LAT tk (pannonica) 
[2.25 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
NYT 4:22 (Amy) 
[3.13 avg; 16 ratings] rate it
Universal 3:49 (Jim P) 
[3.40 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Emily) rate it
Karen Steinberg’s New York Times crossword — Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 10/16/25 – no. 1016
I love that Karen started out co-constructing with her son, Universal puzzle editor David Steinberg, but is deftly popping out solo crosswords.
Fave fill: British pop singers CHARLI XCX (I hope y’all could discern OS X from the clue, [Mac platform renamed in 2016], if you don’t know the singer’s stage name) and RITA ORA, the new-to-me BEER DARTS (inebriation and throwing sharp objects don’t go well together!), my childhood favorite movie candy SNO-CAPS, SISTER ACT (still haven’t seen it), ANECDATA (the [Portmanteau for evidence based solely on personal accounts]), BRAIN DUMP, “J’ACCUSE,” SNAUSAGES, BACARDI with a Hemingway clue, MENOPAUSE getting its due (it’s not all fun, but getting past menstruation is terrific), and TIDE POD.
Smooth Friday-level difficulty (at least for me, knowing the names of the two pop stars if not any of their actual songs).
Unfamiliar term: 9D. [One managing online content], WEB EDITOR. Anyone have an example of someone in this role?
Coincidence: I was just skimming the Wikipedia article on Max BAER ([36A
Max ___, boxer nicknamed “Madcap Maxie”]) and read that exact nickname a day or two ago. Also learned that Beverly Hillbillies actor Max Baer, Jr. is his son.
Hmm: 5A. [Plant often confused with algae], MOSS? Really? I was thinking KELP was confused with algae. Here’s a roof cleaning company to explain the differences between moss and algae. Basically, algae needs water and not just a damp spot.
Four stars from me.
Kareem Ayas’s Universal crossword, “Two Beers”—Jim P’s review
Theme answers are words and phrases that hide the trigram IPA. The revealer is DUA LIPA, or DUAL IPA (39a, [“Dance the Night” singer … or, parsed differently, a hint to the pair of drinks in row 3, 5, 11 or 13 of this grid]).
Universal crossword solution · “Two Beers” · Kareem Ayas · Fri., 10.17.25
- 17a [Admission granted to the rich and famous, often] VIP ACCESS and 19a [Bite playfully] NIP AT.
- 23a [Button for bypassing online commercials] SKIP ADS and 26a [“The Girl From ___” (Brazilian song)] IPANEMA.
- 50a [Chopper’s landing area] HELIPAD and 52a [Graphics that can easily be added to presentations] CLIP ART.
- 59a [“Keep playing without me”] “I PASS” and 62a [Make a quarter turn?] FLIP A COIN.
This theme grew on me…a little bit. Realizing that theme answers were just phrases that had IPA in them, and that there were two of them in certain rows, just didn’t do a lot for me. There’s nothing connecting each pair of phrases together except that they’re in the same row. But I enjoyed the wordplay in the revealer, and the title sounds like a request made at a bar (I think a better title would’ve been “Two Beers, Please” to emphasize this fact).
The fill is smooth and lively with highlights FANTASIA, DEPECHE Mode, CRIMSON, and “I DID NOT!”
Clues of note:
- 59a. [“Keep playing without me”]. “I PASS“. These don’t equate to me. The clue sounds like you’re departing the room for a time or are otherwise occupied whereas the phrase usually means you’re still in the game but just forgoing this round.
- 6d. [Band ___]. TEE. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this sounds very green paintish.
Three stars.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
I’m giving this a high score even though I had to look up CHARLI XCX, which felt totally non-inferable. And I wanted WEB Master instead of EDITOR.
Everything else flowed nicely, some corners as easily as a Tuesday or Wednesday.
But all that aside, there was a lot of fun content, as listed by Amy. I learned ANECDATA which is pretty funny.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
I’m not exactly in her demographic, but I got CHARLIXCX straight away. brat is a tremendous album.
Then I nailed basically every other long entry. I even got SNAUSAGES right off the jump. In the end it was fun but very easy for me, not too far off my Friday PB. I think the cluing helped – not much misdirection in this one.
NYT: CHARLI XCX crossing MIIS did me in. Being a native Cheesehead, when I saw the album title “Brat,” my mind immediately went to “bratwurst,” but I couldn’t come up with the name of a British polka artist. (And then there was BEER DARTS just a couple of steps away, adding to my confusion – thought maybe it was a themed Friday.)
Other than that, a nice Friday puzzle.
CHARLIXCX crossing MIIS and OSX, all of which are non-inferrable, was probably a big stumbling block for many solvers.
NYT: So many Unknown Names (people, products, publications) and yet so easy. My guesses all hit the mark today; a near-Friday-PR for me, and my fastest puzzle since Tuesday. What an up-and-down week it’s been in terms of difficulty.
@Amy, kelp ARE algae, as are most seaweeds. But I share your reaction to that clue.
NYT: This was a fun, fast Friday! For me, it has a vaguely Robyn Weintraub “fun, smart mom” vibe, which made sense after reading Amy’s review. (Amy, does adding your review here make you an example of a WEB EDITOR? I had web master at first, like huda, btw.)
Although I’d surely heard of CHARLI XCX, I was unsure of the exact name, and OS X didn’t come to mind at first, so that X fell last. But, it was surely gettable (for me). (That said, I wouldn’t mind not seeing “OS X” again as fill.) The mini had 2 Xs today, too, oddly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apple_operating_systems
Puzzle: LAT; Rating: 1.5 stars
Weak theme and bad editing. (Skip this puzzle.)