LAT 2:45 (Stella) 
[2.80 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
Newsday 12:38 (Amy) 
[4.17 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
NYT 5:20 (Amy) [4.00 avg; 14 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Matthew) 
[2.50 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Matthew) 
[3.50 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
WSJ 19:54 (Eric) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Alan Arbesfeld’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Up for Grabs” — Eric’s Review
Alan Arbesfeld’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Up for Grabs” — 11/29/25
Take 10 well-known phrases, throw UP in them (sorry not sorry), and crossword wackiness results:
- 24A [Rearranging cards during a gin game?] HAND SHAKE-UP
- 44A [Work schedule for a robber?] STICK-UP SHIFT
- 56A [Running mascara?] MAKE-UP TRACKS
- 78A [Never loses a fight?] CAN’T BE BEAT UP
- 91A [Face shot of an early astronaut?] GLENN CLOSE-UP The astronaut is, of course, John Glenn, who flew the Friendship 7 as the third Project Mercury mission in 1962.
- 114A [Quarrel between harpists?] ANGEL DUST-UP
- 3D [Experts at infield flies?] POP-UP STARS
- 16D [Split decision?] RING TOSS-UP
- 71D [Cop in the “Full Monty” calendar?] BOBBY PIN-UP
- 74D [Blasé observation about a helium balloon?] SO IT GOES UP
On the plus side, the base phrases were all be fairly familiar, and it was easy to fill in the blanks on some of the answers by applying the theme.
On the minus side, the UP is inconsistently placed at the end of a theme answer seven times and in the middle of a theme answer three times. Most of the UPs are attached with hyphens, but two are not. The biggest minus was that I found the wackified phrases not particularly amusing.
Other stuff:
- 15A [2016 National League MVP Bryant] KRIS Not a name that I knew. He’s played for the Chicago Cubs, the San Francisco Giants ands the Colorado Rockies.
- 21A [“A Woman of No Importance” playwright] OSCAR WILDE I was a little confused here because I remembered the play as A Man of No Importance, but that’s a movie with Albert Finney as a Wilde-obsessed bus driver in Dublin.
- 23A [Colleague of Salt and DJ Spinderella] PEPA “Colleague,” not “college.”
- 64A [Wide around the pelvis] HIPPY Not to be confused with HIPPIE.
- 111A [Fan of the mockumentary band whose amps “go to 11”] TAPHEAD I read conflicting reviews on Spinal Tap II: The End Continues and skipped it despite having loved the original movie.
- 117A [Anglo-Saxon laborer] ESNE That’s some old-school crosswordese.
- 11D [Studio equipment] MIKES Not MIXER.
- 25D [Poetic writing/with 17 syllables/and only three lines] HAIKU This sort of clue seems like it ought to be a haiku itself, but I counted the syllables several times and came up with 16 every time.
- 40D [Harpo’s big brother] CHICO I learned relatively recently that the name is pronounced with a short I and not a long E.
- 67D [Composer Webern] ANTON 2oth century atonality. Not to be confused with the Classical composer Karl Maria von Weber.
Adrian Johnson’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 11/29/25 – no. 1129
Lots of flow throughout the grid, not so tough for a Saturday offering.
Fave fill: TRAVEL GUIDE, RETINAL SCAN, CORNER LOT, WHALE SONG, “WHAT A RACKET,” TIME MACHINE, SPIDEY-SENSE, BAD OMENS (educational clue, [The number 4 and the gift of a clock, in Chinese culture]), FAIR GAME.
I wasn’t entirely convinced that APOLOGY CARD is a thing, but then I googled it. Hallmark’s business branch has a webpage headed “Apology Cards” that says “Offer a sincere and personal apology to customers or employees with an apology card from Hallmark Business Connections. Shop apology greeting cards now.” If you receive a card from a business that says “We care about you!” on the front … they don’t actually care, they’re just trying to get out of trouble.
25D. [What sfouf is, in Lebanese cuisine], CAKE. Here’s a recipe for this turmeric cake that requires no eggs. Middle Eastern cuisine is also represented here by DOLMA.
Joe Marangell’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 11/29/25 by Joe Marangell
Fairly easy Saturday. Here’s what I found notable:
- 1A [“Cav/Pag” opera combination, notably] is a DOUBLE BILL, referring to Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci, two short operas frequently performed together. I’m always here for an opera reference.
- 17A [App development using A.I. and natural language] is VIBE CODING, and by contrast to my previous comment, I am Gen X and absolutely not here for phrases containing VIBE(s). I recognize that this phrase is a lively and modern entry for a puzzle, even though I personally hate it.
- 60A [Pop of vibrant color?] is ORANGE SODA. Love, love, love this clue.
- 6D [Participate in a secret exchange] is ELOPE, as in an exchange of vows. ELOPE is such a ubiquitous entry, so when I see a clue for it that I don’t think I’ve seen before, I’m always impressed.
- 8D [Pelvic bones] is ILIA, which is one of my least favorite crosswordese words because I can never remember, between ILIA and ILEA, which one is the bones and which one is the GI system.
