LAT 3:16 (Stella) 
[3.75 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
Newsday 19:06 (pannonica) [3.50 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
NYT 3:00 (Matthew) 
[4.21 avg; 17 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Matthew) 
[2.67 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Matthew) [2.50 avg; 1 rating] rate it
WSJ untimed (pannonica) [2.50 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Kameron Austin Collins’ New York Times crossword — Matthew’s recap
Kameron Austin Collins’ New York Times crossword solution, 1/10/2026
Matt subbing in for Amy tonight, and I’m a lucky guy, getting a Kameron Austin Collins puzzle when I do. I’ll spare you all some hyperbole, other than saying that I would like to use a bunch of it. His puzzles are too-rare treats.
This one features open corners, which I always like, and interesting stuff at all answer lengths. FRIEND OF DOROTHY is both a great grid-spanning entry and adds connectivity through a middle that can often feel clunky when the corners are open – I solved pretty much down the left side, down the middle, and down the right side, but there are plenty of paths open for solvers.
Some highlights:
- The starting corner is my favorite stack of the puzzle, with spoken phrase YOU LOOK FAB, WATERHORSE clued to a bit of trivia, and super-recognizable CRAIGSLIST all clued with just a little bit of crunch, but not so much that you’re left wondering what the puzzle is even asking
- I spent more time than I’d like connecting “Mars” to the French for “March.” It’s third in the year; in French, ANNEE
- All love to ADA Lovelace and kid-lit’s ADA Twist, but I do think we could use poet laureate Limon for the entry more often, as we have here.
- Earlier today I saved a quote from a Natan Last interview: “One pleasure for me in puzzles is discovering I know things I didn’t realize I knew.” And here we are with [Andrew ___, banking tycoon who served as Treasury secretary from 1921 to 1932]. Unlike Syngman RHEE (34A), Andrew MELLON doesn’t appear in Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” but I (and perhaps you) recognize the name from the Pittsburgh university without being an expert in Treasury secretaries.
- “Sports” and “blades” together so often point to the four-letter words from fencing that I momentarily forgot what day of the week it was and tried to find a rebus. But OARS, from rowing, are also “blades”
- Just over a week ago we had MEEMAW as an entry, clued as the grandmother of TV’s Sheldon Cooper, and here we have it in the other direction – as a clue for NANA. Perhaps a foothold for some solvers.
Cheers!
Amanda Cook’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 1/10/26 by Amanda Cook
I don’t have a lot of strong feelings about this puzzle, probably because it’s hard for a grid with no answers longer than 10 letters to have big “wow” moments, but on the other hand there’s nothing that feels like glue here and a lot of the 9s and 10s are nice. I liked BOOK DRIVE, the relatively-new-to-me BEIGE FLAG, BONUS ROUND, AERIAL ARTS, ORGAN PIPE*, and SLEEP DEBT.
*Normally ORGAN PIPE in the singular might feel a little contrived, but I liked the clue of 53A [One of 17,974 in Passau’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral], a reminder of how seriously Germany takes its organ music.
Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Bull Market” — pannonica’s write-up
WSJ • 1/10/26 • Sat • “Bull Market” • Shenk • solution • 20260110
Today we’re adding a /ˈbəl/ syllable to familiar phrases. More specifically, we’re adding that sound between the first and second syllables of the phrases.
- 22a. [Place name on a national map?] LABEL OF THE LAND (lay of the land).
- 26a. [Satisfaction felt by a Gothic architect?] GABLE PRIDE (gay pride).
- 34a. [Smallest bell in a carillon?] HUMBLE DINGER (humdinger).
- 61a. [Wriggly creatures found on every continent?] GLOBAL WORMS (glow worms).
- 74a. [Blow thrown in a gang brawl?] RUMBLE PUNCH (rum punch).
- 100a. [Kinda interested in reading the Testaments?] BIBLE CURIOUS (bi-curious).
- 109a. [Member of the marten family?] SABLE UNCLE (say uncle).
- 115a. [Cannabis consumer’s goal] HERBAL HIGHNESS (Her Highness).
Et voilà. Pretty good stuff.
- 5d [Aztec spear-throwing tool] ATLATL. Seems obscure, but somehow I kind of knew it? And we’re aware that the Aztec language has certain letter combinations like that TL (e.g. axolotl, Quetzalcoatl).
- 6d [Lively 1960s dances] WATUSIS. I guess that’s one way to make sure an -s plural version is viable.
- 13d [Integra seller] ACURA. 66a [Seltos seller] KIA; I’m not familiar with that model.
- 21d [Flower whose name means “daughter of the wind”] ANEMONE. Good to know, and you can see the similarity to anemometer.
- 23d [Destroy, archaically] FORDO. Whoa.
