AV Club untimed (Amy) 
[2.10 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
LAT tk (Gareth) 
[3.38 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
NYT 5:04 (Amy) 
[2.59 avg; 22 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker approx. 3:30 (Kyle) 
[3.83 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
Universal untimed (pannonica) [3.57 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
USA Today 7:08 (Emily) rate it
WSJ 7:11 (Eric) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Hal Moore’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Agape” — Eric’s Review
Hal Moore’s Wall Stree Journal Crossword — 11/12/25
I’m not a fan of themes that use the Down answers, but I can ignore that if that’s how a theme has to work. And this theme really needs to be in the Down answers:
- 3D [Shuriken, e.g.] NINJA WEAPON I think I’ve seen “shuriken” in a crossword before, but I didn’t remember it today. They’re also known as throwing stars.
- 7D [India’s first prime minister] JAWAHARLAL NEHRU I knew the name, I can picture the man, and I knew I would misspell it if I tried to do it from memory — so I filled in the first few letters and the NEHRU part.
- 9D [WNBA great and author of 2024’s “Dear Black Girls”] A’JA WILSON I don’t follow basketball and while Ms Wilson’s book (which appears to be a memoir) sounds interesting, I hadn’t heard of it before.
- 26D [Spectacular, or a feature of four long Down answers] JAW-DROPPING
- 33D [Dry Spanish export] RIOJA WINE
With the JAW-DROPPING revealer, I expect the JAWs to move progressively lower in the grid as you move from left to right. This has a down, up, down pattern, but that’s a minor quibble. J and W are not common letters in English, so there probably aren’t that many possible theme answers.
Some solvers might be unfamiliar with the proper names in the theme answers, so getting the revealer might help them figure out those names.
Other stuff:
- 18A [Dotty character?] LOWER CASE I Cute clue; the EI ending did not look promising.
- 23A [Night vision?] STARLIGHT Another cute clue that doesn’t really work for me.
- 25A [Singh in the World Golf Hall of Fame] VIJAY One of the few golfers I sort of know the name of, though I wanted to spell it like the MTV hosts back when MTV was about music videos.
- 31A [Piazza treat] GELATO That seemed pretty obvious.
- 43A [Tears of Joy and Flexed Biceps, e.g.] EMOJIS Though, technically speaking, the plural of “emoji” is “emoji.”
- 51A [In a difficult position] ON THE SPOT
- 12D [Go for a run, perhaps] SKI I’m impatiently waiting for the two ski areas nearest to where I live to open. It’s not looking promising.
- 31D [Fastball, in baseball lingo] GAS That’s not a term I’d heard before, but with the G from GELATO, I made a logical guess.
- 35D [Camp David Accords figure] Anwar SADAT, president of Egypt from 1970–1981. The peace deal with Israel probably led to Sadat’s assassination. Menachem BEGIN would also have fit here, but the S from 34A URSA ruled that out.
Priyanka Sethy & Ravij Sethy’s AV Club Crossword, “Concluding Movements”—Amy’s recap
AV Club Classic crossword solutiob, 11/12/25 – “Concluding Movements”
Once again, I didn’t remember to start the timer because I’m so used to having the timer automatically on. Felt pretty easy, though, despite the fact that the theme’s cultural references were entirely out of reach for me!
The revealer is 50a. [End with a flourish … or in another sense, what three answers in this puzzle do], FINISH IN STYLE. Take a phrase and add an -IST to turn it into a movement adherent, where the -IST words are known movements. The people in the clue account for the first half of each themer, I guess?
- 20a. [Provocateur and filmmaker Guy Debord, up for anything?], OPEN LETTERIST. He was a Marxist theorist? Both a Letterist and a Situationist? No idea what either of those things might be. So the “up for anything” in the clues signals that OPENness.