- 57D [Actress/model Sedgwick] is EDIE, although some folks might be tempted to put in KYRA, which is perfectly appropriate ambiguity for a Saturday.
- 62D [Begin to charge?] is SUR. I found this contrived rather than clever.
Matthew Sewell’s Newssday crossword, “Saturday Stumper”—Amy’s recap
Newsday crossword solution, 11/29/25 – “Saturday Stumper” – Sewell
Filling in for pannonica this morning. Today’s “Stumper” was easier than most. I did resort to the “check” function when my grid was filled but my solution wasn’t accepted. I had flailed at an S for the end of 5a. [Alarm alternatives], given the plural clue, but AMPS doesn’t quite work and the answer is AM/PM. The crossing didn’t bail me out; 8d. [Allegro adverb] hinted at musical terminology (which I know mainly from crosswords) rather than Italian vocab, so I wasn’t seeing MOLTO.
Fave fill: “FOR MY NEXT TRICK …,” LACKING A FILTER, WIDGETS, ENTRANCE MUSIC.
Clues of note:
- 19a. [Work to convince], TRACT. “Work”is a noun here. Shades of Thomas Paine as seen in the Ken Burns et al docuseries, The American Revolution.
- 23a. [Wood subject, often], IOWAN. Grant Wood, Iowa painter of American Gothic‘s farm couple.
- 35a. [Signs of spring], CROCI. Tricky non-S plural. Alongside the Siberian squill, the first flower to emerge in early spring in my yard.
- 40a. [Article in the press], SHIRT. As at the cleaners, a press to iron the shirt.
- 46a. [Slight emotional reaction], INSULT. I don’t quite grasp what the clue is doing here. What am I not seeing?
- 57a. [Reptilian toon steed], YOSHI. In the Mario video games. Yoshi is a dinosaur and apparently Mario rides him.
- 63a. [Effervescent essence of elasticity], ASTI. Ah, here’s the quasi-cryptic clue. ASTI is found in “elasticity.”
- 1d. [Leader of Islamic worship’s focus], ALIF. The letter A, in Arabic, the first letter (“leader”) of “Allah.”
- 4d. [Elevated Bardic address], “O ROMEO.” Spoken by Juliet, “elevated” on a balcony.
- 10d. [Serial port users], MARINERS. Sailors landing serially at ports, nothing to do with the tech term “serial port.”
- 12d. [Blouse stat], NECK. Uh, what? Do they sell men’s blouses with the neck and sleeve sizes used for men’s shirts? Women’s blouses don’t generally need to accommodate a well-fitted necktie so the sizing is more in the S/M/L/XL vein, nothing to do with inch measurements.
- 21d. [Adjective in a Dickens and Tolkien title], TWO. Grammatically, a number modifying a noun is classed as an adjective. Feels so wrong to me, though. Didn’t learn that in school.
- 25d. [Conform to, in a phrase], TOE. In the phrase “toe the line,” you conform to the line.
- 26d. [Stops over?], LIDS. They’re stoppers located on the top of containers, ergo “stops over.”
- 28d. [Presently unable, with “in”], NO FIT STATE. Eww, no. A 10-letter partial is what this is. “No fit state” isn’t an idiomatic phrase by itself. Heck, “in no fit state” doesn’t even feel that familiar. “In no state to …,” sure.
-
Turkish 1 lira coin. (By Türkiye Cumhuriyet Merkez Bankası (Central Bank of Republic of Turkey) – Türkiye Cumhuriyet Merkez Bankası (Central Bank of Republic of Turkey), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93002285)
30d. [Where to see the Hagia Sophia], LIRA. A circulating commemorative coin. There’s a 1 lira coin from 2020 depicting the Hagia Sophia.
- 32d. [Span with tweens ‘tween], EL-HI. Ugh. I never see the term outside of crosswords and it’s … not good. Sure, there are tweens going to school between the elementary and high school years, but it’s a subpar entry.
- 34d. [Swag, nowadays], ELAN. If you say nowadays that someone has swag, they have a certain élan.
- 39d. [Imposing authority], IRS. The IRS imposes taxes.
- 51d. [Nickname like Dolly], LOLA. Can be short for Dolores. It’s also the Filipino “grandma.”
- 55d. [More meaning less?], -ETTE. A suffix added to indicate smallness.
3.5 stars from me.
WSJ: Eric, how are you counting 16 syllables for the 25D clue? Are you treating “poetic” as a two-syllable word? Just curious how you’re not getting 5/7/5.
Stumper: Surprisingly quick today! Last two squares were the ALIF/LEER crossing (big Natick for me), and CROCI/LIRA.
The “Swag, nowadays” clue for ELAN seems…backwards. Usually, the “nowadays” tag means that the answer is the modern version of the clue. But here, it’s the other way around: swag is the modern version of ELAN.
I’m glad the crosses for LIDS weren’t hard, because wow that clue is tough! Admiringly so, exactly what I expect from a Stumper.
Seth, I wish you wouldn’t post spoilers for the Stumper before a review is posted. Or if you do, at least put **SPOILERS** at the top of your post.
