Monday, December 1, 2025

BEQ 12:19 (Eric) [4.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
LAT 1:46 (Stella) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 3:26 (Sophia) [3.00 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker 9:12 (Amy) [1.80 avg; 10 ratings] rate it
Universal untimed (pannonica) [3.80 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (?) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
WSJ 4:00 (Jim Q) [3.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it

Hannah Binney’s New York Times Crossword — Sophia’s Recap

Theme: Each theme answer starts with a word relating to “cold”

New York Times, 12 01 2025, By Hannah Binney

• 17a [“Remedy” for a riled-up person] – CHILL PILL
• 24a [Penalty for bank fraud] – FROZEN ACCOUNT
• 40a [Hip person, in old slang] – COOL CAT
• 51a [Antithesis] – POLAR OPPOSITE
• 64a [Cause of some wintry weather … or a hint to 17-, 24-, 40- and 51-Across] – COLD FRONT

What a lovely, timely Monday puzzle! It’s the first day of December and (at least for those of us in the Northern hemisphere!) the cold is definitely setting in. I loved all of the answers chosen in this theme set, and how none of the “cold” words directly refer to temperature! CHILL PILL is my favorite – I love the repetition of the letters. POLAR OPPOSITE is also a standout for me. Looking at the fill, it’s incredibly smooth and doesn’t contain too many proper nouns, which is nice on a Monday when solvers have different knowledge bases.

Some other quick hits on the puzzle:

• I wasn’t familiar with GRACE NOTE – the dictionary tells me it’s “an extra note added as embellishment and not essential to the harmony or melody.” Interesting to learn, and not too hard to puzzle out as an answer.
• A fun fact – EVA Noblezada played Eurydice in the original Broadway cast of “Hadestown”, and earlier this year she married Reeve Carney, who played Orpheus!
• The only countries smaller than NAURU? Vatican City and Monaco!
• [Tolkien tree creature] for ENT – I’m current watching “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy for the first time ever, having previously only been familiar with ENTs and orcs through their crossword representation :)  I really enjoyed “Fellowship of the Ring”, we’ll see how “Two Towers” goes tonight…
• Fill highlights – MAINFRAME, CHARADES, MAGIC ACT (although I tried “magic show” first)
• Clue highlights – [Classic music style beloved by Weird Al Yankovic] for POLKA, [Adds unnecessary words to] for PADS.

Happy Monday all!

Brad Lively’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “No, Thanks!” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: Things that people would rather not have given to them, clued wackily.

WSJ • 12/1/25 • Mon• “No, Thanks!” • Brad Lively • solution • 20251201

THEME ANSWERS:

• 20A [Issue for a flying car?] SPEEDING TICKET
• 33A [Bit of bad circulation?] COUNTERFEIT BILL
• 39A [Action movie staple that may come down to the wire?] TICKING TIME BOMB
• 51A [“Save your excuses!” (or an appropriate response to being handed 20-, 33- or 39-Across)] DON’T GIVE ME THAT!

I love this revealer. I don’t know why, but it tickles my funny bone. And, indeed, please don’t give me any of those things for Christmas.

I confess that I’m not sure if the punny nature of the cluing for the themers has anything to do with the theme. I don’t think so? There’s no parallel structure or reason that I can see that each is clued wackily, but they are! More of a “Why the hell not!” approach, I suppose. Typically, I would sense a stronger connection in the themers’ cluing style when ?’s are consistently employed.

I have soured as of late on some of the WSJ Monday fill. I use my study hall students as a litmus test. They’ve been getting very much into crosswords lately (thanks, in large part, to the *shockingly successful* cell phone ban in NY State schools) and Monday is their favorite day as they are mostly novices. They typically struggle with partials (there are 3 in this puzzle) and unfamiliar names or old timey phrases (KLIMT, TO WIT). Things that might not be considered “naticks” to constant solvers certainly can be to them. I wish the Monday/Tuesday puzzles that the WSJ publishes would just be a little more welcoming to a brand new generation of potential solvers.