- 25a. [Antiquity-loving poet Alexander Pope, researching spiritual sects?], CULT CLASSICIST. Poet Pope was a Classicist? Sure. I didn’t affix a label when I read him in any college English lit classes. The clue gives him CULT interests.
- 43a. [Forward-looking sculptor Umberto Boccioni, scoring high on his SATs?], BRIGHT FUTURIST. Only a bit familiar with Boccioni, couldn’t have told you he was in Futurism.
And of course, open letter, cult classic, and bright future are all familiar phrases. I’m glad the overall fill and clues were easy, because the notable names in the clues sure weren’t pointing me towards the answers. Your scholarliness may vary.
Not much else is jumping out at me as in need of discussion, am busy feeling undereducated! 3.5 stars from me.
Brad Wiegmann & Nicole Wiegmann’s New York Times crossword–Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 11/12/25 – no. 1112
Wow, two family-duo bylines in a row for me tonight! Brad and Nicole bring us a cruciverbal riff on the classic OPTICAL ILLUSION, a drawing that could be a duck (with a really odd bill) or a rabbit (with its ears pointing straight back). There’s a rebus square for the duck or rabbit’s EYE in Seth M{EYE}RS / {EYE} MASK. The DUCK is at 38d and the RABBIT, 66a. The circled squares aren’t just there randomly to make the drawing; you connect the dots A through N to draw your rabbit. (It’s a rabbit. Duck bills don’t look like that!) Really a neat concept for a visual crossword gambit.
Fave fill: COBAIN, FIRE UP, SRIRACHA, DORITOS, ROADSTER, SCOFF. I could do without some of the fill (looking at you, AN I, MAA, and such), but the fill is generally smooth given the rigors of planting the A-through-N dots in their precise spots while retaining proper grid symmetry.
4.5 stars from me. I’d paid no mind to the circled letters while solving but found the DUCK and RABBIT and then when I finished solving online, boom, the grid art appeared! I know a lot of you cannot abide the idea of doing a crossword on the computer with anything other than Across Lite, but the NYT really does craft some neat displays for creative puzzle ideas if you solve on their website. It won’t bite, I promise. (I find it more rewarding to have the grid art drawn for me than to spend time playing connect-the-dots on a paper puzzle.)
Caitlin Reid’s New Yorker crossword – Kyle’s write-up
The New Yorker solution grid – Caitlin Reid – Wednesday 11/12/2025
Thanks Caitlin for today’s beginner-friendly New Yorker offering. I admit I found this puzzle a little more slow-going than most New Yorker Wednesdays. Some of that’s due to the cold weather making my fingers a bit stiff in the morning, but there were also a few points where I had to work out answers from crossings. The toughest section was the lower-left, as I had put in DVD for 42A [Media played using lasers] instead of CDS, which left me at sea for the crossing Downs. Lots of nice long entries here including 3D PETERMAN:
Mike Graczyk’s Universal crossword, “Listen Up!” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 11/12/25 • Wed • “Listen Up!” • Graczyk • solution • 20251112
- 56aR [Wise words … or 17-, 28- and 44-Across, based on their first words?] SOUND ADVICE.
- 17a. [“Wake up!”] SNAP OUT OF IT.
- 28a. [“Pipe down!”] ZIP YOUR LIP.
- 44a. [“Stop that!”] KNOCK IT OFF.
Those are all sounds (as well as verbs).
- 1d [Tank tops?] GAS CAPS. Not bad.
- 6d [One flies in a cave] BAT. >shrug<
- 8d [Piano, to a pianist?] SOFTLY. That’s what the musical direction indicates.
- 41d [Simultaneously] AT A TIME. Feels off to me, and I would expect AT ONE TIME as an answer.
- 13a [Capital of the country that 14-Acrosses are likely named after] APIA. 14a [Some Girl Scout cookies] SAMOAS.
- 16a [Suffix with “percent”] -ILE. Waited to see whether it would be this or -AGE.
