LAT 3:19 (Stella) 
[3.00 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
Newsday 23:30 (pannonica) 
[3.86 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
NYT 7:06 (Amy) [3.85 avg; 20 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Matthew) [4.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Matthew) 
[2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
WSJ tk (???) [2.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Marshal Herrmann’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 12/6/25 – no. 1206
I’m not entirely sure what SPICED ALES and TILE SAWS are. Just me?
Fave fill: refreshing SORBETS, the stair-step Q- answers on the lower right side, HOLY SMOKES, CHARLI XCX (thank you, 2024’s “Kamala is BRAT,” for giving me this one), ACTIVEWEAR, WHITE RHINO.
Five more things:
- 19A. [Chinese surname transliterating “Zuo”], TSO. The general’s chicken? Feels kinda random.
- 38A. [Portrayer of Glinda in 2024’s “Wicked,” to fans], ARI(ana Grande). Or you could go with the 2025 installment that’s a current release…
- 49A. [Having a good aura, in slang], VIBEY? I might’ve gone with VIBED/QUAD here.
- 58A. [Side effect after a BBQ meal, informally], MEAT SWEATS. Eww. Add your OLEO here and I’m thoroughly grossed out.
- 33D. [Ratty is one in “The Wind in the Willows”], WATER VOLE. I sure did not remember this one.
Emily Biegas’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 12/6/25 by Emily Biegas
This puzzle started out hard — IMO the NW corner is the most difficult section — and got considerably easier once I got out of there, leading to a final time right where I like it for Saturday. A decent amount of the difficulty in this puzzle comes from clues that have more than one possible answer for the answer length, such as 1D [Trig ratio], which is COSEC but could be COTAN or COSIN; 50A [“Mangia!”], which is DIG IN but could be EAT UP; and 42A [“__ me!”], which is SPARE but which I thought was the far less elegant SO SUE for a while.
Afraid I don’t have time for a clue-by-clue, but I did really enjoy the 57A clue [Enigmatic rock group]. I had enough crossings not to be fooled into thinking this was a clue about a musical group; it’s STONEHENGE, a literal group of rocks. Nice!
Ana Stiga’s Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up
Newsday • 12/6/25 • Saturday Stumper • Stiga, Newman • solution • 20251206
Pretty tough offering today.
Solve sequence: a little bit in all areas of the grid, then upper right followed by the entire top half. Next, lower left, and finally lower right.
- 1a [Chuck, round, etc.] STEW MEAT. Took some time to pin down the first word.
- 9a [Corporeal contraction] SPASM. Just laughing at the obfuscatory clue.
- 15a [“Spill!”] TELL IT, not TELL ME.
- 18a [Appropriately, a common Hungarian prename] ATTILA. However, per Wikipedia: “In Hungary, a legend developed based on medieval chronicles that the Hungarians, and in particular the Székely ethnic group, are descended from the Huns. However, mainstream scholarship has dismissed a close connection between the Hungarians and Huns. Modern culture generally associates the Huns with extreme cruelty and barbarism and is intertwined with the Mongol Empire.” So the clue seems as if it would be better served with a qualifier.
- 19a [South American matzohs] AREPAS. >squints<
- 22a [Quick tap on the hand key] DIT. This is about sending Morse code.
- 23a [Name that sounds like an AL Central city] CASEY, KC, Kansas City.
- 24a [Half of the first Silicon Valley startup (1939)] HEWLETT. A key entry in facilitating my solve, gotten by leaning heavily on the W donated by 10d [honsetpaws.com patron] PET OWNER.
- 26a [What some want in a club] EXTRA MAYO. Tricky clue, for which I needed many crossings to see. Also, eww.
- 32a [Clarkesworld or Strange Horizons] E-ZINE. Didn’t like the look of the Z in the second spot, so I temporarily took out the (correct, as it turns out) LAZE from 25d [Display no industry].
- 33a [Path clearers for kids] SNOWPLOW PARENTS. A term I’ve not heard before, although the clue telegraphs it adequately. Not knowing this definitely affected the difficulty of my solve. Ditto for 62a [Wonderful time?] NINE DAYS, which I still don’t understand.
- 39a [Job changer’s Federal protection since ’96] HIPAA, not COBRA.
