LAT 4:00 (Stella) 
[3.86 avg; 11 ratings] rate it
Newsday tk (pannonica) [4.10 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
NYT 4:46 (Sophia) 
[3.50 avg; 14 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Matthew) 
[2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Matthew) 
[2.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
WSJ tk (pannonica) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Ryan Judge’s New York Times crossword— Sophia’s recap
New York Times, 08 23 2025, By Ryan Judge
Sophia here covering for Amy on the Saturday! I really clicked with this puzzle – I think this is my second fastest Saturday time ever? So I’m curious if this plays on the easier side for other folks, or if the constructor and I were just on the same wavelength. It helped that I was able to drop in 1-Across COBRA POSE straight away – the cross-reference with YOGIS really helped me out by letting me know that there likely wasn’t wordplay in the clue, and then I was off to the races.
By far the most trouble I had was with the central MY JOB HERE IS DONE. I couldn’t figure it out, jumped down to the bottom of the grid, and worked my way back up to the middle. It’s a great answer, made all the more apt by being one of the last entries I put in the puzzle.
Other thoughts:
- Lots of great tricky clues today, as there should be on a Saturday. My three faves were [Product pitched by a pitcher] for KOOL-AID, [Hit list] for TOP FORTY, and especially [Noted line in Buddhism] for DALAI LAMAS. I really thought this was going to be a buddhist mantra or something!
- On the other hand, I found the clue of [Purr-fect adoptee] for RESCUE CAT to be very easy, especially for a longer Saturday answer. Really cute though!
- JUMPED IN crossing MAIN gave me big “hanging out with friends while playing Smash Brothers” vibes. In gaming, your main is the character that you play as the most – In Smash, I’m a Bowser main, to my own detriment.
- Even though it makes sense as a reverse of “carpe diem”, I’d never heard of CARPE NOCTEM clued as [“___ noctem” (motto meaning “go enjoy the night”)]. Pairs well with the clue [Night to remember, perhaps] for EVE.
- I feel like everyone’s forgotten about the movie “Minari” already so it was great to see Steven YEUN clued in reference to it. Probably my top movie of 2020!
- Other fun callouts: PLEASE DO, VEGAN BACON, EVIL GENIUS, YEA OR NAY.
MY JOB HERE IS DONE – off to CARPE noctem! Have a good weekend everyone!
Matthew Stock & Willa Angel Chen Miller’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 8/23/25 by Matthew Stock & Willa Angel Chen Miller
This puzzle is everything I could ask for from a Saturday. It put up a fight and there are clever-as-hell clues all over the grid. Too many to list them all, in fact, but here are some of the best IMO:
- 12A [Shared loads?] is INTERNET FAMOUS. This one had me fooled into thinking it was asking for a noun that related to a community responsibility for such a long time. In fact, if something is “shared” online by “loads” of people…wow, loved it!
- 16A [Game that’s over in the blink of an eye] is a STARING CONTEST, which was easier to unravel than the above clue, but still very cute.
- 52A [Paperwork to let someone go] is PERMISSION SLIP, which, similarly to 12A, had me fooled for a long time. I had the ERM and figured it must be something TERMINATION-related. (I also thought “that’s kinda dark…” until I realized it wasn’t at all.)
- 54A [Class with a mean teacher?] is AP STATS. Get it? A statistical mean!
- 11D [Peter Pan’s destination] is a BUS STATION. This is the kind of entry that, if an editor were looking at an unclued grid, might be deemed “not sparkly enough,” but I think the clue makes it a real treat to figure out. You think it refers to something like NEVERLAND, and instead it’s referring to Peter Pan, the bus company.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
I struggled to get a foothold in this puzzle, probably because of the tricky cluing, although some of it was plain ignorance on my part — e.g EDWIN and YEUN. And I finished with an error which I couldn’t ferret out: I had YEA OR NAE. I know it’s not right, but it didn’t look wrong, probably because of all the NAEs we’ve stuck in puzzles.
MY JOB HERE IS DONE is definitely my favorite entry, followed by EVIL GENIUS.
And Sophia, that solve time is nothing short of amazing, at least from the standpoint of mere mortals.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
I had WHATSDONEISDONE for a while which set me back–struggled at the top, but the rest was very quick for me.
