Sunday, November 30, 2025

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Natan Last’s New York Times Crossword “Hog Wild” — Jim Q’s Review

Pretty good timing for Natan to have the marquee puzzle! Solid reminder for me to order his newly-released book Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle. DONE! Hoping many more will do the same.

Natan Last’s New York Times Crossword “Hog Wild” — 11/30/25

THEME: Words associated with “Pearl” appear at the bottom of common phrases, and each is immediately followed by a famous fictional pig in the next entry below.

It took me a longer than it should’ve to come up with a succinct way of saying that.

THEME ANSWERS:

The Pearls:

• PUMP UP THE JAM.  Pearl Jam… You know all of the tunes, butthelyricsssaalllssoundprrettymuchlikethis.
• GLASS ONION. Pearl Onions… Essential garnish of the Gibson cocktail 🍸🧅🤢
• PASS THE BUCK. Pearl (S.) Buck… I never quite finished reading “The Good Earth.” Depended on good old fashioned (and salacious!) Cliff’s Notes. 
• SAFE HARBOR. Pearl Harbor… Also a movie that Roger Ebert critiqued as “…a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours,” which I learned from last Wednesday’s puzzle!

The Piggies:

• [“”Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!” speaker”] PORKY. 
• [“Pink character in the “Toy Story” movies”] HAMM. 
• [“Literary runt of the litter”] WILBUR.
• [“Farmer Hoggett’s entrant in a sheepherding contest”] BABE. 

The Revealer: 

• [With 87-Down, idiom about wasting one’s efforts … as seen in four columns in this puzzle?] PEARLS BEFORE SWINE. 

This puzzle brought me a lot of joy, even though I confess I’m not overly familiar with the phrase PEARLS BEFORE SWINE. But If Google is any indicator, everyone else knows it but me. It appears extremely common from its biblical origin, and it’s a name of a well known comic and a band from the ’60s (didn’t know those either 😳).

From Google AI:

“Pearls before swine” is an idiom meaning to offer something valuable to someone who will not appreciate or understand it. The phrase originates from a biblical passage in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus warns not to “cast your pearls before swine” lest they trample them. It is also the name of the popular American comic strip by Stephan Pastis and an influential 1960s folk-rock band

I started slow, especially in the central “peninsula” of the grid (which, for the record, looks suspiciously like a cow’s face). Once I found my footing, though, it gradually filled itself in as crosswords do… you think you’re going to be stuck forever and then somehow, you’re not.

The theme itself feels so… offbeat. Sure, we’ve seen phrases that end in words with commonalities, and fictional pigs love to show up in crosswords (here’s another where all of today’s guests were also featured together on National Pig’s Day). But combining what feels a bit like two themes in one was quite fresh.

The theme was extremely helpful to get out of tight spots too. I love theme-fill synergy like that.  Were it not for PORKY in the SE corner, I might’ve been saying “Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!” myself. Actually, all of them were clutch for me. I found the south quite difficult.

But the real fun came from the general cluing and the fill, which is something that doesn’t happen often in a 21x in my experience. Nothing felt like a total softball (even with common crossword words), but there was always enough to infer [“O, had I but followed the ___!”: “Twelfth Night”] for ARTS, to pick one at random. Unfamiliar with the quote. Totally makes sense.

From the PUMP UP THE JAM throwback to Marsha P. Johnson as a TRANS ICON, there was plenty to enjoy.

MISSTEPS / ERRATA / NEW TO ME:

• [Puzzle type that was the Oxford Dictionaries’ 2005 U.K. “word of the year”] SUDOKU. Has it been that long? That was a good word of the year. Unlike dictioanry.com’s 2025 pick, which fascinates and annoys me to both extremes.
• [Actress Zosia ___ of “Girls”] MAMET. Her father wasn’t mentioned. Good. I’m over him.
• [Accommodates] SEATS. Needed every cross. 🤦
• [Former Portuguese colony on the Malabar Coast] GOA. Tough cross with LOUD OUTS, which I wanted to be “LOUD CUTS.” Reasonable error!
• [Bottlefuls for a summer look, perhaps] INSTANT TANS.Weird image. I read it and felt sticky.
• [Coin collector?] SOFA. Ha! Great clue. When that penny shortage starts to hit home, look there first.
• [Dealer’s manager] PIT BOSS. Good clue, but I’d take a question mark for flavor.
• [Chop house?] DOJO. Love it.
• [Preposition that can be represented by a number] FOR. Fun clue! Sure, a gimme, but if it’s gonna be a gimme, it better have me doing something stupid like counting aloud.
• [Lenape people from whom a New Jersey river gets its name] RARITAN. New to me and nice to see.
• [Noodling in a jazz tune] VAMPING. Disagree. When I’m vamping on piano, it’s usually to support the person who is noodling on a solo. I do not consider VAMPING “noodling.” Not quite the opposite, but my interpretation of VAMPING is not exactly far from the opposite of the clue either.
• [In the majority?] ADULT. Not sure I get this. I mean, I guess ADULTs make up the majority of the population? But why the “?”
• [John who painted “Backyards, Greenwich Village”] SLOAN. New for me.
• [Arm of the police department] TASER. 😒
• [Turf ___ (football injury)] TOE. Never heard of this. Can’t tell you how badly I wanted to put WAR in there.

