LAT tk (pannonica) 
[2.83 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
NYT 7:25 (Amy) 
[3.57 avg; 14 ratings] rate it
Universal 4:18 (Jim P) [2.83 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Emily) 
[2.67 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Programming note update: A week later, crossword constructor Paolo Pasco is still on Jeopardy! He won his seventh match Thursday and had already qualified for the Tournament of Champions. Exciting to watch Paolo thrive in the competition!. Last time I saw him was at SporcleCon in August. I was actually getting up to go say hi to Paolo and Adam Aaronson when suddenly—boom, I was on the floor with a fractured femur. (Trivia is a dangerous sport, y’all!)—Amy
Erica Hsiung Wojcik’s New York Times crossword — Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 9/19/25 – no. 0919
I feel like it’s been too long since we had a Fri/Sat NYT by a woman, no?
I’m wiped out this week, so I’ll be quick.
Difficulty: Tougher than I expected, and a bunch of typos had me backing up a lot.
Fave fill: TRILOBITES (my family had a fossil one, and one of us kids took it for show-and-tell and somebody took it! I still want a trilobite fossil!), BEHIND THE TIMES, “WEIRD FLEX, BUT OK” (this is one of those very-online things), SLOANE Stephens, ROYAL FLUSH, HODGE-PODGE, “HI, ALL” email greetings, GENTLE GIANT, GESTATE, ROM-COM.
Didn’t know FAILLE, 40A. [Ribbed silk material].
Four stars from me.
Madison Schulz’s Universal crossword, “Fill the Void”—Jim P’s review
Theme answers are words that can go with CAT to make familiar phrases. However, the only CAT in the grid is in the revealer. Every other CAT is represented by three contiguous black squares in the Across direction. The revealer is BLACK CATS (37a, [Pets also known as voids … or parts of the starred clues’ answers]).
Universal crossword solution · “Fill the Void” · Madison Schultz · Fri., 5.19.25
- 6a. [*Med. imaging machine] (CAT) SCANNER. Meh. “CAT scan” yes. CAT scanner” not so much.
- 21a. [*Easygoing dude] COOL (CAT).
- 22a. [*Imitator] COPY(CAT).
- 31a. [*Glasses style popularized in the ’50s and ’60s] (CAT) EYE. I don’t think I’ve ever heard this phrase, but it makes sense. I’m more familiar with “cat’s eyes” referring to reflectors embedded in the road (especially when they’ve been removed!)
- 46a. [*Bigwig] FAT (CAT).
- 53a. [*Runway] (CAT)WALK.
- 54a. [*Inappropriate whistle] (CAT) CALL.
- 66a. [*Easily frightened individual] SCAREDY (CAT).
Enjoyable theme, in part because we have our own void running around the house. I definitely needed the revealer to make sense of it, so that aha moment was satisfying. It would have been really cool if the letters in CAT could’ve been used in the Down direction as well, but that’s a much more difficult puzzle to construct. I do wish each block of three black squares was separated from any other black squares (as it is for COOL CAT and CAT CALL) just for a cleaner-looking grid. (Maybe that’s not possible, but hey, I can still wish it.)
Our household void looking particularly devilish.
Despite a highly segmented grid, we still have plenty of meaty longish fill like HAN SOLO, ON TOPIC, SOCRATIC, HABANERA, BACKHOE, PARADOX, BEER SNOB, CREAM PIE, MENORAH, and EDAMAME with only AS NEW feeling a little clunky.
Clue of note: 13a. [They keep your pants up]. HANGERS. Presumably, when you’re not wearing them.
Nice theme with very good fill. 3.5 stars. And it’s a debut puzzle! Congrats to our newest constructor!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Nice that the NYT bumped up the difficulty a bit this Friday!
One of the better Fridays of late for that and solid fill too.
Agreed; nice Friday. Came in just at my average time. I got tripped up in the NW corner where I put in CO-OPT instead of ADOPT after I had the **OPT but didn’t know 1D or 2D, so that was the last to be fixed. And, as so often happens, I was writing that I’m not sure how ABE fits “Fin” when it just clicked now. Really nice Friday!
NYT: TIL, WEIRD FLEX, BUT OK. TITTF (tomorrow, I’ll try to forget). Obviously, I’m BEHIND THE TIMES, but OK. Nice puzzle.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
After some less than thrilling grids, I had a really good time with this one. Love WEIRDFLEXBUTOK (just a great slang phrase) and HIALL (which I often use in work emails to groups of people). Plus there were some very clever clues for things like ROYALFLUSH and BOOKREPORT.
WSJ: Finished the meta and it’s worth the effort!
Just want to ask on this blog if some of the wizards here have put in MMMMM energy here and preempted the big meta already on Thursday or even Wednesday. Not me though.
Entertaining NYT. Got stuck at the end on the W edge for a while, but figured it out eventually.
Oops— I meant the E edge. SOTTTO, OK, and DESK.
That center east section was the last to fall for me, me too. Fun puzzle!
Oddly enough, I found today’s NY quite a bit easier than usual (only 6 seconds slower than Amy, which must be some kind of record for me). I picked up a couple of long answers almost immediately, and nothing really slowed me down. The second L of FAILLE was my last letter — never heard of it but the crosses were unarguable.
LAT: 7d [Chimp kin] – ORANG
Please do not clue ORANG in this way.
https://www.orangutanssp.org/orang-vs-orang-utan.html
Thanks for this, anon.
endorsed
Paolo Pasco is very impressive on Jeopardy. I love Sporcle, but I have to admit I never thought about going to SporcleCon. Is it a similar vibe to ACPT, where people take it seriously but not overly seriously, since 99% of the attendees know that they aren’t going to win? I don’t get the sense at ACPT that the 1% who are in the running to win are that competitive, either. I feel like the general atmosphere at ACPT is camaraderie, and it’s not as clique-y as it could be, although others may have had a different experience.
My schedule allowed me to take in only the third day of SporcleCon, mostly in breakout rooms for maybe 60 people. The big ballroom, I think, is where the giant evening competition is on Fri and Sat. I hear it’s gripping, but I’ve not seen it. And I didn’t talk much to anyone besides the handful of familiar faces. Since I missed the first two days, I hadn’t had time to find people to team up with, so I did a few competitions solo, against many teams of 4-8 people, and one or two with my husband (again against larger teams).
Amy, thank you! I will have to read more about it.
Universal–As an experienced board-certified radiologist, I assure you that CAT SCANNER is the proper term for the machine, as clued. A “cat scan,” your suggestion, is the set of images generated by such a machine.