LAT 3:01 (Stella) 
[3.17 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
Newsday DNCCTF (Eric) 
[4.42 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
NYT 7:24 (Amy) 
[3.50 avg; 10 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Matthew) [3.67 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Matthew) [3.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
WSJ untimed but slow (Eric) 
[2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Adam Aaronson’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 1/17/26 – no. 0117
Okay! Adam brings us some Roman math down the middle, with [Longest number writable in standard Roman numerals], MMMDCCCLXXXVIII, or 3,888. D, L, and V all become their neighbor above when doubled, so no DDD, LLL, or VVV. I wish that the Vatican, which has ATMs where you can transact in Latin, exclusively used Roman numerals. Has this number been in a crossword before? Feels like an obvious get, 15 letters long.
Fave fill: FACEPALMS, ice cream MIX-INS (man, I haven’t been to Cold Stone Creamery in years), KNICK-KNACK, timely MLK (his birthday was Wednesday), FAUX-NAIF, TINDER BIO, F-BOMB, ARTSY-/FARTSY, SPIN KICKS. But definitely not PIT STAINS! Eww.
I know most Korean food only from the internet. [Korean barbecue rib dish], GALBI? Filled that one right in. I don’t eat red meat, and I think the only Korean joint I’ve been to was a chicken restaurant in Manhattan. We shopped at the nearby H-Mart several times during our short stay in Midtown.
Overall a fun and fresh puzzle. Four stars from me.
Emily Biegas’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 1/17/26 by Emily Biegas
I liked this puzzle a lot!
- The middle stack of 11s has two very nice entries — READ THE ROOM and STREET TACOS. The third, SELL-BY DATES, could feel a little green-paint as a plural, but I loved the clue [Spoiler alerts?]
- 59A [Smudging ceremony tool] is PALO SANTO. I’ve lived near a restaurant called PALO SANTO for years and never bothered to find out the meaning of the phrase — I always figured it was the name of a place. It was cool to learn a new fact from the puzzle.
- 23D [“Slam Diego” player] is a PADRE. OK, I periodically razz LAT for how many baseball clues there are, but it was fun to learn this sports city nickname.
- 24D PARTY SCHOOL is another really fun entry.
- 30D [Didst wallop] is SMOTE, normally a word that feels like glue but the clue made me snicker in a good way.
Gary Larson & Amy Ensz’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Feeling Out of Place” — Eric’s Review
Gary Larson & Amy Ensz’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Feeling Out of Place” — 1/17/26 (Click to Embiggen)
This was one of the most unusual solving experiences I’ve had in a while, and I’m going to describe that experience because I’m sure that the circumstance under which I solved the puzzle affected both the time it took me to complete and my enjoyment of the theme and other puzzle elements.
I have a fairly good memory and will usually remember having done a puzzle before. That means a puzzle gets one chance to amuse me, to educate me, to puzzle me — and that the effect the puzzle has depends a great deal on my emotional and mental state when I’m solving.
I had hoped to solve and blog this puzzle Friday afternoon. That didn’t work out, and by the time I started solving, it was nearing 11 PM. That’s a bit late for me.
And part of the reason it 11 before I got to the puzzle is that it was a difficult, emotional evening in my home. The conversation my husband and I had was difficult, but I think we now agree on the source of the problem and how we’re going to address it. (We’ve been legally married 11 years, thanks to the Obergefell decision, but for all practical purposes, we’ve been married since 1979.)
I’ve not slept well in a few nights, partly because I had a minor skiing accident Monday and partly because I am trying to fulfill some commitments I made to people I care about. The stress of possibly failing to do what I said I would do certainly contributed to my inability to get more than a few hours of sleep each night.
I solved three-fourths of the grid before deciding that I had gotten too sleepy to continue. I went to bed, slept almost three hours, and couldn’t get back to sleep.
Around 5:30 AM, I came back to the puzzle only to find I’d managed to delete several answers and that some of my answers were wrong. I solved for a few more minutes before realizing that I had no idea how the theme worked and decided to try to figure it out before continuing. I realized long ago that to really understand something, I need to write about it, so I began this review.
