Thursday, October 23, 2025

BEQ 8:19 (Eric) [3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Fireball untimed (Jenni) [4.56 avg; 8 ratings] rate it
LAT tk (Gareth) [2.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 7:33 (ZDL) [3.34 avg; 16 ratings] rate it
Universal 6:51 (Eric) [2.80 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
USA Today 8:10 (Emily) [3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
WSJ untimed (Jim Q) [2.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it

Greyson Miller’s Universal Crossword “Filling Out a Puzzle” — Eric’s Review

This appears to be Greyson Miller’s crossword debut in a publication covered by Diary of a Crossword Fiend. Congratulations!

The theme is a basic one: Stick some extra letters into common phrases and see what wackiness ensues. Today’s added letters are the abbreviation for “pound,” which is less than intuitive. It’s from the Latin libra, which can be translated as “scales” or “pound” (among other things):

• 18A [AI trying to blend in with society?] ON THE DL BOT On the dot I was confused here because in baseball (and possibly other sports), the “DL” is the Disabled List. But after pondering this clue and answer a while, I remembered that “DL” can also mean the down-low.
• 23A [What homesick tulip farmers do?] MISS THE BULBS Miss the bus This was the first theme answer I got completely, and it wasn’t immediately clear to me what the theme was. BULBS was obvious given the clues reference to “tulip[s],” and the answer isn’t totally nonsensical.
• 40A [Gains muscle, perhaps … or a hint to this puzzle’s theme] PUTS ON THE POUNDS I like this clueing, though to me, “puts on the pounds” has always implied gaining weight in a less healthy fashion.
• 51A [Smaug and Sauron, say?] BILBO HAZARDS Biozhazards As a long-standing Tolkien fan, this was my favorite answer. But to geek out for a minute: Bilbo is the title character in The Hobbit. Bilbo’s interactions with the dragon Smaug are a central part of the story, but Bilbo does not encounter Sauron. The Dark Lord isn’t even known by that name in The Hobbit; he’s called the Necromancer and spends the whole of the book in his lair at Dol Guldur, perhaps 150 miles from Erebor (a/k/a The Lonely Mountain), where Bilbo meets Smaug. (Pay attention; this will be on the exam.)
• 62A [Styles in which certain outdoorsy clothes are trimmed?] L.L. BEAN CUTS Lean cuts

The goofy theme answers amused me enough.

Other stuff:

• 9A [Comic book artist Kubert] ADAM I’d not heard of Kubert. He’s worked for both Marvel and DC Comics, but I haven’t really read comic books in 0ver 50 years, before Kubert got started.
• 17A [Easter symbol] LILY Not LAMB/70A [Observance before Easter] LENT/32D [Easter service] MASS Unusual clueing here.
• 21A [Channel popular among ’80s teens] MTV It was also popular among some music-loving 20-somethings until it stopped being music videos 24 hours a day.
• 33A [Ho Chi Minh City, before 1976] SAIGON The Vietnam War was front-page news for most of my childhood, so this should have been a gimme. But I needed some crosses to jar the answer loose.
• 39A [A, in Spain] UNA/64D [A, in France] UNE The feminine form of the indefinite article in two Romance languages shouldn’t tax anyone’s language skills too heavily.
• 2D [Hot food with a cold-sounding name] CHILI Our chili recipe, which we cooked last week, is cobbled together from a couple of sources.
• 15D [Robinhood option] SELL I today learned of Robinhood Markets, a financial services company that offers online trading in stocks, options, etc.
• 21D [Mordor volcano] MT. DOOM More Tolkien!
• 30D [Hit the beach?] RUN AGROUND Cute clue.
• 31D [Bravo host Cohen] ANDY Another name new to me.
• 47D [Not at school] ABSENT I foolishly stuck with AT HOME for too long, which didn’t help me see BILBO HAZARDS.

