Monday, November 24, 2025

BEQ 9:39 (Eric) [3.25 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
LAT 1:49 (Stella) [3.50 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
NYT 3:26 (Sophia) [3.56 avg; 8 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker 4:02 (Amy) [3.00 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (pannonica) [3.00 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (?) [3.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
WSJ 5:02 (Jim Q) rate it

Zhou Zhang’s New York Times Crossword — Sophia’s Recap

New York Times, Monday November 24 2025, By Zhou Zhang

Theme: DUCK DUCK GOOSE – the first two theme answers start with a word that can precede “duck”, and the last answer starts with a word that can precede “goose”

• 20a [Comfortably well-off] – SITTING PRETTY
• 32a [Cereal with “marbits” and a leprechaun mascot] – LUCKY CHARMS
• 42a [Toy that comes out of a spray can] – SILLY STRING
• 51a [Fowl play? … or words that can follow the starts of 20-, 32- and 42-Across] – DUCK DUCK GOOSE

Sitting duck, lucky duck, silly goose – I see what’s going on here! The theme is a bit simpler than some – I looked first to see if both parts of the theme answers could go before “duck” or “goose” – but I like the answers themselves that the simplicity isn’t a big deal. LUCKY CHARMS and SILLY STRING gave the puzzle a fun, childlike vibe. The clue of “Fowl play?” is nice on the revealer too.

Lots of great long answers today – GOBSMACKED, DROP NAMES, ROTISSERIE to name a few. Describing the other CHIPMUNKS as Alvin’s “backup singers” is so funny to me because aren’t they all brothers? Why the focus on the backup singer relationship?? I also liked the parallel of having both ERASE and DELETE in the puzzle. My favorite clue overall was [It’s plum dried out!] for PRUNE – very clever. Oh, and I also liked [Dog-napping spot?] for CRATE.

Happy Monday all, and to everyone in the US, have a great holiday week!

Joseph A. Gangi’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Los Angeles Times 11/24/25 by Joseph A. Gangi

Here we have a puzzle whose theme is more appropriate to this Thursday, but because it’s a simple theme that lends itself to easy-breezy cluing, it serves as a bit of buildup to the meal you might be eating on Thanksgiving. There’s no revealer, but IMO one isn’t really necessary. Each theme entry ends with a food commonly served at Thanksgiving:

• 17A [“Gee willikers!”] is GOOD GRAVY. I really want “willikers” to have an H in it, but OED says “willikers” is right. I guess what I will be eating is not turkey but crow.
• 25A [Lists of top students] is HONOR ROLLS.
• 37A [Folks who do a lot of binge-watching] is COUCH POTATOES.
• 48A [Get down to brass tacks] is TALK TURKEY.
• 60A [Extremely simple] is EASY AS PIE.

Put GRAVY, ROLLS, POTATOES, TURKEY, and PIE together and you get a food coma, but that’s how we do it in America, damn it!

There’s a lot to like in this grid: I especially enjoyed the medium and long Downs of OH, FORGET IT, OPEN LATE, and MICROTREND. I’m always here for a KATIE Ledecky reference. I will, however, offer a cautionary tale for CHIN-UP as clued [Body-lifting exercise that may be done in a doorway]. Google “quarantine workout fails” and you’ll probably see multiple examples of people whose indoor chin-up bar setups weren’t as stable as they thought they were. (There’s one around 2:15 in this video, which thankfully doesn’t end too badly for the person in question.) Especially if you weigh more than about 150 pounds, those tension-set doorway setups don’t actually stay put!

Will Nediger’s New Yorker crossword, “A place so nice…”–Amy’s recap

New Yorker crossword solution, 11/24/25 – “A place so nice” – Nediger

Today we have a themed puzzle, and it appears in the 12/2 print issue but it doesn’t look like that’s a themed issue. No idea why we don’t have a themeless today, other than “we’d accepted some themed puzzles we haven’t run yet, so we’re running this one now.”

The revealer is ECHOLOCATION, and the themers are four places with reduplicative names. NGORONGORO, PAGO PAGO, BORA BORA, and BADEN-BADEN. I appreciate the choice of places being all outside the US, no Walla Walla this time. I enjoyed the “echo … echo … echo” of the clues for these locations, such as [Conservation area bordering Serengeti National Park . . . Park . . . Park . . .].

