LAT untimed (pannonica) 
[2.38 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
NYT 9:08 (Amy) 
[3.32 avg; 19 ratings] rate it
Universal 8:05 (Jim P) 
[2.90 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Emily) [3.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Kelvin Zhou’s New York Times crossword — Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 10/24/25 – no. 1024
Man oh man, I don’t know why this puzzle took me longer than a typical Saturday NYT. It’s just me, isn’t it?
Fave fill: PARACHUTE, ART FORGER, “IT’S MY TREAT,” “I DON’T KNOW, CAN YOU?” (sure wish they’d found a way not you repeat “I” and “can” in the clue, though), PATRIOTIC (lotta US flags at the No Kings marches last Saturday), TCHOTCHKE, “READY, SET, GO,” STICKER SHOCK, SAFETY SCHOOL ([Plan B, for seniors], referring not to emergency contraception or Medicare plans for senior citizens, but rather, back-up plans for college applicants), SKATE PARKS.
Not keen on E MAJ (as always, fill in the M, check the crossings to see if it’s MIN or MAJ, wait for the crossing to tell you which of A-through-G goes first), dated STENO POOLS, prefix STETHO-, arbitrary THREE PIN (in bowling).
Did not know LASH-UP was a thing ([Makeshift arrangement]), and I still haven’t seen The Wire so [Clarence ___, “The Wire” mayor] was an all-crossings-needed clue for ROYCE. Really? A TV character from two seasons of a show 20 years ago, and not even a mention of the actor playing him (Glynn Turman)?
53A. [Number discovered in the 1500s], ETHER. That’s “number” as in “thing that numbs.” I would have guessed 1800s!
3.5 stars from me.
Colden Longley’s Universal crossword, “Interwoven”—Jim P’s review
Theme answers are phrases that are broken into two stacked words with letters in a CRISS-CROSS formation (34a, [Pattern for shoelaces or the starred clues’ answers (forward and backward!)]). The top word in each pair is itself unclued (the clue goes with the theme phrase), but the bottom word is clued normally.
Universal crossword solution · “Interwoven” · Colden Longley · Fri., 10.24.25
- 1a. [*With 13-Across, deeply missed] PINED FOR which is found by taking alternating letters from 1a POND and 13a RIFE.
- 14a. *With 18-Across, crime boss] RINGLEADER from 14a RENAL and 18a RIDGE.
- 16a. *With 19-Across, Guinevere’s lover] LANCELOT from 16a LONE and 19a TALC.
- 63a. *With 66-Across, Beavis’ partner] BUTTHEAD from 63a BATH and 66a DUET.
- 64a. 64a. *With 67-Across, magnetic storage devices] TAPE DRIVE from 64a TEPID and 67a SAVER.
Really cool mechanic to find the theme answers! The puzzle had me scratching my head at first wondering how to get LANCELOT in two words, but then it appeared like magic. Great aha moment! Finding BUTTHEAD from BATH and DUET was worth the price of admission alone. This is an impressive debut puzzle from a new constructor. Kudos!
I do wish 43a could’ve been something thematically related. I wonder if the title “Interwoven” was there at first instead of INTERESTED, but that would’ve forced a V at the bottom of 10d, making the fill pretty difficult. Surely some other related 10-letter phrase could’ve gone there, maybe “out and back”? Not a dealbreaker for sure, but it would’ve been more elegant. Also, it does seem like it should’ve been possible to squeeze one more theme answer in the bottom right corner.
But as it is, it’s a fun theme with solid-to-good longer fill. Highlights include ROLLED-R, ISRAELITE, DROP-TOP, DRATTED, and FLU BUG. Didn’t know the statistical T-TEST, and since it crosses old-timey DRATTED and Italian SEI, that might be a problem area.
Ah, I just noticed the grid is not fully symmetrical. There’s an extra black square in the top row after EDEN. This doesn’t spoil my solve or the grid, but it does mean this puzzle couldn’t run in another venue that demands full symmetry.
Clues of note:
- 5d. [Variable]. ERRATIC. These aren’t quite equivalent in my book. The clue suggests something might change or it might not. The word means something that changes wildly.
