Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Jonesin’ 5:45 (Erin) rate it
LAT untimed (Jenni) [3.83 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 4:40 (Eric) [3.59 avg; 11 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker untimed (pannonica) [3.44 avg; 8 ratings] rate it
Universal 4:02 (Eric) [3.63 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Sophia) [2.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Xword Nation tk (Ade) rate it
WSJ N/A (Jim) 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***

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Oh, It’s Ong” — or is it awn? – Erin’s write-up

Jonesin’ solution 9/16/25

Hello lovelies! This week we have a substitution puzzle with ONG to AWN.

• 16a. [Young deer named after Ulysses Grant’s real first name?] HIRAM FAWN.  Hiram Fong was one of Hawaii’s first state senators.
• 19a. [From one edge of the grass to the opposite edge?] LAWN DISTANCE (long distance)
• 34a. [Starting points of a new car scratch era?] DING DAWNS (Ding Dongs)
• 51a. [Like some platters with cocktail sauce?] MULTIPRAWNED (multipronged)
• 56a. [Author who’s up on her Philly slang?] ERICA JAWN (Erica Jong). Jawn is basically a substitute for any noun that you either don’t know the name of or don’t need to name because everyone knows what you’re talking about. Even though it’s only really heard in Philly, the word evolved from the New York City AAVE term “joint.”

Other things:

• 32a. [Suggestion to put in more quarters?] GAME OVER. Ah, the good old days when arcade games only cost 25 cents…
• 37d. [Driving force] IMPULSE. I’m sure a bunch of people had IMP and filled in IMPETUS here.

Until next week!

Gavin Shirey’s Universal Crossword “Colorful Language” — Eric’s Review

Gavin Shirey’s Universal Crossword Puzzle “Colorful Language” — 9/16/25

Congratulations to Gavin Shirey for what appears to be their debut crossword puzzle! (At least, I don’t see them in the Fiend database.)

We get some nice theme entries in a slimmed-down version of the visible spectrum:

• 19A [1966 Beatles hit written as a children’s song] YELLOW SUBMARINE
• 31A [Low-risk investments] BLUE CHIPS I gave a bit of a side-eye to that clue, as blue chip stocks are shares of large, established corporations — but I was wrong to do so, as blue chip stocks are also typically fairly safe investments.
• 41A [Misleading clue] RED HERRING
• 53A [Skittles slogan, or a hint to 19-, 31- and 41-Across?] TASTE THE RAINBOW

A solid theme set, though with RAINBOW in the revealer, I kind of want all the ROY G. BIV colors in there, in the correct order. That’s a lot to ask of a 15X15 grid, but it might be manageable in a 21X21 grid. And I belatedly noticed that each color goes with a food item, tying into the TASTE. That makes me appreciate the theme a bit more. (Anyone for a nice herring submarine sandwich with a side of chips? No?)

Other stuff:

• 1A [Arctic floater] BERG Not FLOE.
• 2A [Lhasa ___ (dog breed)] APSO My quixotic campaign for brevity in crossword clues requires me to ask whether “(dog breed)” helps anyone. What four-letter word besides “Apso” follows “Lhasa,” at least in a crossword puzzle?
• 45A [Journalistic intro] LEDE The misspelling is intentional, so that it’s not pronounce like the metal. It’s sort of the opposite of Led Zeppelin’s spelling of “lead.”
• 33D [Words before and after “what”] IT IS The phrase “It is what it is” seems to really annoy some people. Yes, it’s banal and self-evident, but is it really any worse than “That’s life.”?

Jonathan Daly’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s Review

Congratulations to Jonathan Daly for what appears to be both a NYT puzzle debut and a debut puzzle in any publication covered by Diary of a Crossword Fiend.

Jonathan Daly’s New York Times Crossword — 2/16/25

It’s a classic theme — words that can precede the same word, in this case BOARD:

• 17A [*High-status American Express offering] BLACK CARD Formally, it’s the American Express Centurion Card.
• 25A [*Task for a locksmith] KEY CUTTING
• 31A [*Motion of receding waves] BACKWASH Washboards were antiques when I was young; the word lived on mainly as a descriptor for well-sculpted abdominal muscles. Now that “six-pack abs” are a desirable thing, does “washboard” live on in the language?
• 45A [*Bottom of the ocean] SEA FLOOR
• 52A [*Product of meat scraps that, despite its name, is dairy-free] HEAD CHEESE
• 63A [Train conductor’s cry … or a hint to each word in the answers to the starred clues] ALL ABOARD

That’s a solid if not especially shiny set of theme answers.