Fave fill: GAZELLE and ZEBRA (both found in Ngorongoro!), PLOTLINE, SHOWBOAT as a verb, AGNOSTIC, “NAILED IT.”

Four stars from me.

Alan Siegel’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Night Vision” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: The word DREAM can be found in  “nightmarish” situations

THEME ANSWERS:

• [Nightmare for college students] MIDTERM EXAM.
• [Nightmares for porch pirates] DOORBELL CAMERAS.
• [Nightmare for the team whose season it ends] WORLD SERIES GAME.
• [Nightmare of a situation] DIRE PREDICAMENT
• [Gary Wright hit, and a hint to what permeates the theme answers] DREAM WEAVER.

I like the idea here, but something feels a bit off. Perhaps it’s the fact that I don’t really think any of the situations are “nightmares” for the subjects of the clues, and it’s hard to imagine otherwise. For instance, plenty of porch pirates throw on a ski mask and look right at the DOORBELL CAMERA(S). No way is someone with that low of a moral threshold losing sleep over a DOORBELL CAMERA, let along being haunted by it. A WORLD SERIES GAME is hard to imagine as a nightmare too. I mean, the season at that point has already ended, so that part of the clue feels inelegant. The team is in the post-season. Also the team has MADE IT TO THE WORLD SERIES!!! I would suppose that’s a dream come true, no? Far from a nightmare in any stretch of the imagination! MIDTERM EXAMS might lead to nightmares I suppose, but I always said “Bring it on!” in my college days. Either that or I didn’t give a sh*t. And DIRE PREDICAMENT lacks the parallelism present in the other clues (which all start with “Nightmare for [certain group of people]…”)

I think the set itself is fine, but the cluing just feels shoehorned in order to get the juxtaposition with Nightmare / Dream.

OTHER THINGS / ERRATA / STUMBLES:

• [Veto that sounds like an NBA team] NIX. I somehow convinced myself that NET was the correct answer because it sounded like “Nyet.” I mean, who’s to say we weren’t speaking of Russian vetoes?
• It felt like a DUPE to have RNA and DNA in the same grid. Not a big deal just made me cock my head a tad.
• DROP A DIME and EMPIRE DAY are both new for me. Easy enough to infer with crosses.
• A LOOP, A COW, YIPE, and AREEL I didn’t much enjoy. Two partials in a 15x is not my favorite thing in the world.
• Calling kitchen prep work MENIAL is… a choice. It implies that little skill is necessary and it’s not too important a task. Hard disagree. I’m guessing that clue was written by someone who hasn’t worked in a real kitchen before.

This one wasn’t my fave today. Feels like the theme hasn’t been fully fleshed out and the fill is not as clean as a normal Monday.  2 stars.

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1838 — Eric’s Review

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1738 — 11/24/25

If all of Brendan’s “Hard” themeless puzzles were this easy, I’d have to question his rating system. There were plenty of answers here that I needed  crosses to get. But except for the NW corner, there weren’t any places where I got stuck. Even in that quadrant, I sorted everything out fairly steadily. That’s the kind of crossword solving experience I most prefer: Something between Filling in Every Answer as Soon as You Read the Clue and Staring at the Grid for Long Periods Unable to Get Anywhere.

Almost every answer in the grid is a word or phrase I’ve seen before, which helped me solve quickly.

Stuff that caught my eye:

