BEQ 15:21+ (Eric) 
[3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
LAT 2:02 (Stella) 
[2.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 3:17 (Sophia) [3.20 avg; 10 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker 4:57 (Amy) [3.00 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
Universal untimed (pannonica) 
[3.67 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (?) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
WSJ 3:09 (Jim Q) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Kevin Christian and Andrea Carla Michaels’s New York Times Crossword — Sophia’s Recap
New York Times, 11 03 2025, By Kevin Christian and Andrea Carla Michaels
Theme: ACs – each theme answer is a phrase where the first word begins with A and the second begins with C
- 17a [*PIN, e.g.] – ACCESS CODE
- 26a [*Stray feline] – ALLEY CAT
- 40a [*Overly eager personal injury lawyer, derisively] – AMBULANCE CHASER
- 52a [*Gangster a.k.a. Scarface] – AL CAPONE
- 66a [*Morning waker-upper] – ALARM CLOCK
- 10d [*Warning sign that might be seen on a chain-link fence] – AREA CLOSED
- 30d [*Record art space] – ALBUM COVER
- 65d [Summer coolers, for short … or a hint to the answers to the starred clues] – ACS
Quick recap today – solid work as always from two veteran constructors. Having 7 theme answers, some of which intersect, is very impressive while keeping the fill Monday appropriate. My favorites were ALLEY CAT and AMBULANCE CHASER. ALBUM COVER was hard for me to parse from the clue – I thought it was referring to a physical space like a recording studio. AREA CLOSED is a little boring compared to the other answers, but it is very constrained with its two theme crossings.
My only slight complaint is that I was hoping for a more interesting revealer than just ACS once I realized what was going on, but the quantity of thematic material made up for it. I remember the NYT running a “central ac” puzzle on a Thursday a few months ago, so air conditioning is clearly rich thematic inspiration even in November :)
Clue highlights: [Apple on a desk, perhaps] for IMAC, [Film that may have inspired “Sharknado”] for JAWS
Happy Monday all!
Ajay Bhargava’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 11/3/2025 by Ajay Bhargava
The revealer at 59A [Forming couples, or a feature of 17-, 25-, 36-, and 50- Across] is PAIRING UP, because each theme entry has a pair of UPs in it:
- 17A [Lunch combo component, perhaps] is CUP OF SOUP.
- 25A [Out of this world] is SUPER-DUPER.
- 36A [Classic Connie Francis song with the line “I’d like to clip your wings so you can’t fly”] is STUPID CUPID.
- 50A [Spanish candy brand whose logo was designed by Salvador Dalí] is CHUPA CHUPS.
I would’ve preferred if only one theme entry was a rhyming phrase, since if you get those two entries you might wrongly think that the theme phrases all rhyme. But otherwise these are good themers; I especially liked the fun fact in the clue for CHUPA CHUPS.
The 11-letter entry in the middle forces a grid shape with more mid-length words than is usual for Monday, which I enjoyed. CICADA, SIAMESE, SHOUTOUT, IGUANA, URSULA, for example, are all nice evocative entries one doesn’t typically see on Mondays.
Susan Gelfand’s Universal crossword, “Help Is on the Way!” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 11/3/25 • Mon • “Help Is on the Way!” • Gelfand • solution • 20251103
Easy and straightforward crossword. The cluing is no-nonsense, the theme is readily understandable. Would make a good introduction for a novice solver.
- 54aR [Person who can assist, or a hint to the word that can follow each half of 18-, 24-, 35- or 49-Across] PAIR OF HANDS.
- 18a. [Persuading] WINNING OVER (winning hand, overhand).
- 24a. [Like food products grown in controlled environments] FARM RAISED (farmhand, raised hand).
- 35a. [High stadium section] UPPER DECK (upper hand, deckhand).
- 49a. [Any day now] BEFORE LONG (beforehand, longhand).
- 3d [California mountain range, informally] SIERRAS (Sierra Nevadas). 28a [Eurasian range] URALS.
- 6d [Lion’s abode] DEN. 64a [Hibernation spot] LAIR. I feel these clues should have been reversed.
- 11d [Play that’s on Broadway once again] REVIVAL.
- 12d [Flowerlike sea creature] ANEMONE. Well, to start with there’s a flower called an anemone, and the ocean beastie is a sea anemone. But sure, people call ’em anemones too.
- 19d [Drink that sounds like 25-Down] ICEE. 25d [“Gotcha”] I SEE. Personally I don’t think we should be calling attention to the similarity here.
- 38d [Examine the similarities and differences] COMPARE. Sure, I’ll share this one again. (any excuse, as it’s seemingly perennial relevant)
- 43d [Not the least bit] IN NO WAY. 49d [Overwhelmingly] BY FAR.