- 41a [On the other hand] AGAIN. Tenuous?
- 42a [Monotony breaker of a sort] DATE NIGHT. Okay, sure. Good clue.
- 48a [The Shape of Water director, or The Last Jedi codebreaker] DEL TORO. Two different people: Guillermo and Benicio.
- 50a [Up very little] ON LOW. meh.
- 52a [Sports knockdowns] REFS. Don’t understand this one.
- 54a [What’s going on] ATTIRE. Tricky clue, and perhaps the rare clue that could be made more tricky if a question mark were added.
- 55a [Duotheistic believer] WICCAN. Did not know this. “Wicca is typically duotheistic, venerating both a goddess and a god, traditionally conceived as the Triple Goddess and the Horned God, respectively.” (Wikipedia)
- 59a [Central Washington State Fair city] YAKIMA. Brainfarted and wrote in YAKUZA at first. Long ago I had a car that I put a YAKIMA brand roof rack on.
- 2d [Every honeybee has one] THORAX. Just a bizarre clue, even if it is accurate.
- 4d [Discoverer’s victim, supposedly] WEEPER. I can only imagine that this is from “finders keepers, losers weepers”, but it doesn’t strike me that the loser/weeper is a victim.
- 5d [Southeast Asian peninsula] MALAYA. A near-gimme for me.
- 9d [Played out] STALE. Another key early fill for my solve. Ditto 12d [Gets home horizontally] SLIDES IN.
- 16d [Gives one away] TATTLES.
- 21d [Fellow’s 16-pound sphere] SHOT PUT. “Fellow”? Is that the name of a famous shotputter? Are the projectiles of different weights for men’s and women’s events? Is there even a women’s shot put event?
- 27d [XXIII multiple] MCL. A rare random Roman numeral clue/entry in a Stumper.
- 33d [Secret agent descriptor] SHADOWY.
- 35d [It borders Miami Gardens] OPA-LOCKA. Dredged from the recesses of my memory.
- 37d [Subject’s comprehensive presentation] PANORAMA. Clue molded to seem like a medical scenario.
- 45d [“No One Mourns the Wicked” singer] GLINDA. Guessed this from the initial G, even though I’m quite unfamiliar with the Wicked lore.
- 47d [Garb the Royal Family favors] TWEEDS, not TIARAS.
- 53d [Look, fast or slow] SCAN. I always warn that SCAN is a contranym.
- 54d [Whom Woolf said “wrote so many poems”] ANON. Good clue, and an answer I should have gotten sooner.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 1 star
Other commenters on this website have noticed that because of a major health issue, that Will Shortz has undergone a major change in his editing abilities, and of his selections of puzzles to publish. And they have called for Joel Fagliano to become the next NYT editor. Without naming names, has Shortz gone the way of fading puzzler Stanley Newman?
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Are you sure you’re not confusing this accusation with those found on other sites? I think the people who are banging the drum about Shortz often want attention for their hot takes, to the point where it might just be ragebait. I don’t think the overall quality of the NYT Crossword has changed a lot in recent years.
Anyway, the puzzle was very good and the run of Q’s amused me to no end.
Also – TILESAWS are more commonly called tile cutters but they’re basically mini circular saws. It made sense to me.
I think a tile cutter is a heavy duty paper cutter thing that nibbles tiles to fit. And a tile saw is the circular saw that can cut tiles much more cleanly. It is high speed and has a water feed. Google gets lots of hits on both.
There was one troll here who kept demanding that Shortz resign, but I don’t think that’s the general consensus. I certainly wouldn’t agree with that opinion.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
NYT: I respectfully disagree. Joel Fagliano crossings from hell have become all too commonplace since Will had his problem. The intersection of water vole (33D) and vibey (49A) is a perfect example.
I agree that it seems that there are more potential Naticks than there used to be. I assume that there is a step in the editorial process for the NYT where someone specifically looks at each square about whether it’s a potential Natick, but if that’s happening, it’s not being done as well as it used to be.
(I wouldn’t expect any other crossword home to do this. But the NYT has resources and should be able to assign this task to someone, whether it’s a tester or an editor.)
Otherwise, I think Joel did a great job as interim editor, and it’s being done well currently also. Joel’s style is slightly different and took some getting used to, but that’s inevitable with a different editor.