- 44d. [Burrito portion?]. ROLLED R. Nice clue. It’s extra deceptive since a burrito is itself rolled.
Very nice debut puzzle. Four stars from me.
Katherin Baicker and Laura Dershewitz’s Los Angeles Times crossword — pannonica’s write-up
LAT • 10/24/25 • Fri • Baicker, Dershewitz • solution • 20251024
- 60aR [Accept victory, however dubious, and a hint to 17-, 24-, 37-, and 52-Across] TAKE THE WIN. Or, more pragmatically, TAKE THE W. That letter has been removed from familiar phrases to make acky answers.
- 17a. [Replacement joint that’s better than new?] MIRACLE HIP (Miracle Whip).
- 24a. [Linguistic battles between psychologists?] SHRINK RAP (shrink wrap).
- 37a. [Jerks riding public transit?] HEELS ON THE BUS (“Wheels on the Bus“).
- 52a. [Donuts, bagels, et al.?] HOLE FOODS (Whole Foods).
These are … kind of okay?
- 2d [Ballet class] POINTE. Class as in category, or as in a venue for a lesson?
- 7d [Mark longer than a dit] DAH. Hm, when it comes to Morse code, I think of dits and dahs as the more accurate names for the component sounds, but if I’m referring to the marks themselves, those would be dots and dashes.
- 13d [Start to check] PRE-. Usually in crosswords this concept is in reference to a TSA entry.
- 37d [Virtuous circle] HALO. Great little clue.
- 38d [Thrilled] EXULTANT. Wanted EXUBERANT here.
- 41d [Skip the daily commute, for short] WFH, work from home.
- 50d [Sin City attraction] CASINO. The house always wins, ultimately.
- 51d [Open up] UNSNAP. I would have appreciated an “in a way” qualifier.
- 53d [Marine scamp] OTTER. A recent trend in crosswords that I’ve noticed is to treat the sea otter, Enhydra lutris, as a stand-in for all otters, when in reality it is the only marine member in a subfamily of 14 species.
- 21a [Support column] PILE, not POLE as I first tried.
- 34a [Informed Delivery org.] USPS. Definitely a worthwhile service.
- 36a [Ref. that added “horror show” in 2024. Wow, so late? 25d [Plagued] HAUNTED. 64a [Dark doings] EVILS.
- 44a [Marshmallow spread] FLUFF. >shudder<
- 65a [Tech company that owns the Chinese microblogging app Weibo] SINA. Never heard of it.
No it’s not just you. This one was tough for me too. I’ve seen The Wire twice and still couldn’t come up with ROYCE with out some crosses.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2.5 stars
It wasn’t just you Amy. It was more of a Saturday for me than Saturday usually is.
I think the phrase “too clever by half” applies to this one. I appreciate a good misdirection clue, but there were so many of them here that it really bogged down the solve for me.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 1.5 stars
Exactly.
And misdirections should elicit a smile once you tumble onto them, but in some cases, I felt they were too far-fetched.
NYT: Early returns on xwstats.com have the median solve at >60% slower than a standard Friday, so this one definitely plays tough
Roeg / Steno pools / lash up / Royce section was particularly slow to fall for me, though I was proud when it finally did!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
NYT: This was tough! It would have gone better if I didn’t start with CIDER at 1 Across and keep trying to come up with a Medicare related answer for #9 Down. Never heard of LASHUP so kept trying to get MASHUP to work. … Felt good when I finished though!
I also had CIDER, and I would argue, that’s a much more apt “product” than a PARER.
Same here, and I thought my husband was an idiot when I saw he had written in PARER!
Your husband may be “the dumbest smart guy [you] know,” but he’s gotta be right some of the time.
I figured out the clue pretty quickly. Then I bobbled it by starting with CORER. I’m glad PEPSI was a gimme.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
been a long time since i took 16.x minutes for a Friday. i’m ok with that! when the reason is clever cluing on a themeless with a lot of nice entries, that is.
“Plan B, for seniors” – SAFETY SCHOOL was one of my favorites.
