LAT untimed (pannonica) 
[2.17 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
NYT 5:19 (Amy) 
[3.61 avg; 14 ratings] rate it
Universal 4:21 (Jim P) 
[2.83 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today tk (Emily) rate it
James McCarron’s New York Times crossword — Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 12/5/25 – no. 1205
Lots of fresh and fun fill in this one. Particularly the longest entries, which unlocked a couple letters in most of the Down answers and allowed me to proceed through the puzzle without having to abandon a section and come back to later.
Fave fill: SEASON TICKETS, “DON’T POKE THE BEAR,” ATTACK AD, “TAKE THAT!,” “HERE GOES NOTHING,” and “I was TODAY YEARS OLD when I learned where much of Brokeback Mountain was filmed.”—51A. [Age at which you just learned something you should have realized before, facetiously]. If you aren’t chronically online, you might not be familiar with that last usage—it just means “I learned X for the first time just now.” (The movie was filmed in ALBERTA! Who knew?) Also liked “CAN IT BE?,” not sure I care for ANKLE TAT but maybe that’s fully in-the-language to some of you.
Five more things:
- 1A. [Home to Kotoka International Airport], GHANA. I actually know someone who was just in Ghana a few weeks ago for a Scrabble tournament! Crossworder Jason Keller, attending the WESPA (World English-Language Scrabble Players’ Association) championship. If only I’d read his Facebook posts more attentively … I wouldn’t have left 1a blank for as long as I did. Was guessing it was a Japanese airport.
- 26A. [Spot likely to smear], ATTACK AD. Political commercial, not a stain on fabric.
- 53A. [1944 Pacific battle site], LEYTE. East of the Phillipine island of Luzon. Here’s the Wiki if you want to read up on this massive naval battle. My in-laws were children on Luzon at the time.
- 1D. [What clones share], GENE SET. Not entirely sure I’ve seen the term GENE SET. Is this a term people who don’t work in genome research would ever encounter?
- 28D. [Fancy], LIKE. Fancy as a verb, not an adjective. I tried LUXE first.
- 31D. [Mohamed ___, Egyptian soccer star], SALAH. He plays for Liverpool, my husband’s preferred English Premier League team. Dude wears his hair wild and plays so well.
Four stars from me.
CJ Tan’s Universal crossword, “You Sure About That?”—Jim P’s review
Theme answers were originally familiar phrases featuring the letters OR, but those two letters have been changed to IT, creating crossword wackiness. The revealer is “OR IS IT?” (74a, [Doubt-raising question, and a hint to the transformation applied to each starred clue’s answer]).
Universal crossword solution · “You Sure About That?” · CJ Tan · Fri., 12.5.25
- 16a. [*Drop-in from Clark Kent’s alter ego?] SUPER VISIT. Supervisor.
- 29a. [*Dracula’s words of hesitation about his next meal?] “AM I BITING YOU?” “Am I boring you?”
- 50a. [*Thieves who steal “Shark Tank” proposals?] PITCH PIRATES. Porch pirates.
- 65a. [*Comment after discovering a tiny bug on your pug?] “THAT’S A MITE.” “That’s amore.”
I had no clue where these phrases were coming from during the solve, so I mostly ignored the theme until I reached the revealer. Thus, I enjoyed my aha moment post-solve as each phrase became clear. Solid theme answers with a touch of humor. It made me nostalgic for the “lost mainframe game” FisK which I played as a kid in the early 80s (spoiler: the title of the game is a hint to breaking a code in the game).
I love the stacks of long Downs in the NE/SW corners: CHAIR YOGA / “DO NOT OPEN” and INSIDE OUT / CAT TREATS. Also good: MCCAFE, AUSTRIA, “BEER ME.”
Clues of note:
- 28a. [Bump on a toad]. WART. Yeah, well, that’s not exactly true is it? The bumps on toads are actually glands, not warts. And no, touching a toad does not give you warts.
- 10d. [Meditative exercise done while sitting]. CHAIR YOGA. The older I get, the more that old TV show Sit and Be Fit makes sense to me.
- 11d. [Warning on a door]. DO NOT OPEN. Given the current month, this seems like it should have a Christmasy clue. But it does bring to mind a certain meme.
Nice puzzle. 3.5 stars.
Brian Callahan and Taylor Johnson’s Los Angeles Times crossword — pannonica’s précis
LAT • 12/5/25 • Fri • Callahan, Johnson • solution • 20251205
I actually needed the revealer in order to complete the theme answer at 17-across, and by extension the top center section of the grid.
- 59aR [Like some expenses, and how the answers to the starred clues are made?] OUT-OF-POCKET. The word pocket is used as a letter bank for the whimsical theme answer phrases.
- 17a. [*Odist with a passion for the culinary arts?] COOKTOP POET.
- 24a. [*Eight-member band from Seoul, perhaps?] K-POP OCTET.
- 37a. [*Social media community obsessed with quick kisses?] PECK-TOK, playing on the -tok neosuffix.
