LAT 3:30 (Stella) 
[2.50 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
Newsday 26:25 (pannonica) 
[4.08 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
NYT 6:02 (Amy) 
[3.55 avg; 20 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Matthew) [3.67 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Matthew) [2.50 avg; 1 rating] rate it
WSJ untimed (pannonica) [3.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Adrian Johnson & Christina Iverson’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 9/27/25 – no. 0927
Good puzzle, good amount of flavor, appropriate level of difficulty for a Saturday.
Fave fill: DANCE MOM, zippy LASER MAZE (would you do well navigating your way through a laser maze, as seen in movies? I would not), HIT A NERVE, PSYCH OUT (nice oblique clue, [Punk] as a verb), COSLEEPER for a baby in/beside the parents’ bed.
Not entirely clear on BONUS ENTRY. 23D. [Kind of contest with multiple chances to participate]? What’s the context here that I’m missing?
Clue I liked: 12D. [Classic rock?], RUNESTONE. Not that I was especially clear on what a runestone is! Here’s the Wiki.
Another nice clue: 30D. [Locale for many community courts], REC CENTER. Basketball courts, maybe tennis courts. Not judicial.
Gotta run. Four stars from me.
Doug Peterson & Samuel A. Donaldson’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 9/27/25 by Doug Peterson & Samuel A. DonaldsonLos Angeles Times 9/27/25 by Doug Peterson & Samuel A. Donaldson
Love, love, loved this puzzle! So many good entries (GALLIANO, INTENTIONAL WALK, MAKE IT MAKE SENSE, and SLAP BASS were my favorites), and even better clues:
- 9A [Many group chat texts] is MEMES. This wasn’t actually my favorite clue, as it was triggering (I hate group chats!), but hey, that means it’s evocative!
- 14A [Garbage genre] is ALTERNATIVE ROCK. I had a Spotify ’90s Mix playlist on as I was solving this, so I was in the right frame of mind to know that the clue was referring to Garbage, the band. I appreciate the deceptive intent even though I wasn’t deceived.
- 19A and 28D are both five-letter entries clued as [Ketanji colleague]; one is ELENA Kagan and the other is SONIA Sotomayor. I already had two crossings by the time I got to ELENA, so it didn’t occur to me until after the fact that this could be an extra source of difficulty welcome on Saturdays.
- 25A and 25D are clued as [25-Down, in Toledo] and [25-Across, in Toledo], respectively. This actually did get me while solving; the answers are TRES and THREE, referring to Toledo, Spain and Toledo, Ohio, respectively. Awesome.
- 32A [Tool used to go suck a lemon?] is CAR VAC. I was about to say “this clue is proof that a good clue can make even a green-paint entry satisfying,” because it is a great clue. However, I’m realizing that I haven’t owned a car in 20+ years; is CAR VAC a thing people who have cars actually say? Google corrects it to “car vacuum” for search hit purposes, so that’s no help and I’m asking you!
- 36A [Jumps on board?] is OLLIES, referring to jumps on a skateboard.
- 52A I like INTENTIONAL WALK as an entry, and I like [Free pass from a manager] as a clue!
- 5D [Ocean cooler] is BRIG, referring to the imprisonment area, or “cooler,” on a ship, but I was fooled into thinking this referred to a BERG at first.
- 15D [Shopper’s “maze with meatballs”] is IKEA. Not a hard clue, but an evocative and funny one.
- 44D Always here for a reference to LONI Love.
Zachary David Levy’s Universal crossword, “The Nuclear Option” — pannonica’s write-up
WSJ • 9/27/25 • Sat • “The Nuclear Option” • Levy • solution • 20250927
The title is rather ominous in the fraught times we find ourselves in. Metaphorically, it refers to actions in the Senate. Literally, it refers to tactical war actions. Both interpretations seem vastly more likely than ever before in recent memory. Sure, it’s a bit of wordplay here, but it also feels like a hanging double-edged sword of Damocles.
- 117aR [Scientific feat first accomplished in 1932, as well as seven times in this puzzle] SPLITTING THE ATOM. In the theme answers, the letters A-T-O-M appear in sequence (circled), with an extra letter interrupting them. Taken together, and in order, those extra letters spell fission, which is a very nice touch.
- 23a. [Biblical garment that’s the focus of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical[ COAT OF MANY COLORS.
- 39a. [Appetizer often made with shrimp and lemongrass] THAI TOM YUM SOUP. The Thai modifier is rather superfluous, but you can see why it was done, and excuse it.
- 56a. [In the very near future] AT SOME POINT SOON.
- 66a. [Home to Nebraska’s largest airport] EAST OMAHA, a place I didn’t know existed.
- 70a. [Material for a screened porch’s screens] PATIO MESH. Is that a real term?
- 78a. [1979 documentary subtitled “Isaac Stern in China] FROM MAO TO MOZART. Good find! You can see how difficult it’s been to get an interstitial vowel for the themers, as those are the least common or natural entries.
