Tuesday, January 13, 2026

Jonesin’ 4:52 (Erin) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
LAT untimed (Jenni) [2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
NYT 5:13 (Eric) [3.81 avg; 13 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker untimed (pannonica) [3.80 avg; 10 ratings] rate it
Universal 6:36 (Eric) [3.33 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Sophia) [2.50 avg; 1 rating] rate it
Xword Nation tk (Ade) rate it
WSJ 3:58 (Jim Q) [3.60 avg; 5 ratings] rate it

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Family Matters” — the family as a unit. – Erin’s write-up

Jonesin’ solution 1/13/26

Hello lovelies! This week’s Jonesin’ puzzle celebrates family in its four longest entries, with a revealer in the center.

• 17a. [Dow Jones Industrial Average, e.g.] STOCK INDEX
• 62a. [Japanese cat figurine with one paw raised] MANEKI NEKO, aka “beckoning cat,” which is supposed to bring luck or fortune to a home or shop.
• 11d. [Boat brand designed for a certain water activity] SKI NAUTIQUE. They are the oldest brand of boats designed to tow water skis.
• 25d. [Long, thin bug that camouflages well with leaves] STICK INSECT
• 42a. [“Family” found in the four long theme answers] KIN

Other things:

• 4d. [D&D villain, or a “Stranger Things” antagonist] VECNA. I haven’t watched the show in years, so I won’t add anything else in case of spoilers.
• 46d. [Fan of Capt. Kirk and crew, as some (including Leonard Nimoy) prefer] TREKKER. There’s been debate forever on the difference between Trekkers and Trekkies. Trekkers seems to have developed to get away from the negative connotation given to the term Trekkies, but Trekkies has been reclaimed by fans, so the terms can pretty much be used interchangeably at this point.

Until next week!

Dan Zarin’s Universal Crossword “The Gravity of the Situation” — Eric’s Review

Dan Zarin’s Universal Crossword “The Gravity of the Situation” — 1/13/26 (Click to Embiggen)

I’m rarely fond of themes found in the Down answers; I just have trouble parsing those answers. But this one’s easy enough that I didn’t have much trouble with it.

There’s a trio of seesaw like things:

• 5D [Coolness factor?] TEMPERATURE I like the little bit of misdirection here.
• 7D [Setting for trades and runs] STOCK MARKET Most of what I know about stocks, I learned in my Business Associations class in law school. I get how publicly-traded stocks work, but I still don’t fully trust Wall Street.
• 32D [Flash Gordon took one from Earth to Mongo] ROCKET SHIP
• 34D [Start of a popular aphorism that’s a hint to 5-, 7- and 32-Down]  WHAT GOES UP I recently learned (here in this crossword blog!) that kind of thing is an anapopodton — a rhetorical device that involves a thought being interrupted or discontinued before it is fully expressed. But I have yet to find a definitive pronunciation of that useful word.

This is a solid, simple theme, easily understood by beginning solvers. Stuff goes up, stuff goes down. Gravity, you win again.

Other stuff:

• 12A [Sounded sheepish?] BAAED I missed the past tense and thought the Universal editors were trying to slip one past us by spelling “baa” with three A’s. I should be less skeptical sometimes.
• 15A [Music genre Johnny Ramone called “some kind of Communist plot”] DISCO I graduated high school is the 1970s. The number of disco songs I can take is pretty low.
• 17A [Cattle call?] MOO That pairs nicely with BAAED, even if the misdirection doesn’t misdirect.
• 44A [Reads posts without commenting] LURKS That sounds so perjorative. If you’ve got nothing to say, don’t say something just to use a little more oxygen.
• 1D [Nostalgic Insta hashtag] TBT This answer or something similar in a puzzle last week caused me to wonder if that hashtag is still used or if the whole concept is meta. Thoughts?
• 23D [Girl whose mom “has got it going on,” per a 2003 song] STACY That’s not my favorite Fountains of Wayne song; they had so many funny songs about losers. But this one isn’t bad.
• 52D [“Flashdance… What a Feeling” singer Cara] IRENE A gimme for someone my age. That song was inescapable for a bit.

Nate Hall’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s Review

Nate Hall’s New York Times Crossword — 1/13/26 (Click to Embiggen)

This is Nate Hall’s New York Times puzzle debut, and as near as I can tell, his debut puzzle in any publication normally covered here at Diary of a Crossword Fiend. Congratulations, Nate!

