LAT 2:48 (Stella) 
[3.29 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
Newsday 28:31 (pannonica) [3.44 avg; 9 ratings] rate it
NYT 7:something (Amy) [3.71 avg; 17 ratings] rate it
Universal tk (Matthew) 
[3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Matthew) 
[2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
WSJ 13:53 (Eric) [3.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
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Adrian Johnson & Ryan McCarty’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 1/24/26 – no. 0124
How do you like the wide open top and bottom? Nice!
I wonder if the NYT knows that after a solver closes the pop-up with their solving time, sometimes the timer keeps going. Mine stopped at 17:50, which was, y’know, a good 10 minutes off. That should be fixed. Anyone else see this?
Fave fill: SENIOR CENTERS, GENDER EUPHORIA, SECURITY BLANKET, PAPER-THIN, AVENGERS: ENDGAME, HALLOWEEN PARTY, SECTIONAL sofa, “END RANT,” SHOWBOATS, rock fans’ KISS ARMY. I was surprised my solution was taken because ENDRANT was looking so alien, but now I see that 2D. [Means of closing up a vent] refers to a venting of disgruntlement rather than sealing a physical vent. You might key in your rant somewhere and at the end of it, type /end rant to signal that you’re done.
Least favorite fill: ONLINE CASINOS, because they’re always rigged to have the house come out ahead and too many people get hooked and bankrupt themselves with betting apps, online gambling, etc. Me, I don’t even buy lottery tickets because I’ll be miffed when my randomly selected numbers aren’t the randomly selected winning numbers. /end rant
Three threes:
- 23A. [Horn-heavy genre], SKA. I’m mad that I didn’t get this without crossings because crossworder and sax player Tony Orbach played in the ska band Urban Blight for decades. Watch them play here.
- 13D. [One breaking a 108-year drought in 2016], CUB. The team will fete the 2016 squad this summer for the 10th anniversary. They’re putting up a monument honoring all three World Series championship teams: 1907, 1908, and 2016. It makes the drought more glaring, no?
- 41A. [Approx. 25% of it consists of national forests], OREgon. I didn’t know that.
Rafael Musa & Geoffrey Schorkopf’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 1/24/26 by Rafael Musa & Geoffrey Schorkopf
I’m not mad at this puzzle for being slightly too easy, because it is packed with the good ish, both entries and clues:
- 28A [“Sorry, did I overshare?”] is TMI, which I think might be the first time I’ve seen TMI clued as a question even though I hear it used as such in speech plenty.
- 33A [Rational process?] is MEAL PREP. Using “rational” as a way to refer to “rations of food” is a biiiit of a stretch even with the question mark IMO, but I like the entry enough that it’s in my “yay” column anyway.
- 38A [They may trick or treat?] is a straight-up great clue for PLACEBOS.
- 45A [Fill a flat?] is SUBLET. I wasn’t fooled into thinking this clue was about tires, but I did think it was about shoes, so I guess I was still fooled! Which is good, on Saturday.
- 52A [First U.S. president to own a car] is TAFT. I always enjoy learning something new from a puzzle without having to Google it after solving.
- 8D [Comment after a bad joke] is I’LL SEE MYSELF OUT, which is a really fun 15.
- 12D [“That would break the internet!”] is BIG IF TRUE, another great entry.
- 30D [Solid foods for a baby, e.g.] is MILESTONE, which was highly evocative of my 8-month-old grandniece eating her sweet potatoes; therefore, A+ from me. She’s a cute little stinker!
- 36D [Focus of the 2024 miniseries “Dirty Pop”] is BOY BANDS. Given that I make puzzles for Billboard and I’m fairly certain I have referenced this docuseries in a clue at least once, I’m embarrassed at how long it took me to get this one. Anyway, a gal loves her BOY BANDS, especially Boyz II Men because I’m from Philadelphia.
I’ll even forgive the meh plural DEERES because I’m such a fan of the rest.
David P Williams’ Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up
Newsday • 1/24/26 • Saturday Stumper • Williams • solution • 20260124
Whuf, this was a tough one! Barely made any dents at first, but managed some toeholds and persevered thence. There were a few correct answers I put in and took out more than once, and a few incorrect ones that lingered too long.
The upper left corner was the very last section to fall, principally because I stuck with SILO at 2-down [Frequent launching locale] for a very long while. Once I relinquished that notion, the rest (slowly) fell and when I returned I could see that the needed answer was EXPO.