- 97a. [Flowers whose stark whiteness is due to complete lack of chlorophyll] PHANTOM ORCHIDS.
It’s a very complete theme, ironically.
- 13d [Ellen with an Oscar] BURSTYN. I think it was for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.
- 17d [Doctor in an H.G. Wells novel] MOREAU. Crossing 33a [“A Walk to Wachusett” essayist] THOREAU.
- 31d [“Good one! I believed you!”] FOOLED ME. I frequently say that about some tricky or punny crossword clues, but that didn’t happen with this puzzle. Potentials included: 32d [Plane figures] PILOTS, 7a [Harbors, maybe] ABETS.
- 43d [Telepath’s claim] ESP. 68d [Future expert] SEER. Hmm.
- 52d [Not taking the standard deduction] ITEMIZING, not atomizing.
- 91d [Pasture sound] MOO. 104a [Totally loses it] HAS A COW.
- 97d [Lighthouse that was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World] PHAROS. Could not for the life of me remember this name.
- 32a [Attorney general Bondi] PAM. Shouldn’t that be Attorney General, capitalized? Also, grrr.
- 35a [Shoemaker Blahnik] MANOLO.
a little too fusiony for my taste, haha - 72a [Attorney, at times] PLEADER. >meh<
- 76a [Rhetorical question, often] AM I? 5d [Sense of self] EGO.
- 121a [Literature Nobelist Tokarczuk] OLGA.
- 127a [Fill-in-the-blanks story] MAD LIBS.
David P Williams’ Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up
Newsday • 9/27/25 • Saturday Stumper • Williams • solution • 20250927
The story of my solve was a lot of sensing the right answers but not seeing how the crossing entries could work with those letters—or having incorrect crossings—and then removing those correct answers, only to eventually put them back in again when I’d straightened out the surrounding fill.
Last section completed was the top right, even though I felt pretty confident about PJS for 10a [Bed covers]. Just wasn’t seeing JUMBO for 11a [Whopping], and it certainly didn’t help that I had BLOTTO instead of FLAMBÉ for 20a [Lit from liquor], hooked off of LETT (21d [Euro spender since 2015]), which I’d gotten fairly early.
Similarly, early on I thought 24a [Was merciless] would be GAVE NO QUARTER, but the U at 27d [Knots and cords] didn’t look promising, although it turned out to be the rather obvious UNITS.
Down in the lower right, I thought 46a [Rapid transport] must certainly be some sort of RAFT, but no it was an AIRLIFT. 46d [Abridged mystery writer] for ANON fooled me, for I was indeed considering a writer of mystery novels.
- 31d [European river that sounds like a European island] ELBE (Elba), 37a [Land that sounds lovely] BUTTE (beaut).
- 9d [Rule broken by geishas] I BEFORE E. Needed so many crossings here.
- 6a [Half a decorator duo] SHUI. Very tricky clue, as the literal translation of feng shui is wind-water, which can be seen as a pair of elements.
- 19a [The ultimate pan] NO STARS. Yeah I misread this as the ultimate plan several times over.
- 5d [“Italian penicillin”] PASTINA, equivalent to Jewish chicken soup I guess. Anyway, I thought it might be LASAGNA.
- 17d [Diamonds around a ring’s diamond] HALO. So this is just a descriptive technical term that I was unaware of.
- 33a [Isn’t 100%] AILS. My first filled entry.
- 49a [Roman conqueror] AMOR. Amor vincit omnia.
- 15a [Not sweet at all] is not TART at all but BRUT.
- 30a [Miss with a ball] DEB. Tricky. I had LET for a while, considering tennis.
- 56a [Concordance, in the main] AYE. 55a [Baloney, in the main] BILGE.
- 23d [Improv activity] JAM SESSION. Was fooled into thinking of improv comedy.
- 32d [Name like Liz] BESS. Yeh I still don’t care for clues like this.
- 37d [Cropped card category] B-DAY. Just a deliberately oblique clue that’s either interpreted correctly or seems inane.
- 51d [No longer, in context] NÉE. Taking a chance on this one helped open up the bottom section.
NYT: Did not care for the LASER MAZE/NAZCA crossing. Guess I’ve seen a LAZER MAZE in a couple of movies – no idea they had a name. And I’m aware of the geoglyphs in Peru, but couldn’t recall the name.
Have never heard of a COSLEEPER – don’t they discourage parents from having a baby sleep in the same bed with them these days? Don’t get BONUS ENTRY as clued. ONE RATE – is that a thing?
Liked the clues for SLOB and EMERY BOARD. Not much else that I found entertaining in this one.
I had dropped in NAsCA, then got the LASER part, and with DIORAMA figured out the S->Z. I think it stuck in my head because of the NAZCA booby (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_booby) even though it didn’t help me get the spelling quite right.
I’m both a DANCE DAD and we co-slept for a bit, not out of choice but necessity; the theoretical concerns with co-sleeping are SIDS, but from what I remember, the available data doesn’t show any actual issues… though this was nearly 10 years ago. I remember seeing COSLEEPERs that would attach to the bed… we just had a king size bed so there was plenty of space. But he moved into his own crib later and everything was fine.
