Adam Wagner’s New York Times crossword, “Rainbow Connection”—Dave’s recap
NYT Crossword solution – Sunday, March 2, 2025
We have a tribute to Kermit the Frog here with the 7 colors of the rainbow appearing, as hinted at 113A: [Tidy way to color…] or INSIDE THE LINES of multiple down entries. The colors appear relatively symmetrically, and in the traditional ROYGBIV order:
BURG
ASEA
NODS
SOHO
IRAN
EASE
GNAT (“gat” is a firearm used by a “made man” I think)
PREGGO (Prego is a tomato sauce, or how the Italians say “you’re welcome”)
GALLEON
GYRATE
REEF
ALPE
PLOT
POSY
ROYAL WE (Nice find to have ROYALE and ROYAL WE here, the latter clued as [Pompous “I”])
MAGNET
GRAY (We have a lot of limestone here in New England, not sure if I’ve noticed it’s generally GRAY, but certainly not the first thing that comes to my mind when asked to name something gray)
MEETS
ALEE
GRINDS
ABBA
COLT
TRUE
TWINES
TAIPING
ORNATE
TEDX
ATIT
LOGO
SOON
CANT EVEN (it took me a while to see “can’t even” for [Is too overwhelmed emotion to speak] here)
SIRI
COON (an offensive entry notably not accepted in Spelling Bee!)
OLDE
PEER
ETDS
A nice touch is that the crossing words are valid crossword entries without the color letters (although almost any string of 3 letters, as many of these appear, can be clued in a modern crossword). That said, this was a very impressive construction. I almost expected an actual rainbow to appear when completing the grid, but I guess I’ll have to wait to find my pot o’ gold.
Not having children, TEETHER is a word I haven’t run across, but I think I’ve heard these pacifiers referred to as “binkies” when I’ve been around teething babies. Not sure if ARTS AND LETTERS (the symmetric partner of INSIDE THE LINES) is thematic, but if the colors are considered “art” then their “letters” are what appear inside the lines. Finally, as a connoisseur of beer, I think the term RYE ALE is more common than a RYE IPA, and it’s the hops that makes it an IPA, so I think hoppy should have been the modifier instead of malty in the clue.
Have a colorful rest of your weekend!
Priyanka Sethy and Rajiv Sethy’s Universal Sunday crossword, “Division of Labor”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases that feature circled letters (in two parts each) that spell out words related to Hercules’s 12 labors. The revealer is HERCULEAN TASK (116a, [Difficult job … such as each divided set of circled letters]).
Universal Sunday crossword solution · “Division of Labor” · Priyanka Sethy and Rajiv Sethy · 3.2.25
- 21a. [Judgment that isn’t unanimous] SPLIT DECISION.
- 29a. [South Asian city home to the Charminar] HYDERABAD, INDIA.
- 47a. [Wing alternative] CHICKEN DRUMSTICK.
- 65a. [Curved tubes in the kitchen] ELBOW MACARONI.
- 83a. [Guidelines that society accepts] ESTABLISHED RULES.
- 99a. [Newborns’ conduits] UMBILICAL CORDS.
Now, I took Latin as my language in high school, and for part of that class, we read up on Hercules’s 12 labors, but heck if I remember them. I knew there was a lion in one and mucking out some stables in another, but I couldn’t have told you any others. So I’m wondering just how much this theme actually helped any solvers.
It is cool, though, despite featuring only half of the labors, and only one keyword for each labor. If you want to read more about the labors, check this site. I wonder if we’ll get another puzzle with the other six labors at some point.
Good clean fill in the grid, though nothing especially long and sparkly. Highlights include KARAOKE, SNAP PEA, HAT TIP, and “IT’S ODD…” All I wanted for the answer to the clue [Mariah Carey Christmas song] was “All I Want For Christmas Is You” but it didn’t fit. I’d probably recognize “OH SANTA” if I pulled it up on Youtube and listened to it, but I’m choosing to demur as a defense against earworms.
Clues of note:
- 54a. [Number that all ZIP codes in Guam start with]. NINE. Our constructors highlight India with a theme answer as well as a Bollywood actor (Shah Rukh KHAN). Here they give a shoutout to my ancestral island. Many thanks!
- 109a. [“You’re in our group!”]. “ONE OF US.” These don’t feel quite equivalent. I have trouble hearing people saying the entry phrase as a standalone statement. Alternate clue: [1995 Joan Osborne hit].
- 109d. [Ref. that added “sglods” in 2024]. OED. New to me. Thanks to the Welsh for this lovely word meaning “chips” (i.e. French fries). “Fish” is pysgodyn, so “fish ‘n chips” is ‘sgod a sglod. There’s also this.
Nice puzzle. 3.5 stars.