NOTES / ERRATA / STUMBLES:

• [Rolled-r sound] TRILL. Just seeing this clue now. I only think of a trill as ornamentation in a piece of music where the performer goes back and forth on two notes.
• “Tough Novice Stuff” as indicated by my young study hall crossword crew: STORIED,  STERNO, IS UP, AS A, INIGO (but grrr… they should know that lol), FIFES, AMIE, A RUG, RIFTS, MAFIOSI, TO WIT, KLIMT, INST, ELSE/IFS, BEATNIK, HIFI
• ELSE/IFS was surprising to see as an entry! Inferable- but wondering if this is a common stand-alone term that most people outside of the programming world should be familiar with?

Enjoyed the general concept of this one, but I wish it were a bit more accessible fill-wise.

3 stars.

Brooke Husic’s New Yorker crossword—Amy’s recap

New Yorker crossword solution, 12/1/25 – Husic

This one was quite tough. Still nowhere near as hard as a Newsday “Saturday Stumper,” though! The difficulty was more from the names and references chosen than from tricky plays on word meanings. You need to know your Indian food (PAPAD) and South American booze (PISCO), your characters-in-A24-movies (OWEN). Grocer ALDI clued as [Lidl competitor] is really hard to get when you’ve never heard of German grocery chain Lidl. And overall there are a ton of names in the puzzle, and it becomes a you-know-it-or-you-don’t trivia quiz, but not the sort of trivia that people who like pop culture (like me) will actually know.

I’d heard of SUBWAY TAKES from its mentions elsewhere, but didn’t know the title. [Kareem Rahma interview series filmed aboard public transit] gave me the SUBWAY part but I needed the crossings for TAKES. Wasn’t sure what position Jordan played but SGS (shooting guards) worked better with 1a than PGS (point guards) would.

Fave fill: “PICTURE IT,” SQUID GAME, RASTAFARIAN (I almost thought this was gonna be PASTAFARIAN), DISABILITY, TIKTOKERS, “GO FOR IT,” GENDER-SWAP.

Things I didn’t know:

• [___ cannon (weapon popular with beginners, in video-game slang], NOOB.
• [One who adheres to an Ital diet], RASTAFARIAN.
• [Computation platform created by Stephen Wolfram], MATHEMATICA. Computation platforms are not part of my life.
• [Desai who wrote the 2025 novel “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny], KIRAN. That K crossing SUBWAY TAKES was tricky to nail down. She won the Man Booker Prize in 2006. “Loneliness” is her first book since then.
• [Rock guitarist Strauss], NITA. Here’s her Wiki page. I feel like there was another Nita back in the 1980s?

Three stars from me. Quite dense with people, places, and trade names, with a number of tough crossings.

Katherine Simonson’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Los Angeles Times 12/1/25 by Katherine Simonson

The revealer at 58A [Snarky response to a boast, and what can be said about the ends of the answers to the starred clues?] is ISN’T THAT SPECIAL, which is a fun phrase and indicates that the word SPECIAL can be placed before the last word in each theme answer to make a new phrase:

• 17A [*Belongings] is PERSONAL EFFECTS, leading to SPECIAL EFFECTS.
• 23A [*Grow, as a savings account] is EARN INTEREST, leading to SPECIAL INTEREST.
• 39A [*Gas station convenience store chain] is CIRCLE K, leading to SPECIAL K.
• 50A [*Philosophical concept concerning the moral code of the universe] is NATURAL ORDER, leading to SPECIAL ORDER.

On the minus side, I didn’t feel like the theme entries were particularly evocative or lively; on the plus side, there’s quite a lot of thematic material. The grid is clean; my favorite entries are MARS ROVERS and MARACAS, and my least favorite is the contrived-but-often-used ARE TOO. But overall the fill is smooth enough for a very easy solve, which is just fine for Monday.

Drew Schmenner’s Universal crossword, “Game Changer” — pannonica’s write-up

Universal • 12/1/25 • Mon • “Game Changer” • Schmenner • solution • 20251201

Had no clue as to what the theme might be as I was solving. In fact, I thought it might be a themeless.

