Wednesday, October 29, 2025

AV Club untimed (Amy) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
LAT 6:15 (Gareth) [1.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 3:14 (Amy) [3.55 avg; 11 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker tk (Kyle) [4.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Universal untimed (pannonica) [3.50 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today 8:30 (Emily) [2.25 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
WSJ 7:04 (Eric) [3.38 avg; 4 ratings] rate it

Lillian Leibovich & Rich Proulx’s AV Club Classic crossword, “Home Visits”—Amy’s recap

AV Club Classic crossword solution, 10/29/25 – “Home Visits”

The Down answers are all clued pretty straightforwardly, while the Across theme answers each have a HAUNTED HOUSE.

• 20a. [Non-criminal legal action] clues a CIVIL LAWSUIT, but that VILLA is haunted by a DEMON so the entry is CI{DEMON}WSUIT.
• 28a. [Powerful politicians in an ancient empire] would be ROMAN SENATORS. That MANSE is haunted by a GHOST, so RO{GHOST}NATORS.
• 44a. [Take two?] clues SECOND OPINION but goodness gracious, the CONDO is GHOUL-infested! So SE{GHOUL}PINION.

It’s a fun Halloweeny theme, but the resulting theme entries do look awful in the grid.

This one was a gimme for me: 16a. [Where the Chamorros are indigenous], GUAM. Team Fiend’s Jim Peredo, his family is from Guam. Also, in her “Audacious Roundup” newsletter this week, Roxane Gay shared alink to this personal essay by a Chamorro human rights lawyer. Julian Aguon wrote about the US military/colonial destruction of Guam’s environment and people, the toxins and radiation causing cancers that have wiped out entire families. Yes, the US is still colonizing its various “territories” and it’s ugly.

Fave fill: the “OOPS, SORRY” and “NO WORRIES” pair, WONDER DRUGS (man, I wish they had more of these), AUGURED.

Not keen on legalese ENSUANT, which I’ve not encountered before.

3.5 stars from me.

John Donegan’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap

NY Times crossword solution, 10/29/25 – no. 1029

This 14×16 puzzle features four Halloweeny riffs for Dracula’s lifestyle:

• 16A. [Dracula’s preferred way to eat wings?], RIGHT OFF THE BAT. Eww.
• 26A. [What makes Dracula frantically hop around?], LIGHT ON HIS FEET. Sunlight, that is.
• 47A. [When Dracula doesn’t feel seen?], UPON REFLECTION. Can’t see himself in a mirror.
• 61A. [Get ready to attack Dracula and his pals?], RAISE THE STAKES and lower them in a stabby manner.

I like it! Playful and seasonally appropriate.

Not sure I knew this: 25A. [Sebastian the ___, mascot of the Miami Hurricanes], IBIS. University of Miami. Apparently they selected this South Florida marsh bird for its bravery in the face of hurricanes. They should have used Ibises for the team name!

Fave fill: SEWING KIT. If you’re in your college years or 20s and don’t own a little sewing kit, pick one up! Super-handy to be able to reattach a button or mend a torn seam. If you’re older than that and still don’t have a sewing kit, go to the drugstore and get you a kit.

1970s name: 43D. [Feminist sex educator Shere ___], HITE. Best known for her 1976 book, The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality. This brought women’s sex out of the shadows of things written by men. Holy cow, that’s 49 years ago now.

Four stars from me.

AJ Phillips’s Wall Street Journal Crossoword “Creature Feature” — Eric’s Review

AJ Phillips’s Wall Street Journal “Creature Feature” — 10/28/25

This felt like it had a little more bite than the typical Wednesday puzzle, but that could just be because I haven’t slept well for a few nights. Or maybe it was because the theme was contained in the Down answers. That always slows me some because I don’t like reading top to bottom (or bottom to top, in the case of the thematic parts of this puzzle). The theme answers consist of one 15-letter answer, 2 10-letter answers and 2 nine-letter answers — that’s a lot of what my husband, a retired graphic designer, calls “totem type.”