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword, “Out of the Picture”—Matt’s recap
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword, “Out of the Picture” solution, 3/2/2025
A gentle meta this week from Evan where we’re prompted to find “a well-known film.” The theme isn’t tough to spot: theme clues describe putative movies created by removing single letters from existing movies:
- 24a [1991 black comedy about a British peer known for snitching?] BARON FINK (a T is missing)
- 26a [1998 comedy-drama about a pig belonging to president Harry?] THE TRUMAN SOW (an H)
- 47a [2012 superhero film about a medieval warrior on Noah’s ship when he stands up?] THE ARK KNIGHT RISES (a D)
- 60a [1996 black comedy about afternoon social events in Las Vegas?] STRIP TEAS (an E)
- 72a [2001 romantic war drama about the place where a nobleman docks his yacht?] EARL HARBOR (a P)
- 83a [2014 drama about stationary cooties?] STILL LICE (an A)
- 93a [2000 western about every small-minded stallion and mare on Earth?] ALL THE PETTY HORSES (an R)
- 107a [2013 heist comedy about an aquatic mammal’s paintings?] THE ART OF THE SEAL (a T)
- 119a [2000 action thriller about Comet and Cupid’s shapely legs?] REINDEER GAMS (an E)
- 125a [1976 neo-noir drama about a stream with a submerged cab?] TAXI RIVER (a D)
I increasingly find that themes like this rely heavily on the voice in the clues to bring you to the whimsical new thing. This was fun enough in that regard. I struggled a bit in not knowing all the films, but they at least all rang a bell with enough crossings.
About the meta: pretty simple extraction here to simply tally up the letters removed from the original theme fodder (literally, “Out of the Picture, per the puzzle’s title) and find they spell THE DEPARTED, certainly “a well-known film.” Hard for me to believe it’s nearly 20 years old now.
Other highlights: I applaud the new-to-me clue for OSLO (a metal band). For a bit now, lots of folks have been cluing OSLO to any number of vaguely-Scandinavian-by-their-names museums found in the city, and it’s gotten tiring // Similarly, [Zincite, e.g.] is a new-to-me ORE // I remember a particularly tense interview when REZA Aslan first published “Zealot.” I’ve been meaning to read it since, and still haven’t // I don’t know if I want to see more of maestros Seiji OZAWA, Mehta, Rubin, etc nowadays in my grids, but it’s a bit of nostalgia to when I was cutting my teeth as a solver when they do pop up // Heh, I typed that, felt I was forgetting someone, and turns out I was, as Georg SOLTI is also in the grid! // I’ve heard good things about “Heartstopper,” in the clue for ELLE, but the graphic novel didn’t grab me. I don’t know that I was aware before this clue that there was a screen adaptation // It’s nice when the number of boxes help me confirm a spelling, as here with LARAINE Newman
very nice NYT. that the shortened forms, as entered, are all valid is a very nice touch.
Agreed. The words that cross the colors all being valid entries is the elegance that makes this a great puzzle. Well done, Adam. I enjoyed it very much.
It wasn’t hard to find the theme but a delight to watch it play out and then also to discover that the fill is all words.
Maybe too many factoids, for me DILI and BOWSER with YEOH the hardest. In a bit of double talk, the Sunday print bio note says the setter loves trivia, oh, but this puzzle doesn’t have trivia, oh, but see if you can know these five answers. Still, a truly colorful Sunday.
Yes, my only quibble was that there was too many obscure people (82A, 111A, and 118A, for examples) and other stuff.
lol “obscure”
NYT: Loved this puzzle for so many reasons. The theme was highly innovative, and the clues were not all pushovers. Even though it took about 45 seconds to guess the theme correctly. (After first wondering if crossing a colored line meant the entire color name — like RED — was part of the entry, it dawned that this could not be feased for the other colors.)
The clues were often chewy, and in fact I felt stalled at several points in the solve, which is always a good sign. At the end, I could not think of the fruit juice brand (having tentatively entered a C in GAME cODES), and in desperation googled to find a list of fruits … which instantly settled the matter, but added about 4 minutes to my time, which ended up maybe 50% longer than usual. Which meant at least 50% more fun!
And I really liked the fact that minus the letter from the color, the remaining letters always spelled a word (though I don’t know about TRE or ABA, for two).
Did not know DILI. And I’m not sure I agree with the revealer’s claim that “seven words are hiding INSIDE THE LINES”. But what the hey.
I have to grudgingly admit that the brilliance of this puzzle — transcending the original low-tech crossword tools — could not have been accomplished without the use of higher tech than usual. Partly because just printing some lines in color isn’t so very high tech.
OK, ABA is American Bar Assn.)
