Jonesin’ 5:54 (Erin) rate it
LAT untimed (Jenni) 
[2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 5:59 (Eric) 
[3.25 avg; 14 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker untimed (pannonica) [3.43 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
Universal 7:13 (Eric) 
[3.13 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Sophia) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Xword Nation tk (Ade) rate it
WSJ untimed (Jim) [3.67 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “There’s a Catch” — you may scramble to get there. – Erin’s write-up
Jonesin’ solution 8/19/25
Hello lovelies! This week we have some weird circled letters in the theme entries…are you feline up to figuring out the theme?
- 17a. [Determining direction] PLOTTING A COURSE
- 27a. [Underwater projectile system] TORPEDO LAUNCHER
- 45a. [Their syllabi last involve a reading list] ENGLISH TEACHERS. And the revealer…
- 61a. [Difficult (and a hint to the challenge of interpreting the circles in the grid)] LIKE HERDING CATS. The circled letters above can unscramble to COUGAR, LEOPARD, and CHEETAH.
Other things:
- 6d. [Bit of “Bob’s Burgers” menu humor] PUN. Here’s a list of the daily specials with explanations.
- 1a. [Enewetak, e.g.] ATOLL. It’s part of the Marshall Islands and still considered radioactive after the nuclear weapons testing there in the 1940s and 1950s.
Until next week!
Eric Rollfing’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s Review
Eric Rollfiing’s New York Times Crossword — 8/19/25
I’m not the target audience for a theme that’s literally as infantile as this one:
- 16A [Catchalls of the insurance industry] BLANKET POLICIES
- 24A [Really giving an earful] RAILING AT
- 36A [Reptile that can reach up to 10 feet in length] MONITOR LIZARD
- 48A [Play Store purchase] MOBILE APP We’re an Apple household, and I didn’t immediately recognize “Play Store” as the equivalent to Apple’s App Store.
- 58A [Catchphrase of a classic MTV show … or a hint for the starts of 16-, 24-, 36- and 48-Across] WELCOME TO MY CRIB MTV Cribs originally ran from 2000–2010; it was apparently revived in 2021 for a single season. I would have guessed that the original run was earlier than that, as I vaguely remember the show but didn’t have MTV after about 1992 or 1993.
The theme answers all work well enough, but the only one that grabs me is MONITOR LIZARD. I like encountering reptiles in my yard or when I’m hiking, though I’ve never wanted one as a pet. But the theme holds together and will probably amuse many solvers.
The five theme answers don’t leave much room for longer Down answers — the longest two are eight letters, and those each cross three theme answers, which limits the words that would work in those slots. 10D RAINGEAR is a bit ho-hum, but 37D ODDBALLS is kind of fun. (I feel seen.)
Other stuff:
- 15A [Job perk that might accumulate] LEAVE I worked for the Texas Legislature for almost 30 years. The pay wasn’t great, but we got an hour of compensatory leave for each hour we worked over 40 a week — and my bosses were great about making sure we could actually use it.
- 20A [Reine’s counterpart] ROI I don’t know why I read the clue as Spanish when I know it’s French.
- 21A [Country that produces surprisingly little Muscat wine] OMAN “Surprisingly” only if you don’t think about the fact that Oman’s official religion is Islam, 95% of Omanis are Muslim, and Islam forbids the drinking of alcohol.
- 7D [Color whose name comes from the Greek word for “cuttlefish”] SEPIA See, you can learn something even from a Tuesday puzzle. (At least I can.)
- 25D [Winner of four World Cups] ITALY Germany also has won the FIFA World Cup four times; Brazil has won it five times.
Rachel Glover and Jeffrey Martinovic’s Universal Crossword “Shades of Gray” — Eric’s Review
Rachel Glover and Jeffrey Martinovic’s Universal Crossword “Shades of Gray” — 8/19/25
I found this a little more challenging than I’ve come to expect from Universal puzzles. That’s not a negative, though. The theme is such that the theme clues don’t make sense until you understand the revealer:
- 17A [*Possible result of static] CLAMBERING
- 23 [*Convincing] COTANGENT
- 34A [*Top-tier] ATE ALONE
- 40A [*Ill] SPIN-KICK
- 49A [*Future husband] FIRE DANCE I can’t see FIANCÉ without imagining Holly Hunter in Raising Arizona.