I don’t feel that there’s been any kind of movement here for Will (or Joel in the past) to resign. People here and there are unhappy, but that would be true no matter who the editor is. I don’t remember seeing any comment about resigning for months.
I deleted it because I couldn’t be sure, but my original reply wondered if that post was written by a chatbot. It sure reads like an AI prompt.
We did mark a comment as spam the other day. The email address sounded commercial, and the comment was weird, sounded like AI. Spam comments used to often be wildly nonspecific, but AI allows for overly specific text.
One woman’s Natick is another woman’s gimme. I loved Wind in the Willows as a kid and my 25 yo daughter taught me VIBEY so I had no issue with that at all.
Just to pick a nit here, a “Natick” isn’t just a difficult crossing. Rex Parker’s “Natick Principle” applies to crosses that involve a relatively obscure proper noun – so the WATER VOLE/VIBEY crossing doesn’t really qualify.
“If you include a proper noun in your grid that you cannot reasonably expect more than 1/4 of the solving public to have heard of, you must cross that noun with reasonably common words and phrases or very common names.”
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
+1 for WATERVOLE X VIBEY being terrible. I don’t really know who Shortz or Fagliano are (or care) beyond them just being familiar names, but these crappy crossings sure are crappy.
This is the only crossword commentary site that I read and I usually only read Saturdays There was a little grumbling when Shortz was on his break. As ME notes, there are different styles and yes, it was a change. I haven’t seen anything much since except a little grumbling about a seeming increase in more modern references that are challenging for us older solvers, which I agree with. Seattle DB seems to be more upset thsn others here.
I think there were folks commenting here who thought Joel’s puzzles were a little more challenging in their cluing than Will’s had been, particularly in the early-week puzzles. I thought that was the case, too – and for me, that was a good thing.
But there were calls here, from time to time, for Joel to be replaced. And there have been occasional calls here, both before and after his hiatus, for Will to be replaced. I think it’s usually just someone with an axe to grind.
I thought today’s puzzle was a nice Saturday. Good long fill, some clever cluing, a couple of new-to-me entries (MEAT SWEATS, VIBEY), but nothing too far-out.
The WATER VOLE/VIBEY cross took a while. I haven’t read The Wind in the Willows, but I know the major characters are animals – so it pretty much had to be an “M” or a “V.” And while I’ve never heard “VIBEY,” I’ve heard of someone giving off good vibes, so …
I know Will Shortz. Will Shortz is a friend of mine. “Other commenters” don’t know what they’re talking about.
And as for me, howya figger faded? You must not be trying very hard to find me.
Stan you are the best! Stumper always the highlight of my week. Please don’t fade!?
I laughed when I read that earlier comment. Stan Newman does a stellar job.
As the person who used to incessantly call for Shortz’s retirement on this blog, I think that Shortz has kind of recovered from his personal ailments and is now working okay.
Also, there is no reason to assume Fagliano would do a better job than Shortz.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
I thought the quality of the stacks of 10s in the NYT was ridiculously high — so much good stuff in this puzzle. A very impressive feat of construction and a pleasure to solve.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
I agree completely. I was confused but the negativity of the earlier commenters. I thought this was a fun Saturday
I notice that the Saturday Stumper is reviewed here every week, but the other Newsday puzzles (Su-Fr) are not.
What is the general consensus of these puzzles? Are they worth adding to a routine?
Are they more comparable to NYT or USA Today? Somewhere in between?
TIA
Thank you for your interest. The other days have never been blogged because the Boss first declined my request to do so, claiming that there were no people to blog it. This was before my pals Shenk, Steinberg etc. got their dailies, for which bloggers were somehow found for.
To answer question, there’s a new Newsday puzzle every day of the year. Monday is acknowledged to be the easiest newspaper daily in the US. Getting gradually more difficult, Friday being a tricky theme with many tricky clues. Sundays at a Wednesday or so level. As often mentioned here, Saturdays have pretty much always been tougher than the Times.
You can always find today’s Newsday puzzle on arkadium.com, which has a short ad to go with it.
The end.