Other stuff:

• 19A [Cause of food poisoning, for short] E. COLI I’d be happy to never see that bacterium in another crossword puzzle, though Today I Learned that not all strains of E. coli are pathogenic. Objection withdrawn.
• 30A [Destiny] KISMET A nice, underused word.
• 11D [A shopper, not a buyer, informally] LOOKIE-LOO Given that the term goes back at least to the 1970s, I’ve probably heard it before, but it doesn’t really sound familiar.
• 12D [Fashion house named for its founder, Signor Garavani] VALENTINO Also new to me.
• 50D [Waste that’s been flushed] SEWAGE The editors missed the chance to cross-reference 19A and 50D.

Erik Agard’s New Yorker crossword — pannonica’s write-up

New Yorker • 9/16/25 • Tue • Agard • solution • 20250916

This one went down as most of the ‘moderately challenging’ New Yorker crosswords do: a bit too easy for my liking. At this point I’m practically consigned to the idea that my personal calibration for these things is skewed.

It contained fewer clues/entries unknown to me than a typical Agard offering, but I nevertheless learned a few things.

Started off easily by getting all of the upper left corner, but then I was lightly impeded from expanding further, until I corrected 2-down [Cinematographer’s stabilizer from STEADYCAM to STEADICAM. Then 25a [1975 hit with the lyric “When I rolled with the punches, I got knocked on the ground”] FIGHT THE POWER clicked, referencing the Isley Brothers song (not the later Public Enemy side with the same title, which I daresay is more well-known these days). {46d [“Is it worth the risk?”] DARE I} From there, everything pretty much flowed smoothly.

• 1a [Celexa, Lexapro, or Prozac: Abbr.] SSRI, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.
• 17a [Noble rank] EARL. Took a minor risk by filling this in without crossings, but I was playing the odds.
• 18a [Does a sneeze-inducing chore] DUSTS. “Why should I dust? Everything has enough dust on it already.”
• 19a [Distant relative?] FAR. Just synonyms.
• 22a [Paperless preference] DIRECT DEPOSIT. Briefly attempted DIGITAL-something.
• 41a [“Macbeth” adaptation directed by Akira Kurosawa] THRONE OF BLOOD. A gimme.
• 46a [Reading a series of unfortunate events?] DOOMSCROLLING. Another gimme, especially with the first few letters in place. The clue lightly evokes the young adult book series, but of course sans capitalization.
• 3d [Brisk mover?] REFRIGERATOR CAR. Tough-ish clue, but before long the crossings yielded what had to be REFRIGERAT—, and later the rest.
• 8d [Beavers who starred in “Imitation of Life” (1934)] LOUISE. Bit of a deep dive.
• 9d [Term popularized by Stella Young for motivational images “objectifying disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people”] INSPIRATION PORN. A useful term, putting a name to a reprehensible phenomenon that shouldn’t go unremarked.
  
• 20d [Doc for a dachshund] VET. The entry that steered me away from the hypothesized DIGITAL in 22-across.
• 25d [U.S. payroll tax] FICA, Federal Insurance Contributions Act.
• 29d [Hated on] DEROGATED. Much less common than the derogatory inflection.
• 35d [South Indian rice cake] IDLI. Another gimme, which helped to quickly open up the right flank and southeast corner.
• 42d [Traditional Navajo dwellings] HOGANS. Yet another gimme, learned from the time I visited Arizona back in the 1990s.
• 44d [Anomalous occurrences] FLUKES. Okay sure I’ll use this as an excuse to post this one again:
  
• 45d [Sandwich that often includes an applewood-smoked ingredient] BLT. Mmm, applewood-smoked lettuce.
• 50d [“Heard”] COPY. Thought this was going to be something more contemporary-slangy.

Tennessee Grimes’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Jenni’s write-up

This is a fun theme that wasn’t obvious to me until I got the revealer. I tripped myself up on some of the fill, as you can see from the checked squares in the grid. That was entirely my fault.

Los Angeles Times, September 16, 2025, Tennessee Grimes, solution grid

• 17a [Fraternal organization venue] is the ELKS LODGE.
• 24a [Desk accessory that might coordinate with a wrist rest] is a MOUSE PAD.
• 49a [Emphasizes passionately] is RAMS HOME.
• 59a [“Land ho!” caller’s spot] is the CROWS NEST.

34a [Place to adopt a new pet, or what is found in 17-, 24-. 49-, and 59-Across?] is ANIMAL SHELTER. Nice! I appreciated all the different types of shelters.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: never heard of LOS Tigres del Norte. Here they are. Explain to me how mariachi music ended up sounding like klezmer, please.