• 58a^R [Places where ingredients become one … and what the scrambled first words of 17-, 33- and 39-Across are doing?] MIXING BOWLS.
• 17a. [Topic you’d prefer to avoid] SORE SUBJECT (ROSE Bowl).
• 33a. [“Superfly” singer-songwriter] CURTIS MAYFIELD (CITRUS Bowl). Hmm, I wonder if the name Kurtis Blow—which itself contains an anagram of bowl—might have been the inspiration for the theme.
• 39a. [Low-quality, imitative products] CHEAP KNOCKOFFS (PEACH Bowl).

That’s a tidy theme. A few weeks early for college bowl season, but I guess those are the breaks.

• 13d [Disappearing sound] POOF. 18d [Water balloon sound] SPLAT.
• 25d [Name hidden in “human interest”] ANI. 33d [Salmon hidden in “taco holder”] COHO. I can just about tolerate one of these types of clues per crossword.
• 32d [Aves. and others] RDS. 31d [Pub quaffs] ALES.
• 35d [(I’m udder-ly amazing!)] MOO. I reflexively put in MOO, then reasoned that if that were the answer, the clue would’ve had quotation marks rather than—or in addition to—parentheses. So I then concluded that the answer was COW, only to be corrected via crossings.
• 41d [Citrus fruit used in a cream pie] KEY LIME. Really? Using one of the key theme answer words in another clue?? See also 40d [Bowling alley target] PIN.
• 21a [Poetic equivalent to a five-star review] ODE. Must an ODE be laudatory?
• 23a [Seer’s “talent”] ESP. Much thanks for mockquotes.
• 44a [Capitalist’s counterparts, casually] COMMIES. Hmm. (1) Not really counterparts, (2) seems more disparaging than casual.
• 51a [Lend] LOAN. Distinct etymologies. Links here: lend, loan.
• 62a [Aviation pioneer Earhart] AMELIA. In the news again because of the conspiratorial obsessions of Timothy Mellon, who furnished a $130 million bribe to declassify government files.
  
• 66a [Ancient Greek warmonger] ARES.

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1840 — Eric’s Review

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1840 — 12/2/25

Lots of unusual entries today, with quadruple-stacked 10-letter Across answers in the NE and SW and triple-stacked 11-letter Down answers in the other corners:

• 5A [Rehearsals where the cast goes over the script for the first time] TABLE READS I’m not sure where I picked that up, but I got the answer immediately.
• 16A [“You think that’s a joke!”] I MEAN IT TOO
• 18A [With 20-Across, “That’s of no consequence!”]/20A [See 18-Across] DON’T MATTER/IN THE LEAST I lost a few seconds trying to get DOESN’T . . . to work.
• 25A [Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital VIP DR. HOUSE I needed the DR. HO to get me started with this, but I’m sure it’s a gimme for many solvers.
• 49A [Co-owner of the Minnesota Lynx, for short] A-ROD As in the former New York Yankees player. The only reason I got that without crosses is that Brendan used this clue not long ago.
• 51A [Baked good at Thanksgiving] POTATO ROLL I’m lucky I had a few letters before I saw this, as I’d otherwise have lost some time to PUMPKIN PIE.
• 2D [Stable athletes?] POLO PONIES Cute clue. I toyed with something HORSES before I stumbled onto the right answer.
• 3D [Largest blackwater swamp in North America] OKEFENOKEE I made a lucky guess, and then lucked out again by spelling it correctly.
• 4D [Second Sunday before Ash Wednesday] SEXAGESIMA Oof. From ecclesiastical Latin for “60th day.” I’m guessing they count backwards from Easter, but I really don’t care.
• 9D [Trapped] ENMESHED Not ENSNARED.
• 26D [Local identification tag] UNION LABEL Cute clue. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a TV commercial urging me to “Look for the union label” when purchasing clothing.
• 30D [Like dysprosium or lanthanum] RARE EARTH That EEA sequence looks really unpromising when you’re filling in the grid.
• 38D [Jazz vibraphonist Tjader] CAL Maybe I’ve heard of him before?
• 40D [They can make you a brand new person] BIRTHS Cute clue.
• 46D [“L’insoutenable légèreté de l’___” (French translation of a Milan Kundera book)] ETRE I might’ve gotten this on my own if I’d remembered the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.