Tuesday, November 4, 2025 |
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Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Wanna-Bees” — doubling the effort. – Erin’s write-up
Jonesin’ solution 11/4/25
Hello lovelies! This week’s Jonesin’ theme is double-e satisfying, with the addition of an extra E to common phrases.
- 20a. [Sax mouthpiece that’s mostly caramel and sugar?] CANDY APPLE REED (candy apple red)
- 31a. [Overachieving high schooler?] PERFECT TEEN (perfect ten)
- 42a. [Super Bowl-winning coach Ewbank, if he had a team of arachnids?] SPIDERS WEEB (spider’s web)
- 55a. [Flinging something at your parents in the front because you want the road trip to be over?] ARE WE THERE YEET (are we there yet?)
Other things:
- 10a. [___ of certiorari] WRIT. This is when a higher court orders a lower court to send a case to them for review.
- 61a. [Accord promoter] HONDA. Love the wordplay here.
Until next week!
John McClung’s Universal Crossword “Daybreak” — Eric’s Review
John McClung’s Universal Crossword “Daybreak” — 11/4/25
I didn’t give the title much thought, but I did pay attention to the squares with circles in them. For the last of the theme answers before the revealer, the circles were a tiny bit of help.
As indicated by the title, smaller units of the day are broken across two consecutive entries:
- 17A [Backyard hideout] TREEHOUSE/19A [Individually owned unit] CONDO
- 29A [Pack tightly] CRAM IN/31A [Sporks and chopsticks] UTENSILS
- 47A [Game with many faces] GUESS WHO/50A [Planet beyond Saturn] URANUS I hadn’t heard of the board game, which isn’t too surprising as it didn’t come out until I was in college. This could have been clued to the “American Woman” band that was big in the 1970s, but the board game clue is probably easier for a larger number of solvers.
- 61A [Jointly owned vacation property … and a theme hint] TIMESHARE
It’s a very basic theme, but it gives a nice spin to the reveal phrase. I like that the broken units of time fit the progress of SECOND/MINUTE/HOUR.
Other stuff:
- 14A [Part of IPA] PALE/3D [Part of IPA] ALE I like that these two answers cross this way, but I’ve never been a fan of hoppy beers. A nice brown or red ale with an IBU is more to my taste. The popularity of IPAs makes my preferred beer harder to find.
- 28A [Meat in a croque madame] HAM A croque monsieur or a croque madame is a grilled cheese sandwich, made with Gruyère. The madame version has a poached or lightly fried egg on it.
- 69A [Witherspoon of “Legally Blonde”] REESE A few years back, we watched several classic 1990’s rom-coms that we had skipped earlier. Most of them, including “Legally Blonde,” were more fun than we’d expected.
- 5D [Person from Ljubljana] SLOVENE I’m lucky that CROAT didn’t fit, because I momentarily tried to place Ljubljana in its southern neighbor.
- 6D [“Blade Runner” actor Rutger] HAUER A pure gimme. Ridley Scott’s 1982 film deserves its status as a sci-fi classic.
- 30D [Hired guns, briefly] MERCS As in mercenary.
- 42D [Source of some chirping] NEST Well, SMOKE ALARM WITH DYING BATTERY didn’t fit.
- 57D [Taiwanese laptop maker] ASUS Not ACER.