- 58A [Like someone who would understand the starred clues’ answers with ease?] COLOR BLIND Aha! We have to ignore the colors in the theme answers (which are themselves valid words) to make sense of the clues. That’s almost a New York Times Thursday-lite level of trickiness. (I used to have a boss who couldn’t distinguish between red and green. Not a big deal, but he was reviewing legal drafts that had been marked up in red and green pencil, and it was helpful to know who had made which changes.)
I greatly appreciate that the theme answers are valid words with or without the colors. One of my many pet peeves is crosswords is answers in a grid that aren’t legit words.
I got off to a slow start by blanking on a few “trivia” answers that should have come quickly but didn’t:
- 4A [Wolfgang Puck restaurant] SPAGO
- 9A [David of philosophy] HUME
Other stuff:
- 14A [Boring tool] AUGER I have no mnemonic to help you remember the drill-like tool from the verb meaning “to portend a good or bad outcome.” You’re just going to have to learn it. Sorry.
- 37A [Liquid holding, perhaps] ASSETS If you’re not up on your accounting jargon, liquidity refers to the ease of selling an asset.
- 64A [How bear is said to taste] GAMY I misread the clue and saw “beer” instead of “bear.”
- 9D [Plants that healers and chefs use] HERBS I lost a bit of time here thinking that the answer would be a specific plant.
- 10D [Strikers’ positions?] UNION JOBS A cute clue that’s probably lost on anyone who doesn’t follow association football.
- 24D [Knight of Arthurian legend] GAWAIN It’s been 40 years since I read Le Morte d’Arthur. There are probably other Knights of the Round Table with six-letter names, but I didn’t hesitate here. Wikipedia reminds me that Gawain is Arthur’s nephew.
- 50D [ ___ Spalko (“Indiana Jones” villainess)] IRINA Cate Blanchett played her in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I never saw that one. The Temple of Doom was so dumb we abandoned the Indiana Jones series. But Raiders of the Lost Ark was a lot of fun.
Kyle Dolan’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Jenni’s write-up
I had no idea what was going on and wasn’t even sure what the theme entries were until I got to the revealer. It’s still a Tuesday-level solve.
Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, August 19, Kyle Dolan, solution grid
- 3d [Potential basketball assist that hits the floor] is a somewhat stilted clue for BOUNCE PASS. OTOH, there wasn’t any un-stilted way to clue it without using the word PASS.
- 7d [Fast-food pickup location] is the DRIVE–THRU WINDOW. I really don’t like the THRU spelling. I know, I know, language evolves. Still.
- 9d [“Quiet!”] is ZIP YOUR LIP. I have mostly (solely?) heard it in the plural, ZIP YOUR LIPS. The Ngram viewer suggests that I am out of date.
- 28d [Kitchen gadget often used on oranges] is a JUICE PRESS.
And the revealer: 31d [Like some protein-rich snacks, or what can be found in 3-, 7-, 9-, and 28-Down?] is HIGH ENERGY. BOUNCE, DRIVE, ZIP, and JUICE are all high in the answers. Nice!
What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: that DAEWOO is no more. I also wasn’t familiar with the term Z–SNAP, although I have seen the gesture. And apparently it’s some kind of programming thing so I can’t find a video.
Brooke Husic’s New Yorker crossword — pannonica’s write-up
New Yorker • 8/19/25 • Husic • solution • 20250819
According to my own sense of difficulty, this week’s Tuesday offering is just a micronotch below the advertised ‘moderately challenging’ level. Each section seemed to have an entry or two that I simply didn’t know, such as:
- 36d [New York Liberty star Sabrina] IONESCU.
- 10a [Indonesian poet Hamzah] AMIR.
- 40d [Biblical sister of Aaron and Moses] MIRIAM.
- 31a [Hit line dance that DJ Casper originally wrote as a routine for his nephew’s aerobics class] CHA CHA SLIDE.
- 14a [Message again … and again] TRIPLE TEXT.
That last one was easy enough to reason out, but I needed some crossings.
- 1a [Jewel case?] SAFE. Nothing to do with CDs. Those jewel cases were a waste anyway. Not recyclable, fragile, heavy in the aggregate. My CD collection is significantly lighter and more compact since I transferred the non-digipak/digisleeve releases into thin sleeves. Highly recommended.
