Tuesday, December 23, 2025

Jonesin’ 4:40 (Erin) rate it
LAT untimed (Jenni) [2.83 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 5:48 (Eric) [3.44 avg; 9 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker untimed (pannonica) [3.44 avg; 8 ratings] rate it
Universal 5:47 (Eric) [3.80 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Sophia) [2.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Xword Nation tk (Ade) rate it
WSJ 5:00 (Jim Q) [3.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “The Other Way” — makes more sense how you read it. – Erin’s write-up

Jonesin’ solution 12/23/25

Hello lovelies! It’s time to BACK it up this week…the theme entries start with an implied BACK and are entered backwards in the grid.

• 17a. [Singer who complements the lead] TSILACOVPU. Reverse the letters and add BACK to the beginning to get BACKUP VOCALIST.
• 25a. [Pre-employment screening] KCEHCDNUORG (BACKGROUND CHECK)
• 40a. [Available again, like a hot item] DNAMEDRALUPOPYB (BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND)
• 49a. [1980s movie starring Michael J. Fox] ERUTUFEHTOT (BACK TO THE FUTURE)
• 62a. [“I Want It That Way” group] SYOBTEERTS (BACKSTREET BOYS)

Other things:

• 30a. [___ Taco (discontinued Good Humor-Breyers ice cream snack)] CHOCO. I am still mad that Choco Taco is gone. It was basically an ice cream cone but the cone was shaped like a taco shell, but that somehow made it so much more delicious than a regular ice cream cone.
• 46a. [Chewed stimulant familiar to Scrabble players] QAT. Its effects include decreased hunger and fatigue, and increased communication and euphoria.

Until next week!

Tarun Krishnamurthy’s Universal Crossword Puzzle “Album Cover” — Eric’s Review

Tarun Krishnamurthy’s Universal Crossword “Album Cover” — 12/23/25 (Click to embiggen)

I forgot again to pay attention to the title. But I’m not sure that had I done so, my solving experience would have been much different. Three theme answers have music genres starting on the right side and ending on the left, as indicated by circled letters:

• 16A [CNN host and “60 Minutes” correspondent] ANDERSON COOPER Opera
• 22A [Wooden piece in some DIY Christmas ornaments] POPSICKLE STICK K-Pop I lost a few seconds here trying to remember if POPSICKLE has a K.
• 50A [Speak convincingly] TALK A GOOD GAME Metal
• 58A [Certain annual music-listening recap, and a hint to this puzzle’s theme] SPOTIFY WRAPPED I’m old-school when it comes to my music consumption and rarely stream music. I know this Spotify feature exists and I think it gives you the opportunity to hear the stuff you listened to most often during the past year.

This is a nice, easy-to-understand theme, with theme answers that are relatively interesting and a revealer and music genres that many solvers will recognize. I’m not sure where the “Covers” part of the puzzle’s title fits in, but the revealer’s WRAPPED works well.

Other stuff:

• 20A [___ Museum (Vegas attraction full of electric signs)] NEON I’ve more than once mentioned that I don’t care for clues with extraneous information in a parenthetical phrase. (Shorter clues are better.) So it’s only fair to note that without this parenthetical, I would only have gotten NEON from the letter pattern.
• 56A [___! Cherry-O (board game)] HI-HO On the other hand, this parenthetical didn’t help me at all. But I expect some solver found it useful or at least informative.
• 3D [Minimalist paintings?] NUDES Cute clue.
• 9D [Smoke shop purchases] VAPE KITS Not VAPE PENS.
• 36D [Fitness class with kids?] GOAT YOGA Cute clue. The question mark didn’t register and I interpreted “kids” as young humans for too long.
• 38D [Moon of Jupiter] EUROPA I had that last letter as E until I couldn’t make sense of 58A, thinking it was pronounced as a long E instead of being the silent E like the continent.
• 53D [Camera that may be attached to a ski helmet] GOPRO Most of the people I see on ski slopes who have helmet cameras are snowboarders. If you don’t get video of your stunt, did it happen?

Nathan Hale’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s Review

Nathan Hale’s New York Times Crossword — 12/23/25 (Click to Embiggen)

A bedtime snack? I’ve got a bit of a sweet tooth, but for years, I’ve tried to rein it in. Not tonight, though, because the grid is full of “empty calories”:

• 20A [Classic Hanukkah treat] CHOCOLATE COIN Well, GELT wasn’t going to fit.
• 28A [Classic classroom party treat] CUPCAKE
• 39A [Classic Halloween treat] CANDY CORN It stretches the definition of “treat” to include those nasty little spikes of sugar (though they’re probably made with high-fructose corn syrup these days).
• 59A [Classic Yuletide treat] CHRISTMAS COOKIE My husband got started on a batch of rum balls this afternoon. That’s going to be the limit of our Christmas cookies this year, unless our house guests bring some.
• 47D [Top execs, colloquially … or what 20-, 28-, 39- and 59-Across are, phonetically?] C SUITE The theme answers all have two C’s and they’re all sweet. That works well enough for me.