I don’t know who the Boss is that Stan refers to or the site he mentions. However, one reason that some puzzles may be reviewed and Newsday’s aren’t is possibly that they are more accessible. The LAT and WSJ’s, for instance, are not behind a paywall and are accessible to everyone. It doesn’t apply to every puzzle commented on here by any means, so maybe doesn’t apply — perhaps it is freely accessible on the site Stan mentions, for instance. Others will have to reply — perhaps it’s a question of resources (pannonica usually does the Saturdays and perhaps is not available other days).
Anyway, to your question of how they compare — Newsday is my local newspaper and, at one time, I did it more frequently than I do now. It compares very similarly to the LAT, NYT, etc. As Stan indicates, it starts easy on Monday and progresses in difficulty as they do. I simply stopped doing it any day other than Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday becsuse I progressed in my solving ability and wasn’t challenged by them any more. (I still do Sunday even though it is not challenging because it is a warm-up for the NYT.)
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Clue for SORBETS was interesting. Funnily, it’s the other version of Sorbet- Sherbet, which fits the definition best. “Sherbet” is literally a drink in Arabic. And in slang, you can call someone a sherbet and it means they’re a pill :) –something to swallow…
Solving the puzzle was a mixed experience- some areas were really amusing, like the Q stack, others felt easy and smooth, and others yet felt quite difficult. It didn’t help that I never heard of MEAT SWEATS. It appears it originated in an episode of Friends and became a thing. Good to know!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
This was a great puzzle that I solved 2 minutes under my average. I am confused at the hate—like really confused.
I loved the Q stack—“it’s not really going to be another—yes it is, haha!” was a delightful reaction. I liked the appearance of TECHNO and VOLE in the longer entries, the latter of which being a common animal name that was gettable with zero knowledge of the source material. I mean who was going to guess MIBEY? CHARLIXCX often trips me up, but I have seen it enough times that I got it after seeing the CX ending. Still don’t like that one though.
I was certain that the Nestlé product was spelled QWIK. I was wrong!
I also found the Stumper hard and had to reveal my wrong letters to sort of solve it.
Had never heard of it before googling, but apparently there’s an expression to be a “nine day wonder.”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nine%20days%27%20wonder
Yes, once I figured it out from the crossings, it sounded slightly familiar and I also Googled it to confirm.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
NYT: Will Shortz has done more for the crossworld than just about anyone and I think he deserves more respect than some of these critical comments display. That he continues to work after his health challenges just shows his dedication.
As for the puzzle, I enjoyed it overall – but didn’t enjoy learning about MEATSWEATS.
NYT: I finished fairly quickly but had an error that I couldn’t track down. Turned out I had put in VIBED/QUAD (just as Amy suggested) and I didn’t notice the problem on looking again.
Both TILESAWS and SPICEDALES seem entirely cromulent to me.
Stumper: Almost finished it but had trouble in the SE. Eventually hit reveal to get GLINDA (all this Wicked stuff is beyond my ken). Like pannonica, I don’t understand the REFS clue, and I can’t make sense of the clue for ALT either. But I did get the NINEDAYS wonder clue.
The clue for HIPAA is wrong, I believe. That law has to do with the privacy of your medical records and has nothing to do with changing jobs. The law that allows you to keep your health insurance (at your own expense) after leaving a job is COBRA.
The “HIP” in HIPAA is “Health Insurance Portability.” When you change jobs and enroll in a new health plan, HIPAA reduces the exclusi0n period for pre-existing conditions based on your “creditable coverage” you had under the health plan of your previous employer.
But, like you, my first answer was COBRA.
Ah, thanks. So hard to keep all the healthcare regs straight. I also thought about ERISA, which if I remember correctly has some health insurance provisions.
Alt…altitude
Yep! “Pilot panel” = airplane pilot panel.
Alt is short for altitude on a panel in a cockpit. Now if someone could explain refs, I’d be all set.
My best guess is that “knockdown” is a Stumpery term for “abbreviation.” Referees -> REFS.
I don’t like it, but it makes some sense. Thanks!
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 4.5 stars
Re Stumper: I’m not sure where that off-hand comment about Mr. Newman came from, or what it was based on, but, at least for me, Saturday morning is a highlight of the week.
