Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Jonesin’ 5:38 (Erin) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
LAT untimed (Jenni) [2.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 6:04 (Eric) [3.57 avg; 14 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker untimed (pannonica) [3.79 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
Universal 5:47 (Eric) [3.13 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Sophia) [1.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Xword Nation tk (Ade) rate it
WSJ 4:38 (Jim) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Time for an Upgrade” — to a higher status. – Erin’s write-up

Jonesin’ solution, 9/9/25

Hello lovelies! This week’s Jonesin’ grid involves leveling up when it comes to classification. Each of the long down entries features a method of grouping things spelled in reverse:

• 3d. [1947 film set in India with Deborah Kerr as a repressed Anglican nun] BLACK NARCISSUS (rank)
• 20d. [Barometric indicator of upcoming rain, maybe] PRESSURE DROP (order)
• 9d. [Title location for an “Adventure,” per a 1976 interactive text computer game] COLOSSAL CAVE (class). If you want to try your hand at the game, here you go.
• 13d. Snakes native to Southeast Asia but considered an invasive species in Florida] BURMESE PYTHONS (type)

Other things:

• 33a. [Minn. college named for a Norwegian king] ST. OLAF. The fictional version is also Rose Nylund’s hometown.
• 47d. [“You’re killing me, ___” (“The Sandlot” quote)] SMALLS. Patrick Renna, the actor who gave the line, played a game with the Savannah Bananas a few months ago.

Until next week!

Zhouqin Burnikel’s Universal Crossword “Tears of Joy” — Eric’s Review

Zhouqin Burnikel’s Universal Crossword “Tears of Joy” — 9/9/25

A punny title and circled letters — must be Tuesday.

We need to pronounce the title’s “Tears” to rhyme with “airs,” not “ears.” The circled letters, which are all at the ends of the theme answers, are synonyms for “joy” that are “torn” by the intervening letters:

• 17A Plane trip that’s getting off the ground DEPARTING FLIGHT
• 30A [Like bread made with rice flour] GLUTEN-FREE
• 46A [Expresses affection from afar] BLOWS A KISS
• 61A [Moral breach] ETHICS VIOLATION

This a solid theme, though of a type most of us have seen many times. The theme answers aren’t all that sparkly, but they’re OK. One wonders how many other words would have worked as theme answers.

Other stuff:

• 5A [Tarawih prayer leader] IMAM I had no idea what Tarawih (التَّرَاوِيح, also transliterated as Taraweeh) is, but it seemed like a transliteration of an Arabic word and IMAM was a fairly safe bet. Today I Learned the Tarawih are special prayers said only during Ramadan.
• 21A [Condor of “To All the Boys”] LANA That’s not a name I knew, but I’m not the target demographic for that series of movies.
• 53A [Muscles alongside tris] BIS Bis, tris, abs, delts . . . You have the energy and motivation to work out, but you’re too lazy to use the full names of your undoubtedly impressive muscles? C’mon, folks!
• 1D [Area ___ (phone number part)] CODE How necessary is the parenthetical phrase? Does it help anyone get the answer? Area 51, Area rugs, Areaways (which I guess is what you call the outdoor stairs that go down to a basement). There just aren’t many options. Or — and here I’m just exercising my male answer syndrome — are the first three digits of the now ubiquitous 10-digit phone number so divorced from the concept of a geographic “area” that members of Generation Z or  Generation Alpha don’t realize that’s what those numbers once represented?

Marshal Herrmann’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s review

Marshall Herrmann’s New York Times Crossword — 9/9/25

One could make a plausible argument that this puzzle is a relatively-easy playing themeless. One could make an equally plausible argument that it has 74 theme answers out of a total of 74 answers. That apparent contradiction is resolved by 35A [Purchase on “Wheel of Fortune” … or every other letter of this puzzle’s grid] VOWEL.

To make sense of the theme, read “every other letter” as “every second letter” and not as “each other letter.” Put another way, every word follows a pattern of alternating consonants and vowels.

I didn’t see that pattern until I was finished. I can imagine the possibility of writing some computer code to find words that fit this pattern. Maybe you could take the resulting list of words and use it as a custom word list for a puzzle like this? I’ll be curious to learn more about how this puzzle was constructed.