- 55d [Word before or aftern”pack”] RAT. A similar mechanism to the theme’s.
- 58a [Number of cities in a Dickens title] TWO. It was the best of clues, it was the worst of clues. (Actually it’s neither.) Marginally interesting that this TWO is next to the revealer’s PAIR.
- 61a [Off-Broadway theater honor] OBIE, a cutesy alteration of O-B, the initials of Off-Broadway.
Liz Gorski’s New Yorker crossword—Amy’s recap
New Yorker crossword solution, 11/3/25 – Gorski
This one went fast for me, likely because I’m good at names (of people, places, brands, and titles). Guessing a sizable portion of solvers found the puzzle frustrating because of overreliance on proper nouns and related fill: ENTEBBE, CAITLIN CLARK, ARES, SETHE, PUMA shoes, RCA, LATIN, “CLAIR de Lune,” BAMA, MIKAELA, NORAD, LUCE, TREVI, Dizzy DEAN, DMITRI, BAI beverage brand, BIG BOI, THE ACCUSED, “Desire Under the ELMS,” RAY Charles, PAPA BEAR, ULEE, RAMI, EMILE, KHAN. When there are so many names, it’s good to use non-name clues where possible–PUMA, RAY, and DEAN could all have been clued as common nouns.
Big demerit for including crosswordese ERNE.
New to me: [Score marking that means “don’t pause between movements”], ATTACCA. Not all of us have played musical instruments, and I feel like I’ve never seen this one in crosswords before.
2.75 stars from me.
Caroline Hand’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Drinks All Around!” — Jim Q’s write-up
Last Thursday’s title “Spirited Away” works fine for this one too!
THEME: Drinks that reference a geographical location are clued wackily
WSJ • 11/3/25 • Mon • “Drinks All Around!” • Caroline Hand • solution • 20251103
THEME ANSWERS:
- [Stubborn beast in Russia?] MOSCOW MULE
- [Arm bandage in Southeast Asia?] SINGAPORE SLING
- [Light wind at a Southern California cove?] MALIBU BAY BREEZE
- [Jail in Montgomery?] ALABAMA SLAMMER
- [Parental figure in Nassau?] BAHAMA MAMA
For 80% of those themers, I’m just seeing the clues now- as a bartender for 20+ years, these were delightful to fill in, but super easy! Just needed a letter or two for most of them.
Cute theme, and if there’s any crud in the grid, I’m not seeing it!
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1832 — Eric’s Review
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1832
I’ve been sleeping poorly for the last week or so; last night I had the novel experience of having to set aside the Monday New York Times Crossword about ⅔ of the way through because I was too tired to finish it. I slept better than I had in days, so maybe the shift from Daylight Saving Time isn’t all bad? (I still hate it, though.)
You’d think that being fairly well-rested would put me in a place to zoom through BEQ’s themeless offering, but I found it crunchy in spots. It was, as his themeless puzzles often are for me, a nice reinforcement of some basic crossword-solving strategies: Read every clue to get your gimmes. Work the crossings. Question those answers you’re sure are correct and don’t hesitate to erase them if the crossings aren’t cooperating. Rinse and repeat.
And if all else fails, step away from the puzzle for a bit. (To the people who put out AcrossLite: Could we please have a timer that automatically stops and starts?) This last strategy is one I am reluctant to use when reviewing a puzzle. We don’t have deadlines here at DoCF, but I know the relevance of our reviews diminishes as time goes on.
I typically roll my eyes when someone else assert in a crossword blog that “Proper nouns should not cross.” “Natick” is a town in Massachusetts, nothing more.
And yet, the crossing of 3oA SANAE TAKAICHI and 26D BRIAN would have done me in had I not caved and revealed the I. I’m chagrined to have struggled with the name of Japan’s new prime minister, especially as I actually read a news story about her a week or so ago. It doesn’t bother me at all to not know the name of the new Cowboys coach; I stopped paying attention to that team when I moved away from Dallas in 1977.
(And yes, I have a mistake in my grid above; 26A [Very much so] is BADLY, not MADLY. That’s a nice demonstration why doing an “alphabet run” on a square that’s a “known unknown” can be so frustrating. I was so confident about MADLY that it never occurred to me that it was wrong.)
Fiend commenters: Any thoughts on that area of the grid?
Other stuff that caught my eye:
- 1A [Green condiment] WASABI Somehow, the correct answer didn’t seem to fit the first time I tried it. I’m not big on horseradish and similar tasting roots and almost never eat wasabi in any form.
- 14A [Fully awake] ARISEN I reject that clue on the grounds that I have spent much of the last week “arisen” but only barely “awake.”
