LAT untimed (pannonica) 
[3.20 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
NYT 11:23!? (Amy) 
[3.67 avg; 18 ratings] rate it
Universal 4:12 (Jim P) [3.25 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Emily) [3.70 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
Kyle Dolan’s New York Times Crossword — Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 1/16/26 – no. 0116
What the what?? A nigh-“Saturday Stumper” level solving time? For a constructor I know? I don’t get it. I had a few incorrect shorties for a bit–AWES for WOWS, IOAN for EVAN, OAK for FIR (who’s got fir floors?), FAKE for FAUX (before I found FAKE PLANTS)–but generally just struggled to plunk in a lot of the long answers. There’s also one unfamiliar bit of vocab: JINK, 25D. [Nimble, zigzagging maneuver]. Oof! That slowed down my entry into that whole bottom left section. Did this one take you twice as long as you expected too, or have I just misplaced my juju?
Lots of great fill and clues here! BABY SHOWER, [Coming-out party?]. “ANYONE HOME?” AAVE, [Dialect featured in the literature of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, for short], short for African American Vernacular English. SINK OR SWIM. SEALS, [Creatures that can turn into humans on land, in Scottish folklore], BOOK FAIR, [Place for trading stories?]. FLOTUS, [White House partner, for short], though I guess sometimes they live in NYC and Florida? ANIMAL FARM. Is FAKE PLANTS green-paintish or a solid term to you? HERDING CATS. AVALANCHE. PET SNAKES (please, no avalanche of pet snakes, I couldn’t take it). JOB OFFERS.
Not sure that the PERMS clue quite works. 50D. [Makes do for a while?]: Perms the hair, makes the hair do (a hairdo) for a while? Give me a swap scenario where this works well.
Four stars from me.
Alex Rohrer’s Los Angeles Times crossword — pannonica’s write-up
LAT • 1/16/26 • Fri • Rohrer • solution • 20260116
Sequences, positions.
- 17a. [{Math}, science, gym, English] FIRST CLASS.
- 30a. [Allegory, {fable}, anecdote, parable] SECOND STORY.
- 46a. [Walkout, slowdown, {picketing}, sit-in] THIRD STRIKE.
- 62a. [Safari lodge, island property, destination spa, {all-inclusive beach hotel}] LAST RESORT. Heh, difficult to find succinct synonyms for ‘resort’.
Tidy theme.
- 1d [Travel by air] WAFT. Not that humans can do this, so the clue has an element of misdirection. Similar effect found in 7d [TV producer] RCA.
- 38d [Mountain with southeast-facing faces] RUSHMORE. Oho, literal, carved portraits.
- 45d [Cry of hunger?] LET’S EAT. Okay.
- 53d [Isabel Wilkerson‘s “__: The Origins of Our Discontents] CASTE. It’s about racism in the United States.
- 58d [Former “DWTS” co-host Andrews] ERIN. Count it as a victory that I was able to recall/work out that the initialism is for Dancing with the Stars. 25d [People who get half the credit] CO-STARS.
- 6a [Show with a “Sport Mode”] CROC. How does that work then?
- 34a [Doja Cat’s signature song] SAY SO.
- 41a [Sailor Moon headpiece] TIARA. Did an image search; seems there are seemingly relatively few instances when the eponymous character wears something that might be considered a TIARA. On the other hand, a constant is that her bangs form a heart shape. Anyway, perhaps if I’d actually read the manga or seen the anime I would know how often that headpiece is seen.
(I feel as if I should like They Might Be Giants more than I actually do.) - 66a [Features of some lobbies] ATRIA, an anagram of TIARA.
Hanh Huynh’s Universal crossword, “Cha-Ching!”—Jim P’s review
Theme answers are familiar(ish) phrases whose first two words combine to sound like a slang word for “money”. The revealer is MAKE MONEY (63a, [Turn a profit … or what it sounds like the first two words of the starred clues’ answers do?]).