But I have to be honest: I have never liked Queen and I especially have never liked the song this theme riffs on. (I once saw a description of it as “fascist rock,” and that fits):

• 19A [Hospital worker tending to newborns] NEONATAL NURSE
• 31A [Bar attraction with a saddle and horns] MECHANICAL BULL
• 42A [Segments of Earth’s lithosphere] TECTONIC PLATES
• 53A [Iconic 1977 Queen hit … or a hint to 19-, 31- and 42-Across] WE WILL ROCK YOU

I graduated high school in 1977. If they taught about collisions between tectonic plates being the cause of earthquakes back then, I’ve long since forgotten those classes.

The “rocking” of neonatal nurses and mechanical bulls is, I hope, obvious to most solvers (at least in the United States; I’m not sure how globally known mechanical bulls are).

Aside from a song that’s likely to be stuck in my head for days, this is a fine theme, at least for older solvers. I never know with pop culture clues how much 50-year-old or older stuff has. I know a lot of it because I lived through so much of it, but I also know pop culture stuff from before my time that many in my age cohort don’t know. (Maybe I should adopt Kameron Austin Collins’s practice of Googling pop culture names: “Is _______ famous?”) (If you don’t know what I’m talking about here, read Kameron’s comments in the Saturday, January 10 Fiend post about crossing Andrew Mellon and Mies van der Rohe.)

I thought I had solved this fairly quickly (I make a lot of typos solving easy puzzles), but then I noticed that the grid is only 14 columns wide. I don’t know if the smaller grid really makes much difference in one’s solving time, but some people seem to think it does. I expect I spend more time pondering clues than I do typing answers.

Other stuff:

39A [Key not found on a Mac] ALT Where was this clue the other night when I was on my iPad and couldn’t remember whether either of the Macs we have that have physical keyboards has an ALT key? (If I remember correctly, some Fiend reader more knowledgeable than I commented that one of the other keys — Option or Control, maybe — functions as an Alt key on an Apple computer.)

• 41A [Kiss or Heart] BAND I have to wonder whose idea it was to keep this clue in the same era as the revealer. Whoever it was, their music fan credibility hasn’t gone up any in my eyes.
• 4D [Birth name of Marvel Comics’ Black Panther] T’CHALLA I may be old and have almost zero interest in comics and action films, but even I have seen the movie Black Panther.
• 9D [Yogi, once] BEAR CUB Cute clue.
• 26D [Offshore drilling site] OIL  RIG We’ve been watching Landman lately, mostly because my sister-in-law has a small recurring role as one of the people living in the retirement home. It’s also a pretty good show.
• 33D [Big name in carving knives] CUTCO That doesn’t sound familiar. What an inspired name for a brand of knife.
• 43D [Vice-presidential candidate of 2024] TIM WALZ The last year or so has been such a mess that I couldn’t immediately remember Kamala Harris’s running mate, even though he and his state have been in the news a lot lately.
• 44D [Pet sitters?] LAP CATS Cute clue, but I had DOGS first.

Richard Liu and Katherine Xiong’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Jenni’s write-up

A musical start to my day! Always welcome.

Los Angeles Times, January 13, 2026, Richard Liu, Katherine Xiong, solution grid

• 17a [Actress who plays Honey Chandler on “Bosch” and “Bosch: Legacy”] is MIMI ROGERS.
• 25a [Flightless species last seen in the 1660s] is the DODO BIRD.
• 56a [Musical film starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling] is LA LA LAND.
• 66a [Lukewarm critique] is a SO–SO REVIEW.

And the revealer: 38a [Type of exam that allows crib sheets, or a hint to 17-, 25-, 56-, and 66-Across] is OPEN NOTES. MI, DO, LA, SO.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: that MIMI ROGERS appears in “Bosch.”

And, of course…

Patrick Berry’s New Yorker crossword — pannonica’s write-up

New Yorker • 1/13/26 • Berry • solution • 20250113

My intro will be the same as most weeks: pretty smooth offering, not challenging enough, the interface sucks.