- 21A [Actress Kathryn] HAHN Maybe a gimme, maybe easy once I had a letter? The uncommon spelling of her first name helps. We’ve seen her in Glass Onion and heard her in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, but that’s it.
- 23A [Journey guitarist Schon] NEAL Journey is high on my list of 1970s bands that I detest, despite having once won an album of theirs in a radio station giveaway (along with a god-awful rodeo-style belt buckle that had the station’s logo). I originally had NEIL in the grid.
- 29A [Rack coverage] BRA “Rack”? C’mon Brendan, grow up.
- 35A [Guacamole ingredient] JALAPEÑO We’re lazy when it comes to making guacamole and just throw in a tablespoon or so of green chile salsa. (I chopped about eight jalapeños for a soup last week and my fingertips burned for hours afterwards. I’m not sure if we still have any latex gloves for tasks like that.)
- 46A [Shakespeare collection] FOLIO A gimme. I inherited my parents’ Yale Shakespeare, an annotated collection of all his known plays and sonnets that was published about 100 years ago. I’m working my way through the major plays, but it’s slow going.
47A [Company with a Pegasus logo] MOBIL That should have been a gimme, but I assumed it was some sneaker company. The 1920s Mobil sign in Dallas is iconic.- 50A [Country whose flag is nearly identical to Indonesia’s] MONACO I can’t picture either flag.
- 51A [Gundpowder transporter] TEA CADDY I had a misspelled MISTEP at 39D instead of MISHAP, which made me question the obviously wrong TEE CADDY.
- 52A [Breakfast made in a pan] OMELET Is this clue intentionally vague? Lots of breakfast foods are made in pans. Throw in a “special” and OMELET becomes a bit more obvious.
- 1D [Massachusetts town on Buzzards Bay] WAREHAM That’s not a name I really recognize, but I don’t know Massachusetts all that well.
- 2D [Colorado natives] ARAPAHOS Where I live in the Four Corners area of Colorado, the predominant Native American people are Utes. I left the S off because “Arapahoe” is an accepted spelling.
- 9D [Mira ___ (Zohran Mamdani’s mother)] NAIR How am I just now learning that Mr. Mamdani’s mother is the film director? John McWhorter, the New York Times language columnist, recently had an interesting piece about how the mispronunciations of Mamdani’s name may not be as disrespectful as they seem.
15D [Alongside most voters] IN THE MAJORITY This clue threw me for a long time because I was picturing someone standing in a voting booth with a voter. (I’ve been voting since 1978 and have never actually voted in a “booth.” [Public service announcement: If tomorrow is Election Day where you live, please learn at least a little about the candidates and issues on your ballot and vote.]- 25D [Do a repeat showing] RE-AIR Not RERUN.
- 28D [Hyderabad’s river] INDUS An early, semi-educated guess.
- 32A [Athletes’ “game” when they have to do everything] HERO BALL Not a term I knew.
- 37D [Water down] DILUTE/40D [Mislead intentionally] DELUDE I like seeing those two so close together in the grid.
- 39D [Boner] MISHAP See 29A.
- 44A [It looks good on paper] TONER Cute clue. I put in the right answer early on, but took it out when I couldn’t get the crosses to work.
- 46D [___ Farbissina (“Austin Powers” villain)] FRAU Mike Myers makes my skin crawl. I had no idea here and expected the answer to be a name, not a title.
- 47d [Tibetan steamed dumpling] MOMO Crosswords are good for expanding your food vocabulary. Sometimes, I’ll even try some dish I’d never heard of until I saw it in a crossword.
- 50D [Do some landscaping] MOW Not SOD. To me, “landscaping” is different than “yard work.”
NYT was an agreeable Monday theme in a solidly made crossword.
TNY: As usual, I don’t find Ms Gorski’s puzzles challenging, compared to certain other constructors whose names I need not give. I didn’t know ATTACCA, and I don’t think ‘catapults’ is a good clues for HURTLES. The former is a transitive verb, the latter intransitive — in my usage, at least.
Gorski is usually more up my line than some of TNY contributors like Last, with fewer pop culture names. This one very much did challenge me, where names collided especially with the college basketball player, RAMI, and KHAN. I certainly was knew of ENTEBBE but just didn’t recall it. Generally puzzles are going to be out of reach for several months. My winter dry eye has set in, with reading vision impairment even with OTC glasses.
HURTLES doesn’t bother me. I can’t decide whether “catapults” can be transitive, but surely HURTLES can be not. Think of “he hurtled toward his doom.”
I agree with your example of hurtle usage — but that’s intransitive (no direct object). But can someone ‘catapult’ across the room? Seems unnatural to me.