On the other hand, I correctly had 4-down [Terra Chips variety] TARO since the start. 13a [Person going native?] EXPAT vexed me for so long; on the one hand, I think the question mark is too misleading, but I can see how an unadorned version would be equally if not more obscure—perhaps it’s just a bad clue? Over at 1-down, I was in a rut, believing that [Operatic soprano from Charleston] was a performer rather than a role (BESS, from Porgy and Bess). Lastly, 16a [Seasonal flier] had me in all sorts of conniptions. Once I got the –PASS part, I changed my reasoning from airlines and even reindeer to paper fliers, as if a SKI PASS or a EURAIL PASS were literally a sheet of paper. Even after the correct entry SPIRAL PASS was in place courtesy crossings, it took some moments before I realized it was about American football, which is indeed seasonal. Very oblique clue, with an iffy answer; isn’t a little greenpainty when the terms tossed around, to my knowledge, are more like PERFECT SPIRAL and TIGHT SPIRAL?
- 6a [Yet to be resolved] TIED, not TORN.
- 10a [Cold cut?] ICE. How does this work? Also, abolish ICE.
- 14a [All of Vatican City] OMNI. Understanding this clue and filling in the right answer was like flipping a switch. 22a [Forum crowd] TRE.
- 15a [Sweat spot] BROW, not BEAD, which I had for quite some time.
- 18a [Lift on wheels] RIDE. “Can I get a lift?” “Can I get a ride?”
- 20a [Abundance, in a phrase] SPADES. Took far too long to see this one.
- 23a [Mini-arsenal of a sort] QUIVER. Another early get, and the epicenter of my solving pattern.
- 24a [Quality time and physical touch, per Psychology Today] LOVE LANGUAGES. At one point, I figured this ended with URGES. But then, 32d [Force of nature] URGE.
- 30a [Results of good tipping?] LEADS. Sure, but tough.
- 31a [Fox __ ] CUB. A nigh-useless clue.
- 34a [Resistance fighter] LUBE, not LUKE. And I considered some sort of lubricant first!
- 35a [Intro of the earliest times] SINCE.
- 36a [La __ patrie (France, to the French] MÈRE. If I’d known this answer in particular, I feel my solve would have been at least several minutes faster, perhaps even as much as five!
- 37a [Point of a tool] USE. Another entry where I hokey-pokeyed a lot.
- 38a [Visionary strategy?] LASIK. Not a great clue, but I should have, ha-ha, seen the answer far sooner, especially after being confident about –SIK via crossings.
- 39a [Drum or dance] CONGA.
- 40a [Defendant in double jeopardy] COUNTERFEITER. Is it “double” because counterfeit items are duplicates? If so, that clue needs a question mark.
- 43a [Broken records, often] SHARDS. 57a [Circles kept in squares] LPS. 1a [World records] BESTS.
- 51a [Word from Old English for “graze”] ETCH. 12d [Dairy products] EWES; cynical but true.
- 54a [Polar opposites of penguins] AUKS. Another early get, although this one was not especially helpful in expanding my solve.
- 59a [Golden yellow, creamy, savory…] YOLKY. <takes a cautious step back>
- 3d [Web design] SPIN. <squints>
- 6d [Annual rank-and-file rituals] TOP TEN LISTS. Easy once I had the LISTS part, mostly via crossings.
- 8d [Limits of navigation] ENS. The letters bookend the word.
- 10d [Emulating peacock feathers] IRIDESCENT. First attempt was mirroring the -ING suffix, but that didn’t work. Some time later I’d narrowed it down to OPALESCENT and IRIDESCENT, and needed to work the crossings to determine the correct one.
- 11d [C student at work] CODER. Is “C” this C? I think most people work with it using something like Microsoft Visual C++
- 15a [Face with fortitude] BRAVE. This one went in and out and in. 33d [Hold up] BEAR.
- 21d [Small dogs in small blankets] PIGS. Another early get.
- 23d [Erstwhile patent medicine] QUACK REMEDY. Got the first part pretty early on, should have gotten the other bit sooner.
- 24d [Standout] LULU, not LONE.
- 25d [Well-borne thing that becomes light, per Ovid] ONUS. This entry was pivotal to the solve. With OMNI and TRE, that’s quite a lot of Latin.
- 26d [Gen Z-created atmospheric gauges] VIBE CHECKS. Weird phrasing in the clue.
- 28d [Wishful thinking advocate] GENIE. Fun clue, but maybe I think that because I seized on it rather easily.
- 35d [Beachfront construction] SAND DUNE. “Construction” used loosely. Built this one up from the bottom, with the DUNE part preceding SAND by quite some time.
- 36d [Short self-identification] MOI. More hokey-pokeying on my part.
- 38d [Fly or other “fake food”] LURE. Completely eluded my understanding until I had the entire entry filled.
