Monday, September 15, 2025

BEQ 14:38 (Eric) [3.00 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
LAT 1:59 (Stella) [3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 2:49 (Sophia) [4.00 avg; 13 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker 7:27 (Amy) [2.32 avg; 11 ratings] rate it
Universal untimed (pannonica) [2.00 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (?) rate it
WSJ N/A (Jim Q) rate it

***The WSJ puzzle will feature an entire week of metas to celebrate its 10th Anniversary of puzzle publication. The puzzle suite will be written about as a whole once the meta answers are released***

Matthew Stock and Michael Lieberman’s New York Times crossword — Sophia’s recap

Theme: THERE’S NO I IN TEAM – The names of baseball teams without the letter “I” are embedded within the theme answers

• 17a [Ingenious fix (San Francisco)] – ELEGANT SOLUTION (San Francisco Giants)
• 27a [Hotel discounts for conventioneers (Pittsburgh)] – GROUP RATES (Pittsburgh Pirates)
• 49a [Brief appearances by A-listers in films (Baltimore)] – CAMEO ROLES (Baltimore Orioles)
• 63a [Coaching axiom suggested by 17-, 27- and 49-Across] – THERE’S NO I IN TEAM

Happy Monday, baseball fans! I’m a huge Seattle Mariners fan, so this puzzle was right up my alley. The theme gets more elegant the more I look at it – I like that the constructors limited themselves to only one sport, although it could have been cool to have some other baseball-specific answer (“mlb”?) somewhere else in the puzzle to make the distinction clearer. All the teams cross over both words in the answer, too. My favorite entry is the grid-spanning ELEGANT SOLUTION, but GROUP RATES and CAMEO ROLES are nice finds too.

Another layer of elegance – If I’m not mistaken, these are the only baseball teams that would work for this puzzle. I can think of “Rutgers” for the Detroit, uh, Tgers, but that doesn’t follow the same “the team crosses multiple words in the answer” pattern. If there are others, put them in the comments!

Other thoughts on the rest of the puzzle:

• The puzzle played pretty easy for me today, but I did have an incorrect answer right at the start: “tiara” for [Headwear for a monarch] rather than CROWN
• ONION BAGEL and OIL PASTELS are standout down answers, and I also liked PEGASUS, SALTINE and KAHLUA.
• [Reason for teens to rent a limo] for PROM – is this a real thing people do or is it just in movies? I went to a small high school, but not a single person brought a limo for prom.
• [A red cross, for the American Red Cross] for LOGO – I just learned on Jeopardy! this week that the logo originated as an inversion of the Swiss flag in honor of the founder of the Red Cross, who was Swiss. Pretty cool!
• Favorite clues: [Brain ___ (low-quality internet content)] for ROT, [Common origami bird] for CRANE

Freddie Cheng’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Los Angeles Times 9/15/25 by Freddie Cheng

If this puzzle were an ’80s pop song, it would be “Things Can Only Get Better” by Howard Jones. Old-school style, there’s no revealer; it’s just that if you take the last word in each of the puzzle’s four longest answers, you get, in order, WORST, BAD, AVERAGE, GOOD, BEST:

• 17A [Half expecting a terrible outcome] is FEARING THE WORST. I found this clue weirdly hard to parse while solving. I wonder whether hyphenating “Half-expecting” would have helped.
• 28A [“What a pity”] is THAT’S TOO BAD.
• 39A [Demographic statistical standard] is NATIONAL AVERAGE. (When I got to this entry, I hadn’t yet figured the theme out, saw NATIONAL, and thought, “Is this another MLB team theme?”)
• 46A [“No problems yet”] is SO FAR SO GOOD.
• 63A [Classic family sitcom starring Robert Young] is FATHER KNOWS BEST.

On the plus side, it’s a LOT of thematic material. On the minus side, I wasn’t crazy about the unpleasant STALAGS or the contrived (to me, anyway) IN A SPIN and OINKER. A puzzle with this many theme answers crammed in almost has to have an abundance of very short fill, so I would’ve liked the handful of mid-length answers to have a little of that elusive quality, “sparkle.”

Anna Shechtman’s New Yorker crossword–Amy’s recap

New Yorker crossword solution, 9/15/25 – Shechtman

Lots of unknowns for me in this puzzle:

• MUBI is a [Platform featuring works by auteur filmmakers]. 
• [Cookie Monster’s “real” name] is SID??
• [Boat brand for water-skiers and wakeboarders], TIGE. How many of us are water-skiers and wakeboarders?
• [Dadaist collagist Hannah] HOCH. Not nice to cross a less-familiar name with crosswordese AGHA clued as a name, and the abbreviation GEOG(raphy) clued nonspecifically via Trivial pursuit categories.

Speaking of crosswordese: Belgian artist James ENSOR is probably best known to most of us from crosswords. Right up there with ERTE, SERE.

I count about 17 names of people, places, and brands. That makes for a lot of cranky solvers who find the puzzle unfair.

Fave fill: GENTLE PARENTING, LIVESTREAM, BRAINWORMS, HOME BIRTHS, chef OTTOLENGHI.

Three stars from me.