• 6a [Land’s end?] COAST. yes.
• 14a [Corridors] HALLS. “… along these corridors and through these rooms in this building that belongs to the past, this huge, luxurious, baroque, and dismal hotel …”
• 15a [Recording stored digitally] AUDIO FILE, not to be confused with an audiophile.
• 18a [Performer in a circus’s mane event?] LION TAMER. A rarer and rarer phenomenon, with good reason. It’s a cruel practice that’s frowned upon by many.
• 22a [Place for boarders?] GATE. At an airport terminal, say.
• 28a [Mythical creature akin to a griffin or centaur] CHIMERA. Not to be confused with the extinct tick Khimaira fossus or the extant chimaera fishes.
• 32a [Pseudonym used by directors when disavowing their own films] ALAN SMITHEE. This was a gimmee for me. 34d [Expunged from a draft] EDITED OUT.
• 41a [Word before Mac or cheese] BIG. Clever.
• 54a [Beetle that’s a spud farmer’s foe] POTATO BUG. The clue pretty much telegraphs it.
• 59a [Neal Stephenson novel whose main character is named Hiro Protagonist] SNOW CRASH. The early work, probably one of his best, that garnered him wide attention.
• 63a [Cantankerous] TESTY. Neither TETCHY nor TOUCHY would fit.
• 2d [Prepared for a coin toss?] MADE A WISH. Sure.
• 24d [Targets for swingers at some parties] PIÑATAS. Should have seen through this one more quickly.
• 29d [Poet and philosopher dubbed the Sage of Concord] EMERSON, Ralph Waldo.
• 33d [Peppers long thought to top the Scoville scale] HABANEROS. But now there are ghost peppers, Carolina reapers, scorpion peppers, and I’ve just now learned of the frightening “pepper X“.
• 43d [Lean on] COERCE. Oh that kind.
• 56d [Host nation of the 2028 Olympics] USA. Am expecting boycotts and people staying away out of fear.

Gotta run!

 Andrea Carla Michaels & Dena R. Verkuil’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “You Said a Mouthful” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: Phrases that end in types of salad

WSJ • 12/13/26 • Wed • “Finish Strong” • You Said a Mouthful • Andrea Carla Michaels • Dena R. Verkuil• solution • 20260112

THEME ANSWERS:

• COOL AS A CUCUMBER
• ROTTEN EGG
• HOT POTATO
• LOW HANGING FRUIT
• (revealer) [Impossible-to-follow speech, and a hint to the ends of 17-, 27-, 48- and 60-Across] WORD SALAD

Another collab with Andrea! Whose name seems to be appearing somewhere on this site with tremendous frequency as of late.

It’s odd to see Andrea’s name on a WSJ Tuesday… where I typically brace myself for something that doesn’t quite make complete sense to me. Not-making-complete-sense is never the case with her puzzles, and this is no exception, though I think that this puzzle’s concept could be fairly run on any given Monday as well. So the typical off-kilter Tuesday vibes weren’t there… which is a good thing… although I must confess, there’s something about expecting to say “Whaaaaa?” and then actually saying “Whaaaaa?” that’s rather satisfying about Tuesday.

Anyway, this is a simple, clear, consistent, solid theme. All the themers solidly in-language and interesting to uncover in and of themselves. LOW HANGING FRUIT being at the bottom was cute, whether intentional or not. A smooth fun solve all around that made me a tad hungry. I’m eating a Cheetos salad right now. There’s only one ingredient though. And it’s changing the color of my laptop keyboard.

Also, whenever I hear the words “potato salad,” I instinctively say “Show me potato salad!” as if I were hosting The Price is Right. It’s from a Family Guy bit back in the early episodes. No one gets the reference and I end up looking quite silly, but I can’t seem to stop. And you know what? I don’t want to stop.

ERRATA: 

• [It takes a bow] VIOLIN. Cute. A violin “takes a bow” in the sense that it takes a bow to play it properly (unless playing pizzicato, of course!)
• [“The Silence of the Lambs” director Jonathan] DEMME. Not the first time I’ve seen this name in crosswords, but still can’t remember a demmed… erm… damned letter of it.
• [“Wake and bake” practitioners] STONERS. Brought me back to a phase of my college days. I’d just eat some Cheeto salad and fall back asleep though.
• [Like ski trails and movie theater floors] SLOPING. The ski trail being the preferable one if you were forced to eat off the ground somewhere.
• [Got the gold, say] MEDALED. I typically think of this word as referring to silver and bronze medals.

Enjoy the day! Eat healthy! Perhaps a salad? 3.5 stars.