- 49d [Major advance] GIANT STEP.
- 77d [Bar topic] LAW. 42a [Scott Turow memoir] ONE L.
- 90d [Out of the game] BENCHED, not RETIRED.
- 91d [Bacteria in uncooked food] E COLI. It’s found in many other places and isn’t always detrimental to health. E. coli definitely needs better PR. 20d [“Mad Men” field, informally] AD BIZ.
- 104d [Translating challenge] SLANG, not IDIOM.
- 113d [Alternative to -ette or -ess] -ENNE. <head waggle>
- 1a [Govt. org. that created the precursor to the internet] DARPA. And it was called, wait for it, drum roll … DARPAnet.
- 6a [Aggressive act by Congress] WAR ACT. Congress? What’s that?
- 17a [Wetsuit that stops above the knees] SHORTY. Is that distinct from a springsuit?
- 24a [Milky Way component] NOUGAT, not NEBULA.
- 31a [Common sculpture model] TORSO, but I tried HORSE first.
- 43a [Cuatro halved] DOS. 103a [Tres doubled] SEIS.
72a [Light brown hardwood] ASH. 73a [Medium brown hardwood] TEAK. Am currently considering different kinds of wood for a piece of furniture I’m hoping to have made for me. One possibility is tiger maple.- 90a [Worker at plant?] BEE. Okay.
- 108a [Kash Patel’s org.] FBI. ick.
- 114a [Gofer’s duty] ERRAND. Misread this multiple times as “Golfer’s”.
- 124a [Serve seconds to, e.g.] REFEED. 112a [Shut again] RECLOSE. 78a [Shows a chameleonlike quality] READAPTS.
Matthew Sewell’s Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s précis
Newsday • 1/10/26 • Saturday Stumper • Sewell • solution • 20260110
Once again, I’ve run short on time, so am unable to give this a proper write-up.
It was a tough offering, and I think that I solved it so quickly only because I knew I was under extreme pressure to do so. Made some bold guesses, many of which turned out to be correct.
Favorite clue, possibly: 56a [Work shift] RELO. Biggest mis-fill 44d [Disorder] BEDLAM for BOLLIX. Mystery while solving: 7d [Saudi neighbor on the UN roster] SAO (for São Tomé and Príncipe).
Solve progression: a few desultory entries here and there, as usual. Then nearly all of the top section, then the lower left, back to the center section, and finally the lower right and bottom middle.
Got to run, apologies!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
Kameron, I don’t know what you have been doing lately but you need to make more puzzles! 5 stars! No notes. Perfection.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Great review by Matthew.
I too appreciated the grid itself. FRIEND OF DOROTHY was by no means a gimme but I recognized it as it emerged and was able to complete it with an aha moment- maybe an example of knowing something I didn’t realize I knew. I just read the description of the origin of the expression and it’s very interesting.
Struggled with the NE corner a bit and with some of the cluing, but overall a very satisfying Saturday.
Someone rated this NYT puzzle a one? That’s just mean. How about you make a rule that if you are going to pan a puzzle by assigning it a 1, then you need to include the reasoning and explanation or else it won’t be counted.
Nicely said.
I gave it 4.5 only because it was a little too easy (it’s my fifth fastest Saturday NYT puzzle; barely over my Wednesday NYT average).
We at Team Fiend try to take the ratings system seriously — that’s why we did away with totally anonymous ratings. But we recognize that not everyone who wants to rate a puzzle feels like commenting.
That’s not really how rating systems work in the world. People are allowed to not like things, even when the constructor is a community darling that gets a pass on some questionable work. I wouldn’t rate this as a 1, but the ROHE/MELLON Natick (with the bonus ambiguity of DA(R/M)DEST) makes this nowhere close to a 5 for me.
If you’re seriously upset that a crossword had an entry with more than one possible answer, you may need to stop doing crosswords after about Tuesday.
I’m not upset about an entry with more than one possible answer; I’m annoyed about an ambiguous entry that exacerbates the natick crossing an unnecessarily obscure cluing of a dead rich white man with another dead rich white man. But thanks for reinforcing my point that, because this site seems to like KAC for some reason, literally no one else is willing to point out this flaw.
Mies van der ROHE is probably the second most common architect name to show up in crosswords (after I.M. Pei). Maybe Frank Gehry is in the running.
In addition to Carnegie Mellon University, the MELLON name is still attached to one of the largest financial services companies in the country – Bank of New York-Mellon.
What the fact that they are both dead white guys has to do with anything escapes me.
The third most common architect is George Costanza.