- 48a. [*Beverage sold at a Florida theme park?] EPCOT COKE.
- 10d [Word with tip or take] HOT, not OFF. 29d [Sent along (to)] PASSED OFF; passed on sounds more natural to me, although I guess some people use that as a euphemism for dying.
- 11d [Driving challenges?] SAND TRAPS (golf). 13d [Driving challenges?] ROAD TESTS (automobiles).
- 52d [Brand of rolled tortilla chips] TAKIS. Never heard of it.
- 59d [Dory propeller] OAR (boats). 60d [Dory propeller] FIN (fish).
- 42a [Catch] HEAR. 51a [Catch] HITCH.
- 44a [Star associated with Venus] SERENA. Tennis sisters, not constellations.
- 64a [Get too much sun] FRY. Seems as if I’ve been seeing this formulation more than usual in recent crosswords.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
I sped through James’s debut Friday back in July, but this time the cluing wasn’t nearly as easy. Had to work a bit for this one, which I appreciated. And some fantastic long entries. TODAYYEARSOLD is one of my favorite entries of the year.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4 stars
Nice puzzle.
Good NYT except for one thing: GENESET. I’d never heard of this expression, and on looking it up the connection to clones is slim at best. A gene set, as I understand it, is a collection of genes that frequently show up in together in different genomes, indicating some shared characteristic. So it’s only tangentially related to the fact that clones have identical genomes from A to Z.
It’s an abstruse concept, and a hard one to clue in a reasonably simple way. I would have made a big effort to get it out of the grid.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
I came here to say exactly what you said. I had entered GENOMES instead. The clue is totally wrong for GENE SET (or vice versa).
I often wished the NYT had better ways to check on scientific fill or clues. Now there is AI. Please ask it for definitions!
Even if that clue is wrong, I think one surefire way to get even less accurate clues would be to rely on AI for definitions.
Huda holds the title of Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan Neuroscience Institute. She has a CV that contains 730 scholarly activities and 93 grants. I’ll listen to her
You should still not be relying on AI for information:
“Today’s A.I. bots are based on complex mathematical systems that learn their skills by analyzing enormous amounts of digital data. They do not — and cannot — decide what is true and what is false. Sometimes, they just make stuff up, a phenomenon some A.I. researchers call hallucinations. On one test, the hallucination rates of newer A.I. systems were as high as 79 percent.”
I completely agree Evan that AI should not be a sole source of information. But I think AI is an additional way to check information, and in the right hands, it’s possible to drill more deeply than what appears to be more superficial google searches for some of the scientific clues. So, important caution, but more tools are somehow needed.
I don’t argue that there are ways to discover the technical meaning of “gene set,” with or without AI. I still think the issue is whether that meaning is appropriate for even a Friday crossword.
I don’t know what the constructor may have submitted for a clue, but I wouldn’t be surprised if cluing it in simple English as a synonym for genome wasn’t an intentional attempt to make the entry more accessible. I really don’t think this is a case of not knowing the difference. I do know that at least one test solver who knows what “gene set” means took it as an editorial decision to avoid a technical obscurity. Would a more accurate clue make for a better solve for most people? That’s the debate.
I was sure that GENOMES was a correct early foothold. When I sorted it out, I pondered whether the clue should be a technically accurate reference to gene set enrichment analysis, but decided that would be too obscure. I figure that “gene set” was a reasonable colloquial synonym for genome, even though it’s not used formally. I never thought it was worth rejecting the puzzle over. It made for a fun knothole in the solve for me.
I don’t agree. You say that ‘gene set’ could be a ‘reasonable colloquial synonym for genome,’ but it just isn’t. It’s a fairly recent technical term that hasn’t found its way into general language. It should have been avoided altogether, IMO.
From the American Society of Human Genetics: “Each has a specific set of genes that is the same from person to person.”
This is simple English, being used for a non-technical tutorial. I don’t understand why you would argue this, or a thousand similar citations, isn’t reasonable and understandable to a wide audience.
I don’t have the scientific acumen to judge GENESET – it is certainly unfamiliar to me. “Genome” occurred to me, but when I first read the clue, I was really expecting it to be DNA-something, or may be “same DNA.” Fortunately for me, when I came back to that clue/answer, I already had the “S” from RISEN and the “E” from MEER in place, so I let that go until the end.
Apart from that, I thought it was a nice puzzle. All four of the long across answers were good. Fun clues for SEASON TICKETS, ATTACK AD, ANKLE TAT and THONG.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2 stars
NYT – GENESET??? No. I am offended. GENOME? GENETICS? Anything else. We do not say GENESET.
Then how about cluing it: Actor Hackman’s Alien Friend?? GENES ET
An improvement
LAT: Odd theme. I completed the grid, and didn’t get it until I came here. Not a fan.
NYT: Great puzzle except for that one bad clue (GENESET). I think natural intelligence should have been enough to spot and remove it.