I was surprised to see my time finish around the 19 minute mark (that’s on par for me for NYT Sunday). I thought I was a solid five minutes north of that.

4.5 stars from me today. That’s pretty much exactly the solve experience I want on a Sunday.

P.S.

Hannah Slovut-Einertson’s Universal Sunday crossword, “Let the Music Guide You”—Jim P’s review

Theme answers are song titles that hint at literal instances of wordplay in other parts of the grid as indicated by circled letters.

Universal Sunday crossword solution · “Let the Music Guide You” · Hannah Slovut-Einertson · 11.30.25

• 21a. [“Rocky Horror” song with instructions in the lyrics, or a hint to 23-Across] TIME WARP, with TIME in 23a KNOW WHAT I MEAN “warped” a little.
• 32a. [Blanco Brown song with instructions in the lyrics, or a hint to 41-Across] THE GIT UP with GIT in 41a SEEMS LEGIT going upwards.
• 59a. [Line dance in a Ray Anthony song with instructions in the lyrics, or a hint to 68-Across] BUNNY HOP with the RABBIT in 68a MOON RABBIT doing a little hop at the first B.
• 78a. [Romantic-sounding 2007 song with instructions in the lyrics, or a hint to 86-Across] CUPID SHUFFLE with CUPID scrambled in 86a PERIODIC UPDATE.
• 101a. [DJ Casper song with instructions in the lyrics, or a hint to 112-Across] CHA CHA SLIDE with both CHAs in 112a CHANGE CHANNELS sliding down to the left.

If any theme warrants an unsymmetrical grid, this one’s it. There’s a lot going on here and each theme answer is implemented in a different fashion, so being a little lax with symmetry works fine here.

My challenge was not knowing most of these songs and/or their singers, so it turned into a bit of a slog for me. But I do appreciate the creativity and the execution that went into this.

Additional proper names in the fill clues and entries added to my challenges, but there’s some great long fill here: HOMO SAPIENS, ESTROGEN, WIRE-HAIR, HUMERUS, BETA RELEASE, STORM OUT, BIRTH CHART, and PENTACLES. New to me was EWR [JFK alternative]. That New Jersey airport has very few instances in the Cruciverb database.

Clue of note: 55d. [Notes ___ apology] APP. I’m showing my age here, but this one’s also new to me. This refers to the practice of celebrities writing an apology in the Notes app on iOS and publishing a screenshot of it in social media. Of course I use the Notes app to write a bunch of things, though I can’t say I’ve  written an apology there.

Ambitious and creative puzzle with some great fill. 3.5 stars.

Evan Birnholz’s Washington Post Crossword “Bright Spots” — Matt’s Review

Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword solution, “Bright Spots,” 11/30/2025

One of Evan’s classic revealer+spell a bonus phrase themes this week. Let’s look at the themers:

• 26a [Location that gets many visitors] TOURI[ST AR]EA – Note the rebus, crossing TWI[ST AR]MS
• 32a [Pirates legend who was National League MVP and World Series MVP in 1979] WILLIE [STAR]GELL, crossing WERE [STAR]VING
• 46a [What a collector of Manet and Monet paintings collects] IMPRESSIONI[ST AR]T, crossing ICY [STAR]E
• 78a [Like vegetables with a lower proportion of carbs and calories compared to potatoes, for example] NON[STAR]CHY, crossing NED [STAR]K
• 99a [British prime minister who succeeded Rishi Sunak in 2024] KEIR [STAR]MER, crossing KICK[STAR]TERS
• 104a [Cigarette brand’s deceptive claim to be safer than other brands] LES[S TAR], crossing LO[ST AR]K
• 120a [Baked dessert with a redundant name] EGG CU[STAR]D, crossing EDWIN [STAR]R

And a central revealer points both at these rebuses and an extra layer:

• 66a [Gospel song whose title is a hunt to seven squares in this puzzle (the first letters of seven Across entries, following by the first letters of Down entries, will spell the opening of another apt song title] THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE

That’s a wordy revealer, but it points first to STAR (a “little light”) being the letter string in the rebus squares, and then to the first letter of each entry incorporating a rebus. In the across entries, those spell TWINKLE, at which point I realized all themers start with the same letter as their crossing (e.g. the T of TOURIST AREA and TWIST ARMS.) 

So the relevant word from the down entries is also TWINKLE, suggesting TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR, certainly a second aptly-titled song for this theme

I did not notice the asymmetry in this grid until after my solve. I pay attention when that happens. In this case, I think three things helped the solve and grid shape feel “normal”: the long and centrally-placed revealer; the themer placement that at a quick glance is similar to in a symmetric grid; and the fact that rebus squares are rarely symmetrical themselves. 

Other highlights: [Sch. in Paradise] for UNLV references a jurisdiction name, not a special endorsement of Las Vegas // Fun new clue for Alan ALDA here: [“Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie” playwright Alan] // They’re not clued together, but HOTEL crossing VALET is fun 

Cheers!