- 5a [Portions of a magic-mushroom chocolate bar, say] DOSES. Interesting clue framing.
- 17a [Moves overseas, perhaps] OUTSOURCES. I had a little subject-object confusion.
- 20a [Marks where piercings used to be] SCARS, though it might have been SCABS; had to wait.
- 28a [“I’m __ Girl” (first track on Beyoncé’s “Renaissance”] THAT. 45a [Charli XCX song whose title completes the lyrics “You always said, ‘It’s okay to cry’ / … __ cry”] SO I.
- 30a [Many posts in an Instagram feed] ADS. Well that doesn’t sound fun.
- 36a [Pizza, pasta, polenta, et cetera] is just ITALIAN FOOD.
- 50a [Utter a mantra] CHANT.
- 52a [Blog-feed format, for short] RSS. BlueIris, did you ever get that working? Has it been useful?
- 54a [Question from a latecomer] WHAT’D I MISS? For a time I was trying to make WHAT DId I work.
- 57a [Words on a meme depicting a man and his sleeping partner] WAKE UP BABE. I believe including the image is now passé; it became so familiar that just the words are enough.
- 59a [Tiny birds considered prophetic by the Druids] WRENS. Crosswords always reminding me that WRENS are quite small.
- 7d [One might close with a snap] SECRET HANDSHAKE. Got the HANDSHAKE part rather easily, but was then considering that “snap” might indicate a photograph to commemorate some historic deal.
- 10a [Love, in Hawaiian] ALOHA. Kind of an all-purpose word, much like shalom or a little like prego.
- 13d [Makes clear?] RESETS. Was definitely thinking about ERASES.
- 25d [Stroll, in the Southwest] PASEO. Had no idea it was regional. If anything, I figured it was more of a European thing.
- 29d [V, for X] HALF. In two ways, right?
- 33d [Start to the names of some juice blends] CRAN-. One of my first bits of fill.
- 34d [Term sheet?] INDEX. I don’t completely understand the clue.
- 41a [Go unnoticed] PASS BY.
- 47d [River through the Himalayas] INDUS. I should have known this, but needed a few crossing letters to see it.
Jonathan Raksin & Jeff Chen’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Field Goals” — Jim Q’s write-up
THEME: Aptly described careers… Dad jokes really :)
WSJ • 8/19/25 • Tue • “Field Goals” • Jonathan Raksin • Jeff Chen • solution • 20250819
THEME ANSWERS:
- 20A [Person who’s driven to a fault?] SEISMOLOGIST
- 29A [Person who’s down for the count?] CENSUS TAKER
- 37A [Person who’s well-intentioned?] OIL TYCOON
- 49A [Person who’s drawn to scale?] MOUNTAINEER
- 57A [Person who’s bone-headed?] FOSSIL HUNTER
All winners to me. This is a puzzle after my heart. No revealer necessary, just solid, very corny jokes. I like that fault, count, well, scale, and bone consistently change definition from the base meaning. The last one is a bit of an outlier as the clue doesn’t describe the FOSSIL HUNTER’s magnetism to the line of work, but no biggie. The first four are tied for my favorites.
NEW TO ME / MISSTEPS / THINGS I PROBABLY SHOULD’VE KNOWN:
- [Jones who played Truman Capote in 2006’s “Infamous”] TOBY. I knew of neither TOBY nor the movie “Infamous.”
- [Caterwaul] YOWL. Hoping that “caterwaul” sticks around in my vocab. That’s a fun word.
- [Disquieted feeling] CHAGRIN. Despite using this word often enough in the
RYU. Why so angry?
phrase “Much to my CHAGRIN,” I don’t think I could’ve told you a definition for it.
- [Piece of cake] SNAP. Had SLAB. Then something else cake-related that I can’t remember now. Stared at SNAP for longer than I should have before realizing that we were going for a synonym for “easy.”
- [1970s TV show with a Shaolin monk in the Old West] KUNG FU. I’m guessing there was no panda in this one.
- [Street Fighter protagonist] RYU. I played this game quite a bit. Don’t remember RYU. Did he have blond hair? Nope. That was Ken.
OTHER THINGS:
- AHA is almost symmetrical to OHO. That makes me happy.
- ADD IN as a yogurt option brought my back to TCBY. Remember that chain? I don’t even see that in crosswords!