(
NYT: Yet again I spend a ridiculous amount of time hunting for a mistake because the online interface did not accept the way I did the solve: with rebus squares using the color letters. Ridiculous.
Agreed.
I’d say that multiple letters in a square isn’t true to the theme. The hidden letters are found inside the lines, not to one side
I agree with PJ Ward that a rebus is not what this puzzle’s theme is telling the solver.
Or maybe I just lucked out by believing that since the nth letter of the color name is already in the grid via the color, I don’t need to write it.
Funny, because I put them in rebus to help with my solving (in fact, at first I thought it was a rebus puzzle, and after seeing R E D spelled on 3D, I realized the theme). So I first put in O_ R_ A_ N_ G_ E_, etc. in for the downs to help, but then erased the colors leaving the valid acrosses; I really liked that. I was hoping that maybe there would be an animation with the color words blinking in and out, but oh well :-) And it is colors INSIDE THE LINES, so the rebus has to go. Nice Sunday puzzle!
Willie Nelson nailed this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS23wm99YY4&ab_channel=BubblesBubbles
Thanks for the writeup Dave! Well spotted that ARTS AND LETTERS was very much intentional ☺️.
And you make a really interesting point about 3-letter-words — that almost any 3 letter sequence could be clued. I was super curious how true that is, so I checked XWI. Of the 26*26*26 = 17,576 possible 3 letter permutations, the NYT has run 2,736 in the modern era. So about 15.5% of the total — which is honestly way lower than I expected! Either way, I tried my best to minimize thematic threes but this grid had other plans!
That count surprises me too, Adam. As yet another reminder how old I am, this thread reminded me of those old rotary dial phone trigrams that appeared under the digits. It was an ambitious and well-executed theme!
Great Sunday puzzle—a lot of fun! My wife, who does puzzles off and on, got the theme and also noted that the crosses were still valid. Really nicely done.
NYT: This puzzle doesn’t spark joy for me.
The first thing is why the heck names like PAXTON and SIEGEL are next to theme entries. I know some people will know them, but you can’t put NATICK in just because Bostonians know it, okay?
The second thing is the obscene amount of 3 letter entries. More than thirty of them. Many of them are crosswordese. Last Sunday Evan Birnholz also had a lot of 3 letter entries but at least most of them are natural. Today we have SHO and GAT.
Hi, this is a kind request not to invoke my name to slam someone else’s puzzle that I enjoyed solving myself, thanks.
(And those 3’s you’ve mentioned are actually 4’s, or at least they serve as both.)
I’m sad I tried my hand at The NYT crossword for the first time and to find out all the missing letters and misspelling were on purpose. I won’t play again.
In solving on an iPad, the colors did not show. Surely I am not alone?
In your app, click the gear icon at the top right. If Show Overlays is toggled on, you will see the colored lines. If it’s off, you won’t.
That setting applies to all kinds of graphic flourishes in the puzzle, including any post-solving animations like the Zamboni in John Lieb’s puzzle in December. I frankly don’t know why there’s even an option to turn them off.
I use the ipad and I was today years old when I learned you could turn that off… that would just make this puzzle impossible.
NYT: Tedious, boring, and not at all entertaining.
agree wholeheartedly!
About the stumper….. I know psa meaning but what is the meaning here for naacp? thanks
Does National Association for the Advancement of Colored People make sense?
Yes.
Yesterday’s puzzle and it should probably be posted there. However, my assumption was “public service announcement” on the theory that the NAACP was the first to run one, but I didn’t look it up.
Had time to check and, no, they weren’t the first, but they run them so “NAACP creation” is simply that they create them.
Ok thanks for that. I hadn’t made myself clear I guess. I knew what NAACP meant and what psa meant. ( as in public service announcement) I just didn’t get why one had to do with the other. I just thought psa meant something different in this instance. So again thanks for your time 👋
No problem! I got curious myself wondering if they were the first. :)
NYT: An impressive feat of construction that I didn’t find to be much fun to solve. As someone has written elsewhere, a puzzle for constructors, not solvers. Too much 3-letter fill for a grid this size, and too many names for my liking.
I’ll echo what Evan said—most of the 3 letter is actually 4-letter fill with the theme, yes?
NYT: My annoyance with the online app aside, I liked the puzzle fine. However, I still find the genre of gimmick where adding or removing letters make “valid [but unclued] crossword entries” to be not very satisfying when those entries are things like ATT, ESE, or SHO. Sure, if you’ve done a million puzzles you immediately recognize those letter strings as “valid,” but they’re not words. If you *haven’t* done a million puzzles, ATT doesn’t seem like anything and there’s no clue to tell you it’s… whatever it is. A football stat, I guess? So, this kind of puzzle comes off as a tad cliquish.
WaPo – Laughed out loud when I entered “REINDEER GAMS”