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1818 — Eric’s Review

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1818 — 9/15/25

Something about this one felt a little off — or maybe it’s just me. There’s nothing here that I actively disliked, but there’s not a lot of sparkle, either.

Stuff that caught my eye (beyond the many K’s):

• 12A [His death was announced during Monday Night Football on 12/8/80] John LENNON That date isn’t seared in my brain; I learned of the ex-Beatle’s murder the next morning. Not the kind of thing you want to wake up to.
• 14A [From the states, jokily] ‘MURICAN Even as I typed ‘MERICAN, I wondered if the first vowel would be a U. It didn’t help that I had no idea on 6D [“I Got 5 on It” rap group] LUNIZ.
• 16A [Zany Internet joke] DANK MEME I held off on the DANK part for a long time because I thought it referred to an overused meme.
• 20A [Specialty of the magazine Downbeat] MODERN JAZZ
• 23A [She played Helen Santos on “The West Wing”] TERI POLO This is the kind of pop culture answer that might be a gimme for 90% of solvers, but for which I needed a bunch of crosses. I know of the show, I know of the actress, but I didn’t know they go together.
• 30A [Country where almost 90% of the population are expats] QATAR I guessed this from the R. The small oil-rich countries on the Persian Gulf have a lot of guest workers from countries like India and Bangladesh.
• 32A [Screen passes?] E-TICKETS Cute clue, what with it being the start of football season.
• 36A [Iron used in boring equipment, pins, and dowels] DRILL STEEL This could just as easily have been “Iron used in boring crossword answers.”
• 44A [Old Scratch, with “The”] EVIL ONE That’s not a name for Satan that comes easily to mind (not that I spend much time thinking about Satan).
• 45A [Talk about lying] SERMON Kind of a nice juxtaposition in the grid with 44A.
• 3D [Descend upon] INVADE Not INFEST.
• 4D [Insulting and snotty comment] SNIDE REMARK What does it say about me that this was my first fill?
• 5D [Pony Express employees] POST RIDERS I needed too many crosses for this one.
• 9D [First score in backgammon] ACE POINT I haven’t played backgammon in decades and I’d long forgotten that term (if I ever knew it).
• 11D [They’re heard during hoops games] SNEAKS I tried to get SQUEAKS in there. I don’t watch much basketball, but the sound of sneakers on the wooden court is easy to summon up.
• 22D [Historical educational show hosted by Walter Cronkite] YOU ARE THERE I remember watching that show as a kid — dramatizations of historical events. A nice gimme for the SE corner.
• 26D [Site of some busts?] ART CLASS Cute clue.
• 42D [___ season] FLU I got my flu and COVID vaccinations on Saturday. Maybe I’m still feeling the side effects.

Zachary David Levy and Katie Hale’s Universal crossword, “Wheelie?” — pannonica’s write-up

Universal • 9/15/25 • Mon • “Wheelie?” • Levy, Hale • solution • 20250915

• 57a^R [Frustrated cry from a texter … and an appropriate follow-up to 16-, 21-, 34- and 51-Across?] DAMN AUTOCORRECT! Each answer features a common phrase that’s one letter off from the original, invoking a car make.
• 16a. [“Powerful 500s? Huh?”] FIATS OF STRENGTH (feats of strength).
• 21a. [“Wrangler obsession? I don’t get it!”] JEEP IN MIND (keep in mind).
• 34a. [“Suddenly show the Skylark? What’s that supposed to mean?”] CUT TO THE BUICK (cut to the quick).
• 51a. [“Always choosing the Explorer? I’m not following!”] TRUE TO FORD (true to form).

The original letters are EKQM and the replacing ones are IJBD, which are essentially gibberish, or possibly Myers-Briggs categories (which are ALSO (1a) essentially gibberish).

Not sure how much the title relates to the theme or its mechanism.

• 14d [Carried] BORNE. In context I’m reminded of the classic card game about driving, Mille-Bornes. 17d [Clubs or diamonds] SUIT (not part of that particular card game). 18d [Poker variety for big spenders] NO LIMIT—or [Autobahn feature, at times]? 21d [Traffic woe] JAM.
• 23d [Color that’s an anagram of “cure”] ECRU. 25d [Blah in color] DRAB. 30d [ __-ray Disc] BLU.
• 33d [Academic’s deg., often] PHD. 10a [Executive’s deg., often] MBA.
• 35d [Black gunk] TAR. 65a [Sticky stuff] GLUE.

Okay enough of that rut.

• 37d [Rapunzel’s magical drop] TEAR, not hair. I’ve forgotten that part of the story. Per the Wikipedia synopsis, her tears fall into the blinded (probably a curse or something) prince’s eyes, magically restoring his sight.
• 42d [Cardinal’s color] RED. Must be the religious kind, because female avian cardinals are brownish and the clue makes no specification. I doubt also that it’s a reference to one of the sports teams, because then the clue would have read “Cardinals'” with the apostrophe after the S.
• 55d [Chapter part] PAGE. Uh, ok I guess.
• 19a [Surrounding glows] AURAS. I waited to see if it would be AURAE. 20a [“Harriet” actress Janelle] MONAE.
• 64a [Research funding sources] GRANTS. Currently being decimated/devastated at the federal level.

p.s. Hey kids, remember, don’t text and drive at the same time.