Sunday, October 12, 2025

LAT tk (Gareth) [2.63 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
NYT 21:38 (Eric) [2.72 avg; 18 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Darby) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Universal (Sunday) 7:30 (Jim P) [2.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Norah) [2.63 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
WaPo tk (Matt G) [2.60 avg; 5 ratings] rate it

Michael Schlossberg’s New York Times Crossword “Make No Mistake” — Eric’s Review

Michael Schlossberg’s New York Times Crossword “Make No Mistake” — 10/12/25

This was a rather slow and not entirely enjoyable solving experience for me. The title is so vague as to be no help with the theme. Circles and illustrations of scissors throughout the grid hint at the revealer, a phrase most people have probably heard. But the theme, clever though it is, leaves a fair amount of gibberish in the grid, which is not something I care for:

• 23A [Boast accompanying an evil laugh [120 sec.]] MINE ALL MINE Two minutes
• 28A [Words on a juice carton] NOT FROM CONCENTRATE
• 41A [Licorice-flavored vegetables [32 oz.]] FENNEL BULBS Two pounds
• 48A [Letter opener?] TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
• 63A [Carpenter’s adage illustrated four times in this puzzle] MEASURE TWICE CUT ONCE I perpetually remember this as “Measure once . . . ” That’s probably why I was not that adept a woodworker.
• 83A [Scientist who spent his last years under house arrest [8 qt.]] GALILEO GALILEI Two gallons
• 89A [Observe the expected formalities] STAND ON CEREMONY
• 105A [Split something equally [24 in.]] WENT FIFTY-FIFTY Two feet
• 112 [Waving the white flag, so to speak] CONCEDING DEFEAT This one was particularly difficult for some reason. I ended up typing out the full answer so that I could see where the ONCE was cut.

If you can look past the gibberish, this is a fine theme, with three measurements balanced by three cuts. (Each scissors represents an imagined ONCE.) I did have to figure out what was going on with the scissors to make sense of CONCEDING DEFEAT, but the circled letters for the measurements were essentially irrelevant to my solving.

There are many units of measurement, so I’m sure there are other possibilities for those theme answers. There are more possibilities for the cuts than I thought; xwordinfo.com list over 850 words with the letter pattern ONCE. I particularly liked STAND ON CEREMONY because the ONCE is broken up between two words.

Other stuff:

• 4A [Words that might precede “Out, darned Spot!”?] BAD DOG Cute clue, though I’m not sure it conforms to enlightened dog training practices.
• 36A [Lampshade-shaped candy piece] ROLO That shape is echnically known as a frustum.
• 73A [Biohazard regulator, in brief] OSHA Is this still true? [Deep sigh.]
• 111A [Lamborghinis, to some] DREAM CARS Cars like Ferraris and Lamborghinis were always my favorite Matchbox cars. I still think some Maseratis are pretty cool-looking, but I long ago stopped lusting over obscenely expensive autos.
• 121A [John, across the pond] SEAN Years of crossword-solving has trained me to interpret “John” in this sort of clue as “toilet,” so I was surprised that the answer wasn’t three letters.
• 4D [Good name for an apiarist?] BEA My mother’s name was Bernice, but everyone called her Bee. My father’s family could never get the spelling right. I lost some time here by having an E for the third letter.
• 10D [Religious title whose name comes from the Hebrew for “father”] ABBOT I’d never thought about this before, but I knew about the Hebrew abba.
• 12D [Classic car that shared its name with a planet, informally] MERC I wonder if I’ve reached the point where the number of automotive marques from my childhood that are no longer produced is greater than the number of marques introduced in the United States during my lifetime. Probably not, but it feels that way sometimes.
• 17D [Doofuses, north of the border] HOSERS Thank you, Bob and Doug McKenzie.
• 31D [Core-strengthening Pilates exercises] TOE-TAPS I’ve been doing Pilates without knowing it!
• 64D [Name found in “whole milk”] EMIL I’ve seen this sort of clue in other publications. It’s certainly one way to clue a proper name so that no one can complain that they’ve never heard of the person in the clue.
• 75D [Men who marry later in life] BENEDICTS I’d not heard this term before (despite technically being such a man). I presume it comes from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Crossing 75A [“The Facts of Life” girl] BLAIR was not ideal. I had a C rather than a B because CENE- sorta kinda looked like “centenarian” (talk about late in life).
• 78D [Settings of many Patrick O’Brian novels] SEAS I missed this gimme while I was solving. My husband has read the Master and Commander series more times than I can remember. I think I lost interest after the third or fourth installment.
• 84D [Easy-listening radio category] LITE FM Not a format I’d heard of. Just thinking about it creeps me out.