- 40a [Food warmer in a cafeteria] HEAT LAMP. >shudder<
- 52a [Water tank] CISTERN. etymology: Middle English, from Latin cisterna, from cista box, chest — more at CHEST
CJ Tan’s USA Today Crossword, “Ad Stacking” — Emily’s write-up
Can’t skip these ads!
USA Today, November 12, 2025, “Ad Stacking” by CJ Tan
Theme: each themer in the downs contains –ADAD–
Themers:
- 4d. [Foul tip?], BADADVICE
- 7d. [Be one person by day and another by night, say], LEADADOUBLELIFE
- 35d. [July 1 observation for some North Americans], CANADADAY
A wide range of themers in today’s set: BADADVICE, LEADADOUBLELIFE, and CANADADAY. Each was crossed fairly and being in the downs today, I’d already been through my first pass at acrosses and was able to complete these without difficulty.
Favorite fill: BEHONEST, MANTA, and SNAGS
Stumpers: RECEDE (needed some crossings) and EVENTFUL (also needed crossings)
Overall a fun puzzle with a smooth solve for me today. I enjoyed the grid design and the fresh fill, along with some top notch cluing.
4.0 stars
~Emily
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 1.5 stars
Sorry, I wasn’t having this one. Maybe if you solved this with paper and pen it could be enjoyable, or if they filled in the drawing after you plugged in all the circled letters on the digital grid. But in this form it was really confusing and pointless. None of the themers made any sense until I was done, and the theme itself didn’t work for me at all. Plus the cluing and fill gave me fits.
I want to save 1* scores for grids that are almost unsolvable (see: “Art Crimes”) or clearly offensive, but I didn’t enjoy this one bit. I imagine this will be a very divisive puzzle, though.
Where did you solve this puzzle? I used the NYT website and the drawing filled itself in afterwards.
I used the app. My big problem was the theme was entirely based on a visual cue that didn’t appear until after I was done. None of it made any sense to me during the solve. Maybe that’s an execution problem rather than a puzzle problem, but it didn’t change how little I enjoyed this one. Normally I’m on the positive side of polarizing grids, just not this time.
Were you familiar with the classic rabbit-or-duck optical illusion before doing the crossword, Jamie?
Only vaguely. I recognized it when it filled in at the end.
I would have been more in the “meh” range if the rest of the solve hadn’t been so clunky. I thought the cluing difficulty was really inconsistent, and there was a pretty high gunk level even separate from what was needed to make the OPTICALILLUSION work.
The image popped in with Across Lite, not on completion but when I hit Reveal.
I was amazed that the illusion worked at this low resolution. You can really see both the duck and the rabbit.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
Yeah, this puzzle is a really polarizing one. First off, I didn’t like the theme; I LOVED the theme. Very well constructed there, with quite an amount of theme material.
On the other hand, there is a lot of flaws also:
* Too many obscure fills
* Too many difficult clues (I spent like a minute thinking about how 59D works even after checking the answer)
* Unprompted rebus
* Cramped grid: only TWO 8-letter long fills
p.s. considering the difficulty of this Tuesday and Wednesday, I totally expect myself to go DNF tomorrow…
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 1.5 stars
@Jamie I was much relieved to read your comment. Over at the NYT WordPlay blog, the comments were almost uniformly positive, indeed, at times glowing. I definitely did not share their enthusiasm. I did like the two long answers describing the image: OPTICALILLUSION and AMBIGUOUSFIGURE, but those and SRIRACHA were the only answers I enjoyed. And no, solving on paper didn’t help–if anything, it made things worse, with all the lines I had to draw on top of the puzzle to try to see the ambiguous, illusory figure.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2 stars
NYT: In the face of such a novel theme, the cluing choices of the editors seems to be a desperate but ultimately telling plea, like that of Fredo Corleone to Michael Corleone, “I’m smart!” Theme: 5 stars. Cluing: 1 star. Overall: 2 stars.