- 48d [Anagram of TIMBERLAKE minus TAKE MR] BIEL. Was just about to acknowledge this as being technically correct but also with a big “why?” Then I had a notion, which was confirmed: Justin Timberlake is married to Jessica Biel. Is this common knowledge? I can see how introducing this factette into the clue would make it ridiculously unwieldy, but maybe it would have been better to just play the whole thing straight.
- 49d [Keel over] LEEK. Your cryptic-style clue, a reversal.
- 50a [Revolutionary movement] EDDY. To go with SPIN and SPIRAL PASS.
Desirée Penner & Jeff Sinnock’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “A Chorus Line” — Eric’s Review
Desirée Penner & Jeff Sinnock’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “A Chorus Line” — 1/24/26 (Click to Embiggen)
Pop song titles and snippets of pop song refrains get punny clues as “lines” that may or may not be spoken dialogue:
- 23A [Bottom line? (Sir Mix-a-Lot)] BABY GOT BACK
- 34A [Punchline? (Chumbawamba)] I GET KNOCKED DOWN This was the first theme answer I tried to complete, and I was slowed by my unfamiliarity with the band. I perpetually conflate them with The Lion King character Pumbaa. (OK, the names aren’t that close. But in my memory, Simba’s warthog friend’s name has a few more syllables.)
- 49A [Fault line? (Taylor Swift)] I’M THE PROBLEM “Anti-Hero” is one of two Taylor Swift songs that I know.
- 51A [Guideline? (Uncle Kracker)] FOLLOW ME I don’t recognize that stage name.
- 62A [Dateline? (The Beatles)] I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND
- 80A [Hotline? (Bruce Springsteen)] I’M ON FIRE
- 82A [Lifeline? (Gloria Gaynor)] I WILL SURVIVE I came of age during the disco era and didn’t like that music much. But this one ain’t bad.
- 94A [Help line? (The Police)] SENDING OUT AN SOS We saw The Police on their first US tour. They did “Roxanne” as a second encore, despite having previously played it, because they’d run out of songs that all three members knew.
- 108A [Streamline? (Justin Timberlake)] CRY ME A RIVER I didn’t really think that Timberlake had recorded the standard by that name (which was written by Arthur Hamilton and made famous by Julie London), but a quick check verified that Timberlake’s song is a different one.
I enjoyed this theme, but I’m a big fan of popular music (or at least unpopular popular music). I knew all the titles except the Chumbawamba, the Uncle Kracker and the Timberlake, which probably helped. The songs come from many decades worth of pop music, which I like. I also like that most of the “lines” are something other that “words a person might say.”
Other stuff:
- 25A [“I before E…” and “Every good boy does fine,” e.g.] MNEMONICS Why do people insist on teaching a spelling rule that has so many exceptions? It’s just weird.
- 38A [Prioritizes for treatment] TRIAGES I was in the local ER a few weeks ago following a minor skiing mishap (I drove 30 miles from the resort to my house and my husband drove me to the hospital). Having seen my share of ERs in urban hospitals, I much prefer the calmer atmosphere of a small-town ER. On the other hand, I’m glad I was still in Austin when I needed emergency heart surgery.
- 41A [“Riverdale” star KJ] APA I’ve never seen that show.
- 57A [Name on “The Big Lebowski” posters] COEN Every time I rewatch that movie, I marvel that I was underwhelmed by it the first time I saw it. It’s every bit as funny as the preceding Coen brothers movie, Fargo.
- 88A [Language akin to Comanche] ERIE Not CREE. I should know better.
- 4D [Raisman with three Olympic gold medals] ALY Anyone got a useful mnemonic for remembering this gymnast’s name?
- 73D [Be flirty with] HIT ON My dictionary supports my understanding of the answer as a bit more sinister than “flirting”: “[to] make sexual advances toward someone.”
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2 stars
NYT: 2 stars with yeeted, 4 stars without yeeted. /end rant.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2 stars
my thoughts exactly, could almost go 1.5/4.5. I’ve had enough
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2.5 stars
+1 for both! Enough is enough. Great puzzle totally ruined with 2 terrible entries. I’m rating 2.5, with one star subtracted for each.
I found the NYT much harder than usual, and didn’t care for it at all. METAT is a terrible way to start, and ENDRANT I accepted with the greatest reluctance. I actually threw in YEETED from the T because I’ve seen it before and I know constructors like to be trendy (or a little behind the trend, more like).
I don’t know what GENDEREUPHORIA might be, and I don’t care to find out. The clue for DEPLORES seems wrong: You deplore what someone else did, you regret something you did yourself. Plural TAROS is bad.