I’m impressed that for the most part, the words in the grid are pretty good entries, including the four grid-spanning entries:

• 14A [Too fanciful] OVER-IMAGINATIVE
• 17A [Fixture above a bathroom sink] MEDICINE CABINET If this were a Friday or Saturday puzzle, this prosaic entry might have a witty or misleading clue, but it’s Tuesday, so no such luck.
• 52A [“Hold that thought …”] MORE TO COME LATER
• 56A [“And switching gears …”] ON A SEPARATE NOTE

Other stuff:

• 26A [Viewing spot for the Grand Canyon] RIM Particularly when seen from the South Rim, the Grand Canyon is an amazing sight. Hike far enough down into it and ceases to feel like a canyon; it’s a desert surrounded by cliffs.
• 34A [Redding who wrote the song “Respect”] OTIS He’s simply one of the greatest R&B singers of the 1960s — or any era.
• 5D [Who rapped “I’ve created a monster, ’cause nobody wants to see Marshall no more”] EMINEM It helped here to know that Eminem’s birth name is Marshall Bruce Mathers III. How can it be that he’s almost AARP eligible?
• 15D [Well-known by everyone] ICONIC Does the fragmentation of pop culture in our time mean there are fewer and fewer true icons, at least in that sphere? Is Otis Redding iconic? Eminem?
• 45D [“The Count of Monte Cristo” author] Alexandre DUMAS Iconic?
• 47D [Soul singer Adams] OLETA Iconic? Not to me, though maybe I did have her name floating somewhere in the back of my head.
• 55D [What might precede Phone, commercially?] AN I As in “an iPhone.” Cute.

Adam Wagner’s New Yorker crossword, “Matchy-matchy” — pannonica’s write-up

New Yorker • 9/9/25 • Tue • “Matchy-matchy” • Wagner • solution • 20250909

This 16×15 themed crossword played just a touch easier than the typical Tuesday ‘moderately challenging’ offering.

Main cohesion of the theme lies in the phrasing of the clues, and the wordplay therefrom:

• 17a. [Pair of socks?] ONE-TWO PUNCH. Fisticuffs.
• 23a. [Pair of sneakers?] MR AND MRS SMITH, who I believe are spies or intelligence agents, per the film.
• 37a. [Pair of chaps?] JEEVES AND WOOSTER. British gents.
• 46a. [Pair of spectacles?] DOUBLE FEATURE. Sure, a film can be a spectacle, so that part works. But does anybody really say “a pair of spectacles”? We say “glasses” or “a pair of glasses” interchangeably, but in my experience it’s just “spectacles”.
• 57a. [Pair of pants?] HUFF AND PUFF. My favorite of the bunch, with 17-across a close second.

• 1d [“Link in __” (common Instagram plug)] BIO. Prevalent across social media.
• 6d [In-law suite, in real-estate lingo: Abbr.] ADU. Oof, not pretty. Internet informs me that it stands for accessory dwelling unit.
• 7d [Chocolate candies with a letter on them] M AND MS. Infringes on the theme, I feel.
• 9d [Second of the Three Musketeers, alphabetically] ATHOS. Took an extra beat because the order ‘Athos, Porthos, Aramis’ is ingrained so deeply.
• 12d [Democratically empower] ELECT. Supposably [sic]
• 16d [Hair you can really see if you squint?] LASH. Points for originality, but I don’t think you can see your own lashes when you squint. Arguably with mascara, ok. Now, when someone else squints you can see their lashes quite clearly, but that isn’t what the clue indicates.
• 26d [Lilies of the high desert] SEGOS.
  
• 36d [Seuss and Dre, for two] DRS. Does this impinge on the theme? It has echoes.
• 58d [Device that generates white noise] FAN, though that is not the intended purpose.
• 59d [“Wherefore __ thou, Romeo?”] ART. I only recently learned that people commonly (and mistakenly) take this to mean “Where are you, Romeo?” as if it were a question of physical location.
• 1a [Vehicle for a coast-to-coast journey] BOAT. I definitely fell for the figure/ground illusion here, but then neckered my way into seeing it correctly.
• 10a [Output of a noisy hotel machine] ICE. Not white noise.
• 21a [Dynamic __ ] DUO. This feels sufficiently removed from the theme.
• 22a [Theatres with a viral 2021 Nicole Kidman ad] AMCS. Plural looks a little weird.
• 31a [ __ fryer] AIR, crossed by 28d [Pump air into, as a plane cabin] PRESSURIZE. hmm
• 53a [Stealthily named kitchen-appliance brand] NINJA. >squints<
• 61a [Dream a little dream, perhaps?] DOZE.
  