@Gary R, your experience was very similar to mine. I did know of the NAZCA lines. But like you, I know COSLEEPER only as a person, not a piece of furniture.
To your list of AS IFs, I will add BACTRIAN which is an adjective, not a noun, when applied to camels rather than people. I always cringe a little when I hear de-icer referred to as ICE MELT. LEGO SETS are not “components” of buildings; LEGOS… are components of both model buildings and LEGO SETS. And so on and so forth.
I didn’t know “punk” could be used as a verb, and neither does Merriam-Webster, so I consider myself to be in good company on that one.
I did like LIE TO ME. But all told, there were far more OYS than ahas in this puzzle.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
Late to the game, but in addition to the MAZE/NAZCA crossing, you’ve also got in the SE the terrible RENTACAR (the “enterprise” is actually car rental), and ICARE, which no one has said after a hug, ever. Everything was technically gettable, but it certainly left a bad taste in my mouth, after what was otherwise a pretty good puzzle.
Stumper – I solved it. I didn’t conquer it. I just kept adding an entry, or even a single word, until everything was filled in. Good thing I enjoy a challenge.
Amen!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
Great NYT Saturday!
LAT: challenging, but some odd cluing in there:
39d [Phishing target, informally] SOCIAL. This seems a bit obtuse to me. Social what? Social media account/login? Seems an unnecessary stretch, when there are so many ways to clue this entry.
46a [Act excused with crossed fingers] LIE. “Excused”?
“Social” is used to mean social media.
I thought it was shorthand for your SSN.
Yes.
Newsday: Slow, but never got truly stuck. Still slower than pannonica’s time but this might be the closest I’ve ever come to beating it, haha. Finished in a bit over 30 minutes.
Started with AILS/APIA, NEE/ANON/NEON, ELBE/SAABS/BESS/DEB all “sure” answers but didn’t have enough in one place to really get anywhere.
Eventually I found RIME (protip: [Winter coat] (4) is always HOAR, RIME or SNOW) crossing BRACE, which was still nothing… then PJS hit me for [Bed covers] (tried SOD first) and finally the grid was open with JUMBO.
From there I pretty much filled in slowly but steadily from right to left, finishing in the NW with the precarious RE?A? (with its inscrutable [Change lines, say] clue)/?IRO/?ASTINA (never heard of PASTINA but it was fun to learn about) but eventually found REMAP to finish with no errors.
– Not a fan of JAM SESSIONS plural for [Improv activity] even tho I get the intended reasoning behind it (“activity” being used as an uncountable noun here)—I had JAM- for a while and SESSIONS was the obvious answer, but I resisted for a long time since I just don’t buy the uncountable sense of “activity” (“the state or quality of being active”) as a substitute for concrete, countable “sessions”… so I was disappointed to see it end up being correct.
– [Rule broken by geishas] stumped me for a long time even with -FORE-; was absolutely thinking “rule” as in a Japanese government, but I’m pretty up on my Japanese history and I’m pretty sure the geisha never overthrew the government. I was really hoping to be wrong tho. So I BEFORE E was a big “aha” moment that also felt cheap. Use-mention misdirection strikes again.
– M-W doesn’t have the noun sense of “actual.” Seems like this is finance-specific terminology. Seems pretty contrived but guessable anyway.
– [First class offerings] is a great clue, tho I knew we were looking at a school class right away. I think I wanted SEAT MAP at some point.
– Just realize now that [Leverage privilege] was meant to be read as a verb phrase, not a noun phrase. Was confused even after getting the answer.
– Not sure if UNION was intended misdirection for [Knots and cords] but I fell for that one anyway.
– I did *not* know BUTTE was pronounced “beaut” LOL. Thank you for saving me tons of potential embarrassment down the road.
Fun puzzle.
Stumper: Properly super hard. Liked it, but I didn’t like the CAMAY/AMOR crossing. And the REMAP AVILA MIRO PASTINA crossings were all educated guesses, just hoping they were right. Even after I put in PASTINA with some confidence (pasta…), REMAP could’ve been REtAP (lines as in tubes that go to a keg or something?) or even REcAP (like lines in a TV show??). Both seem ridiculous, but REMAP isn’t that much better, and anything can happen in a Stumper.
Stumper: Pannonica nailed it, as usual. About my only difference was that my last area eas the lower right, not the upper right.
LAT: Perhaps this is just an idiosyncratic thing, but I’ve found the past few Saturdays very uneven in difficulty and this one was no exception. The top half felt like Wednesday-Thursday difficulty but I was slowed to a crawl by the bottom section (though admittedly not helped by trying to put “Shoshone” instead of the correct “Cheyenne”).
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
great tough puzzle with multiple pats to every tough spot
Puzzle: WSJ; Rating: 4 stars
I like ZDL as both a constructor & a commenter. I missed the “fission” (interspersed letters) after the solve, which is why I’m rating this puzzle higher than usual.