Other stuff:

• 15A [Secondary subject for a college student] MINOR I guess that clue works. My undergrad degree is in Radio-TV-Film, and I didn’t have an official minor. But probably ⅔ of the classes I took were not in the RTF department.
• 18A [Alternative to épée or foil, in British English] SABRE It’s only from crosswords that I’ve learned the three type of swords used in fencing (at least at the Olympic level). About 35 years ago, my husband designed a logo for the Texas Fencing Academy. They’re still sort of using it, but their current logo inexplicably uses a Klingon Bird of Prey from Star Trek.
• 19A [Tokarczuk who won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature] OLGA I should probably have not needed a cross or two to get this name.
• 31A [Antitrust enforcement org.] FTC/13D [Org. regulating water safety] EPA I wish the New York Times would start putting “former” in this kind of clue.
• 

  Me a day after the last time I caught serious air (2006)

  41A [It’s part of the job] TASK With the K from 33D HUCK already in place, I tried DESK here, while shaking my head at the NYT’s limited view of the working world.

• 2D [Go off a ski jump, say] CATCH AIR Not CATAPULT. I have to be careful skiing that I don’t inadvertently make myself airborne. I never learned how to reliably land a jump, and my back is messed up enough as it is.
• 7D [With all judges present] EN BANC A gimme had I read the clue. Many appellate courts hear cases with a three-judge panel and will sometimes grant the losing party an en banc rehearing if the losing party doesn’t appeal to a higher court.
• 8D [___ de Rossi, “Arrested Development” actress] PORTIA Another would-have-been gimme; she played Lindsay Bluth Fünke, the adopted sister of Jason Bateman’s Michael.
• 41D [Resident of Pisa or Lucca] TUSCAN I sort of knew Pisa is in Tuscany, but the T from TASK made it certain.
• 56D [“Escape (The ___ Colada Song)”] PIÑA I may have to sue the NYT for intentional infliction of emotional distress for that earworm.

Alan Olschwang’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Jenni’s write-up

I’m writing this on Monday for posting on Tuesday, which is my 41st wedding anniversary. Yay us! My husband will enjoy this puzzle when he solves it; the circled letters in the theme answers include some of his favorite things.

Los Angeles Times, December 23, 2025, Alan Olschwang, solution grid

• 18a [Rather often] is QUITE A LOT.
• 23a [In large quantities] is HAND OVER FIST.
• 37a [Taunting remark] is EAT YOUR HEART OUT.
• 50a [NHL legend known as “The Great One”] is WAYNE GRETZKY.

And the revealer: 60a [Handmade backyard nest box, and an apt description of 18-, 23-, 37-, and 50-Across] is BIRDHOUSE (although shouldn’t it be or in the list of answers to make it singular? Wow, that’s a very very small nit. Sorry). I didn’t realize each bird stretched across more than one word until I typed them out. Quite a wingspan.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: that ZORRO is Spanish for “fox.”

And just because IOWA showed up in the grid…

Anna Shechtman’s New Yorker crossword — pannonica’s write-up

New Yorker • 12/23/25 • Tue • Shechtman • solution • 20251223

Today’s New Yorker crossword is part of their themed year-end review holiday offerings; it’s about 2025 in literature, mostly author deaths and titles published during the year.

I haven’t read much this past year, but the names and titles were more or less familiar to me and the solve went rather quickly.

Rather than extract the ‘themed’ entries, I’ll just proceed through all the clues and mention salient ones, as if it were a themeless.

