LAT 3:36 (Stella) 
[2.50 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
Newsday 16:08 (pannonica) 
[3.70 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
NYT 5:35 (Amy) [3.67 avg; 15 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Matthew) [3.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Matthew) 
[4.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
WSJ untimed (pannonica) 
[2.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
Aidan Deshong & Akshay Seetharam’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 8/9/25 – no. 0809
On the easy side for a Saturday, I thought. The NW and SE corners are a little bit cut off from the rest of the grid, but I found the clues easy enough to jump around.
Fave fill: cronchy CROSTINI, CUT AND PASTE (crisp clue, [Move around from here to there]), “JUST BECAUSE,” EASTER CANDY (there are fresh Brach’s jelly beans in my house), IRVINE (because my cousins went to UC Irvine), SPORCLE (SporcleCon is in Chicago next weekend, pondering if I should go), SKULKS, JAMAIS VU (sort of the converse of deja vu), IPHONE CASES, SAND CASTLES, THE WIRE (still haven’t watched it!), and COSTCO.
Three more things:
- 43A. [Literature Nobelist who wrote “Siddhartha”], HESSE. Was this a standard high-school English class assignment for Gen X? We read it for class.
- 9D. [“The only ___ is mediocrity”: Martha Graham], SIN. This interesting quote clue would make me dance, except it would be mediocre dancing so I mustn’t.
- 24D. [“La Cousine ___” (Balzac novel)], BETTE. Did not know or remember this title. I have recently seen two Bette Davis movies, though! All About Eve and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
David Karp’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 8/9/25 by David Karp
If you add up my times from the last two LAT Saturdays — 2:36 and 2:23 — you get 4:59, which is one second less than I spent on just the one LAT Saturday from three weeks ago. Now we’re back to a more normal level of difficulty this week — not too easy, not approaching-Stumper-levels hard.
- 17A [Game whose object is to get lots of hits] I had never heard of MUSIC BINGO and thus was never going to get this without a bunch of crossings, although it’s totally inferable from the clue.
- 25A [Story that may remain unfinished] is a clever clue for ATTIC.
- 62A [Tale that may be told with a fire in one’s eyes] is also clever for GHOST STORY.
- 5D [Drinks made from two kinds of beans] is MOCHAS. I liked this one; it took me a while to figure it out, and then it was nice to think through that this meant coffee beans and cacao beans.
- 6D [Rockie start?] is an AT-BAT. I didn’t like this clue — even with the question mark, IMO calling an AT-BAT a “start,” when “start” has a specific pitching-related meaning in baseball, is too loose.
- 24D [Hockey fan’s intermission experience, perhaps] is ZAMBONI RIDE. I have 0 knowledge of hockey, so I had no idea that fans sometimes get to get on the Zamboni. That’s pretty cool, although not sufficient motivation to make me go to a hockey game.
- 43D [Capital city in Província da Estremadura] is LISBOA. I’ve watched enough Drag Race España to know that Spain has an autonomous community called Extremadura, which in turn gave me enough information to realize that “Estremadura” must be Portuguese, not Spanish. (Although now that I look at the clue again…even if you don’t know it from “Estremadura,” you ought to be able to get it from “da” where Spanish would use “de.”)
- 58D [Threenager, e.g.] is TOT. I absolutely love the modern coinage “threenager,” which I first learned from this Care and Feeding column. Apparently toddlers do not stop being terrible once they stop being two! Therefore, I love this clue.
Gary Larson and Amy Ensz’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Make a Bee Line” — pannonica’s write-up
WSJ • 8/9/25 • Sat • “Make a Bee Line” • Larson, Ensz • solution • 20250809
Today we’re simply prefixing the letter B to familiar words and phrases.
- 25a. [Radar operators?] BLIP READERS (lip readers).
- 27a. [Fight fixers?] BOUT RIGGERS (outriggers).
- 106a. [Customs declarations?] BORDER FORMS (order forms).
- 111a. [Boring Catholic services?] BLAND MASSES (landmasses).
- 4d. [Incompetent sailors?] BOAT FLAKES (oat flakes).
- 16d. [Farm-raised sardines?] BRED HERRINGS (red herrings).
- 65d. [Irish Potato Famine era?] BLIGHT YEARS (light years).
- 76d. [“Fire in the hole!”?] BLAST WORDS (last words).
Not much theme material for a 21×21 grid. With the first few relevant entries, I thought they would all be lines of work, acknowledging the full title and giving more coherence to the theme. These two factors, plus some notably clunky inflections in the fill, didn’t really endear the crossword to me.