- Should [Net sales] for E-TAIL be clued with a question mark? Easy enough, but still feel like it’s asking for one.
- “The Terror” on AMC. I watched the first episode on a plane. Not for me.
4 stars!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
It’s a tragedy that we now put a mobile in a crib.
Not a mobile device; a traditional mobile sculpture.
Fortunately Jeff and I got a dad joke-friendly reviewer today. We are both firmly in that demo ourselves, so the brainstorming for this one came very naturally. Thanks for the kind words, Jim.
WSJ: This was my jam, for sure. (Originality? ok perhaps 3/5, but execution, clueing and fun would each be 5/5, for me.) A slight Gen X aroma wafted in from Nirvana’s IN UTERO, ESSENCE magazine — and KUNG FU finally clued for the TV series!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvu5YcmYhSQ (unsure who will remember this opening credit sequence)
Also, I thought [Person who’s bone-headed?] being a FOSSIL HUNTER was consistent, for the “Field Goals” theme, fwiw. She’s “headed” for the bones, much like a SEISMOLOGIST is “driven” to a fault – no?
Finally, from this puzzle, I’d randomly guess you’re both terrific dads. ;-)
NYT: I guessed what the theme was before I hit the revealer — which meant nothing at all to me! My age is showing.
On the other hand, when I saw the clue ‘netminder’ I immediately tried to think of web-related terms.
TNY: Continuing a recurrent pattern, today’s was a mite harder than yesterday’s. A lot of guessing required, though it all made sense. TRIPLETEXT seems completely random, and I don’t understand the clue for OUTSOURCES. WAKEUPBABE is a meme? OK then. But I did know CHACHASLIDE, because of the funny SNL sketch with John Mulaney. The SE corner was last to fall, with the INDEX/XIAO cross my last square.
Re: OUTSOURCES – A company that moves production of some product or component from its own domestic factory to an overseas supplier is outsourcing that work.
Re: TRIPLE TEXT – It’s a “thing.” Some people will send the same text twice (double texting) or three times in rapid succession in order to grab the recipient’s attention and/or convey a sense of urgency. I think it’s always double or triple – I haven’t heard of quadruple texting.
Re TNY: the puzzle’s difficulty was all in the names, lyrics, memes and other trivia that were unknown to me. This is my least favorite style of puzzle, for sure. But even with all the unknowns, it took me just a few seconds longer than the NYT, so to me it seemed a lot easier than “moderately challenging.”
Another unfavorite TNY for me, for sure.
Oh, INDEX makes sense if you think of an index as as a sheet (i.e., a page) of terms, with the page numbers where they occur. Of course, that seems to require a 1-page index.
” ‘Surprisingly’ only if you don’t think about the fact that Oman’s official religion is Islam,” Isn’t that a bit unfair to the NYT? Surely the clue isn’t ignorant of the fact but playing on it. (Incidentally, if I follow the etymology correctly, the word doesn’t actually derive from the capital of Oman, but is rather related to “musk,” which isn’t calling Muscat malodorous but rather has independent origins.)
Yes, I interpreted “surprisingly” as “ironically,” and of course everyone involved with the puzzle knows why.
There are three candidates for the name muscat, which is actually a group of dozens of grape varieties. The city of Muscat is one. “Musky” is another. Nutmeg in Italian is noce moscata, “musky nut,” and the grape is moscato. The third is that the floral scent of the grape attracts flies, musca in Latin.
Another irony is that a favorite red grape in Australia is Shiraz, probably not related to the city in Iran. The grape is used in France and many other wine-growing regions although it is usually called syrah there. A member of our extended family is named Shiraz. As he is Pakistani, I assumed his family had some connection to Iran. When I asked him about it, years ago, he said, “No. My father likes the wine.” That was surprising.
That was interesting and informative (as always), thanks! (I took “surprisingly” less ironically, more like “surprisingly given its name,” where the speaker would be totally legit.)
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Well, this puzzle was a pleasant surprise on a Tuesday morning! A very well-executed theme, a clean grid, some clever clues, and a little more push-back than the usual Tuesday puzzle.
I had absolutely no idea about the MTV show, and had to wait for crosses to get CRIB, but that turned out to be more entertaining than if I’d known the answer of the top of my head, I think. For me, it was a surprising revealer that tied the theme answers together in an unexpected way. Nice work, Mr. Rollfing!