Tough NYT for me — decidedly not on my wavelength, with lots of names that I had to puzzle out one letter at a time.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
I thought this was going to be a tough puzzle because the start was rough, then it suddenly went very fast. The difficulty seemed about right though.
Did anyone else catch a subtle baseball theme? (Reference to sports radio, “pitche(d/r)”, MITTS, EDWIN Diaz, Men’s College World Series, more?). I am not as experienced as most around here…are such themeless themes common? Coincidence?
Puzzle: LAT; Rating: 5 stars
I don’t understand the low ratings on the LAT puzzle. It was very difficult for sure, but some of the most clever clues I’ve come across in a single puzzle.
Puzzle: LAT; Rating: 5 stars
Agree 100%
Ditto … Unlike many puzzles I really struggle with, this one didn’t seem to get its difficulty from proper nouns. There’s lots of clever cluing leading to “aha” moments, as opposed to “I’ve never heard that name/title/slang term before” moments.
NYT: also super fast for me. Got slowed down just a bit in the SW corner, but otherwise went very fast. Dropped in 1A right off the bat. Only entry I didn’t love was MY JOB HERE IS DONE; I’ve always heard MY WORK HERE IS DONE, which doesn’t fit. Anyway, still a fun albeit very fast Saturday.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=My+job+here+is+done%2CMy+work+here+is+done&year_start=1990&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=1&case_insensitive=false
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
I had MYWORKHEREISDONE until the end, when I realized I’d neglected to add the D without realizing it. Finally erased it and put in JOB and everything else fell into place. I agree though — I’ve never heard “my job here is done.”
missing pannonica’s stumper review
smooth for me except i was hung with sao pedro instead of sao paulo for a bit
deleting paulo solved that problerm and my time was slightly under my average
Yes, I am missing it, too! She’s the authority! It was a bit of a slog for me — not as hard as the hardest, but not as easy as the easier ones. Re: Sao Paulo, I was helped by knowing that it was St. Paul. I got that one, “PT boat,” and “Renee” early, which helped those areas. However, “ad blitz” and “howitzer” eluded me for a long while, so the lower right and upper left were my last areas to fill.
Oops, I thought I’d arranged coverage for my write-ups today.
I assume a misunderstanding happened. We missed you! :)
P.S. Thanks to Dave’s help, I got the RSS feed working, so I got your reply notification in a pop-up! :)
huzzah!
I can whip something up if there’s still a demand. Solve time 25:01 (just now).
Yes, there’s still a demand, please!
Took me a long time, and I finished with an error – the crossing of PANNED and PUREE. I had filled in BANNED, and didn’t check the cross to see if it made sense.
Didn’t care for plural LENTS. Pretty tortured language in the clue for 38-D – “Put a salt?” I’m not convinced that HOWITZERS “consume” shells. ONE-TO-ONE seems like it should be ONE-ON-ONE.
Liked QUILL PEN, ZAMBONIS and SCRATCH AN ITCH.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
I only know that grid-spanning central phrase as “my work here is done” which obviously wouldn’t fit. A bit of research shows that the form changing “work” to”job” is a common meme, but its one I’ve never encountered, either online or IRL. So that felt off to me, even though it will seem fine to those who are familiar with the meme.
Very mixed feelings about this puzzle. So much trivia! So many names! But also a fair number of really good, tricky clues, as Sophia has already noted. And in spite of all that, I found it very easy for a Saturday — my time was almost identical to yesterday’s, and I thought yesterday’s was on the easy side for a Friday. So, in spite of its highlights, kind of a let-down in terms of Saturday expectations.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
My wife is not a crossword solver at all. But she is big into stationery. So when I was having trouble with 23D, I thought “click” in the clue might be referring to a pen and showed her the grid to see if she knew what the brand was. Figuring out it was NIKON was quite disappointing.
Sophia, are you a competitive crossword solver? That time is just inhuman. It took me around 20 minutes. Still enjoyed it, though. I didn’t think it was unfair or gunky or anything like that.
Puzzle: LAT; Rating: 4 stars
LAT: “Classic rock singer” is a stellar clue for SIREN.