😊
I know you’ve been around long enough to know what a Natick is and why it’s not ideal, so I’m not sure why you’re playing dumb about it now. Yes, I’m aware that both of those men who have been dead for many centuries are slightly well known, but one is only known at this point for being crusty crosswordese, and the other is only known for something that isn’t mentioned in the clue. If you think that’s amazing constructing, good for you, but I’m not buying it.
As long as we’re nitpicking:
Andrew MELLON (1855–1937)
Mies van der ROHE (1886–1969)
hardly ‘centuries’
I’ve wondered how reviews would go if the constructor wasn’t known by the reviewer. Blind reviews are kind of the standard for things I’ve followed. Ok it’s not a lot of things but almost all wine reviews I’ve followed are blind.
Not meant has a comment on KAC, I’ve found I generally like his grids
I think the writers and commenters here have been pretty good about saying if they think a well-known constructor may not have turned in their best work… particularly on Sundays. I haven’t gone back in the archives far enough to know about Kameron’s older puzzles, so my high praise was purely on its own merits.
“[L]iterally no one else is willing to point out this flaw.”
Even if I weren’t a contributor here, I wouldn’t consider crossing Andrew MELLON and Mies van Der ROHE a flaw.
None of us knows everything, but the more you know, the easier crosswords are.
I hope your next crossword has fewer things that you didn’t know.
I knew both of these entries, but that doesn’t make it not a Natick. You are aware of that term, right? Crossing two relatively obscure proper nouns in a way that one may have to guess at it? Most people think of it as a flaw, but apparently if it’s an indie darling constructor, people somehow forget all of the conventional wisdom of what makes a good crossword.
R,
Pardon me for assuming your original comment was written out of frustration that two proper names that you didn’t know crossed. (Yes, I know how Rex Parker defines a Natick, thanks.)
To me, it’s not unreasonable to expect that someone who solves a NYT crossword recognizes the name Mies van der Rohe. That makes the crossing not a Natick, even if it hadn’t been pretty obvious that the crossing letter was a vowel. No Natick, no flaw.
The MELLON / ROHE cross is a fair point. I’m more forgiving than many of proper nouns and trivia in general and when they cross, and I pretty strongly feel that too much puzzle criticism right now proclaims judgement on a puzzle of ~70 entries and ~190 squares based on one or two entries or crossings, but I get it.
+1 to your strong feeling!! i watched a movie recently that was terrific up until the ending, which i found off-putting and disappointing. to call that a 1-star movie would be ludicrous to me. (maybe if it impeded my 300-day Movie Streak i would feel differently? idk)
Strong feelings are fine.
Informed feelings are even better.
You’re suggesting that my commentary on puzzle criticism is … uninformed?
It’s interesting to see you quiet this, because I remember a time not so long ago when you would have been pretty outspoken about a NYT puzzle with enough dead rich white guys to create naticks. Have you mellowed, or is it this specific constructor getting a pass?
Hi R – I understand that it can be frustrating to encounter a crossing of two proper nouns that aren’t tip-of-tongue. It might help if I tell you my thought process for crossings like this. A quick test: When you google “Is mies van der rohe famous?”, what do you get? I get “Yes, Mies van der rohe is extremely famous and considered one of the most important and influential architects of the 20th century,” in edition to a wide array of newspaper articles, museum summaries, encyclopedia entries, Reddit threads, youtube analyses, academic articles – and on and on, recent material and not. The results for MELLON are comparably robust. For me, they also both have pop cultural cache, as names I’ve heard tossed off and referenced in books, movies et al many times.
So – for me – not obscure, not Naticks, and not people who only live on as crosswordese, but rather the exact opposite: two fairly straightforward examples of what Shortz and co think of as “classical knowledge” (Will’s phrase), meaning basic, broad cultural knowledge that solvers can be expected to, if not know offhand, be familiar enough with for most crossings to be fair, especially on a Saturday. This is why I felt comfortable crossing them. The reason we call things “Naticks” is specifically because of a town, Natick, that no one from outside of Massachusetts has any reason to know. In my opinion, these guys don’t qualify. Not even close.
Obviously YMMV! And ultimately I understand that, for many people, enjoying a puzzle depends on being able to finish it. But it may at least help to know why I and the editorial team feel differently.
Also – this puzzle has nods to ADA Limon, Michelle YEOH, Syngman RHEE, Judy Garland, etc. etc. – so it is strange to see you reduce my work to “dead white guys.”