Universal crossword solution · “Cha-Ching!” · Hanh Huynh · Fri., 1.16.26
- 17a. [*Pastor’s request] “LET US PRAY.” Lettuce.
- 31a. [*Television service used for airing boxing matches] PAY-PER-VIEW. Paper.
- 47a. [*Lie out on a super hot day] BAKE IN THE SUN. Bacon.
These are fine, though the last one is on the iffy side. BAKE IN THE SUN isn’t as much an in-the-language phrase as the others, and “bake in” doesn’t quite sound like “bacon” to my ear. The schwa sound is distinct in the latter when I say it.
On top of that, it’s twelve letters long where its partner, PAY-PER-VIEW, is only ten, thereby immediately causing grid dissymmetry. I couldn’t come up with a suitable alternative, so maybe this is the best there is. I do like the concept of the theme, though.
The lack of symmetry does free up the grid for some fun fill such as PUMPS IRON, LA LA LAND, HIT HARD, TEAM UP, BAD-ASS, “NO LOSS,” and KATANA.
Clues of note:
- 49d. [Japanese sword seen in “Kill Bill”]. KATANA. I wouldn’t have minded if 47d also got a Kill Bill clue, perhaps [Like Uma Thurman’s character in “Kill Bill”] BAD-ASS.
- 57d. [They’re wound up before they sleep!]. YO-YOS. Cute clue. Makes you think the answer is related to toddlers before they “hit the wall.”
Overall, a nice theme let down slightly by one theme answer. Strong fill aided by a lack of symmetry. 3.5 stars.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
I did pretty well. Amy’s times normally blow mine out of the water but I was only about 30 seconds behind today.
I was slowed down a bit because I had FACEPLANTS/ERIC at the bottom, and because NAZISCUM didn’t fit in 45A.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Had some rough spots (JANE GREY/JINK!) but other areas flowed very smoothly for me.
I don’t think FAKE PLANTS is green painty. Well, it’s green, but it’s an expression I’d use.
Amy: My take on “Makes do for a while” is that it’s a process that MAKES a hairDO that lasts FOR A WHILE . When I was growing up, my mom used the full word PERMANENT with a French pronunciation. I’ve never had one, but my sense is that they were in fact permanent– as long as that part of the hair was around, it was curly.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
JINK, DINK, and ZINK all could theoretically work if you didn’t know JANE (especially DANE, which is what I had, and still prefer even though it’s wrong). Also had EWAN for EVAN and just didn’t notice that APOLLOWII wasn’t correct.
huda, that’s very interesting that your mother pronounced PERMANENT as if it were French. I’d never heard of that before. I wonder how common that was during that time period. All I knew about perms before today was what I learned from watching Legally Blonde, but a quick google search tells me that the French word for a perm is “permanente.” I wonder if the owner of the salon where she had it done was French.
The internet is also telling me that there is such a thing as a “temporary perm,” which seems like a contradiction, but it’s a version that’s less damaging to hair that only lasts a few weeks.
As for the puzzle, I fell into a lot of the same traps as others: IOAN then EWAN before EVAN; AWES before WOWS; etc. According to xwordinfo, this is the first use of JINK in the Will Shortz era; it was last in the puzzle in 1986.
@Me- I grew up in Damascus, Syria, which had been under French rule until mid 20th century, so I think you are hearing that influence. It probably originated in some French salon and became a peppy perm in the US :) .
A temporary perm is an interesting concept! You learn al kinds of cool stuff form the good people here.
huda, thank you! Yes, this is a great place to learn things, and, with the exception of a few grumblers, it’s one of the nicest places on the internet IMO.
Continuing my workcrastination, IOAN is a Welsh variant of Ian/John, so that answer was a reasonable one for EVAN.
