Tuesday, January 6, 2026

Jonesin’ 4:07 (Erin) [3.75 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
LAT untimed (Jenni) [2.83 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 10:04 (Eric) [2.33 avg; 18 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker untimed (pannonica) [3.38 avg; 8 ratings] rate it
Universal 5:something (Eric) [3.00 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Sophia) [2.00 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Xword Nation tk (Ade) rate it
WSJ untimed (Jim Q) [2.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Welcome to ’26” — with a tribute to my favorite 26! – Erin’s write-up

Jonesin’ solution 1/6/26

Hello lovelies! Matt’s starting the new year by trying to bring some order to things…but what kind of order? Let’s find out!

• 19a. [First part of a phrase describing a special feature of this puzzle … ] ALL OF THE ACROSS
• 33a. [ … in which I (this is part 2, by the way) … ] CLUES ARE
• 43a. [ … normally don’t do this, but here you get to see each one of the (part 3) …] ARRANGED
• 52a. [ … twenty-six represented! (4th and final part)] ALPHABETICALLY

The theme is that ALL OF THE ACROSS CLUES ARE ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY. We start with 1a. [Aardvark’s diet] and follow the alphabet to the end, including Q at 47a. [Questionable, in “Among Us”], X at 62a. [Xylophone material], and ending with Z at 66a. and 67a. [Zymurgy-related verb].

Other things:

• I like the placement of metals in two different languages next to each other. We have 25d. [Silver, as in Montana’s motto] PLATA and 26d. [Gold, in Latin] AURUM hanging on in the west side of the grid.
• 51d. [Chocolate substitute that doesn’t taste like it] CAROB. Why is it called a chocolate substitute then? Why not let it be its own kinda sweet kinda nutty powder that isn’t trying to be chocolate?

Until next week!

Rich Feely’s Universal Crossword “Whoops!” — Eric’s Review

Rich Feely’s Universal Crossword “Whoops!’ — 1/6/26 (Click to Embiggen)

I’ll cut right to the revealer, as I needed it to make sense of this theme. 57A is [“My bad” … or a hint to a two-line arrangement within each pair of starred clues’ answers] THAT’S ON ME To my credit, once I had the grid filled, I figured out the “two-line arrangement” — THAT one line above ME — without reading the clue for 57A.

The paired clues and answers:

• 17A [*”Could turn out well!”] WORTH A TRY atop 20A [*In one go] AT A TIME That second answer doesn’t seem to work with the clue.
• 28A [*Pieces of headwear that resemble pails] BUCKET HATS atop 34A [*Three and five, but not four] PRIMES
• 44A [*Martini request] WITH A TWIST atop 48A [*Normal distribution’s center] MEAN People more mathematically inclined than me: Does MEAN work here? My limited understanding suggests that “median” fits the clue better.

I liked that the theme’s a bit different than the “words spelled by the circled letters” type of theme that we see so often from Universal. I also liked that the THAT’s are all split among two or three words and that the ME’s are consistently under the letters A and T.

The theme answers are fine; I especially like WORTH A TRY and WITH A TWIST as grid entries.

Other stuff:

• 16A [Screen legend Sophia] LOREN A gimme even though I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of her movies.
• 23A [“Weekend Update” NBC show] SNL/26A [George ___, 1975 cast member of 23-Across] COE I watched Saturday Night every week in the 1970s and didn’t recognize the name George Coe as someone from that show. But he’s definitely familiar-looking; Wikipedia says he was cast on SNL to “balance the relatively young cast.”
• 40A [Treacherous snakes] SERPENTS Am I imagining Wallace Shawn sibilantly pronouncing that word in The Princess Bride?
• 55A [Like a Windows error that generates the “blue screen of death”] FATAL If you’re going to put a downer of an answer like that, you might as well clue it like this. But is that screen still blue? This article suggests it’s not.
• 5D [Unwanted messages] SPAM/6D [Pureed meat spread] PATÉ Those two answers go well together, don’t they?
• 18D [Pronoun found in “franchises”] HIS That’s kind of an odd clue. Why not “Pronoun found in “historical”? “Pronoun found in ‘antihistamine'” if you wanted to make it more challenging?