Sorry to hear about your ocular difficulties.
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 4.5 stars
It’s funny you have this delightful Universal PAIROFHANDS puzzle by Susan Gelfand (Gelf(h)and?) which is so hard to pull off where both parts can precede the word “hand” but together still make a smooth compound!
And then the constructrix of the fun WSJ puzzle is named Caroline HAND!!!!
(And pleased to mention that NYT, TNY, Univ, WSJ all made by women! Two hands up for that!)
Love your parenthetical comment, Andrea. Years ago when David Steinberg–I believe–had a week or a month of puzzles constructed by women, I was a happy camper. I looked forward to more and more grids being created by women and those on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Not that I don’t love to distraction any new puzzle from Patrick Berry, Evan Birnholz, and others. But, today was just wonderful with nice grids from Zhouqin, Susan, Caroline, and Elizabeth. David
TNY: As Amy mentioned, pretty heavy on the proper nouns. Fortunately for me, the only ones that were totally unfamiliar were BIG BOI, RAMI, EMILE and MIKAELA.
Had a couple of missteps in the NE that slowed things down – VAMPIRE before DRACULA and IT’S ON ME before MY TREAT.
I thought the clues for E-CIG and I RESIGN were pretty good. Otherwise, not a lot of clever cluing.
BEQ:
I usually go to BEQ’s site to check my printed-out puzzle after completing it, but it seems that he doesn’t have the answers today. Luckily, I remembered I could come here to check.
I found it difficult today and had to take a break before completing it. Coming back, I was able to finish successfully. My trouble was in the same area as yours, Eric, but I made a couple of good guesses. I agree that The BRA clue at 29A was really bad. When I got to the clue at 39D, I figured it was going to be along a similar line and was surprised it was merely MISHAP.
I found the bra clue amusing.
I’m bored by the scold patrol and their desperate need to feel offended.
I don’t offend easily, and that wasn’t my complaint. I just found it really dated and juvenile.
Come for the review.
Leave with more knowledge of a reviewer’s life than you ever wanted to know.
Feel free to not read the reviews.
I like it when Eric shares parts of his life with us because it gives us an insight into his personality and his write-ups. (Keep being yourself, Eric.)
BEQ: SANAE TAKAICHI was tough. I remembered seeing a piece about her in the Times recently, but couldn’t recall her name – so that required pretty much all the crosses. I knew the first name of the Cowboys’ coach, but wasn’t sure whether it was spelled with an “I” or a “Y” – but probably should have been inferable, crossing the Japanese politician’s name.
I gather HERO BALL is a basketball term. I watch quite a bit of college basketball, but almost no NBA ball. Have never heard the term.
I’m not offended, but I would have been more entertained by the clue for BRA about 53 years ago, when I was actually a sophomore.
“I knew the first name of the Cowboys’ coach, but wasn’t sure whether it was spelled with an “I” or a “Y” – but probably should have been inferable, crossing the Japanese politician’s name.”
If I hadn’t bobbled BADLY/MADLY, the BRIAN/BRYAN issue would have been easy to resolve. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a Japanese word or name transliterated with a Y.
That whole area around BRIAN could have been better clued, given the relative unfamiliarity of SANAE TAKAICHI.
It bugs me (and I can imagine how it bugs Japanese people) to hear “Sanae” as “sah-nai.” It’s three syllables: “sah-nai-eh.” It’s not that hard and she’s a head of government!
Did you read John McWhorter’s piece on how pronouncing “Zohran Mamdani” (especially the last name) can be difficult for English speakers? Part of his point was that Cuomo might not have been dismissive (or merely careless) or when he kept mispronouncing Mamdani in the debate.
Thanks for the explanation of how to pronounce “Sanae.” I don’t watch TV news or listen to NPR anymore, and I’m often at a loss on how to pronounce some of those newsworthy names.
New Yorker: Amy wrote “New to me: [Score marking that means “don’t pause between movements”], ATTACCA. Not all of us have played musical instruments, and I feel like I’ve never seen this one in crosswords before.” When we started going to classical music performances again after having not been in years, the first group we saw was the Attacca Quartet. I knew they took their name from a musical term, but I didn’t know what it meant. (I also have never played an instrument more complicated than a kazoo or wooden blocks.)
My biggest slowdown was assuming that [Fontana di ____ ] was some sort of dessert I’d never heard of. I’m annoyed with myself because this is the second time in about a month when I’ve seen the Trevi Fountain clue in Italian.
I don’t ascribe much value to McWhorter’s linguistic musings and assertions, as they are usually subordinate to and in service of his, to put it kindly, misguided politics.