Said inflections: 47a [Parent, e.g.] REARER, 102a [Cut again, as the lawn] REMOW, 7d [Scope customer] GARGLER, 34d [Wind and water, e.g.] ERODERS.
- 52a [Composer of a symphony known as “The Palindrome“] HAYDN.
- 58a [Figured (out)] SUSSED. I was under the impression that to suss something out meant that one learned of something, but mw.com supports the clue as is.
- 60a [Bluer than blue] X RATED. 15d [In a blue state] SAD.
- 66a [Sill sunner] PET CAT. Kind of blah.
- 75a [Harvard grad] CANTAB. Vaguely remembered this, but needed crossings.
- 77a [Talks foolishly] BLITHERS. Neither BLATHERS nor BLABBERS. Crossed by 64d [Worthless talk, slangily] BILGE, which I feel doesn’t need that ‘slagily’ qualifier.
- 81a [Planet’s busiest woman?] LOIS LANE. The Daily Planet newspaper. Why busiest?
- 118a [Russian duo with the 2003 hit “All the Things She Said”] TATU. Known to me only via an earlier crossword appearance.
- 2d [“Higher” singer Cruz] TAIO. New to me.
- 11d [Shorten in the cutting room] EDIT DOWN. I’ll allow it.
- 55d [Small denominations] SECTS. not CENTS.
- 59d [“Swing __ Hammer” (Harry Belafonte album)] DAT.
- 99a [Snowboarder’s jump] OLLIE. It’s a move basic to both snowboarding and skateboarding.
- 103a [Character on poison warning stickers] MR YUK. The old skull and crossbones was probably too cool-looking.
- 105d [Like some chatter] IDLE.
- 109d [Performer who might be trapped in a box] MIME. Well, not literally. 96d [Apparently do] SEEM TO.
Matthew Sewell’s Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up
Newsday • 8/9/25 • Saturday Stumper • Sewell • solution • 20250809
Managed to post a decent time thanks to several inspirations and leaps!
My solve was pretty much all over the place at once—in fits and starts of course—but finally ending up in the top center.
- 9a [Org. promoting “Serving Success”] USTA, the United States Tennis Association. I thought it might be some charity organization, or even a veteran’s group.
- 14a [Rosetta Stone characters] ETA. Had to wait to find out which Greek letter this would be.
- 18a [Point of foul play?] POLE. Baseball. 51d [Round-tripper rewards] RBIS. 40d [Hit shows at county fairs] DERBIES.
- 19a [Pedestrian] MEAT-AND-POTATOES. One of my solving leaps. Got it with just a handful of crossings.
- 23a [Grunge-y group] GEN X. Considered GEES.
- 24a [It’s handled in the kitchen] TEAPOT. Considered TEA SET.
- 38a [Cold __ ] ONE. Meh.
- 39a [Sign of falling down on the job?] HARDHAT AREA. Nice clue. Fortunately I had the first H from the gimme 24d [Monitor with a red needle] TACH, plus a couple of other crossings. Still, another leap that paid off.
- 43a [Did the wave?] EELED. Not understanding this.
- 46a [“Mein __ Marquis” (Die Fledermaus aria] HERR. Eventually guessing this correctly after several tries was, no exaggeration, the key to my filling in the entire grid.
- 50a [Model power source] RUBBER BAND MOTOR. Had the MOTOR part early enough, but needed crossing help to see the first part.
- 55a [Sand “mine”] AMOI. George Sand. Clue definitely had me thinking of beaches.
- 60a [Elle alternative] NELLY. Nicknames, not magazine titles.
- 61a [Banners of the Charleston Era] DRYS. Tricky clue.
- 62a [Correspondence come-back] SASE, not SAME. I should have paid more attention to the odd hyphenation.
- 2d [Reunion rendition] ALMA MATER. Is that also term for a school song, or is there another sense of rendition happening here? … Aha, consulting a dictionary shows me that, yes, it can also mean a school’s song.
- 4d [Metaphoric height] STRATOSPHERE.
- 5d [Zebra crossing?] VELDT. The D from MEAT-AND-POTATOES worried me, but since I had to embrace it, a little brainwracking paid off, allowing me to finally complete this last section of the grid.
- 6d [Riding high] AT A PEAK. meh.
- 7d [What many a salad requires] MAYO. eww. I’ll continue making my tuna salad with mustard instead.
- 9d [Fuzzy number] UMPTEEN. Another pivotal entry to my solve.