• 1A [Place to conk out] CRASH PAD This is the perfect example of what I found challenging about this puzzle. Aside from SOFA BED (which obviously doesn’t fit), I can’t think of another answer for that clue. While CRASH PAD is a perfectly fine answer, it’s not so obviously correct that nothing else makes sense. So I skipped 1A and moved on.
• 9A [Title that comes from the word “Caesar”] TSAR Not CZAR. Even as I typed CZAR, I questioned whether I had the right transliteration of whatever the Russian is. So I immediately checked the Z and saw that 10D was probably STRUTS. I highly recommend that strategy; a wrong answer in the grid can slow you down more than having no answer. (Fun fact: “Kaiser” also comes from “Caesar.”)
• 13A [Group that plays on the weekends] REC LEAGUE Again, a perfectly solid answer that wasn’t immediately obvious to me. The last time I played in a recreational league (flag football; late 1980s; we lost almost every game), we played on weekday evenings.
• 16A [Inventor of the wheel] ANCIENT MAN Last week, I was chatting with my friend Deborah over the use of “man” when referring to “person.” I try to avoid that, but Deborah isn’t offended by that sort of usage. There are certainly plenty of things men do that are more offensive than this. Still, it’s something that’s easily avoided.
• 19A [Leaping movements] BOUNDS I expected some French word used in ballet.
• 20A [Genre for Soul II Soul or Jamiroquai] BRIT FUNK I got the —UNK first and briefly considered something PUNK before deciding these bands I’d never heard of sounded more FUNK than PUNK. Then I needed another cross or two to get the genre I’d never heard of.
• 23A [Formal headgear] SILK HATS I would’ve put TOP HATS if it hadn’t been too short.
• 29A [Prove it] THEOREM I’ll have to watch Brendan’s future puzzles to see if this is a standard style of clue for him. I’m most used to New York Times puzzles, and a clue like this would normally have an exclamation mark in a Times puzzle.
• 36A [“Billy Budd” captain] VERE I vaguely remembered that name. I haven’t read Melville’s novella since high school and missed whatever homoeroticism there is between Vere and Billy. It’s apparent from the 1962 movie that Vere is attracted to Billy, but can you blame him? As a 20-something, Terrence Stamp was easy on the eyes.
• 38A [Golden State border city with a portmanteau name] CALEXICO Given Brendan’s fondness for all kinds of music, I’m mildly surprised he didn’t clue this to the Tucson band.
• 42A [Hombre’s partner] MUJER My Spanish is not great, but I shouldn’t have needed the J to get this one.
• 46A [Saved, as feed] SILOED AWAY That seems redundant to me. When SILO shows up in a crossword these days, it’s usually the metaphorical sense.
• 48A [Actress Farmiga] VERA A gimme; she hangs in the corner of my brain set aside for uncommon names. We’ve enjoyed her performances but haven’t seen her in anything in a few years.
• 51A [Holding anthers] STAMENED My knowledge of the reproductive parts of plants is spotty at best, and STAMENED has a bit of the roll-your-own quality that can make Brendan’s puzzles annoying sometimes.
• 2D [Nevada landmark that says “The Biggest Little City In The World”] RENO ARCH Now that I’ve seen a picture of it, I remember looking it up before. But while solving, I got ARCH first and then decided RENO made more sense than ELKO.
• 5D [Follows closely] HEEDS This could have been HEELS or any other five-letter-word using that sense of “follow.”
• 8D [___ down (deliberate oversimplification)] DUMBING I’d have been a bit quicker if I had seen this sooner, because it’s such an obvious answer even without the parenthetical.
• 9D [High-end retailer with blue gift boxes] TIFFANY’S As much a gimme as I get. (Fun fact: Tiffany & Co. has trademarked that particular shade of robin’s egg blue.)
• 17A [Director of the live-action “Mulan”] NIKI CARO I know the name but haven’t seen any of her movies.
• 21D [Jim who was the first Native American to win gold at the Olympics] THORPE Stockholm, 1912, in Classic Pentathlon and Decathlon. The IOC took his medals away when it determined Thorpe had played semi-pro football before competing in the Olympics (yes, the Olympics used to be limited to amateur athletes), but fully restored the medals in 2022.
• 27D [Jones and Bardem’s costar in “No Country for Old Men”] Josh BROLIN I momentarily blanked on this. The Coen brothers have made some of my favorite movies and No Country for Old Men is one of their best. (Fun fact: The scene where Woody Harrelson’s bounty hunter meets up with Javier Bardem’s hired assassin was shot at the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico. If you’re in the area, it’s a great place to stay and not as pricey as you might expect.)
• 32D [NBA legend nicknamed “The Dream”] Hakeem OLAJUWON I needed a key letter or two to get this one and felt smug for having spelled the answer correctly the first time. All smugness evaporated when I left off the H in his first name.
• 34D [Like one wearing glasses?] FOUR-EYED No. The term is derogatory. I started wearing glasses around age 11 or 12. That’s a difficult stage in most people’s lives, and having to wear glasses doesn’t help.