Paul Coulter’s Fireball Crossword “All Together Now” – Jenni’s write-up

Just as I was starting to think I wasn’t going to figure this out, I…sort of figured it out. I sussed out one of the theme answers. It still took me quite a while to crack the whole thing. So.many.rebus.squares. Here’s Peter’s grid – much easier to read than mine.

Fireball Puzzle, October 22, 2025, Paul Coulter, “All Together Now,” solution grid

• 19a [Reacts to a stressful situation] has three rebus squares preceding UP. 1d [Look beyond] is SEE {PAST}. 2d [Everywhere all at once] is ALL {PRESENT} and 3d [Petroleum bought or sold at an agreed price for delivery at a specified later date] is OIL {FUTURE}. PAST/PRESENT/FUTURE are TENSES so 19a is TENSES UP. I’m not crazy about ALL PRESENT or OIL FUTURE in the singular and I don’t really care because the theme is brilliant.
• 21a [What a lost soul might seek to do] is GET {WEST} {NORTH} {EAST} {SOUTH} – GET DIRECTIONS. The crossings are LO{WEST}, FAR {NORTH}, AT L{EAST}, and THE {SOUTH}.
• 41a [Purpose of orthodontics] is TEETH {JACK} {TEN} {NINE} {EIGHT} {SEVEN} ENING – TEETH STRAIGHTENING. CAR{JACK}, PA{TEN}S, PEN{NINE }WAY, D{EIGHT}ON, and {SEVEN} PIN.
• 56a [When the standings matter most] is {FALL} {WINTER} {SPRING} {SUMMER} END – SEASON’S END. {FALL}S ON, {WINTER} ALE, {SPRING}LET, and {SUMMER}ED. And OK, I’m not crazy about SPRINGLET either. I enjoyed the solve so much I didn’t notice that until I was writing this.
• 60a [Chicago team, informally] is DA {BABY}{MAMMA}{PAPA} – DA BEARS. {BABY}ISH, {MAMMA} MIA, {PAPA}YAS.

I loved this puzzle. The difficulty level was perfect. Fun!

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: never heard of the PENNINE WAY.

Aimee Lucido’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up

Difficulty: Easy (7m33s)

Aimee Lucido’s New York Times crossword, 10/23/25, 1023

Today’s theme: PICKLEBALL (Sports craze of the 2020s … as seen three times in this grid?)

• NIN(JA M)ASTERS
• CA(BIN D)OORS
• JA(MES S)PADER

I am admittedly a snob and  look down on PICKLEBALL — tennis, for people who can’t play tennis.  Those goofy little courts, and the never ending *pong* *pong* *pong* sounds.  The ubiquity of it doesn’t help.  I logically understand the arguments people make about being accessible for those with mobility issues, and why should I bemoan anyone trying to be social and physically active, etc.  Doesn’t matter.  Still hate it.

Cracking: PLEASE GO, you’re embarrassing yourself

Slacking: neither ACAD nor a lender be

Sidetracking: While Steve Carell was obviously the heart and soul of the office, JAMES SPADER as Robert California remains one of my top ten favorite all-time television characters.

Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Just Visiting” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: BY is “dropped” in common phrases/names/words that end with those letters.

THEME ANSWERS:

• 17A [Song character who “waits at the window”] ELEANOR RIGBY
• 36A [B.B. King’s first Top 40 hit] ROCK ME BABY
• 42A [Entertainer who was 25% owner of the Pirates for 30 years] BING CROSBY
• 63A [Socially inept] DWEEBY
• 64A [Visiting, and a hint to what we’re doing in five Across answers] DROPPING BY

Solved this slowly and methodically while half paying attention to high school gossip (perk of the job—every teacher’s inner eavesdropper thrives during study hall). Anyway, I found this pretty tough, but I can’t tell if that’s because I wasn’t all that focused. I don’t think I’ve ever partaken in RUSK bread, which, according to Google, is frequently used for teething. I think I’ll stick to the Rosemary Parmesan for my next Jersey Mike’s order. BELLS for [Time-tellers at sea] makes no sense to me… is this referring to cruise ship BELLS? Ah! According to Google AI:

Time teller bells on ships mark 30-minute intervals using a system of chimes, where each chime represents a half-hour past the hour. The cycle culminates in “eight bells” which signals the end of a four-hour watch. The sequence starts with one bell at 12:30, 4:30, or 8:30, and adds a bell for each subsequent half-hour, repeating until eight bells are struck at the top of the hour. 