Circles in the theme answers enclose letters that don’t spell words until you realize that you need to read those circled letters from bottom to top:

• 5D [Like nearly half of all premature deaths] PREVENTABLE I didn’t know that statistic, but it doesn’t surprise me if I think about some of the major causes of death like motor vehicle collisions and suicide.
• 7D [User of an inverted pentagram, maybe] DEVIL WORSHIPPER Thanks to muscle memory, I’ve now I’ve typed the second word twice with a single P. I checked three dictionaries and the first two indicate that the one and two P spellings are equally common; the third says the two P spelling is preferred.
• 11D [Mazes full of dead ends?] CATACOMBS Literally “dead,” as in a stiff! Bereft of life. Rests in peace! Pushing up the daisies! Metabolic processes history! Off the twig!
  Kicked the bucket! Shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!
• 

  Northern saw-whet owl (Aegolius acadicus)

  27D [Stephen King book in which dead animals rise again, like five spooky creatures do in this puzzle] PET SEMETARY It wasn’t until I saw the “rise again” that I understood that the circled letters are read top to bottom and spell, from the left side of the grid to the right, WOLF, BAT, OWL, RAT and CAT. I don’t consider owls particularly spooky. Less than a month ago, I had the wonderful experience of seeing a northern saw-whet owl in the aspen tree outside the second-floor window where my desk is. It was no more than 10 feet from where I was sitting. On the other hand, on a very dark night, some owl calls might be chilling at first.

• 36D [Movement that’s in vein] BLOOD FLOW I missed the punny clue while solving.

This is a nice theme for the week of Halloween. Soolvers unfamiliar with King’s novel might try to spell it CEMETERY, but that shouldn’t slow them down too much. Pet Sematary isn’t one of the few King novels I’ve read, but I appreciate how he repeatedly referenced Jonathan Richman’s “Roadrunner” in Christine.

Other stuff:

• 1A [Get in hot water?] STEEP Not BATHE.
• 14A [Locker room sulker] LOSER At dinner this evening, we saw the first inning or so of Game 4 of the World Series. I don’t know whether the Dodgers or the Blue Jays are sulking tonight. If I had to pick a team to root for, it would be Toronto.
• 17A [Bleeped word] EXPLETIVE I’m reading the linguist John McWhorter’s Nine Nasty Words and just got to Chapter 4, A Kick-Ass Little Word. So far, the book has been very interesting.
• 41A [Jet black] SABLE Not EBONY.
• 43A [Rock with a blue tinge?] EMO Many of the clues seemed to have some wordplay, but I feel like I’d seen them all before. This clue, though, seems fresher.
• 46A [Activist Mandela] NELSON No, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate did not die in prison.
• 6oA [Mens ___] REA That’s Latin for “guilty mind” and is an important part of a criminal statute or prosecution. We spent a lot of class time on mens rea in law school and even more time on what the Texas Penal Code refers to as a “culpable mental state” when I worked for the Texas Legislature. It’s always struck me as a bit esoteric for a mainstream crossword.
• 2D [Substance marked with a skull and crossbones] TOXIN Fortunately for me, POISON was too long.
• 6D [Spanish party island] IBIZA I’m sure my pronunciation is atrocious, but whenever I see that name, I can’t help turning the Z into something close to TH, the way a Spaniard would.

Chandi Deitmer’s USA Today Crossword, “Light It Up” — Emily’s write-up

On fire!

USA Today, October 29, 2025, “Light It Up” by Chandi Deitmer

Theme: the last word of each themer is an item that can be lit

Themers:

• 20a. [Stuffed dish also called sigarim], MOROCCANCIGAR
• 36a. [Keanu Reeves-led action film series], JOHNWICK
• 53a. [Encounter a worthy opponent], MEETYOURMATCH

A variety of themers in today’s set with MOROCCANCIGAR, JOHNWICK, and MEETYOURMATCH. Nothing was an insta-fill for me, though for some solvers they might be, but everything was fairly crossed.

