Wednesday, November 19, 2025 |

AV Club tk (Amy) rate it
LAT tk (Gareth) [4.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
NYT 4:20 (Amy) [3.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker tk (Kyle) rate it
Universal tk (pannonica) rate it
USA Today tk (Emily) rate it
WSJ 7:44 (Eric) [4.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it

Kevin Shustack’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Ask Around” — Eric’s Review

Kevin Shustack’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Ask Around” — 11/19/25

The journalistic “Five W’s” are today’s theme, captured in circles in both Across and Down answers:

• 16A [Thanksgiving request] WHITE MEAT
• 37A [“The Shield of Achilles” poet] W.H. AUDEN
• 54A [“Easy now,” in a modern spelling] WOAH THERE
• 7D [Ambushes from interviewers, or, more literally, this puzzle’s answers with circles] LOADED QUESTIONS
• 10D [Gradually shed] WHITTLE AWAY
• 23D [Historic Sunset Strip nightclub] WHISKY A GO-GO

I feel like I’ve seen this sort of theme relatively recently. That’s fine; whether a theme of this sort succeeds or doesn’t in part depends on whether the theme answers are inherently interesting. These are all good enough, though I’d be happy to never see the “modern” spelling WOAH again.

Knowing overall what the words in the circled letters should be might help some solvers get answers that they might not be familiar with, such as W.H. AUDEN or WHISKY A GO-GO. (I knew both, but both required a few crosses.)

Other stuff:

• 18A [“Fullmetal Alchemist” genre] ANIME That sounds vaguely familiar; since it started out as a comic book/graphic novel, one could easily have put MANGA here. (I got lucky with ANIME.)
• 19A [Frodo’s Sting, e.g.] SWORD A Tolkien gimme? I’ll take it.
• 40A [Hartford Yard Goats or Rocket City Trash Pandas] AA TEAM “Rocket City Raccoons” just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?
• 54A [Vampire’s bane] STAKE Not CROSS.
• 48A [Second EGOT earner Helen] HAYES I need a mnemonic for the EGOT winners; I got this only after a cross or two. Ms Hayes’ Emmy was for Best Actress in 1953 (no production specified). Her Grammy was for Best Spoken Word Album, Great American Documents, in 1977. Her two Oscars were Best Actress in 1931 f0r The Sins of Madelon Claudet (hand up if you’ve seen that) and Best Supporting Actress in 1970 for Airport. Her two Tonys were for Best Actress in Happy Birthday (1947) and Time Remembered (1958). Wikipedia says that Miami Vice actor Philip Michael Thomas coined the term “EGOT” in 1984. Is Ms Hayes’ admirable accomplishment a true EGOT if the term didn’t exist when she completed it?
• 11D [ ___ Lou Wood of “Sex Education”] AIMEE I’m feeling a bit smug for having remembered Ms Wood’s name. Her character in that series is secondary to the main plot, but her performance is quite good.
• 20D [LeBron beat his scoring record in 2023] KAREEM Abdul-Jabbar. To be a bit more specific: Abdul-Jabbar is credited with 38,387 points in his NBA career and LeBron James has 42,184 as of November 17, 2025.
• 31D [“Casey at the Bat” poet Ernest] THAYER There might be no joy in Mudville, but I’m glad to have remembered the author of a poem I’ve not read in 50+ years.
• 52D [Do worse than place] SHOW/54D [Do better than place] WIN I missed the parallel clues while solving. I know this terminology is used in horse racing, but I’m not sure if it’s used in other sports.

Jeremy Newton’s New York Times crossword–Amy’s recap

NY Times crossword solution, 11/19/25 – no. 1119

I think I’ve seen Jeremy Newton style his name as NEWTOZ, where that Z can swivel into an N. So he’s exactly the right constructor for this theme. The theme places the letters ON, NO, OZ, and ZO in the shaded squares, and the twin revealers explain what they’re doing:

• 36A. [Straight-shooting … or a punny title for this puzzle?], NO SPIN.
• 38A. [Sexually excite … or another punny title for this puzzle?], TURN ON.

So the bigrams ON and NO spin 90 degrees to the either side to appear as ZO or OZ. The various shaded bigrams are part of SALON, NOT US, ONION, NOTRE, MATZO, OZONE, OZEMPIC, CHORIZO, “DUNZO” (that’s slang for “done”), and OZARK. It would be more elegant if the grid didn’t also include ZORA, NOD, NOISE, OZAWA, ORZO, and the extra ONs in OZONE and ONION.

Fave fill: STARDATES, CURLICUES, RATE HIKES (here comes your electric bill hike thanks to AI data center bloat), GO SOLAR (which maybe isn’t fully idiomatic but I like it), NUTELLA, OZEMPIC, CHORIZO. Not sure that MINOR TEAM (clued as [The Syracuse Mets vis-à-vis the New York Mets] really flies; that feels like it wants to be MINOR LEAGUE TEAM, TRIPLE-A AFFILIATE, or some such.

Four stars from me.