Tuesday, January 13, 2026 |

Jonesin’ 4:52 (Erin) rate it
LAT tk (Jenni) rate it
NYT 5:13 (Eric) [3.75 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker tk (pannonica) rate it
Universal 6:36 (Eric) [4.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
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Xword Nation tk (Ade) rate it
WSJ tk (Jim Q) [5.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Family Matters” — the family as a unit. – Erin’s write-up

Jonesin’ solution 1/13/26

Hello lovelies! This week’s Jonesin’ puzzle celebrates family in its four longest entries, with a revealer in the center.

• 17a. [Dow Jones Industrial Average, e.g.] STOCK INDEX
• 62a. [Japanese cat figurine with one paw raised] MANEKI NEKO, aka “beckoning cat,” which is supposed to bring luck or fortune to a home or shop.
• 11d. [Boat brand designed for a certain water activity] SKI NAUTIQUE. They are the oldest brand of boats designed to tow water skis.
• 25d. [Long, thin bug that camouflages well with leaves] STICK INSECT
• 42a. [“Family” found in the four long theme answers] KIN

Other things:

• 4d. [D&D villain, or a “Stranger Things” antagonist] VECNA. I haven’t watched the show in years, so I won’t add anything else in case of spoilers.
• 46d. [Fan of Capt. Kirk and crew, as some (including Leonard Nimoy) prefer] TREKKER. There’s been debate forever on the difference between Trekkers and Trekkies. Trekkers seems to have developed to get away from the negative connotation given to the term Trekkies, but Trekkies has been reclaimed by fans, so the terms can pretty much be used interchangeably at this point.

Until next week!

Dan Zarin’s Universal Crossword “The Gravity of the Situation” — Eric’s Review

Dan Zarin’s Universal Crossword “The Gravity of the Situation” — 1/13/26 (Click to Embiggen)

I’m rarely fond of themes found in the Down answers; I just have trouble parsing those answers. But this one’s easy enough that I didn’t have much trouble with it.

There’s a trio of seesaw like things:

• 5D [Coolness factor?] TEMPERATURE I like the little bit of misdirection here.
• 7D [Setting for trades and runs] STOCK MARKET Most of what I know about stocks, I learned in my Business Associations class in law school. I get how publicly-traded stocks work, but I still don’t fully trust Wall Street.
• 32D [Flash Gordon took one from Earth to Mongo] ROCKET SHIP
• 34D [Start of a popular aphorism that’s a hint to 5-, 7- and 32-Down]  WHAT GOES UP I recently learned (here in this crossword blog!) that kind of thing is an anapopodton — a rhetorical device that involves a thought being interrupted or discontinued before it is fully expressed. But I have yet to find a definitive pronunciation of that useful word.

This is a solid, simple theme, easily understood by beginning solvers. Stuff goes up, stuff goes down. Gravity, you win again.

Other stuff:

• 12A [Sounded sheepish?] BAAED I missed the past tense and thought the Universal editors were trying to slip one past us by spelling “baa” with three A’s. I should be less skeptical sometimes.
• 15A [Music genre Johnny Ramone called “some kind of Communist plot”] DISCO I graduated high school is the 1970s. The number of disco songs I can take is pretty low.
• 17A [Cattle call?] MOO That pairs nicely with BAAED, even if the misdirection doesn’t misdirect.
• 44A [Reads posts without commenting] LURKS That sounds so perjorative. If you’ve got nothing to say, don’t say something just to use a little more oxygen.
• 1D [Nostalgic Insta hashtag] TBT This answer or something similar in a puzzle last week caused me to wonder if that hashtag is still used or if the whole concept is meta. Thoughts?
• 23D [Girl whose mom “has got it going on,” per a 2003 song] STACY That’s not my favorite Fountains of Wayne song; they had so many funny songs about losers. But this one isn’t bad.
• 52D [“Flashdance… What a Feeling” singer Cara] IRENE A gimme for someone my age. That song was inescapable for a bit.

Nate Hall’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s Review

Nate Hall’s New York Times Crossword — 1/13/26 (Click to Embiggen)

This is Nate Hall’s New York Times puzzle debut, and as near as I can tell, his debut puzzle in any publication normally covered here at Diary of a Crossword Fiend. Congratulations, Nate!

But I have to be honest: I have never liked Queen and I especially have never liked the song this theme riffs on. (I once saw a description of it as “fascist rock,” and that fits):

• 19A [Hospital worker tending to newborns] NEONATAL NURSE
• 31A [Bar attraction with a saddle and horns] MECHANICAL BULL
• 42A [Segments of Earth’s lithosphere] TECTONIC PLATES
• 53A [Iconic 1977 Queen hit … or a hint to 19-, 31- and 42-Across] WE WILL ROCK YOU

I graduated high school in 1977. If they taught about collisions between tectonic plates being the cause of earthquakes back then, I’ve long since forgotten those classes.

The “rocking” of neonatal nurses and mechanical bulls is, I hope, obvious to most solvers (at least in the United States; I’m not sure how globally known mechanical bulls are).

Aside from a song that’s likely to be stuck in my head for days, this is a fine theme, at least for older solvers. I never know with pop culture clues how much 50-year-old or older stuff has. I know a lot of it because I lived through so much of it, but I also know pop culture stuff from before my time that many in my age cohort don’t know. (Maybe I should adopt Kameron Austin Collins’s practice of Googling pop culture names: “Is _______ famous?”) (If you don’t know what I’m talking about here, read Kameron’s comments in the Saturday, January 10 Fiend post about crossing Andrew Mellon and Mies van der Rohe.)

I thought I had solved this fairly quickly (I make a lot of typos solving easy puzzles), but then I noticed that the grid is only 14 columns wide. I don’t know if the smaller grid really makes much difference in one’s solving time, but some people seem to think it does. I expect I spend more time pondering clues than I do typing answers.

Other stuff:

39A [Key not found on a Mac] ALT Where was this clue the other night when I was on my iPad and couldn’t remember whether either of the Macs we have that have physical keyboards has an ALT key? (If I remember correctly, some Fiend reader more knowledgeable than I commented that one of the other keys — Option or Control, maybe — functions as an Alt key on an Apple computer.)

• 41A [Kiss or Heart] BAND I have to wonder whose idea it was to keep this clue in the same era as the revealer. Whoever it was, their music fan credibility hasn’t gone up any in my eyes.
• 4D [Birth name of Marvel Comics’ Black Panther] T’CHALLA I may be old and have almost zero interest in comics and action films, but even I have seen the movie Black Panther.
• 9D [Yogi, once] BEAR CUB Cute clue.
• 26D [Offshore drilling site] OIL  RIG We’ve been watching Landman lately, mostly because my sister-in-law has a small recurring role as one of the people living in the retirement home. It’s also a pretty good show.
• 33D [Big name in carving knives] CUTCO That doesn’t sound familiar. What an inspired name for a brand of knife.
• 43D [Vice-presidential candidate of 2024] TIM WALZ The last year or so has been such a mess that I couldn’t immediately remember Kamala Harris’s running mate, even though he and his state have been in the news a lot lately.
• 44D [Pet sitters?] LAP CATS Cute clue, but I had DOGS first.