Monday, November 17, 2025

BEQ 13:35 (Eric) [3.50 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
LAT 1:53 (Stella) [2.63 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
NYT 3:45ish (Sophia) [3.97 avg; 15 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker 7:04 (Amy) [3.13 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
Universal untimed (pannonica) [3.58 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (?) [3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
WSJ 4:14 (Jim Q) [2.83 avg; 3 ratings] rate it

Rena Cohen’s New York Times Crossword — Sophia’s Recap

Theme: Each theme clue of today’s NYT is a certain set of things that all belong to the same group. The answer is {the connection}{the number of things}, but when put together you get a common phrase. It’s a little hard to explain, but in practice it works very elegantly.

New York Times, 11 17 2025, By Rena Cohen

• 17a [Circle, cone, cube, cylinder, heart, pentagon, star, triangle] – FIGURE EIGHT
• 27a [Airheads, Dots, Fun Dip, Heath, Kit Kat, Life Savers, M&M’s, Milk Duds, Nerds, Oh Henry!, Peeps, Pez, Rolo, Skittles, Twix, Twizzlers ] – SWEET SIXTEEN
• 44a [Boot, good, loom, moon, pool, rook, woof] – DOUBLE “O” SEVEN
• 60a [Andrew, Ketanji Brown, Mahalia, Reggie, Stonewall ] – JACKSON FIVE

I thought this puzzle was very clever!  My favorite entry was DOUBLE O SEVEN because of how differently the base phrase was interpreted. I’ll admit to having a little moment of “I ain’t reading all that” when the SWEET SIXTEEN clue came up, but of course for the clue to make sense it does need to be that long, and newer solvers can get more out of the clue by counting. (The items in the sets are ordered alphabetically – I only noticed that while copying them over into this recap). Man, is that a disparate group of people in the JACKSON FIVE. Not sure I’d like to see them all in a band together….

Fill highlights: I MUST SAY, GROUNDHOG, BUMBLEBEE, SKEE-BALL

Clue highlights: [Many a prom tuxedo] for RENTAL, [Vegas attraction, with “the”] for STRIP

Write-overs: “hippo” instead of RHINO for [Heavyweight African animal, informally]. Also, I kept parsing IF EVER as “i fever” and wondering what that was….

Happy Monday all!

Enrique Henestroza Anguiano’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Los Angeles Times 11/17/25 by Enrique Henestroza Anguiano

This is a pretty cool theme! The revealer at 51A [Repeatedly, or what’s found in the answers to the starred clues] is TIME AND AGAIN, because the circled squares in each theme answer spell out a unit of TIME, not once but twice (i.e., AGAIN):

• 20A [*Overseer of a theatrical production] is a STAGE MANAGER, which has AGE twice.
• 26A [*Law that governs interstate electricity transmission] is the FEDERAL POWER ACT, which contains ERA twice. (The second ERA is split between POWER and ACT.)
• 45A [*Little Free Library instruction] is TAKE ONE LEAVE ONE, which contains the word EON twice, split across two words in each case. Love this theme entry, especially because my neighborhood in Brooklyn is riddled with Little Free Libraries and I’ve been known to both TAKE and LEAVE books there.

The fill is pretty great, with ALTER EGO, WHO-VILLE, SEAGULL, and HANG TEN as standouts; I also liked TRIPE clued as [Menudo ingredient]. I wasn’t crazy about the green paint-feeling REAL DEEP, and CARRARA marble might be a smidge hard for Monday, but in general this puzzle managed to be lively despite being easy. And that’s not easy to do!

Alexander Liebeskind’s Universal crossword, “What’s More” — pannonica’s write-up

Universal • 11/17/25 • Mon • “What’s More” • Liebeskind • solution • 20251117

• 51a^R [Words before the final item … or like the second number in 17-, 23-, 34- or 44-Across] LAST BUT NOT LEAST.
• 17a. [Lead-in to “Contacts” or “Flowers”] ONE EIGHT-HUNDRED.
• 23a. [Full turn] THREE-SIXTY.
• 34a. [Convenience store chain with an annual Free Slurpee Day] SEVEN-ELEVEN.
• 44a. [April celebration of cannabis] FOUR-TWENTY.

23a is one complete number, but can be parsed as two entities as written, so I don’t disqualify it.

It seems a little weird to call the second part of a two-part thing “last”, but the grid is only 15×15, and longer phrases may be harder to come by. (I have not thought for a moment of phrases for such a hypothetical.)

• 1d [Some spirits] GHOSTS. I immediately put in GPS for 1a [It might help you find a way] and then GENIES here. When the latter didn’t work, I took everything out.
• 8d [Like overly watery chili] SOUPY. >shudder<
• 38d [Poem that tells a story] BALLAD.
  
  Amazing that he was only in his early 20s when he wrote and recorded this album.
• 44d [Bad service?] FAULT. This is tennis. As is 39a [Point of no return?] ACE.
• 14a [Move like a hare] HOP.
  