The WSJ puzzle is wonderful. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I appreciate these reviews but often there is much nitpicking.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
I found the NYT puzzle is both fun and remarkable.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2.5 stars
Yeah, I’m the “meh” side on the NYT. I abandoned AcrossLite and shifted to the website as soon I got the “connect the dots” idea. I don’t like puzzles-within-puzzles. I completely accept that this is a personal preference. It’s not a bad puzzle. It’s also not for me. Which, for the record, is one of the reasons I’m not crazy about star ratings.
I did it on paper and the last thing I got was the unexpected rebus which really made the image pop into place. Impressive to get the alphabetical circles in all those right places. I’m with Amy on this one and my enjoyment crescendoed as it fell into place.
NYT: “Visual” themes generally don’t do much for me – grid art and connect-the-dots are not what I’m looking for in a crossword. So, no big surprise that this theme fell flat for me. I solved on my laptop in AcrossLite and tried to connect the dots in my head – that got me nowhere (and I had forgotten about the DUCK and RABBIT entries by that time). I went to the NYT app and filled in the answers, just to see what the drawing looked like, and – meh.
OPTICAL ILLUSION was a nice entry. But AMBIGUOUS FIGURE is not exactly in-the-language. DUCK and RABBIT had to come from crosses and pattern recognition – even if I had been solving on paper, I wouldn’t have had enough of the dots connected to get the idea.
On the other hand, I appreciated a little tougher cluing than the usual Wednesday. When I finally got ACR from crosses, it was a nice aha!/duh! moment.
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 3.5 stars
I liked the theme, and the way the ‘sound’ clues bounce back and forth on the grid somehow added to the onomatopoeia-icalness of the theme.
I got stuck — and I think this must have been a trap laid by the clue writer — on ‘age’ instead of ‘ile’ for the percent- suffix clue.
And then I stumped myself on the ‘Americans in Canada’ clue by my brain insisting it would have to be something like ‘under cover’ or ‘ashamed’ or something along those lines.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
I couldn’t recall, so I went back to the original draft. The amazing Universal team has to take credit for that clue (and I love clue sneakiness!) – I had the chestnut “spot in la mer” for that one originally.
Thanks for solving! 😊
(Also, giving 5 stars to the adorable duck-rabbit while I’m here!)
Thanks for constructing!
(And for the little TOR shout out in the puzzle – as you can see in my handle, YYZ is home…)
S.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
Best Wednesday NYT ever
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
I have to admit, this was pretty sick. The single rebus square was a chefs kiss. I understand how people will hate this puzzle but I can’t think of a single complaint, and the difficulty was spot on.
I took forever to figure out the section in the NYT with the rebus. First, I thought Seth’s last name was MYERS, so couldn’t see how to fit that in. And then I had JRS instead of JVS for the high school team (my knowledge of US high school terminology is spotty, to say the least). Eventually I realized that the sun blockers must be VISOR, and that let me get EYEMASK.
But I wasted so much time working out that part of the puzzle that the optical illusion trick was lost on me.
Finished Caitlin Reid’s breezy New Yorker themeless in 2:30 and felt like Stella!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
I am definitely not one of you speed solvers but I usually can crank out a paper and pencil Wednesday before heading to school. Not today. Just finished it and connected the dots and I am just so impressed at the creativity and depth here. THEN, I remembered the “is it a duck or a rabbit” thingy and I was just gobsmacked. I am definitely a fan of this Wiegmann duo!
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 5 stars
10 across: 4/ in a date: Abbr. (APR)
and
18 down: 10/ in a date: Abbr. (OCT)
A bit US-centric… other places have other formats for dates. Hence, IDAD.
Pannonica’s review of Universal:
40a [Food warmer in a cafeteria] HEAT LAMP. >shudder<
What's so shudder-worthy about a heat lamp? (just curious)
I just find them creepy. 95% irrational.
You’re not gonna tell us what the other 5% is? ;)