- 13d [Upside-down map] PAM. Just a simple word reversal, and the cryptic-style clue in this crossword. I idly considered this as an answer very early on but dismissed that, only returning to the thought when the grid was nearly complete.
- 21d [Corn mazes, hayrides, etc.] AGRITAINMENT. New portmanteau to me, but fairly gettable. I was sold on -TAINMENT early on.
- 27d [Quick game] DEER. Never a fan of calling animals ‘game’.
- 31d [Word from Old English for “hut”] COTE. Learned something. Full etymology from m-w.com: Middle English, “dwelling of a rural laborer, hut, shelter for domestic animals, as a pen or coop,” going back to Old English, feminine weak noun, “dwelling of a rural laborer,” going back to Germanic *kutōn- (whence also Middle Dutch cote “hut, pen for animals,” Middle Low German kote, kotte, kate), by-form of *kuta- — more at COT entry 1
- 32d [Becomes tired] GOES STALE, not GETS STALE.
- 49d [Security in many an IRA] T-NOTE. Sticking the first T without yet knowing whether the answer would complete with NOTE or BILL was helpful in getting 48a [Real-time loggers] STENOS, which helped break open the entire southeast section of the grid.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Quite easy for a Saturday– finished with Wednesday time. Loved that stack of long answers in the middle. JUST BECAUSE is a great entry (and a very annoying answer in real life).
Nice cluing!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
What a delight this was. It was just challenging enough that I couldn’t blast through it – I still beat my average, but well short of my PB. Fantastic and clever clues that made me laugh repeatedly. Interesting fill all over the place. Nothing that felt forced or subpar, or made me roll my eyes or scowl at my iPad. And all this from a couple of college students.
I think this is my favorite of the year so far.
NYT: “I have recently seen two Bette Davis movies, though! All About Eve and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”
Amy, go for the trifecta! My husband was watching a scene from The Little Foxes at breakfast a few weeks ago, and even with the sound off, Bette Davis was so much fun to watch.
Really fun puzzle, marred slightly by the WALUIGI/AW C’MON crossing. (If you’re not up on your Mario characters, the W could just as easily be an H.)
I loved seeing JAMAIS VU, which I picked up from Catch-22 decades ago. If you’ve never read it, do yourself a favor. It’s a very funny book.
OH C’MON before ACCOST became clear. Then AH C’MON.
WALUIGI – very unfortunate in an otherwise nice puzzle.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 1 star
If I never see another Mario reference in a puzzle, I can die a happy man. This was junk.
Agree that WALUIGI can retire from xwords forever. It could just as easily been HALUIGI because all I know are Mario and Luigi and will never know any more.
Nice confidence building Saturday for me!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
eh i disagree. mario and friends have been around since what late 80s? early 90s?
they’re as much a part of pop culture know as other phenomena that started then.
easy lovely Saturday for me 4.5stars
As a tall, gangly dad who does not automatically let his kids win at Mario Kart, WALUIGI is my go-to driver. If I can slog through clues about mythology and Shakespeare and international bodies of water, you can handle video game characters.
Agree with Grumpy. And heck, this puzzle had so much of Nintendo it may as well have been a theme puzzle, albeit a very dull theme. Also (agreed) an easy Saturday, even for someone who knows diddly about Mario.
I can’t recall whether I knew JAMAIS VU before. Interesting. And of, if I never see Mario again, I hope I can vote for at least a couple of fellow cuts in Shortz’s pantheon.
Fun puzzle—my 1000th in a row, too! Really liked it. I don’t play video games, but I’ve heard WALUIGI from comedy podcasts, so I felt pretty confident about it.
And I agree about Catch-22; it’s my favorite novel that I read in undergrad, and it’s a really interesting piece of fiction. I wasn’t sure if I want to go back to it; [politics rant]after the 2016 election, I was reminded of Catch-22, where the novel turns and the ridiculous characters become sinister[/rant].
NYT: Puzzle was OK, but a little heavy on the names, I thought. And some of the cluing seemed questionable to me. To wit:
‘American in Paris’ — French people don’t say YANK, do they?
‘Series of mental blocks’ — TETRIS. Why ‘mental’?
‘Parts of cassette players’ — SPOOLS are in the cassette, are they not?
I thought the same thing. And I’m really ambivalent about this puzzle.
Some of the longer answers, and some of the misdirects in the clues, were very good. I particularly liked JUST BECAUSE and CROSTINI.
But the entertainment trivia left me cold (my last entry was the “w” in WALUIGI) and some of the clues were just trying too hard. I especially object to “mental blocks”: they are images on a screen; they’re “mental” only in the same sense that every image you perceive is a mental construct. But your point on tape SPOOLS is well taken, too.
