Friday, August 29, 2025

LAT 8:22 (Eric) [4.22 avg; 9 ratings] rate it
NYT 7:17 (Eric) [3.15 avg; 13 ratings] rate it
Universal 4:21 (Jim P) [2.88 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Emily) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it

Jesse Cohn’s New York Times Review — Eric’s Review

Jesse Cohn’s New York Times Crossword — 8/29/25

A fun, breezy Friday this week, anchored around a pair of 14-letter Down answers (both of which are making their New York Times crossword debuts):

• 17A [Queen’s guard?] KILLER BEE
• 18A [Language whose name consists of four consecutive U.S. state postal abbreviations] MANDARIN I had the -IN and briefly tried squeezing in the Native American language ALGONQUIN. When that didn’t work, I decided to wait for a few more crosses. The states referenced are Massachusetts, North Dakota, Arkansas and Indiana. (But you knew that.)
• 20A [Genre for 5-Down] BLUES/5D [“The Thrill Is Gone” musician, 1970] B.B. KING
• 31A [Plot device in many a rom-com] MEET CUTE I was surprised to learn sometime in the last year or so that the name of this trope goes back until at least 1941. I would have guessed it was a much newer coinage.
• 38A [What fan fiction is not] CANON I’m mildly interested in the genre, but I can’t stand reading poorly-written stuff.
• 49A [Four-star review, say] I LOVED IT Whether four stars equals “love” depends on what the scale is, no?
• 51A [Spitting contest?] RAP BATTLE I just recently learned — from a crossword puzzle, natch — that to “spit bars” is to rap.
• 53A [Manage to lose] EVADE I initially had THROW, having a different sense of “lose” in mind, all the while thinking that “throwing” a game is much more a deliberate action than just “managing to lose.”
• 55A [“Seriously!,” in slang] NO CAP I’ve yet to hear anyone use that phrase.
• 56A [Fighters on the beach in 2023’s “Barbie”] KENS I still haven’t seen that movie.
• 4D [Painting on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, with “The”] THE CREATION OF ADAM
• 15D [Eclipse, for one] CELESTIAL EVENT
• 19D [1980s cartoon foe of Gargamel] SMURF I’ve seen a lot of Smurf references in puzzles lately.
• 32D [Dog’s post-op wear] CONE
• 5oD [High-quality flavoring for salad dressings, in brief] EVOO I believe Rachel Ray gets the credit for popularizing this acronym for extra-virgin olive oil. (Or maybe it’s an initialism; I’ve never heard anyone actually say it aloud.)
• 51D [Inits. of the statesman who said “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly”] RFK Imagine how the world might be different if Robert F. Kennedy hadn’t been assassinated and had beaten Richard Nixon.

Guilherme Gilioli’s Universal crossword, “Silence, Please!”—Jim P’s review

Theme answers are familiar phrases that feature silent letters. Collectively the silent letters spell out the word THING, as hinted at by the revealer “I CAN’T HEAR A THING!” (60a, [Remark at a noisy party, or a theme hint]).

Universal crossword solution · “Silence, Please!” · Guilherme Gilioli · Fri., 8.29.25

• 17a. [Plie and chasse, e.g.] BALLET MOVEMENTS.
• 23a. [“I swear!”] “HONEST TO GOD!”
• 38a. [“I’m OK with that”] “SUITS ME!”
• 41a. [Newspaper features] COLUMNS.
• 49a. [High-end piece of neckwear] DESIGNER TIE.

Cute. The revealer phrase feels a little loose to me, but it works well enough. (Yes, if you’re at a noisy party and can’t hear the person next to you, you wouldn’t say I CAN’T HEAR A THING because the truth is you’re hearing quite a lot of things. You’d more likely say, “I can’t hear a word you’re saying.” But that won’t fit in a grid.)

Six theme answers is a hefty amount to try to squeeze into a grid, so perhaps that’s why we don’t get much in the long fill department. Highlights include FIRE ANT, VIOLETS, PAC-MAN, and a TORRID love affair.

Clue of note: 1a. “A Boy and His ___” (world’s smallest stop-motion film)]. ATOM. See the short video below and read a bit about it on the Wikipedia page.

Solid puzzle. Three stars.

Jeffrey Martinovic’s Los Angeles Times Crossword — Eric’s Review

Jeffrey Martinovic’s Los Angeles Times Crossword — 8/29/25

A neat little visual theme today, in which the circles in the grid aren’t just an indication of special letters, they’re read as a variety of circular things:

• 16A [Programming sequences that don’t end, literally] INFINITE Loops
• 22A [Puzzling field formations, literally] CROP Circles
• 30A [Containers for a comic character’s internal monologue, literally] THOUGHT Bubbles
• 35A [Bling for successful MLB teams, literally] WORLD SERIES Rings
• 42A [Exercise devices for pet rodents, literally] HAMSTER Wheels
• 51A [Toys that are quite hip, literally] HULA Hoops I never did master those things.
• 59A [Weights used for strength training, literally] MEDICINE Balls

I should give that last one the side-eye, since a ball is closer to a sphere than a circle. But I’m impressed by the diversity of the “circles” in the grid and even more impressed by the solid answers that fill those circles to make equally solid two-word phrases.

I have almost no experience writing computer code, so INFINITE didn’t immediately suggest loops. But by the time I hit THOUGHT, bubbles was obvious. I enjoyed figuring out the other “literal” circles.

Other stuff:

• 15A [Invitation on a sealed envelope] OPEN ME I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this, but OK.
• 9D [Original “Star Trek” studio] DESILU My husband and I have watched almost everything in the Star Trek franchise, but it was only a few years ago that we learned that the first one-and-a-half seasons of “TOS” (“The Original Series”) were a coproduction of Lucille Ball’s and Desi Arnaz’s Desilu.
• 29D [“Fiddler on the Roof” wife] GOLDE I’ve never seen that show/movie, but a few letters allowed me to make a logical guess at the name.
• 36D [Tight-fitting lid] DURAG I can’t find it now, but there was an article in The New York Times a few years ago that maintained that anyone who’s ever worn a durag spells it that way.
• 43D [Roof tiles] SLATE Per Wikipedia, “Slate is incredibly durable and can last several hundred years, often with little or no maintenance.”