Friday, October 3, 2025

LAT tk (pannonica) [3.50 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
NYT 7:42 (Amy) [4.06 avg; 18 ratings] rate it
Universal 5:11 (Jim P) [2.67 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Emily) [2.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it

Rebecca Goldstein & Rafael Musa’s New York Times crossword — Amy’s recap

NY Times crossword solution, 10/3/25 – no. 1003

This one didn’t feel so hard while I was solving it, and then my solving time said “tough Saturday.” And you?

Fave fill: PODCASTS (thank god for transcripts), ELDER CARE, RED CARPET, HALF-ASS, WORK-LIFE BALANCE, CRYBABIES, “ASK ANYONE,” BEER TENT, DEAD LINKS, EATS IT UP, “PLEASE BE PATIENT,” MONTE CARLO, DOCUSERIES. What’s the best docuseries you’ve seen lately?

A few clues:

• 25A. [Animals whose name sounds like a letter that doesn’t appear in its name], EWES. Is it bad that somehow  I wanted GNUS?
• 27A. [Graduates in green-and-black regalia, in brief], MDS. I’ve never been to a med school graduation.
• 38A. [On deck], NEXT UP. As in baseball. The Cubs just graduated from the wildcard stage to the actual playoffs. The wind was blowing the wrong way to be able to hear the roar of the fans from my place, though.
• 55A. [Fished off the coast of Maine, maybe], EELED. Some months back, I read about eel fishery in Northeast rivers. I think Maine’s eel-fishing grounds are the rivers, for young glass eels, and not the ocean? The little guys come up from the Sargasso Sea via the Atlantic, but then head into Maine’s waterways. Here’s the New Yorker article, mentioning the rivers the Maine eelers are using.
• 13D. [7-5 and 6-0, e.g.], SETS. As in the scores in tennis sets.

No bad fill in here, is there? Four stars from me.

Jake Halperin’s Universal crossword, “Soft Launch”—Jim P’s review

Theme answers are familiar two-word phrases whose first words could also be synonyms for “tryout”. With a change in meaning, the phrases are clued with crossword wackiness, of course.

Universal crossword solution · “Soft Launch” · Jake Halperin · Fri., 10.3.25

• 17a. [Writing tool prototypes?] PILOT PENS.
• 32a. [Legal representation demo?] TRIAL LAWYER.
• 46a. [Proof-of-concept storage area?] SAMPLE SPACE.
• 63a. [Beta-stage film music?] TEST SCORE.

A nice example of this type of theme. I especially like TRIAL LAWYER because its altered meaning comes naturally and is somewhat humorous. SAMPLE SPACE isn’t a phrase I hear very much, as it comes from the realms of mathematics and statistics, but it was inferable enough.

In the fill I enjoyed VALLEY GIRL as well as ANTIMATTER and shorter stuff like SWOLE, IN LOVE, and KAFKA.

Clues of note:

• 55a. [Hip-hop-turned-K-pop band]. BTS. Didn’t know they started out as a hip-hop band. Interesting.
• 13d. [Ctrl+Enter, in an email app]. SEND. I’m mildly interested in whether or not anyone actually uses this keyboard shortcut. To me, it feels like it’d be too easy to send an email inadvertently this way. I’d rather be more deliberate about it and click the SEND button.
• 22d. [Join with a blowtorch]. WELD. I used this clue in a puzzle once and was quickly corrected that welding is performed with a much hotter acetylene torch, where a “blowtorch” using propane does not get hot enough for welding.

Good puzzle. 3.5 stars.