This was very easy for a Saturday, made slightly difficult only by the trivia and the questionable clues. So I give it a “meh”.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
The day I see my last Nintendo character in a puzzle will be a good one! But enjoyed this one otherwise. (Wrote this before I saw Mr. Grumpy’s similar comment.)
Welcome to the club!
Re Stumper: It was an eye-opener for me that “cote” derives from Old English, while “hut” derives from Old French. I would have bet (and lost) that it was the other way around.
I think EELED refers to the way eels move through the water in a wave-like fashion.
Re: Sounds good to me! That’s my thought, too.
Puzzle: LAT; Rating: 1 star
LAT Really!: 31D Rawr crossed with 38A Mwahaha. Never seen before.
Stumper: Agree with pannonica, as usual. Just my tough area was the upper right — “spoon” eluded me for the longest time, until I thought of “spoon-fed.” I was floundering for a while, but then surprisingly got “alma mater” and “stratosphere” from only three or so letters each. I luckily have heard of “agritainment” before — lots of fall corn mazes, etc. near me — so that was another one I got with only a few letters.
Question: I sometimes forget to check back for answers to questions and mentioned it here. A mention was made of an RSS feed, so I installed a browser plug-in for that, but where/how do I sign up for it here?
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 4.5 stars
pannonica lives in my head
this puzzle took me way too long, it was the kind that when i began doing stumpers i would have just stopped after 10 minutes with a few words here and there, feeling stupid
but i have learned to keep going for that ultimate satisfaction of seeing the confetti drop with no cheating
it took me twice as long as my average time, but felt really nice to finish
sewell makes nice stumpers, thanks, lad
Stumpers are definitely an acquired taste!
Not sure how to interpret this!
BlueIris: You can find a link to the RSS feed on the righthand margin of the DoaCF website page, under the Meta header. It’s called “Comments feed”.
OK — I clicked that and it wants to know what to do with a file ( application/rss+xml ). I tried Open, but then it wanted to know what program to open it with.
Hi, if you email me at [email protected], I can walk you through the process. Please let me know what app you downloaded to read the RSS feed from this site.
Dave
Thanks! Will do. I put BlueIris in the subject line so that you’ll know it’s me. :)
Stumper: You’re overthinking the clue on ALMA MATER. A “rendition” is a word people use when referring to songs (not just school songs): e.g., “Here’s my rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” And a school reunion is where you’d sing the alma mater of your school.
Yep, I understood that.
LAT: I have celebrated Passover for nearly every one of my 70 years, and I never buy egg matzos because they are decidedly not crispy – in fact, much of the time they are downright soggy. I suppose a box that is specifically earmarked for matzo brei wouldn’t be too bad, but that recipe wants the matzo to be soggy.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Do yourself a favor and watch The Wire, Amy! It’s truly one of the best—and my opinion the best—dissections of post-industrial American society on the screen.
Sunday Puzzles.
Power is out in our lovely town again and won’t be on until late. I’ve copied tomorrow’s files to a cloud server. I have to post the links as separate replies to avoid tripping the security feature here.
https://www2.shmwc.org/wp250810.pdf
https://www2.shmwc.org/wp250810.puz
https://www2.shmwc.org/ucs250810.puz
https://www2.shmwc.org/uc250810.puz
Power is back so normal links at Today’s Puzzles should work.
Thanks!
In the WSJ, I didn’t know MR YUK as opposed to a skull, and its crossing with TATU wasn’t welcome. I eventually remembered DOMO arigato, so I didn’t have to worry that I don’t get the joke of a MIME in a box. I did get LOIS LANE but like Pannonica wasn’t convinced by the “busy” clue. I didn’t know 420, but here crossings were fair. I wanted the missing first two letters of a Neil Diamond song lyric to give NO SIREE because that’s what I feel about him.
I still don’t get the reasoning in “Fire in the hole,” although I do understand how B + LAST WORDS works out. I’m also still puzzled by the geography in NNE. No doubt some points in the Bronx are to the east of some points in Brooklyn, but a decided minority.
Puzzle: WSJ; Rating: 2 stars
Mike Shenk may be a very good crossword creator, but his editing bothers me almost as much as Stan Newman’s. To wit, 81a: Planet’s busiest woman? Answer: Lois Lane
Why did Shenk omit “Daily” from prefacing the clue? And with apologies to the two creators, Gary Larson & Amy Lenz, I am deducting 1 star from the puzzle’s rating.