• 6a [Deg.s held by Scott Turow and Charles Yu] JDS. Both are authors with lawyerly credentials.
• 9a [Harpoon or javelin] SPEAR, not STICK.
• 15a [“Bury __ Bones in the MIdnight Soil” (V.E. Schwab lesbian-vampire bestseller of June, 2025)] OUR. An elaborate clue for a simple word, but that’s the sort of thing you get with puzzles like this.
• 17a [Author whose novel “Flashlight” is framed by a man’s msyterious disappearance while walking on a Japanese beach (June, 2025)] SUSAN CHOI. Knew the name.
• 25a [Ancient Chinese dynasty of legend] HSIA. Toughie. Glad I got it automagically via crossings.
• 32a [Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie novel whose title refers to the idealistic way one of its characters takes stock of her past relationships (March, 2025)] DREAM COUNT. The first part was easily guessable, but I needed help via crossings for the second.
• 48a [Vincenzo Latronico novel that updates George Perec’s “Things: A Story of the Sixties” for the Instagram age (trans. March, 2025)] PERFECTION. Interesting-ish.
• 50a [Like the e-books on Project Gutenberg] FREE. A great resource.
• 66a [Ocean whose novel “The Emperor of Gladness” is based in part on his experience as a restaurant worker (May, 2025)] VUONG. I know the author’s name well, despite never having read any of his books.
• 70a [Début novel from Michael Clune about a hyperliterate teenager who believes his anxiety is caused by a Greek god (July, 2025)] PAN.
  
• 71a [Mario Vargas __ (Peruvian Nobelist who dies in April, 2025)] LLOSA. A literary superstar.
• 4d [Rips into] TEARS AT. Such as Christmas gifts?
• 21d [Robbins whose books were called, in his Times obituary, “the perfect accompaniment to acid trips, Grateful Dead shows and weekend yoga retreats, long before those things became middle-class and mainstream” (February, 2025)] TOM. Some of these entries have very exaggerated clue-to-answer-length ratios, as I alluded to earlier.
• 31d [“Things in __ Merely Grow” (memoir published in May, 2025, in which Yiyun Li writes, “It takes an instant for death to become a fact”)] NATURE. I like the title more than the quote.
• 65d [R.R. stop] STA.
  
  Was looking for the Michelle Shocked cover version, but most of her oeuvre seems to be missing from the regular streaming outlets. She’s kind of flaked out these days and has had issues with both record companies and audiences, so I guess the absence is one consequence.

It’s tricky to assess crosswords like this one, because they are by necessity full of names and titles, and that tends to be polarizing for the commentariat. I feel this one did a solid job of remaining accessible to non-hyperliterate solvers while fulfilling its purpose.

 Adam Vincent’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Base Fare” — Jim Q’s write-up

WSJ • 12/23/25 • Tue • Base Fare • Adam Vincent • solution • 20251223

THEME: Sweets can be found at the bottom of vertically placed theme answers

THEME ANSWERS:

• ROCK CANDY
• DIRT CAKE
• MUD PIE
• SAND TART
• (revealer) [Sugar alternative that sounds like an apt ingredient for the starred answers] SWEET’N LOW
• (bonus themer) [“Bon appétit!” (or an apt instruction for the starred answers)] DIG IN!

I’m familiar with ROCK CANDY, and I know I’ve enjoyed some DIRT CAKE and/or MUD PIE at some point during a PTA sponsored classroom party during my elementary school years (though I thought those two treats were synonymous), but I’ve never heard of a SAND TART, which I’m not sure is the most appetizing sounding delicacy in the world. I’m just picturing “treats” left behind by wildlife in a municipal playground’s sandbox. That’s gross. Sorry.

Clearly, sand is not an ingredient.

Actual SAND TARTs look delicious.

Overall this was a fun and enjoyable Tuesday solve. Tuesdays can go either way for me. The last couple have landed squarely on the “enjoyable” side. I was trying to think of what the revealer might be- given the title and the vertical placement, I knew it had to be a reference to the desserts being at the bottom. Didn’t see SWEET’N LOW coming though. That was fun to uncover.

Mostly smooth solve for me, though I could’ve sworn Survivor was on ABC instead of the correct CBS, so that created a bit of a hiccup. Also, my brain was looking for a team that might play in a stadium or something named “The Velodrome,” so that was a bit of a facepalm moment when I reminded myself what a velodrome actually is.

DIG IN! is a fun bonus answer, but… I’m not so sure it’s an “apt instruction” given the themers. I mean, when’s the last you said “DIG IN!” to someone about to engage in ROCK CANDY enjoyment? Or said “Bon appétit!” to the 8-year-old whose palate can abide the ingredients in DIRT CAKE? The absurdity of the imagery is worth it though.

OTHER THINGS:

• Getting nostalgic with some Obama references in there. Sigh. Whatever your politics are, I can’t imagine that charisma isn’t missed.
• [Bit of Earl Grey, say] CUPPA. Like, “I’ll have a CUPPA tea”? Is that a common slang thing, or am I missing something else entirely? I’m not really sure, and I don’t care enough to google it.
• [Bad sound to hear in a bouncy castle] HISS. Love this clue!
• Not much in the way of longer fill with the L/R symmetry and the placement of themers, but the fill is mostly crud-free. Nice!

3.5 stars from me today.