Interesting! I was today days old when I learned that. Is this common knowledge?

I didn’t know of Edna Ferber’s So Big either. In the end, I completely guessed the S and the B and was shocked that Mr. Happy Pencil appeared.

Thematically, this was enjoyable, though I feel like the “dropping” letters conceit is becoming more common as of late. Nothing earth shattering there, but still fun to uncover. DWEEBY as a themer was the only on that felt a little stilted. Most of the fun in this puzzle came from figuring out the fill and learning some trivia.

STUMBLES / NEW TO ME / ERRATA:

• [Saw things?] TEETH. The tool. Cute.
• [1982 film with 2010 and 2025 sequels] TRON. Didn’t know about the sequels and never saw the original. Is this a franchise worth getting on board with?
• [Bridge need] FOURTH. Not sure what this means- I assume the card game. Like, you need a FOURTH player? I dunno. Something about it feels off.
• [Entertainer who was 25% owner of the Pirates for 30 years] BING CROSBY. A themer, but a great little nugget of trivia in there!
• [Somber wind] OBOE. Interesting. I never thought of that instrument as somber. Musta been a sad duck in Peter and the Wolf.
• [High pitch, e.g.] BALL. Love this baseball clue!
• [“Eddington” director Aster] ARI. Unfamiliar with both Eddington and ARI Aster.
• [Stock holder?] BARN. I very proudly entered YOKE, thinking I had beaten the ? clue soundly.
• [Apple laptop nicknamed “Clamshell”] iBOOK. New to me, despite being a Mac guy.

I can go on and on with the stuff that I got hung up on and the fun trivia I didn’t know, but that will suffice. The fact that I knew so little and still solved with the perfect amount of Thursday bite is a testament to the construction, though I might toss some side-eye at the SO BIG / RUSK / BALL crossings.

4 Stars

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1829 “To the Nines” — Eric’s Review

Roman numerals annoy me, in real life and especially in crosswords. This puzzle was full of Roman numerals, but it was fun anyway.

Six compound nouns are wackified by the insertion of the Roman numeral for nine:

• 18A [Very small server system?] WEE UNIX I penciled in a T instead of an X here because I initially didn’t realize this was a theme answer. It’s shorter than some of the answers like 19A that aren’t part of the theme. (Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules?)
• 22A [Bungle up plant pests?] BOLLIX WEEVILS This is my favorite of the theme answers, mostly because I like the word “bollix.” I don’t know why it just occurred to me that it’s derived from “bollocks.”
• 30A [Breakfast cereal served at the Genius Bar?] APPLE CRISPIX We’re an Apple household and have spent many hours at the Genius Bar, so the start of this one was a gimme.
• 40A [Stubborn social reformer Dorothea?] TENACIOUS DIX I like this one too, possibly because I sorta knew who Dorothea Dix was and I’m familiar with Jack Black’s band Tenacious D.
• 48A [Shiny comic book Gaul?] GOLDEN ASTERIX I lost some time on this one by assuming “Gaul” was the surname of some comic book writer or illustrator. But no, it’s the French comic book protagonist.
• 56A [Make some repairs to a train station?] FIX STOP This one doesn’t work too well for me, though the photography term F-stop is very familiar. Also, I had yet to realize that 18A and 56A were theme answers, so I thought there was an extraneous IX in the grid.

Overall, a nice theme with three amusing theme answers and three nothing-too-awful theme answers. That’s a win in my book.

