Thursday, November 27, 2025

BEQ 7:48+ (Eric) [2.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Fireball untimed (Jenni) rate it
LAT 5:25 (Gareth) [2.50 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
NYT 8:43 (ZDL) [3.47 avg; 17 ratings] rate it
Universal 5:50 (Eric) [3.63 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today 8:14 (Emily) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it

Note: There’s no Wall Street Journal puzzle today because of the Thanksgiving holiday. Please eat and drink responsibly.

Alexander Liebeskind’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up

Difficulty: Average (8m43s)

Alexander Liebeskind’s New York Times crossword, 11/27/25, 1127

Today’s theme: SQUARE THE CIRCLE (Complete an impossible task … or a hint to reading three Down answers in this puzzle)

• WISHB(ONE) FORMATION / (ON E)DGE
• FAS(T WO)RKER / YEAR O(F OUR) LORD
• EAR(TH REE)NTRY / SATUR(NINE)

Some phrases are just revealers dying to be made into puzzles — SQUARE THE CIRCLE falls firmly into that category.  Might have played faster if I remembered what SATURNINE meant.  Wasn’t he the god of riches and enlightenment?  Why the dour connotation?

Cracking: the KREBS CYCLE, medical school PTSD notwithstanding

Slacking: SED, sed me

Sidetracking: AD WARS

Zhouqin Burnikel’s Universal Crossword Puzzle “Turkey Trot” — Eric’s Review

Zhouquin Burnikel’s Universal Crossword “Turkey Trot” — 11/27/25

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate this holiday! Odds are that anyone reading this has many things to be thankful for, and it never hurts to take a few minutes and acknowledge that.

I’m assuming that today’s theme is a simple one because so many people will be wrapped up in cooking or socializing. Unless I missed something (always a possibility with me), we get five words or phrases containing the trigram TOM in which as you go lower in the grid, TOM “trots” to the right:

• 17A [*Easy opponents in the boxing ring] TOMATO CANS I’m all for colorful entries in crossword puzzles (especially theme entries), but this one might be a little too colorful. It’s perhaps more unfortunate that it’s the first theme answer.
• 23A [*Video game featuring Lara Croft] TOMB RAIDER When I filled in this gimme, I thought the theme involved TOM followed by A, then B, then C. I got ahead of myself and stuck TOMC in the next theme slot, only to immediately delete it.
• 38A [*River through Washington, D.C.] POTOMAC
• 48A [*Comic strip hero with a skull ring] THE PHANTOM
• 59A [*Absolute lowest point] ROCK BOTTOM

I didn’t notice until I was finished that the grid is asymmetrical. I assume that’s why the theme clues are starred, as there’s no reference to the asterisks in any other clue. (But it looks to me like Ms Burnikel placed her theme answers in symmetrical slots, so maybe the asymmetry is just to get better fill.)

Other stuff:

• 15A [Western lake home to Emerald Bay] TAHOE I don’t recognize the bay, but a five-letter crossword friendly lake is almost always TAHOE.
• 27A [Mono alternative] STEREO In the 1960s, when I was still listening to records that my older siblings had bought, stereo mixes were almost an afterthought. The only recording for which I have both the mono and stereo mixes is White Light/White Heat by the Velvet Underground, and whatever differences there are between the two mixes are too subtle for me to notice.
• 33A [West African nation known for desert blues] MALI I tried CHAD first, but I should know better.
• 11D [Cosmetic product for shaping arches] EYEBROW GEL That’s new to me.

• 

  A show I’m certain I was at

• 28D [Concert souvenir] TICKET STUB Does the clue need “obsolete” or “old-fashioned”? I can’t remember the last concert I went to where I needed a paper ticket to get in. I kinda wish I had save my stubs, because I’m no longer sure when I saw some of the shows I saw.
• 31D [What adult jaguars have that adult pumas don’t] SPOTS I didn’t notice this while solving and didn’t know that juvenile mountain lions have spots.
• 51D [Dried poblano pepper] ANCHO Our local grocery store doesn’t stock ANCHOs, and our chile suffers for it. We’ll be in Texas next week and hope to stock up on those.

Olivia Mitra Framke’s USA Today Crossword, “Warming Up Some Leftovers” — Emily’s write-up

Seconds, please! And maybe thirds, too.

USA Today, November 27, 2025, “Warming Up Some Leftovers” by Olivia Mitra Framke

Theme: each downs themer ends (aka “leftovers”) in a Thanksgiving food

Themers:

• 3d. [Abrupt way to quit a habit], COLDTURKEY
• 7d. [“Sounds good to me!”], COOLBEANS
• 11d. [Games with a lot of quick passes], HOTPOTATO
• 56a. [CLUE], THANKSGIVINGDAY

What a fantastic themer set with COLDTURKEY, COOLBEANS, and HOT POTATO with a revealer of THANKSGIVINGDAY. Not only do we get a delectable set, there’s a bonus with each themer getting progressively “warmer”.