When I started writing this post, my grid looked like this:
(Click to Embiggen)
I stared at the grid, trying to understand the theme. Remembering that some of the longer answers (both Across and Down) had punny clues indicated by question marks helped. However, the five or so clues with question marks that were not part of the theme, combined with the relative shortness of the theme answers and the fact that they run Across and Down, didn’t help me get the theme.
Would I have picked up on the theme more easily if my brain had been functioning better? Undoubtedly.
The theme is common phrases compound nouns whose second word can be a slangy word for an emotional state:
- 24A [Furious with Big Tobacco?] SMOKING HOT
- 53A [Blasé about one’s stamina?] WIND CHILL My sister was the Queen of Malapropisms and similar linguistic gaffes. (She never did learn that the abbreviation for et cetera is not “ect.” But she was highly amused when someone else referred to the cooling effect of a breeze as the “windshield factor.’ (RIP, Sharon.)
- 82A [Suffering from seasonal affective disorder?] LIGHT BLUE I don’t know if Sharon was ever diagnosed with that disorder, but as much as she loved living in Seattle, she complained every year about the gray winters.
- 112A [Sympathetic about other people’s hopes and dreams?] GOAL TENDER
- 4D [Bummed out about one’s social status?] STANDING DOWN In checking my answers in this part of the grid, I noticed that I had TOWN. Fixing that bit of nonsense helped a lot.
- 16D [Upset over anemic bloodwork results?] IRON CROSS Yes, that symbol was associated with the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Empire, but I don’t need crosswords reminding me of Nazis. There’s enough of that in the news coming from Minneapolis this week.
- 63D [Enthusiastic about extra-strong cocktails?] DOUBLE-PUMPED
- 79A [Burned out on philosophy?] DEEP-FRIED I don’t understand this one at all. To me, “fried” is drunk or maybe tired, neither of which is itself an emotional state.
I’d gotten many of those answers in my first solving session but missed the connecting element of emotions. And I’m just now realizing how timely the theme is for my own situation: I’m typically quite reserved, but thanks to my sleep deficit, this morning was near tears just talking to my husband about MTV, which launched when we were 22 and could barely afford basic cable.
Normally, I’d highlight some other answers that caught my eye, but I have lots of things I want to try to get done this afternoon. So here’s a cover of a Led Zeppelin song with a timely title:
Ben Zimmer’s Saturday Stumper — Eric’s Concession
Ben Zimmer’s Saturday Stumper — 1/17/26 (Click to Embiggen (But Why Bother?))
You win, Mr. Zimmer.
Newsday Saturday Stumper crossword solution, 1/18/26 – Zimmer
Note from Amy: I finished this one, used the “check puzzle” function to highlight two wrong letters to fix. I wasn’t online till late evening so I didn’t see that Eric’s grid was incomplete.
NYT: A good Saturday-level challenge, but it’s not going to be among my favorite puzzles.
MIX INS (if I’m parsing that correctly) crossing M’KAY (if I’m parsing that correctly)? No, thank you.
MMMDCCCLXXXVIII? I understand the basics of Roman numerals, but why is there a largest number that can be written in them (and why should I know what it is)? Why would the Romans invent a system that wouldn’t allow them to express a number larger than 3,888? And why does Wikipedia say the largest number that can be expressed in Roman numerals is 3,999: MMMCMXCIX? Inquiring minds want to know.
But I liked the clue for SIDEWALKS. And any puzzle that includes ARTSY FARTSY can’t be too bad!
Crossword blogs were probably a mistake, but crossword blog comment sections were *definitely* a mistake.
And yet you’re here, reading the blog (I assume) and commenting, but saying nothing about the topic at hand.
Maybe you’re right.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
There are things called overlines or vinculums that multiply numbers by 1000. So for the Roman numeral 4000, you would put a line over IV.
Also the clue was longest numeral, as in the most letters.
It depends on your definition of standard Roman numerals. This puzzle assumes that the subtractive form (as in CM) is not “standard.”
Larger numbers could be expressed by putting a bar over numbers, which multiplied their value by 1000. But again, that’s not “standard” per this puzzle.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
The clue says longest writeable i.e. the number that uses the most letters, not largest in value. There’s a difference between the two.
I came here wanting an explanation of 8D, and it seems pretty dubious. It also puts a strain on the rest of the grid.