Not a bad change-up.

Andrea Carla Michaels’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Adjust the Tint” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: Television shows with titles that begin with colors

THEME ANSWERS:

• 17A [Tom Selleck police series] BLUE BLOODS
• 28A [Kevin Costner TV western] YELLOWSTONE
• 44A [Netflix sci-fi anthology series from Britain] BLACK MIRROR
• 60A [HBO resort-based anthology drama, with “The”] WHITE LOTUS
• 37A [Sketch comedy show that launched Jim Carrey and Jennifer Lopez, and a hint to the titles in 17-, 28-, 44- and 60-Across] IN LIVING COLOR.

Andrea’s byline is always a welcome sight. You can count on interesting and engaging fill and a tight theme.

Interestingly enough, I feel like I recently solved an IN LIVING COLOR themed puzzle. I think it was in the WSJ too… lemme see [searches]… sure thing! July 21! Nothing wrong with different constructors leaning on the same revealer, but given the 1990s throwback subject matter, I didn’t expect the rerun so soon.

Here’s what I said then:

As someone caught between Gen X and Millennial—too old to claim avocado toast, too young to have fully trusted dial-up—this revealer struck a nostalgic chord. In Living Color ran from 1990–1994, and while my memories are fuzzy, I definitely recall the Fly Girls, Homey D. Clown, the Wayans family dynasty, and of course, the truly unhinged Fire Marshall Bill (Jim Carrey before he went full enlightenment guru).

And hey—if it works, it works.

As for these themers, they’re all A-listers. Even if I never touched BLUE BLOODS and still haven’t carved out 60 YELLOWSTONE hours, I know them. BLACK MIRROR is my jam (if you like it, check out Inside No. 9—British, darkly funny, very Roald Dahl). And WHITE LOTUS is some of the sharpest storytelling I’ve seen since Breaking Bad. So: A+ lineup.

FACEPLANTS / DIDN’T KNOW / PLEASE-DON’T-SHAME ME MOMENTS / IRRELEVANT MUSINGS:

• 10A [Fed. agents] T-MEN.Always have to flip a coin between G and T. Are they interchangeable? Don’t care enough to Google.
• 14A [Rainforest vine] LIANA. Welcome to my vocabulary! See you in a Wordle, perhaps.
• 25A [“Well, golly!”] “OH, GEE!” Crossword test: put OH in front of any exclamation and it still works.
• 57A [“Too Much” co-creator Dunham] LENA. Unfamiliar with Too Much. The crossword snob in me wants to say that it would’ve been nice to avoid mentioning other TV titles in this one, but the crossword snob in me is an ass and I don’t much like him.
• 62A HORN. Look at that! LENA and HORN in the same puzzl… oh wait it’s HORN(E). nvmd.
• 2D [Person doing laundry, often] PILER. I’ve allotted myself one playful side-eye in an Andrea Carla Michaels review. Here it is, Andrea.
• 7D [Govt. agency overseeing fairness in hiring] EEOC. I recently had DEI in a published puzzle clued with [Workplace fairness initialism]. The publisher (not the editor) asked for a rewording to avoid the word “fairness.” So there’s that.
• 24D [Cerebral folds that sound like Middle Eastern sandwiches] GYRI. If I ever need to pluralize GYRO, I’m going with this.

3.5 Stars from me. Over the plate, breezy, but lots to like and learn from here.

Amie Walker and Amanda Rafkin’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Jenni’s write-up

A lively Tuesday puzzle! Every theme answer has circles at each end.

Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, September 9, Amie Walker and Amanda Rafkin, solution grid

• 17a [Sweet apple cultivar from Minnesota] is HONEYCRISP. Mmm.
• 25a [Enjoy a clothes-free swim] is SKINNY–DIP.
• 36a [Common Banksy technique] is SPRAY PAINTING.
• 48a [Buttery cookie made with citrus zest] is a LEMON SNAP. Never had one. Now want to make some.

The circles spell HOP, SKIP, SPRING, and LEAP. When I got the first two I thought we were headed into HOP SKIP and a JUMP. Nope. The revealer at 59a is [House of Pain hit that begins “Pack it up, pack it in,” and a description of each set of circled letters] – JUMP AROUND. Nice!

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: never heard of House of Pain and did not know that HONEYCRISP apples hail from Minnesota. Also did no know that YAMAHA is the world’s largest manufacturer of musical instruments.