Favorite fill: HORDE, SWINGSET, and POM

Stumpers: BLITZO (new to me), HULA and HOOP (first thought about a doll toy or a top), and ENTRY (COMMENT)

A delightful puzzle jam-packed with goodness today! Super impressive fill, title, theme, themer set, and crossings. For starters, we get TROT crossed with the “t” of COLDTURKEY; turkey trots are popular races (often 5K or 5 miles) on Thanksgiving Day. Then NPR is crossed with the “p” of HOTPOTATO; for me, I equate Thanksgiving morning with listening to the call-in show on NPR in which the hosts try to help frazzled home cooks save their meals from disasters before guests arrive. In addition, as in life, Christmas isn’t far behind as SANTA is crossed with the spanner, and is a common sight in many Thanksgiving Day parades. If that wasn’t enough, we get to STIR hot cocoa, which is apt for this chilly weather. Also a lot of words for anger (ABHOR, SEETHE, ROIL)–hopefully that isn’t alluding to the fact that this holiday can be known, to some, for family spats. Though there’s also some love as well, with AMOR and DOTED, along with CRIED–lots of emotions in today’s puzzle which is fair for a Thanksgiving-themed puzzle.

May everyone has a relaxing and tasty day!

5.0 stars

~Emily

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1839 “Extra Servings & Start of the End of the Year Drive” — Eric’s Review

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1839 “Extra Servings & Start of the End of the Year Drive” — 11/27/25

I liked this until the end, when I got stuck on a couple of answers. That’s my least favorite way to finish a crossword puzzle.

Capital letters in the clues for the theme entries suggested to me that this might be a letter bank theme, and I was right:

• 18A [Extra servings of DATES] TASTE-TESTED
• 23A [Extra servings of POLENTA] PONTOON PLANE
• 34A [Extra servings of BACON] NBA ON NBC
• 42A [Extra servings of YAMS] SAYS MASS
• 52A [Extra servings of BRISKET] KISS IT BETTER
• 60A [Extra servings of GOUDA] OUGADOUGOU I knew it’s a capital city, but I couldn’t remember where. It’s in Burkina Faso, in West Africa.

That’s an odd menu for Thanksgiving, but whatever. I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten a true yam, but if you count sweet potatoes as yams, I love all the foods Brendan is serving up. Just maybe not as part of the same meal.

It was mostly the sports clues that threw me today, as I assumed that 18A ended in SEED because I didn’t know 11D ARTE Moreno, owner of the Los Angeles Angels. I also didn’t know 44A, the professional wrestler SGT. Slaughter.

Having SEED instead of TESTED kept me from seeing that the theme answers, though totally unrelated to the foods in the theme clues, are all common-enough words and phrases. I might have been a little quicker if I’d realized that earlier on, because I’d have been able to complete some of the theme answers based on the letter patterns.

Other stuff:

• 9A [City on the Missouri] OMAHA I guessed that immediately, based on the frequency with which that city appears in crosswords (which is often a reliable way to get an answer you don’t otherwise know). But I left it out until I had a cross or two because the Missouri River runs for 2,341 miles before it joins the Mississippi just north of St. Louis, and there are lots of cities along the way.
• 15A [Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!”, e.g.] ELEGY I made a semi-educated guess here, based on the only Whitman I’m sure I’ve read, one of his other elegies about Abraham Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” Whitman wrote four poems about Lincoln; the other two are “Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day” and “This Dust Was Once the Man.” (I don’t recognize either of those titles.)
• 7D [Crews vehicle: Abbr.] AGT My Googling suggests that “Crews” is Terry Crews, host of America’s Got Talent. I’ve never seen that show.
• 19D [Move quickly] TEAR ASS “Haul ass,” okay. But I’ve never heard anyone use “tear ass,” and that was part of my difficulty towards the end.
• 37A [First platter] DEBUT LP Not food (despite the theme). I like this clue, but maybe that’s because I had LP first and it was clear as soon as I read the clue what the rest of it was. For my money, John Prine is the best debut album I’ve ever heard. How do you top songs like “Sam Stone, “Hello in There” and “Angel from Montgomery”? Please post your recommendations in the comments.
• 64A [Phantom instrument] ORGAN “Phantom” as in The Phantom of the Opera.
• 2D [Father figure?] DAD BOD Cute clue, but not as cute as it was in 2019 (which is the earliest use I see of that clue, in a Will Nediger puzzle in The New York Times).
• 12D [Bad wrestler] HEEL More “sports”! Based on the answer, I assume “bad” here means “evil” and not “incompetent.”
• 21D [Part of the body that can expand up to 500 times its size] UTERUS I didn’t know that fact. But there’s a lot of stuff about the human reproductive systems that they either didn’t teach in fifth grade sex education or that I’ve long since forgotten.
• 36D [Have marginal thoughts?] NOTATE Cute clue.
• 39D [“Deuces”] BYE Urban Dictionary suggests this usage comes from the two finger of a peace sign. I’ve learned from crosswords that some people say “Peace” when departing, but I’ve never heard that in real life.
• 50D [Get to the chopper?] TEETHE Is “get to the chopper” that familiar a phrase? The only connection I can make is to getting to a medical evacuation helicopter.
• 61A [SGA’s team, on scoreboards] OKC Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder. The office I worked in for almost 30 years used a computerized workflow management system in which everyone who handled one of the thousands of documents we produced during a legislative session was known by their initials. I was pretty sure SGA was not my friend Susan.

MaryEllen Uthlaut’s LA Times crossword — Gareth’s theme summary

GETOVERIT is the explaining answer, and Ms. Uthlaut features four double-stack theme entries (including the explaining answer) with GET/IT lined up. Fortunately, both parts are quite amenable to filling grids so despite being crowded, the puzzle isn’t out of control…

The first GET is in ORANGETEA, underneath GAIT. The second is in DODGETRUCKS and RAITA. The third is concealed in BRIDGETABLE and ADROIT. Below GETOVERIT, we find ITINERARY.

Gareth