• 29a [Dog show org. hidden in “peak condition”] AKC. Ok, sure.
• 33a [Big name in real estate] REMAX, for which I’ve always  believed the re- stands for ‘real estate’.
• 61a [Letter before 54-Down] ESS. 54d [Letter for which a shirt is named] TEE. But also 28a [“Help us!”] SOS.

Elizabeth Gorski’s New Yorker crossword–Amy’s recap

New Yorker crossword solution, 11/17/25 – Gorski

I tend to like etymology clues. Did you know ANTIDOTE is a [Word that comes from the Greek for “given against”]? I didn’t.

Not entirely sold on DESTINED FOR FAME. Perhaps “destined for greatness” is more in-the-language?

Crosswordese with a pluralization: 34a. [Palm starches], SAGOS. Meh. Other crosswordese: 18a. [H. H. Munro’s pen name], SAKI. Haven’t seen either of these in other puzzles lately, but they sure came up plenty in 1980s crosswords.

Fave fill: DAVID GEFFEN HALL. Other musical fill: GAVOTTE and ORGANIST.

Three stars from me.

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1836 — Eric’s Review

Pretty smooth sailing for me. Enough gimmes to keep me from getting stuck, but also a few clues that required a little thought.

Gimmes:

• 15A [Literary critic Trilling] LIONEL I don’t remember ever reading anything by him, but I picked up his name decades ago and stuck it in the “unusual names” part of my brain.
• 17A [Quaking trees] ASPENS They’re one of my favorite trees, and they’re all over where I live.
• 25A [Joy Division singer ___ Curtis] IAN
• 38A [Third of December?] CEE
• 

  “La Mort de Marat” by Jacques-Louis David (1793)

  54A [French Revolution figure Jean-Paul] MARAT

• 27D [Costa Rican president who won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize] ÓSCAR ARIAS He won for his proposed solution to the Central American crisis, which involved anti-government guerrillas in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
• 42A [Overseer of a child actress’s career] MOMAGER

Stuff that required thought (or at least a crossing or two):

• 18A [Movie with the classic line “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue”] AIRPLANE I saw it once, back in the 1980s. It’s a bit silly for my tastes.
• 26A [It benefits most of society] THE GREATER GOOD Is that still a thing these days?
• 32A [Martin Shkreli, by another name] PHARMA BRO I knew the name, but “pharma bro” isn’t yet part of my vocabulary.
• 41A [Who you should emulate when you’re in their city] THE ROMANS According to Wikipedia, “In the 4th century, Saint Monica and her son, Saint Augustine, discovered that Saturday was observed as a fast day in Rome, where they planned to visit. However, it was not a fast day where they lived in Milan. They consulted Saint Ambrose who said ‘When I am here (in Milan) I do not fast on Saturday, when in Rome I do fast on Saturday.'”
• 43A [Chuck Schumer and John Thune, e.g.] SENIOR SENATORS I got this from the crosses, though at least for Schumer, I might have been able to figure it out eventually. I like the potential misdirection of using the Senate majority and minority leaders instead of say, John Cornyn and Alex Padilla.
• 57A [Home to Canada’s RCMP Heritage Centre] REGINA I was over 60 before I learned to pronounce the capital of Saskatchewan with a long I.
• 2D [Stereotypical spot for a cleanup] AISLE THREE I had AISLE SEVEN for too long.
• 4D [Bread baker, at times] KNEADER I don’t care for this sort of verb + ER noun that you virtually never see anywhere but a crossword puzzle. (Contrast that with the perfectly acceptable MARCHER.)
• 6D [“The Big Easy”] Golfer Ernie ELS To me, “The Big Easy” is New Orleans.
• 30D [Position where the athlete’s front foot is closer to the ball than their back foot] OPEN STANCE
• 45D [Words said while flashing the devil horns] ROCK ON My alma mater is the University of Texas, where the “Hook ’em” gesture is virtually identical to devil horns. Just my luck that HOOK ‘EM fit.
• 51D [___ Moten Barnett (pioneering African-American actress/contralto)] ETTA I’m not a big opera fan, but I listen to enough classical music that I would have expected to recognize her name — especially as one of her signature roles was Bess in the Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

Aaron Ullman’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Fowl Play” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: Phrases where the last word can also be a form of chicken yum-yums

WSJ • 11/17/25 • Mon • “Fowl Play” • Aaron Ullman • solution • 20251117

THEME ANSWERS:

• DENVER NUGGETS
• WATER WINGS
• WHITENING STRIPS
• BUDTENDERS
• Revealer [Daring question, to which the answer is “yes” for the ends of 20-, 26-, 37- and 45-Across] ARE YOU CHICKEN?

Love this one! So much fun. Fresh too. BUDTENDERS  is a great entry, and while I know video games get more than enough love from crosswords, KOOPAS is fun to see too. Probably because Super Mario Bros. was pretty much the only video game I ever played. Briefly. Before my parents took away the Nintendo because I played it longer than I was allowed to and never gave it back. Not that I’m bitter.

Revealer was great. Even though I had made the chicken connection after DENVER NUGGETS and the title, it still made me smile.

4.5 stars from me. Excellent Monday.