“It helps with server load” – TRAY
“Starting line at a starting line” READY SET GO
“Locales with many banks” – SKATE PARKS
“Synthetic oil producer?” – ART FORGER
lot of nice ones
3.5 stars
Thanks for writing what I was thinking about this puzzle (though I think I gave it 4 stars last night).
It was my slowest Friday in a long while. One of the few where I wondered if I could finish it without either looking up something like The Wire character or just letting the whole puzzle sit for a few hours.
Even when I had the SCHOOL concept of SAFETY SCHOOL, I couldn’t remember the first part of that term.
Tough puzzle but some really fun clueing.
A very nice Friday morning workout. SAFETY SCHOOL was not really a thing when/where I went to high school – those of us who were intending to go to college just figured we were going to one of the state schools within two or three hours’ drive from home.
But the term came up recently in an article I was reading about the current quarterback at Indiana University, Fernando Mendoza. He’s a graduate transfer from Cal, where he played for three years and earned a business degree. The article mentioned that his SAFETY SCHOOL was Yale, where they were interested in having him play football, but they don’t offer athletic scholarships. A little different take on the concept.
I graduated high school in 1977 and applied only to the University of Texas. Looking back, I might have been able to get into something a bit more elite. But then I would never have met my husband or have stumbled into a mostly great job.
The idea of Yale as one’s SAFETY SCHOOL is a bit ironic.
That sounds like Max Fischer in Rushmore, trying to woo a teacher at least double his age. “My top schools where I want to apply are Oxford and the Sorbonne. But my safety’s Harvard.”
UT isn’t Hahvahd, but it’s hardly Podunk U.
My take on Mendoza is that he really wanted a shot at playing football on a big stage. – so a little bit different calculus regarding his “safety school.” And of course, Cal isn’t exactly Podunk U, either.
Thanks for the glowing endorsement of my alma mater!
After SCOTUS held UT’s affirmative action program unconstitutional, the legislature enacted a law that said (as best as I remember) that any student who was in the top 10% of their graduating class would be automatically admitted to either UT or Texas A&M. (Because the Texas public schools are still de facto fairly segregated, the policy did actually mean that Black and Hispanic students got in.)
I’ve heard that if you’re not in the top 10%, it’s harder to get into UT than it was in my day.
To add to the chorus, yes, this was an unusually tough Friday. I’ve only seen Don Q’s sidekick referred to as Sancho Panza or just Sancho, so PANZA didn’t make me happy. I got THREEPIN eventually but took a while to figure out what it meant. SAFETYSCHOOL and LASHUP are not in my vocabulary; STETHO is obscure; no idea about ROYCE since I never watched the show.
I think STENO, and STENOPOOLS even more so, survive only in crosswords, or maybe reruns of the old Perry Mason show.
It didn’t make me unhappy, but I bobbled PANZA. My first thought when I saw the donkey clue was of Shrek, even though I am fairly sure no one rides that donkey.
Then, having only passing familiarity with Don Quixote, I misremembered his sidekick’s name as “Sancho Panza.” (That’s not totally dumb.)
Wait – isn’t “Sancho Panza” actually the character’s name?
yes. And, as I recall from my smoking days, not a bad cigar
Of course “Sancho Panza” is Quixote’s companion. What I meant to say was that I misremembered the character’s name as “Pancho Sanza.”
The first half is legit (and part of the title of the best song Townes Van Zandt ever wrote). For all I know, there are Spaniards and people of Spanish descent with the surname “Panza.”
Sorry to have created confusion. I’m good at that sometimes.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
NYT: The L of lashup was the last letter to fall for me. I don’t think I have ever heard that phrase. Tough puzzle, I did not know Erika or Royce but I got there with the crosses. Good challenge with fun fill.
Puzzle NYT
Jamie and Huda – my thoughts EXACTLY!
NYT: This is a Friday puzzle and not a Saturday one, so it’s not supposed to be a Stumper. ROYCE is clued in way too obscure a way IMO for Friday. I’m guessing someone on the editorial team really likes “The Wire,” which seems to be in clues quite a bit.