Evan Birnholz’s Washington Post Crossword “Starter Pack” — Matthew’s Review

Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword solution, “Starter Pack,” 10/12/2025

Our theme this week hinges on in-the-language “X&Y” formations, reparsed to clue two-word phrases beginning with X and Y:

• 23a [S&L associations?] SOFTBALL LEAGUES
• 39a [A&E show?] ABBOTT ELEMENTARY
• 54a [R&B musician?] RANDY BACHMAN
• 70a [D&D character?] DAFFY DUCK
• 82a [B&B location?] BOYNTON BEACH
• 99a [R&D process?] RADIOACTIVE DECAY
• 119a [A&W drink?] AMERICAN WHISKEY

A consistent mechanism, for sure. I had a mixed bag, enjoyment-wise, with these. I think that hinges on how narrowly the last work in each clue applied to its theme entry, since that’s the basis of the misdirection.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY, DAFFY DUCK, and ABBOTT ELEMENTARY were highlights. “Location” felt too broad to be helpful to get me to the “beach” in BOYNTON BEACH. I can’t really complain about LEAGUES~’associations’ or WHISKEY~’drink’, but they didn’t super excite me. RANDY BACHMAN is on me – the name rang a bell, but Googling now I absolutely should have (1) known him better and (2) been excited to see him in a grid. 

Other highlights: I went 0-for-4 across the top row, with “reheat, oh no, pod, scams” instead of REWARM, OOPS, GAM, SPAMS. That cost me a good bit of confusion when reviewing the downs // At 21a, while the name is long, hopefully you spotted “Mahershala” in “Mahershalalhashbaz” to get to the actor ALI // Susana NORIEGA rings a faint bell for me – not a piece of fill that shows up often enough to really learn the cluing angles that don’t platform dictators // My humor doesn’t always line up with Evan’s, and I rarely love lengthy clues, but today, I chuckled at an SNL “Celebrity Jeopardy!” quote for TEN // WIFE GUY is a colorful bit of recent internet vintage – Evan’s clue is nicely neutral for a tern often used as an insult // Momentary pause for me at [Moonstruck line], as I haven’t seen the movie in full. But no quotes in the clue, and it’s a more generic IM IN LOVE rather than something from Cher or Nic Cage

Kareem Ayas’s Universal Sunday crossword, “Mixed Drinks”—Jim P’s review

Theme answers are familiar phrases that hide kinds of milk (scrambled). The revealer is MILKSHAKES (125a, [Blended ice cream beverages, or a hint to this puzzle’s circled letters)].

Universal Sunday crossword solution · “Mixed Drinks” · Kareem Ayas · 10.12.25

• 23a. [Where suits are taken care of?] COURT OF LAW. Low-fat.
• 33a. [Type of keyboard without pipes] ELECTRIC ORGAN. Organic.
• 52a. [Senior instructor?] HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER. Chocolate.
• 71a. [Government-funded health facilities] PUBLIC HOSPITALS. ICHOSPITA. Pistachio. There’s pistachio milk?
• 91a. [1982 Duran Duran single] HUNGRY LIKE THE WOLF. Whole.
• 107a. [“Wait just a second …”] “HOLD ON A MINUTE!” Almond.

On the one hand, there are some cool finds here, like “chocolate” hidden within a “school teacher”.  But on the other hand, it may be a bit ridiculous to expect a theme like this to actually help a solver if they should get stuck (which is what a good theme is supposed to do). Even knowing the theme and staring at PUBLIC HOSPITALS for several minutes, there was no way I was going to come up with “pistachio” without trying to write it out (which I ended up doing). Once you get to about, say, seven letters+, anagramming can get very tricky very quickly. (Also, that first one threw me off quite a bit since my initial thought was “float + w”. Since a float is also a type of ice cream beverage, I was wondering if it was mixed with something else.)

Fortunately, since the fill is quite smooth and the clues are fairly straightforward, the grid is easily solved without regard to the theme, which is what I did.

Fill highlights include TOFURKY, SADISTS, MAMA BEAR, DOOMSDAY, PBS NEWS, and ELIXIR. I don’t know that I’ve heard the phrase PIN PAD, and I had trouble with the second P since I had TROD instead of PLOD in the crossing, but it sorted itself out soon enough.

Clues of note:

• 22a. [“Ahh! That hurts!”]. “OW! OW!” I thought crossword convention defines “ahh” as an “apt rhyme for spa” (or similar), not as a shout of pain.
• 28a. [Pin number?]. TEN. We’re talking bowling here. Also, since PIN PAD is relatively far away from this entry, the dupe doesn’t bother me.
• 100a. [It might ruin a day at the beach]. RAIN. On the other hand, this entry is right next to DOOMSDAY. In truth, I didn’t notice the duplication of “day”, but still, I would’ve removed it from this clue.
• 45d. [Sounded like a smoke alarm]. CHIRPED. I’m not digging this clue, as it makes it sound like chirping is a smoke alarm’s primary noise, as opposed to merely the “change my battery” alert.

Mixed feelings on this mixed drinks theme, but the grid is well made, and it’s a quick solve. Three stars.