I was sure that “What some want in a club” was going to be extra LOFT. I guess not.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Great NYT Saturday. I feel like a much more constructive criticism (which I’ve voiced on here before) than the “old man shaking fist at cloud” read, is that the NYT editorial consistency on Saturday puzzles varies wildly between fresh, modern fill and stale 2000s-era crosswordese. None of these variations suggest that Will Shortz, the goat himself, is losing a step. If anything it shows how the NYT is developing its crossword editorial style to accommodate a wider swath of solvers and that’s…a really good thing?!
Stumper was tricky, I thought a bit forced with some cluing. LAT/WaPo was trickier than normal Saturday fare, but a fun outing!
I suspect he also doesn’t want to shut out older constructors. That was a discussion I wanted to have a couple weeks ago when we had the Sunday by Randolph Ross, who has been published in NYT since before Will Shortz was even the editor. Do we expect the old masters to fully keep up with the language and turn out grids like we’re seeing from the teenagers and college kids lately? Or do we treat them as sort of constructors emeritus and welcome whatever they send us, even if the fill might be a bit dated?
Stumper: As ususl, pannonica is correct in everything. I’m glad she understood 22A because I sure didn’t.
Stumper: I looked up “nine days wonderful,” and apparently “nine days’ wonder” or “nine day wonder” is an idiom. Never heard it myself.
Puzzle was a great Stumper stump-fest, though I didn’t love the bottom left. Way way too many proper nouns and foreign words and random acronyms and whatever the heck CID is. I had NIGERIAN and DEL TORO and NADAL, but I at first guessed TACOMA instead of YAKIMA (never heard of it), which made SHADOWY hard to see. And then there’s WICCAN and OPALOCKA and CID and ORO. Yikes.
“Central Washington” is the clue for it’s not Tacoma (which is west Washington), but I wasn’t sure exactly where Yakima was, so hesitated until I confirmed it ended in an “a.”
Elaine was born in a concentration camp in Wyoming, but grew up in central Washington. We’ve been back to Yakima to visit family, living and in the Tahoma Cemetery, many times. We were once on a visit, with our son Alex in his middle-school years, and we were driving downtown. As we passed a campus, I said to Elaine, “You must have some nice memories from here.”
She replied, “I’ve never seen this place in my life.” It was Yakima Community College, where she spent time doing God-knows-what before escaping to California. Alex was never so impressed with his mother as when she admitted she didn’t remember her school one bit.
COBRA instead of HIPAA kept the SW obscured for most of the Stumper solve. And TKOS instead of REFS. I like @pannonica’s idea for WEEPER in the NW – that one had me take AREPAS out and then back in. “Don’t just look” was Act for too long. Could lATE NIGHT break the monotony as much as DATE NIGHT?
NINE DAYS of wonder seems to refer to the High Holy days of the Jewish Calendar.
Hesitated with 45D, GLINDA sharing so many letters with GraNDe.
Great Stumper, thanks Stan!
I don’t think ‘nine days wonder’ has any connection to Judaism. It’s a pretty familiar phrase in England, where I grew up, and the earliest citations I can find date it to the 14th C. George Herbert’s 1633 poem ‘The Temple’ includes the line The brags of life are but a nine days wonder.
Still, no one seems to have a very convincing explanation of the true origins of the phrase. I used to think it was connected to Lady Jane Grey, the so-called Nine Day Queen, but it’s earlier than that.
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 4 stars
Another great write-up from Pannonica. “Squint” is a perfect reaction to the clue and answer on arepas.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
Look at the stack of Qs, the entry CHARLI XCX, and the two Vs. This grid was too obviously a failed attempt at a multiple pangram, that turns out to be not a pangram at all (there is no G, say).
I don’t like people repurposing their failed grid as themeless and send it to NYT of all publications.
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 4.5 stars
Pannonica asks, “Is there even a women’s shot put event?”
Yes there is. I knew women competed in the shot put and I suspected the shot to be a different weight. I looked it up and I expect the women’s event is more recent. The weight of the men’s shot is 16 lbs or 7.26 kg. The women’s shot is an even 4 kg or 8.8 lbs. The men’s weight being an integer imperial unit while the women’s weight is an integer metric unit leads me to believe the men’s event predates the women’s by a significant time.
Thanks for checking up on that. I just didn’t have time to do it myself yesterday morning.
Puzzle: WSJ; Rating: 1 star
No solved WSJ puzzle for December 6, 2025.