In the US, EVAN gradually increased in popularity as a baby name for boys, hitting the Top 100 in 1982 and peaking at #35 in 2009, but then it fell quite quickly, being given at about 30% of the 2009 rate now. I wonder what caused it to drop. I don’t think there have been any incredibly famous (or infamous) people named Evan. The most famous people I can think of are the baseball player Evan Longoria, the figure skater Evan Lysacek, the actress Evan Rachel Wood, and the fictional characters Evan Hansen (from the Broadway musical, “Dear Evan Hansen”) and Evan Baxter from the Bruce Almighty/Evan Almighty movies, but I don’t think any of them are famous enough to drive a significant number of parents to name their kid Evan.
Well, there’s also Evan Birnholz
Pilgrim:
LOL. There’s no way I’m as famous as those other Evans, but if I ever meet a parent who names their kid Evan because of me, I promise you’ll be the first to know.
There’s Evan Williams bourbon too.
Evan doesn’t seem like a particularly unusual name, but the best I could come up with is Evan Bayh, who is a former Senator and Governor from Indiana.
Hard to tell what drives the ups and downs of name popularity – certainly TV and movie stars’ names (or their characters’ names) have an impact.
According to the Social Security Administration, my name, Gary, was the 13th most popular male baby name the year I was born. No idea why (Gary Cooper?). It remained in the top 100 until 1989 (which surprises me). Recently, it barely makes the top 1000.
I found the NYT quite tough, certainly tough for a Friday. Not obscurity so much as first tries were often wrong, lots of ‘what else could fit there…’. But doable with considerable thrashing around. Good puzzle.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
I found this puzzle unusually difficult for a Friday as well, but some of the clues were very clever which made up for it!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
NYT: No, you haven’t lost your juju, Amy! I found today’s puzzle very challenging – even after my morning latte. As a former ice hockey player, I was sure that the “nimble, zigzagging maneuver” was a DEKE and that threw the lower left side into the murk for a a while. I was just glad to finish today. A good workout!
NYT – APOLLO VII killed me.
NYT was tough for a Friday. I JINKed around quite a bit to get footholds. I had AWES before WOWS, MARIA before ANITA, LETSROLL before LETSROCK. I knew JANEGREY immediately but take issue with the clue — she was never officially crowned so was not a queen. Good puzzle but seems more like a Saturday to me.
Similar issues for me; nearly double my average Friday time. The SW corner required serious chipping away, and that was after I had fixed MARIA -> ANITA. Also had DANE GREY instead of JANE GREY and FACEPLANTS before FAKE PLANTS… definitely felt like a Saturday.
Sure would like for today’s Universal puzzle to have its theme described.
The first two words of the theme entries sound like slang terms for money: LET US = lettuce.
Amy; In the Northwest you’ll find many Douglas fir floors, including my own, in the form of tongue and groove planks.
.
I prefer the spelling “Douglas-fir” to remind us that Pseudotsuga menziesii is not a fir. In Latin it’s not even not a fir. Psuedotsuga means “false hemlock,” so Douglas-fir is more precisely not a hemlock. But there aren’t a lot of fellow purists in charge of language, so I wouldn’t object to the clue on the basis of excellent doug fir flooring. And happily, true fir is used for flooring as well, although mostly in Europe.
If we’re going to appeal to the accuracy of scientific names (as opposed to their efficacy), that could be a can of worms!
I agree. I’m just as happy with “Douglas-fir is not a fir” as with “Douglas-fir is not a hemlock.”
I love Douglas-fir. I may have mentioned the huge one growing by my house. It’s prime real estate for hawks because it’s the highest point in the area. I have a great view of it from my bathtub and can watch a pair of red-tails tending to a nest at the top while I soak. I’ve been known to spend way too much time soaking.
Their cones are fun too. They look like an army of tiny mice are trying to hide in them.
Doug fir is quite a bit softer than most oaks or maples, which see a lot of use in flooring. But it’s one of the harder softwoods (yellow pine is harder) and is a handsome wood – I wouldn’t mind having it on my floor.
Other than some exotic tropical woods, Douglas-fir has the highest modulus of elasticity of any wood. This resistance to bending is one reason it’s so valuable for flooring.