The SE corner almost defeated me. I don’t follow Avengers movies, eventually guessed ARMY after KISS and ONLINECASINOS. HALLOWEENNIGHT before PARTY. WOWS before MOWS. Finally pieced it together, with no great feeling of satisfaction.
+1 on MET AT (especially at 1-A). +1 on DEPLORES. +1 on plural TAROS. +1 on what was supposed to come after KISS (the KISS part came easy).
Gender euphoria: Imagine you always felt yourself to be male, but your parents raised you as a girl. Then you finally were able to get a boy haircut and clothing. Mightn’t you feel euphoric that your outside finally matched your inside>
David L you convinced me. I really like hard themeless puzzles, but not enough to make up for all the things you mention.
Personally, I deplore the fact that M-W, unlike the OED, simply invents examples of usage, rather than quoting published works by others. As as result, it’s impossible to judge the tone and context of their claimed usages. The illustrations they give of ‘deplore’ meaning ‘strongly regret’ do not strike me as natural or commonplace.
That’s because the M-W would need to be the size of the OED. As the OED shows, regret is the oldest sense (which is why it’s listed first). Citations start with 1567 and include Spenser and Tennyson.
I guess I enjoy crosswords in part because I *will* learn things sometimes too, and that’s part of the fun. I guess some people will go into crosswords with an aversion to learning or coming across anything new to them, but that just isn’t where I’m at.
I’d invite everyone downrating the puzzle by several stars based on one shorter entry to look at the bigger picture. It is really hard to pull off the 13/14/15 stack immediately above YEETED. Here, the constructors do it with three colorful, interesting entries without a whiff of gunk (and with only one proper name) in the 15 crossing entries. The section is an amazing feat of construction.
I understand that YEET and its variants aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, even if I kinda like them. But I promise you that you will find crosswords more fun if you can find it in yourself to allow constructors a few entries that aren’t your personal favorites in situations like this where they are needed to hold together amazing sections.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Solid NYT except PUTH / OCHS crossing :(
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 5 stars
Possibly the stumpiest Stumper I’ve solved. Not unfair, just loaded with very subtle clues. Some I saw through quickly – 11D, 35D, and 38A. Some I saw parts of like 16A, 23D, and 26D. Most required a lot of crossings before the penny dropped
I didn’t find the clue at 31A to be useless. The first two words to come to mind were HUNT and GLOVE. Not much help there. When I got 10D I was close. Then 39A came to me and CUB made sense. It really helped with URGE and BEAR. But that’s just me. What else could it have been? Maybe DEN?
LAT: ANAND crossing RABAT and IRENA in the upper left felt a bit naticky to me – managed to guess correctly
NYT 5D [Four minus one] = TREY ??
Yes, I know that trey means three, but in some pretty specific contexts. I can’t think of any where you’d subtract one from four and arrive at trey. Strange clue.
I agree. There was a lot of fun cluing in this puzzle, but that clue for TREY fell flat for me. I started with TRIO, which I thought worked pretty well. The contexts in which I’m familiar with “TREY” are basketball (three-point shot) and card games – “Four minus one” doesn’t really work for either of those.
I finally excused this clue by remembering that “trey” is slang for a three in card games. So, one less than a four card is a trey. Still sort of ugly, but at least has some logic.
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 2.5 stars
Stumper: Useless clues are one thing (e,g,, FOX ___), but I can look past obtuse cluing if I’ve at least heard of the thing being referenced. There were too many “huh?” moments even after filling in the answers.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
I enjoyed today’s puzzle — 4 stars from me. But I’m commenting on a general matter. I’ve long been curious about the attention (obsession?) with those who track their solving time. I’m guessing that many like me have been solving puzzles long before they were online. Did you all use a stopwatch on your solving then? And perhaps call friends with that info? Or did the capability of the technology just create a new obsession? I’m well that aware timing is optional and I never have (and TBH, don’t see the point), but curious at those who do and how their experience compares to the before times. Do you look back and wished you had timed, say, that Thursday puzzle in 1999?
A number of us have attended crossword tournaments (ACPT has been running since 1978), where solving time and accuracy are both key. And some of us just like to challenge ourselves, track our improvement or see if we’re slowing down.
My husband is perennially training for the next marathon. He times every run and tracks his pace, regardless of the fact that a training run isn’t a race. I think wanting to monitor one’s performance is innate to many of us (and irrelevant to many others).
Amy, I’ve gone back to completed Times puzzles and seen inflated times. In a separate glitch, the other day I finished the puzzle and when I went back to look at it, it was blank. Had to fill it in again. This was a tough puzzle for me, took me 30:12 and initially I didn’t think I was going to be able to complete it.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Every time this has happened to me, the correct time still shows on my stats page and also the data scraped by xwstats. So I think it is a glitch on the page rather than the recorded data.