Favorite fill: DOLLARMENU, THEATERKID, and DAYOLD

Stumpers: ASNEEDED (needed crossings), ADIR (new to me), and ROCKED (also needed crossings))

Overall a great puzzle with a fun theme and themer set with lots of fresh fill. Though I found some cluing to be a bit tricker, there weren’t any areas were I got stuck and my solve still felt smooth. An interesting grid design today too.

4.0 stars

~Emily

Robert S Gard’s Universal crossword, “Sounds Like a Know-It-All” — pannonica’s write-up

Universal • 10/29/25 • Wed • “Sounds Like a Know-It-All” • Gard • solution • 20251029

• 57a^R [Disclaimer after an unintended witticism … or an alternative title for this puzzle] NO PUN INTENDED. Whoa, real bad form with ‘unintended’ in the clue and ‘intended’ in the answer. Anyway, the bigram NO has been inserted into the base phrases to make—in my opinion—weak puns; they bear little resemblance to the original versions, so the wordplay is that much farther removed from the source.
• 20a. [Carolers riding tracked vehicles?] SNO-CAT SINGERS (scat singers).
• 28a. [Wine bar offering that might get out of hand?] BOTTOMLESS PINOT (bottomless pit).
• 47a. [Bunch of people from the Italian Riviera?] GAGGLE OF GENOESE (gaggle of geese).

How did all this strike you?

• 1d [Bruce Wayne’s underwater vehicle] BAT-SUB. Sure, why not? 36a [“Like I care”] WHATEVS.
• 6d [Did a book review of?] AUDITED. Pretty nice.
• 7d [Warbler garden visitor] WREN, not in fact a warbler, though they are both passerines.
• 11d [Chimpanzee or orangutan] APE. Good job not using ‘chimp’ and ‘orang’.
• 14d [Org. that ended its “shoes off” policy in July 2025] TSA. Did not know this. An extremely rare improvement.
• 26d [Tomato from Maryland, ironically] ROMA. Trivia I did not know and shall attempt to retain.
• 29d [Piece of portable art, for short] TAT. Never really thought of tattoos as ‘portable’ but of course they are.
• 45d [Like some lions and leopards] AFRICAN. The ‘some’ in the clue led me immediately to ASIATIC because the vast majority of lions are in Africa. There’s a small population in Subcontinental Asia. Leopards, on the other hand, have wide distribution throughout that continent, though they are threatened, endangered, or even extinct in many places.
• 50d [Mild-mannered] GENTLE.
  
• 51d [Tolerate] ENDURE, 52d [Prolonged attacks] SIEGES.
• 13a [Add to the family, perhaps] ADOPT.
• 40a [“I hear …”] SOME SAY.
  
  (This is the most ridiculous cover I could find, but my time was short. There’s probably something better out there.)
• 54a [Tito’s alternative, slangily] STOLI. Both are vodkas.
• 68a [Closer to “still mooing”] RARER. Clue phased me. I guess I haven’t heard that particular ‘witticism’ in a long time.
• 70a [With it, upstairs] SANE. For this one, it took only a beat or two to make sense of the seemingly nonsensical clue.
• 71a [Soldier’s chow hall] MESS.

Sheris Steinman & Katie Hale’s LA Times crossword – Gareth’s theme summary

I think I liked the full width explaining answers, HERBALESSENCES, more than the theme itself. The rest consists of three people, one fictional, whose first names are herbs. Surprisingly, there is no-one called Ginger or Basil makes an appearance. Instead, we have:

• [Winner of the first Olympic gold medal in men’s snowboard slopestyle], SAGEKOTSENBERG
• [White Christmas co-star], ROSEMARYCLOONEY
• [“Peanuts” character with a tendency to sleep through class], PEPPERMINTPATTY

Gareth