Paul Coulter’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s Review

Paul Coulter’s New York Times Crossword — 1/6/26 (Click to Embiggen)

I found this unexpectedly challenging for a Tuesday NYT grid — perhaps because circled letters in a grid are sometimes more of a distraction than a help, and this was one of those times.

As I was solving, I couldn’t see where the theme was going and spent time trying to figure it out. Even after finishing, it took me a minute or two to make sense of the two-part revealer:

• 17A [With 59-Across, “This is beyond a doubt” … or a punny hint to 24-, 38- and 49-Across] THERE’S NO TWO/59A [See 17-Across] WAYS ABOUT IT
• 24A [The only person to have the opinion] A MINORITY OF ONE
• 36A [Contrast] SET IN OPPOSITION
• 49A [Thing bound to end in failure] NO-WIN SITUATION Part of my difficulty with the whole puzzle might have been that I parsed NO-WIN as NOW IN.

Those circled letters? “No” spelled the usual way and spelled backwards (“two ways”), on either side (“about”) of “It.”

The revealer accurately describes what’s happening in the other three theme answers. And those three are all lively, familiar phrases, straightforwardly clued. But I can’t say that I really enjoyed the theme.

Other stuff:

• 1A [Lt. ___, communications officer on the original “Star Trek”] UHURA/45A [Burton of “Star Trek: T.N.G.”] LEVAR All those hours spent watching Star Trek and its many sequels paid off.
• 15A [Epic that ends “Such was the funeral of Hector, tamer of horses”] ILIAD I read the Iliad for the first time about five years ago. I don’t remember that line, but since I recognized Hector as the Trojan warrior, ILIAD was a safe bet.
• 35A [Its products often include wordless assembly instructions] IKEA Also a safe bet, though I’ve never bought anything from them.
• 6D [Penalty box, in hockey lingo] SIN BIN I don’t watch ice hockey. I’ve seen references to this term in other crosswords, but I needed a few crosses to get the answer here.
• 10D [One-named Cuban-born designer who fashioned Nancy Reagan’s red outfits] ADOLFO I remember Mrs. Reagan’s fondness for bright reds, but that name doesn’t sound familiar.
• 39D [Country in which men traditionally wear robes called dishdashas] OMAN I guessed IRAN and didn’t check the crossings until I finished the grid and got the error message.
• 49A [“For real!,” in modern slang] NO CAP How many NYT solvers who didn’t know that phrase before Sunday (see 54D) remembered it today?

Robert S Gard’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Jenni’s write-up

I knew what was going on and was curious about the revealer. It did not disappoint.

We have circles.

Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2025, Robert S. Gard, solution grid

• 17a ‘This could’ve been a lot worse” is IT’S NOT SO BAD.
• 31a [Jewel boxes] are CD CASES. Kids, ask your parents.
• 37a [Antiwar gathering of world leaders] is a PEACE SUMMIT.
• 44a [Hit that may go out of the park] is a HOME RUN.

And the revealer: 59a [Supporting musicians, or what can be found in 17-, 31-, 37-, and 44-Across] is BACK–UP BANDS. We have BOSTON, AC/DC, MUSE, and REM running back in the theme answers. Fun!

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: never heard of MUSE. As a band, I mean.

 Andrew Mascillaro’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Guessing Game” — Jim Q’s write-up

This may be a debut for Andrew Mascillaro as I don’t see a record of the name here on Fiend. If so, congrats, Andrew!

THEME: Places where one might take “A SHOT IN THE DARK”

THEME ANSWERS:

• [Setting for light combat?] LASER TAG ARENA
• [Places where knowledge is power?] QUIZ SHOWS
• [Place that may have been password-protected?] SPEAKEASY
• [Ozzy Osbourne song, or what you might take in 20-, 28- or 45-Across] A SHOT IN THE DARK

*I reprogrammed my autocorrect so that the word “shit” is not automatically changed… but the drawback to that is close words (like SHOT) now autocorrect to “shit.” It’s not easy to change either… so typing A SHOT IN THE DARK is a process. Please excuse me if it says something else at some point in this post. That one vowel changes the entire theme…

Anyway, I braced myself for some Tuesday weirdness, and I got it! Not necessarily in a bad way, just some head scratching moments. Like why all the clues for the themers have question marks… 🤷‍♂️ Beats me. I don’t get what’s punny enough about the clues for QUIZ SHOWS or  SPEAKEASY to warrant a ?. LASER TAG ARENA I can see… “Light combat” and all… but consistent question marks in theme answer clues usually means that there’s something they have in common as a result of a pun. Not here.