There is a countervailing permanent glitch I’ve seen, which is that puzzles that one downloads and then starts offline or starts online and finishes offline (or once when my internet glitched badly mid-solve) can have artificially low times. The NYT thinks my Sunday record is 3:55, whereas the truth is nearly triple that!
GT, I’m 74 years old and have been doing the puzzle since my early 20’s. When I would do it in the newspaper on my lunch break at work I usually checked the time to see how long it took. I always was pleased when I could do the Monday puzzle in less than five minutes. My times will never match up to those of the solvers on the board, but if I get close I feel good. My time today really disappointed me. Too many things I was unfamiliar with as well as the misdirections.
I think most people work with [C] using something like Microsoft Visual C++
pannonica,
Yes, C++ is derived from C. And yes, Visual C++ is used for developing C++ programs in Windows. But most old-school C coding has nothing to do with C++, Microsoft or Windows. Some might say that C coders are “real” programmers, who wouldn’t be caught dead near Visual C++.
You’re correct!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
I thought this grid was excellent. Challenging without being unfair, lots of good clues and entries.
Imagine being so upset with the use of a contemporary slang word that you take 2 or 3 stars off a rating. Was this grid not GROOVY enough for you? Or TUBULAR? Or TIGHT? Or SKIBIDI? Slang is changing all the time. Sorry if you can’t or won’t keep up.
My dissatisfaction goes deeper than taking off two stars for one word. I would be surprised to see yeeted used anywhere else in the NYT. The NYT sets a standard for journalism in many regards, crosswords included. It saddens and frustrates me to see that standard eroded. I admire and am in awe of the innovations that Will has brought to the NYT crossword. In that regard, I happily keep up. For me, however, yeeted is on the wrong side of the boundary line between cleverness and detritus. The fact that the ratings for almost every puzzle span the entire range from one star to five stars demonstrates that we all have very different boundary lines. I find this to be the most valuable asset of this website. The opportunity to see and consider the other viewpoints.
That is an interesting perspective. Personally I think a big part of the Crossword’s appeal is how it plays and interacts with the language, and how it keeps up (or tries to keep up) with how it changes over time. I think YEETED is a wonderfully descriptive word, totally separate from a word like flung or heaved or tossed… and using it in a Saturday is fair game.
All that said, if I ever see SIXSEVEN in a grid I will absolutely lose it.
> …how it keeps up (or tries to keep up) with how it changes over time.
Very well reasoned point. Thank you.
> …if I ever see SIXSEVEN in a grid…
Agreed! 8^)
Stumper: Pannonica is, as usual, totally on target. I did real double-takes on 16A, etc. I’m glad she figured out the rationale behind 48D because I was lost. For the most part, I don’t follow who marries who, etc. Martin (above) is on target for 11D — the original C programming language is meant. I have no doubt that it is still used — heck, COBOL is sill used.
Very hard NYT. I didn’t know YEETED or Wood, and so the crossing could have used ELLA or ELLE easily. END RANT crossing ANA (or potentially Ina or Una) was similar, I share the reluctance to use DEPLORE about oneself, and I had pretty much the whole E/NE section blank without an ending to AVENGERS, HALLOWEEN, or ONLINE, as well as the W in the lead-in to STOP.
Puzzle: Newsday; Rating: 4 stars
Man, I love Pannonica’s write ups. Today I needed a lot of help understanding some of the clues/answers. And I always chuckle when she “squints” or “takes a cautious step back”.
You’re very kind, thank you.
NYT: Can someone explain “Called on one’s birthday?” NÉE to me?
Otherwise, I really enjoyed the puzzle! I’m quite alright seeing slang like YEETED in the NYT; it keeps it from feeling entirely stuck in the past.
“Jane Doe, née Smith” means that Doe was called Smith on the day she was born.
“NEE” is often used to indicate a woman’s family name before she marries (what she was called on her birthday).
More specifically, not just any random birthday, but her actual “birth day”.
Thanks—I think that’s what I was missing. I understand what NÉE means, but the connection to birthday was missing for me.
Puzzle: LAT; Rating: 4 stars
LAT: Rational is also a brand of professional ovens with precise temperature control. So it might well be used as part of MEAL PREP in a restaurant, hence “Rational process?”
Puzzle: LAT; Rating: 2 stars
Once again the editor(s) try to be too cute or vague w/ their editing. 46A needs a qualifier: “The ‘A’ of NATO” and the answer is “Alfa”.
Deducting one star for this editing mistake.