syllable are reparsed as two words.
- 17a. [Baseball player who flirts with joining the Kansas City squad?] ROYAL TEASE (royalties).
- 31a. [Release vital agricultural workers?] FREE BEES (freebies).
- 37a. [Sound of a job seeker who ran hard to get to an appointment on time?] INTERVIEW WHEEZE (interviewees).
- 46a. [Precaution for absent-minded drivers?] TWIN KEYS (Twinkies).
- 64a. [Coast Guard’s desire after a hurricane warning?] VACANT SEAS (vacancies).
Liked but didn’t love this idea. AT least all the pronunciations work well enough for me.
- 4d [Airport express lane, briefly] TSE PRE, which looks wild in the grid.
- 11d [Promising time in public broadcasting?] PLEDGE WEEK. More important now that PBS, NPR, et al. have been defunded. If you consider such outlets worthwhile.
- 30d [Male-dominated society] PATRIARCHY. Let’s work on that some more.
- 41d [Capital of Zimbabwe?] ZEE. Kind of thought this would be ZED.
- 53d [Writer’s angle] SLANT. Could be figurative or literal. 29d [Author] PEN.
- 23a [Three-in-one vaccine, familiarly] DPT, not MMR. Diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus.
NYT: “OCTAHEDRA (but would rather not have OCTET in the same puzzle).” A few years ago, I would never be noticed something like that, but tonight I hesitated slightly to put in OCTAHEDRA because I was certain OCTET was correct.
I found this a little more challenging than recent Friday NYT puzzles, especially in the NW corner.
I wondered if these words were a sly wink to the OCTET of T shapes in the grid.
I thought the same.
That’s an interesting idea. I also hesitated when OCTET was at 2D and OCTAHEDRA was just a few clues away at 10D; it didn’t seem like it would have been necessary to have both of these in the same puzzle, let alone so close together. But if it had been intentional, that makes more sense.
I didn’t notice until just now that the only black squares in the whole grid are the ones in the eight black T’s, which increases the elegance of the grid. The T’s are all pointing towards the center, which also improves the look of the pattern. I don’t usually note the grid appearance, but this one is quite nice.
Eastern seaboard Boy Scouts know staghorn sumac. We made “pink lemonade” with the staghorn berry clusters.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Yes and strangely enough, that’s where I learned the word DRUPE.
I enjoyed most of this one, SILENT ES notwithstanding.
Cool, didn’t know about that lemonade!
SUMAC can be a great spice. There’s a Jordanian recipe with chicken, sumac, onions and pinenuts that’s really tasty.
I make Iranian kabobs, koobideh, so always have a jar of sumac on hand. Years ago, in an Iranian restaurant, I asked the waitress how to say sumac in Farsi. She looked at me like I was joking. That’s when I learned it’s an Arabic/Farsi word.
We’ve been on this forum for how many years? You still manage to crack me up.
Of course you make Iranian kabobs, koobideh… Of course you keep sumac in your pantry…as well as staghorn berry clusters.
WSJ: I found the meta very solvable for a Mike Shenk puzzle. Just pay attention to the prompt.
Of course, this assumes that I got the correct answer.
As usual, I haven’t a clue.
Last week, when I spotted the meta in 3 minutes, I knew I was going to regress to the mean this week. And well, I don’t have an idea this time.
I guess I have to stare at the puzzle for an hour more.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
NYT: nice Friday. Just enough bite.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
I love the classic Friday themeless and lively grid spanners, so in that respect I was disappointed. But it was still a good solve and much less frustrating than Thursday.
Also there were a TOTAL of 20 TEEs, if you were curious.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
I love it. Not too challenging or easy, but I still had to google 3D to finish NW and the grid.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
NYT: A wonderful Friday puzzle, really enjoyed all of the long across answers. But maybe some other math geek can help me with 1D: I taught high school mathematics for 10 years, and I never encountered “disc” as defined in this clue when I taught Geometry . The only time I saw discs was when I taught volumes of revolution in AP Calculus (note to Amy: you probably don’t remember this definition of disc because you were never taught it 😎)
NYT: I thought this was an excellent Friday puzzle with lots of great fill and great shape.
NW last to fall for me as well. Was not familiar with REGNANT (I was thinking where’s the P?!) but that was gettable when MEGA, PETA(BYTE) didn’t work out.
I was a math major: never heard of DISC as used.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2.5 stars
NYT: This was tough for me. DOPE SLAP? SLY BOOTS? EPICNESS? Okay.
I asked my GenZ kid about DOPE SLAP, and she also thought that was made up, so whatevs. Not our lingo.
Have literally never heard of SLY BOOTS, but at least it was gattable with crosses.
It’s vaguely familiar to me, though I couldn’t say where I might have picked it up. A sort of cousin to ‘bossy boots’…
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
I think of SLY BOOTS as British. Nice that it crosses LOO, and is near the British queens.