R – thanks for your interest. i do think i’ve mellowed in some respects, fwiw, but it doesn’t feel relevant in this case: my comment was an endorsement of a general crossword take and not an appraisal of this nyt puzzle specifically. it’s noteworthy to me that you nonetheless used it as a springboard to, for the fourth time in this day’s comments section, go ad hominem at the constructor, when you could simply say you disliked the crossing or the puzzle and leave it at that. in all earnestness, if you haven’t already, i think it could be worth spending some time processing why a talented constructor being well-liked bothers you to this extent. (i say all this as a big Kameron enjoyer, but i think it would hold true even if i agreed with your assessment)
With the ratings how they work now, I would guess that the admins. know who gave it a one, not just some rando “spreading joy” but a regular who did not like the puzzle. That’s ok, we aren’t required to like everything, and we aren’t required to post what we DO like about it, so I’m comfortable that this is better than trolls dropping 1’s just because they can, as it used to be.
Kelpie threw me, we’ve been watching a lot of Australian TV (US writers have taken a dip in quality) and a Kelpie is an Australian sheep dog, and that just didn’t work LOL! Lots of tripping points but they all ironed out after a few crosses, things I didn’t know I knew (Friends of Dorothy, Mellon ) Not as tough as I expect from KAC but I was so happy to see his byline I gave him a 5 just for showing up ;-) _… Just kidding, it was a good puzzle, just not quite as difficult as I usually find his.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
Excellent puzzle and spot-on review.
I assume that the New Yorker constructors are contractually obligated to deliver a certain number of puzzles each year (or whatever period their contracts cover). If the KAC puzzles I’ve seen there were less-than-inspired, KAC hid that well. In any case, I was happy to read in Wordplay that he’ll be back in the NYT more frequently.
Vis-à-vis the Natan Last quote: Jim Horne long ago wrote a great piece about that phenomenon:
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/science/07moment.html
I enjoy all aspects of the “trivia” in crosswords: The easy gimmes like FRIEND OF DOROTHY, the kinda/sorta known stuff like Andrew MELLON, and learning new things like WATERHORSE.
And barbecue twice! (By coincidence, we tried a new barbecue restaurant the other day that is way better than the place here that calls itself “Serious Texas Barbecue.” We moved to Colorado from Austin, so we know good barbecue when we find it.)
Very fun Saturday, albeit quite quick for me too. I don’t know where it lands in my stats for Saturday, but it was a good 4 minutes faster than yesterday’s Friday and close to a third of my average time. It would’ve been faster if I hadn’t lost time with my error giving me MATERHORSE instead of WATERHORSE.
Thanks also for explaining the ANNEE clue / answer… I was so misdirected I didn’t know where to turn, other than Crossword Fiend.
I liked the NYT, but have a couple of quibbles. The spelling DAMNDEST threw me off for a while, and while David Hume did have some thoughts on ECON it’s hardly the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of everything he wrote. Still, it’s a very well constructed puzzle — I would only count the hoary RHEE as crosswordese.
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 4.5 stars
Pretty typical Stumper time for me – 23:03. Some tough parts but I had some footholds scattered throughout. I saw through 30A and 32A for two of them
34A is the cryptic clue for the day
Spent too much time with SHOWTIME for 36D
61A – I guess print in the clue is a copy of a film, like the release print
Lots of Stumper clues but gettable
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
Not being up on my Celtic mythology, I had YMCA/MATERHORSE until the very end like Dallas. Otherwise, an outstanding grid. It wasn’t a record time for me but still pretty fast (9 minutes and change).
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
Lots of fun! Would love to see more of Kameron’s puzzles.
KAC’s Wordplay comments (in part):
“I took a hiatus from constructing new puzzles some time ago and didn’t resume until around this time last year — hence, this being my first submission to The Times since 2023, though, suffice to say, hardly the last.”
He’s a top-tier constructor in my book. I too am looking forward to seeing his byline more often.
Oh, I didn’t see the Wordplay comments. Thanks for sharing! Yeah, top-tier constructor for sure.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
I too, with the MATERHORSE error costing me precious time to error scan. Bang up puzzle though, the NYT. It wasn’t particularly breezy for me, but learning FRIEND OF DOROTHY was such a great learn-as-you-go clue. Reminds me of BOOKSHELF WEALTH in (iirc) a wapo entry in November/December of last year. Either way, very happy the NYT ran this one. The whole solve felt fresh and accessible while still in the Saturday zone.
The LAT was fine, much breezier imo than the nyt; hooboy, the stumper and I did not get along today. A solid 17 minutes and I doubted myself at every turn. I was not on the constructors wavelength on this one, but the puzzle itself was quite good once filled in, so no complaints here. Have to give it to nyt this week.
Puzzle: WSJ; Rating: 3 stars
Wsj – what does bull market have to do with the puzzle? Also how does global become glow and label becomes lay
I believe the theme is to add a syllable that sounds something like “bull” to familiar phrases. So, GLOW WORMS becomes GLOBAL (glow-bull) WORMS and LAY OF THE LAND becomes LABEL (lay-bull) OF THE LAND.