There are several other ways to clue ROYCE that would seem more appropriate for Friday IMO. Rolls-ROYCE of course, but there is also the rapper named ROYCE da 5 9 who had a #1 album in 2011; the musical group Rose ROYCE that had a #1 hit (“Car Wash”) in 1976; Prince ROYCE who has had 20 #1 Latin hits including as recently as 2023; and ROYCE O’Neal, who is a current NBA player. All of those would be difficult but not seem overly obscure for Friday. Clarence ROYCE doesn’t show up at all on the first 10 pages of results for me when I google “ROYCE.”
Maybe ROYCE is just not that easy to clue creatively. Rolls ROYCE is well-known, but neither the clue in today’s puzzle nor any of the other ROYCEs you cite is familiar to me. I do remember “Car Wash” from my college days, but couldn’t have come up with the artist if there was a gun to my head.
The clue for THREEPIN, is it referring to the literal E which looks like a three-pin plug?
It’s a bowling reference. The pins are numbered:
7 8 9 10
4 5 6
2 3
1
The THREE PIN is on the right in the second row. (Sorry – I can’t seem to get this to display in the triangular format of the bowling pins.)
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
I absolutely loved the NYT- it was witty and challenging. I think that’s what a Friday puzzle should be.
Can’t decide on how I feel about the clue for “I DON’T KNOW, CAN YOU?” Is it revolutionary? Is it, as Rex describes it, playfully breaking the rules? Or is it just sloppy–because I think a solver would have a very legitimate complaint that, “I THOUGHT that was the answer but I didn’t put it in for 20 minutes because, because, you just don’t DO that! You don’t repeat answer words in the clue! What the hell?!”
What percentage of solvers do you imagine know that there’s a “rule” that you don’t put part of the answer in the clue?
My guess is that it’s pretty low and that if you made a Venn diagram of the people who know that “rule” and the people who read crossword blogs, the circles would almost entirely overlap.
I’m sorry to hear that you lost 20 minutes on the puzzle because of that. (And I hope you’re exaggerating the amount of time.)
I know that “rule” exists and have found myself more frequently noticing it being violated. But the duplication of “I” and “can” was a de minimis violation at most.
I think the rule is probably pretty well known among solvers, in spirit if not letter. Think of how many times you’re trying to find a 7- or 8- or 9- letter answer that is obviously a compound noun, and how you see the nouns in the clue and it quickly registers in your brain, “Well, THOSE words aren’t in the answer, for sure.”
And no, I didn’t spend 20 minutes refusing to write an answer; I meant to use an exaggerated hypothetical to emphasize the merit of that point of view, which has now diminished for me somewhat after I spent 20 minutes trying to write a good clue.
I’ve been solving crosswords for upwards of 40 years. I’m aware of the various “rules” about dupes and so forth. The rules rarely, if ever, come to mind while I’m solving a puzzle.
I thought this was an entertaining clue/entry.
what’s the best clue for it that doesn’t repeat any answer words? i can’t think of one that’s not super vague, stilted, etc
I’d go with [Instructive, but snarky, question from a teacher] or [“May” endorsement].
placematfan, those are really excellent clues. I was also of the school that the repetition was unavoidable, but you have convinced me otherwise.
I can’t think of a better clue but I’m certainly not at your level of cluing.
I may be misinterpreting your post but I take it that if the entry is good enough you’ll compromise on the clue. If I’m correct, does this entry rise to that level? In my experience the phrase seems to leave people miffed if not annoyed. Not necessarily a great phrase.
where is the LA Times?
nver mind, found it!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
One of the best puzzles from anywhere in a long time. Loved, loved, loved 53A. [Number discovered in the 1500s], ETHER. That’s “number” as in “thing that numbs.” And there are so many more to highlight. We’re a paper and pencil house and usually always finish before we leave for work, but this one delighted us until just before dinner. Thank you, Kelvin Zhou.
NYT: Can’t even fill a corner. Totally beyond my pay grade.
WSJ: Compared to most other meta contest puzzles, this one is a joy to fill. The meta is also easy enough.
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 4.5 stars
At first I detested the gimmick deployed by constructor Colden Longley, but after successfully completing the crossword, I grew to appreciate how difficult this criss-cross stunt was!