Still, the themer was fun to reveal. A nice little AHA moment. You are definitely taking A SHOT IN THE DARK playing LASER TAG (I don’t refer to the LASER TAG setting as an ARENA, probably because I’ve only played rinky-dink LASER TAG games in mini-malls, and it’s hard to call that an ARENA). I guess A SHOT IN THE DARK refers to the idea of a contestant taking a wild guess on a QUIZ SHOW… but I’m not sure. Especially as clued [Places where knowledge is power?]. That seems to imply that contestants would have the knowledge and therefore wouldn’t have to be taking many SHOTs IN THE DARK throughout their tenure on said show. And I guess if the SPEAKEASY is poorly lit, one might take A SHOT (of bootlegged whisky) IN THE DARK. So while in the end, I really did enjoy this and the theme concept, I was still left with some Tuesday head-cocking moments.

OTHER THINGS / STUMBLES / NEW TO ME:

• Guessed correctly on a potential Natick spot for me: TABLAS [Indian drums] and BPOE [Fraternal org. since 1868] crossing. Ah! That’s the Elks. Got it.
• [“Funky Cold Medina” rapper] TONE LOC. A rare moment that I was able to fill in a rapper without any crossings! 90’s kid here.
• [“Squid Game” and “Extraordinary Attorney Woo,” for two] K-DRAMAS. Inferable for me, but I did not know that was the name of that genre. Is “Extraordinary Attorney Woo” any good? Never heard of it.
• [Kill, in gaming slang] FRAG. New to me.
• [“Rock and Roll, Hoochie ___” (1974 hit)] KOO. Don’t know if I’m ready to accept KOO as a viable partial entry, but that’s a difficult spot to connect the two themers for sure.

2.75 stars for me today.

Paolo Pasco’s New Yorker crossword — pannonica’s write-up

New Yorker • 1/6/26 • Tue • Pasco • solution • 20260106

1. The New Yorker’s ‘moderately challenging’ puzzles continue to be not so much that.
2. The website interface remains suboptimal.

It’s an appealing z-shaped grid anchored by two grid-spanning entries at the bars of the Z:

• 17a [Plot trope exemplified by the romantic arcs in “Pride and Prejudice” and “You’ve Got Mail”] ENEMIES TO LOVERS. I didn’t find an entry with that title at the rather exhaustive site tvtropes.org. This was the closest.
• 44a. [Sunken feature of a midcentury-modern living room] CONVERSATION PIT.

Let’s tour the rest of the grid.

• 1a [Someone from Granada or Vigo, e.g.] SPANIARD. 9a [Like someone from Granard or Sligo, e.g.] IRISH. Deft.
• 23a [Yearn (for)] PINE, not ACHE.
• 32a [Rhyming synonym of “shaky”] QUAKY.
  
• 40a [Toy company involved in the Pharrell Williams movie “Piece by Piece”] LEGO. Never heard of the film, but what else could it be?
• 49a [Cutesy “ditto”] SAMESIES.
  
  a tinge of racial caricature, but I suppose it could have been a lot worse, given the vintage
• 1d [Passed quickly] SPED BY. 27d [Passes in an airplane, say] FLIES OVER.
• 8d [Graphical display of information, informally] DATA VIZ. I like it.
• 26d [Like James Brown’s music] FUNKY.
  
• 32d [Celestial objects that can outshine whole galaxies] QUASARS. I tried PULSARS first.
• 33d [Skirmish] FRACAS. etymology: “French, din, row, from Italian fracasso, from fracassare to shatter” (m-w.com)
• 35a [Person who’s idolized or adored, in anime fandom] SENPAI.
• 43d [Gap] HOLE, not VOID.

Highly engaging crossword, but as I said pitched too easy.