MKAY makes me think of South Park — that teacher character whose name I can’t remember — rather than folksiness. And I don’t know whether MIXINS is to be read as mix-ins or mixin’s (like fixin’s, which was my first thought). MOLDS seems like a big stretch for ‘archetypes.’
MIXINS is “mix-ins.” There are a bunch of ice cream parlors that have employees mix the toppings into the ice cream rather than put them on top, often on a granite or marble slab with a big spatula-like utensil in each hand. Cold Stone Creamery and Marble Slab Creamery are two big chains that do that. There are videos on YouTube of employees doing it. From the Wikipedia rabbit hole, it looks like the concept was founded by Steve Herrell, who started both Steve’s Ice Cream and Herrell’s Ice Cream.
It’s fun to order the mix-ins and watch them do the mixing, but it looks like awfully tiring work for the employees.
As for the Roman numeral, I really liked it because it is one of the rare long crossword answers that is something you have to figure out rather than know-or-not-know. It was like a mini-puzzle within the puzzle.
I liked it; though I feel that yesterday’s and today’s puzzles could’ve swapped places if my times are any indication.
NYT: Is it me or is FAUX NAIF a bit green-painty?
That’s a fair question, but it’s an actual thing in the art world. Faux-naïf artists are trained, but they try to emulate untrained artists.
I had heard it, so that’s one vote against :-)
No, it’s a known term.
LAT….40 down……please explain
TIA
a 2-seated carriage drawn by horses harnessed one before the other
or
a group of two or more arranged or following one behind the other
oops! That’s from the m-w definition of tandem
Just wanted to remind everyone that this is the week for the Muller Music Meta puzzle. The deadline is tomorrow. I almost forgot about it.
Stumper: I assume a review is coming. Overall, not too bad! My husband started with a few, as usual, then passed it to me. I was pretty fuzzy this morning, so only got a few as well, then passed it back to him and he finished it, which is very unusual! Usually, he only gets a few more and passes it back to me.
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 4 stars
Yeah, I had an easier time with this one than most Stumpers. But had to wait until the SE to get a decent start.
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 4.5 stars
NYT: here i am, relieved to read that we could’ve switched yesterday’s and today’s puzzles for difficulty (yesterday’s Friday would’ve been a subpar Saturday time for me even if we did switch!) That said, I really enjoyed today’s, and i quite liked the 8D Roman numeral clue. Solving for time i didn’t stop to think through it, but it does give a great indication what the crossings should look like. Fun.
LAT: they’ve been on a roll with their Saturday puzzles of late. I do these through the WaPo app, and today’s was fun. The fill felt a little fresher than NYT, while still thoroughly in the Saturday level, especially with the new-to-me SE corner PALO SANTO.
Stumper: I think Ben Zimmer did a really fun job with this one. A very different grid style than recent stumpers with the triple-10 stacks in the NW/SE corners. Added a good punch to the stumper fare, and i think my time showed this was a more rewarding puzzle–a healthy under par time but felt more ‘fun cluing produced good intuition’ versus ‘easier than normal’. I did have to backtrack a bit, as I plonked in RECORD SCRATCHES over NEEDLE SCRATCHES. Honestly, I just really enjoyed this. Personal taste i guess.
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 4.5 stars
A lot of fun. I started with CLOSE instead of ALIEN on 8D. Fortunately 34A was only two words so I was able to figure it out reasonably quickly.
I didn’t find a cryptic clue in this one
I was hoping for a Stumper review. I’m stuck in the far NE and wanted to throw in the towel and check 1A, 11D and 12D. Anybody?
Stealspast, LSU, and unsheathe
LSU, aha. Thanks!
Thank you!
If that happens again, you can always find the puzzle on the brainsonly website and reveal the answers. (I use it to reveal my wrong letters when I get stuck.)
Me, too! I always like reading the reviewer’s opinions. I’m not sure what “DNCCTF” means, but it seems to translate to “isn’t happening.”
Google knows all — “DNCCTF” is apparently “did not come close to finishing.”
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 5 stars
NYT: Great puzzle with lots of stuff I had to suss out instead of proper nouns you either know or don’t know. My favorite type of Saturday
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
NYT: jose madre, I also had lots of fun with the roman numerals. You had to realize that it was the longest number in characters, not the biggest number.
Good grief.