Other stuff:

• 4A [“Run Through the Jungle” band, briefly] CCR The fact that I didn’t get this immediately probably means the federal government is coming for my Medicare card.
• 7A [Coast Guard mem.] CPO I was initially going to put ENS, then realized that 7D [Crow’s call] had to be CAW, which made me think 7A was CMR. But the abbreviation for “Commander” is “Cmdr.,” so CPO it was.
• 10A [Brandenburg Concertos monogram] JSB Johann Sebastian Bach, as I hope you knew.
• 36A [Weaves together] MESHES Not MERGES.
• 57A [Local legislator, informally] STATE REP In almost 30 years of working for the Texas Legislature, I met many of those folks. Some were idiots, some were jerks, some were well-meaning but ineffectual, and a few were smart and hard-working. (If you live in a state that’s holding any kind of election this year, please get informed and vote!)
• 63A [___ de Saint-Exupéry (“The Little Prince” author) ANTOINE A gimme, though I haven’t read that book in over 50 years.
• 66A [Student Debt Support org.] NEA That’s not a program I’m familiar with. Does it still exist?
• 3D YOKELS That’s a word I’m never happy to see in a crossword. My dictionary defines it as “an uneducated and unsophisticated person from the countryside” (emphasis added). To me, the word is a slur on rural people.
• 4D [Dubya’s secretary of state] CONDI For you youngsters, that’s short for Condoleezza Rice, the first Black woman to hold that post.
• 9D [Cheri in the “SNL” Spartan cheerleaders skits] OTERI The last three words of this clue are verbiage. Any experienced crossword solver knows Cheri + SNL = Oteri.
• 11D [Geodesy, e.g: Abbr.] SCI There’s my Word of the Day: “The branch of mathematics dealing with the shape and area of the earth or large portions of it.”
• 14D [“Cryptonomicon” author Stephenson] NEAL Both the book and its author are new to me. The book appears to be historical fiction in part covering some Allied codebreakers during World War II.
• 28D [Three, on sundials] III More Roman numerals!
• 34D [Opposite of là] ICI “Here and there” in French. Or, really, “there and here.”
• 35D [“One of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy,” according to Steve Martin] SEX Normally, I’d object to a 16-word clue for a three-letter answer. But it’s a funny line, so it gets a pass.
• 36D [Ski area locales: Abbr.] MTS Please do a snow dance or light a snow candle for Southern Colorado. The snow coverage last year was disappointing; I’m hoping for a better season this time around.
• 47D [“Amadeus” setting] VIENNA The play is great. The Milos Forman film is great. If you’ve never seen either, give the movie a try.
• 51D [Language that roughly 2000 people speak globally (I’m sure many of them are teachers)] LATIN Another clue whose length is disproportionate to the length of the answer, but it too gets a pass because it amused me.
• 53D [Escorted through the foyer] LED IN Not SAW IN.

Katherine Baicker’s USA Today Crossword, “Shut the Front Door” — Emily’s write-up

Can you hold it for me?

USA Today, October 23, 2025, “Shut the Front Door” by Katherine Baicker

Theme: each themer begins (aka front) with a type of door

Themers:

• 20a. [Income-based fee structure], SLIDINGSCALE
• 30a. [“Bill-killing” executive power], POCKETVETO
• 45a. [Part of some chemistry exams?], SCREENTEST
• 53a. [“You can go about your business], STORMTROOPER

What a wide-ranging themer set of SLIDINGSCALE, POCKETVETO, SCREENTEST, and STORMTROOPER. I needed some crossings for each today but everything was fairly crossed. They weren’t too tricky or niche but would take certain knowledge that just wasn’t quick for me today but likely would be for some people. With the fun theme, we get a SLIDING DOOR, POCKET DOOR, SCREEN DOOR, and STORM DOOR.

Favorite fill: SWEETTALK, POLAR, HOPON, and BABKA

Stumpers: RIDGE (needed crossings—only thought of “apex”, “peaks”, and “cliff”), SAO (new to me), and BAT (misdirected and thought of only a party)

Loved this theme and themer set! Great cluing, though some were tricky for me so not my fastest solve but it still felt smooth to me. Lots of fun, fresh overall fill as well. Delightful!

4.5 stars

~Emily