I’ll do that in the future! Though, just curious, why check the comments before you’re done solving? IMO, comments here are specifically for discussing spoilers. Or are you looking at the comments for another puzzle?
I never check the comments here until I’ve finished all the puzzles that I’ll do for the day.
Thank you, Seth!
My routine is that I do the NYT puz first, then come here to look at comments. If I see that a solution for the Stumper is posted, I come back later. But I like to do Wordle and the Bee and a few other things before I settle down with the Stumper.
It’s kind of Seth to agree to put a spoilers warning, but I hope he doesn’t take that to mean he shouldn’t be posting spoilers in his comments before the official review is posted. I agree with what I think he is saying, which is that if I see “Stumper” at the beginning of the post, I would expect that there will be spoilers in that post. I think if that label is there, an additional label of “spoiler” seems unnecessary. Of the nine comments starting a thread posted as of this writing, six of them have spoilers in them.
At least he did put “Stumper” at the beginning. I do the Stumper first, then the LAT and NYT later. When I look at the comments after the Stumper, I ignore any beginning NYT (most of the early ones, usually).
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
NYT: APOLOGYCARD may be a “thing” but (a) it doesn’t really feel in the language and (b) APOLOGY TOUR is a much more common, modern usage that is much fresher…I don’t know, Saturday puzzles recently have been of two kinds. The first: modern, fresh cluing with new phrases and fun answers that show an ever-developing art of puzzle setting and that consistently challenge the solver to freshen their vocabulary and question their autofill. The second: puzzles that clue the 1988 best country song Grammy winner because the author hasn’t updated their trivia bank in twenty years or they got backed into a setting corner…
What’s wild is, this puzzle has both of these features? There is also plenty of good: BADOMEN cluing via Chinese culture, CAKE-as-sfouf, DOLMA, cluing for ATOLLS, USCOINS etc all great and fun. Is this the ultimate “exactly middle of the road puzzle”? No, I think it’s a little better than average with help from the good I listed above…but I’m watching you NYT!
All of this, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. Neither APOLOGY CARD nor APOLOGY TOUR is especially “in the language” for me (though I’ve heard of both).
A positive for me (an old fart) was the lack of any rap/hip-hop music references and only one rather gratuitous gaming reference. The grid was not too heavy on person names, and they are all people I’ve heard of – but it was a little unusual in that all the people named in the grid are dead.
But if you want “old-timey,” MY STARS is an expression my grandmother used to use. She died over 50 years ago.
Hip hop has been around for at least 50 years, so not incompatible with being an old fart.
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 5 stars
Great Stumper! Very difficult to get started, but then everything fell into place. Incredibly tricky clues. Five stars!
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 5 stars
I had a similar experience; excited to solve it all without any cheats.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
NYT: super smooth flow with no bad crossings. Everything I enjoy in a themeless
Stumper: fairly straightforward overall, but I’m with Amy not understanding the clue for INSULT. I was also surprised to see TWO described as an adjective. Some people say yes, others say no. I have no clue about the reliability of that website, but it’s there…
Stumper: For INSULT, maybe “slight” is a noun. Someone does something to you that you feel is a slight, and you take it as an insult. So your reaction is to be insulted.
That’s a good take on the 46A clue!
I get that ‘slight’ is meant as a noun, but it’s a synonym for ‘insult.’ So I don’t get what the rest of the clue is doing, unless the ’emotional reaction’ part is meant to be interpreted as ‘insult.’ Which doesn’t seem quite right to me.
I think you are correct. One can always argue over Stumper details.
Mostly easy (for a Stumper). For me, anything under an hour for a Stumper is easy/medium. That didn’t stop me from a two-square error, squares 38 and 39. Looking back, LIES FOR instead of goES FOR seems glaringly obvious.
I’m so glad I resisted the wrong-seeming but tempting “asia” for the Hagia Sophia, as a four-letter place in crosswordese. Wikipedia says most of Turkey is in Western Asia, so not as far off as I thought, maybe?
Nice puzzle, thanks Matthew Sewell!
“Asia” has been used before and, yes, I tried it this time. :(
Stumper: Agree with Amy and the others in everything, except that it was easy. It took me and my husband, going back and forth at least twice and I had to look up an answer to one.
yeah, agree, my time was not good
and there are “misleading” clues, and “obscure” clues and then just clues that don’t have any way in
whatever, stumper is a highlight of my week, i love them all, good bad and ugly
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Fun puzzle
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
Not a bad fill for a Saturday, but cluing might for may is… a choice
Puzzle: LAT; Rating: 1.5 stars
The bad selection of puzzles by the editor to which crosswords they post, and also the inept editing of clues is ruining the LAT.
To wit: 20A: “Cave man”, and the answer is “Plato”. Who the heck is supposed to know that?
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 1.5 stars
This puzzle is horrid. Who needs answers such as “B Dubs”, “Cries Havoc”, and “Castellano” in a crossword! Editors: make wiser puzzle selections in the future.
Re: Stumper review of 46a. [Slight emotional reaction]: INSULT. “I don’t quite grasp what the clue is doing here. What am I not seeing?”
The word “slight” in the clue points to its synonym, “insult”.