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Fish commonly caught in the Upper Midwest / MON 8-25-25 / A smile, perhaps / Greeting between buddies / Banned substances in sports, for short / Salesperson making unsolicited phone contact / Player protecting a QB's blind side, often / When repeated, an old newsboy's cry
Monday, August 25, 2025
Constructor: Ryan Mathiason
Relative difficulty: Medium-ish, when solved Downs-only (though I ultimately failed in this endeavor)
Theme answers:
- LAKE TROUT (17A: Fish commonly caught in the Upper Midwest)
- LEFT TACKLE (24A: Player protecting a QB's blind side, often)
- LAUNDRY (38A: Household chore traditionally done on Mondays)
- COLD CALLER (50A: Salesperson making unsolicited phone contact)
Performance-enhancing substances (PESs), also known as performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), are substances that are used to improve any form of activity performance in humans.Many substances, such as anabolic steroids, can be used to improve athletic performance and build muscle, which in most cases is considered cheating by organized athletic organizations. This usage is often referred to as doping. Athletic performance-enhancing substances are sometimes referred to as ergogenic aids. Cognitive performance-enhancing drugs, commonly called nootropics, are sometimes used by students to improve academic performance. Performance-enhancing substances are also used by military personnel to enhance combat performance. (wikipedia)
• • •
But let's leave my failed Downs-only experiment aside [side note: my wife just walked into my office with the identical Downs-only problem I had, only she also had trouble putting together SPARE TIRE—again, not exactly Monday cluing on that one (34D: Fifth wheel)]. What about the theme? Well, it's not great. Which is to say it's super basic, very loose, and kind of ... arbitrary. LAKE TROUT? Of all the fish in the world that one might catch with a "line," we get LAKE TROUT? Not just trout, but LAKE TROUT? So weird. Especially weird when the second themer is also a two-word "L.T." phrase (LEFT TACKLE). I spent half the puzzle thinking there was some kind of L.T. theme. LEFT TACKLE is not quite as arbitrary as LAKE TROUT, but still, lots of positions on the offensive (and defensive) lines in football. COLD CALLER is yet another awkward, contrived phrase. You get a cold call, or you cold-call someone, but a COLD CALLER ... that is not a phrase I've ever used or heard used. I can imagine what (who) it is, but blargh, pretty ugly. The rest of the grid was fairly ordinary. Mostly 3-4-5s, ho hum
Aside from the POKER TELL fiasco, the Downs-only experience was close to average—mostly easy, with a few patches I had to work through somewhat slowly. As I said, SPARE TIRE took some thought—I was staring at a whole bunch of empty squares in that one, none of which were easy to infer. Pretty sure I got it, finally, because I inferred the "T" in ATOM, and that "T" helped me see TIRE. Before that, I blanked on what the Ohio University mascot was (again, not exactly Monday fare, Ohio University not being a terribly prominent D1 sports team) (BOBCAT). I had STAGE before STAIR (22D: Part of a flight). INDIA and NEPAL have the same number of letters, so that made 46D: Country holding one side of Mount Everest briefly challenging ... oh, damn, the other country isn't INDIA, it's CHINA! Also five letters! OK, well, glad NEPAL worked out then, didn't have to struggle through the hypothetical scenario of neither NEPAL nor INDIA's working.
My favorite coincidence of the evening was that I was watching the movie While You Were Sleeping (1996) (for my Movie Club) just before solving. During the movie, my wife was wondering aloud what movies Sandra Bullock had won her Oscars for. I could only remember one: The Blind Side (2009). Turns out, she only won the one (she does have two nominations, though, the second being for Gravity (2013)). Anyway, "blind side" ended up being in the puzzle: 24A: Player protecting a QB's blind side, often. I admit, it's not a very eerie or even interesting coincidence. But now maybe you know a little more about Sandra Bullock's career, so that's something. Oh, there was one other coincidence I liked: the fact that IDAHO was adjacent to POKER TELL ... Oh, I've been to Boise, and Sun Valley, and Coeur d'Alene, but I've never been to POKER-TELL-O. I hear it's nice.
That's all. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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53 comments:
My five favorite original clues from last week
(in order of appearance):
1. Just saying? (5)
2. Needing more salt, perhaps (5)
3. Musical appreciation? (4)(5)
4. Purchases that come with metal plates (3)(5)
5. Like a column starting a row, perhaps (9)
ADAGE
ICIER
TONY AWARD
TAP SHOES
LIBELLOUS
My favorite encore clues from last week:
[Fictional character with a famous opening line] (3)(4)
[Where many gather to form a line?] (5)(6)
ALI BABA
BINGO PARLOR
Nice comfortable Monday with an easy theme to grasp. I'm groaning at Rex' (Pocatello) IDAHO pun, and eager for Mr. Egs' reaction. I hope he isn't too Boise to respond.
Glad it wasn’t just me! I tried Downs only solving because I learned about it from reading your blog. And I’ve been having success. But poker face led me to all kinds of difficulties today
Easy, breezy Monday with no overwrites or WOEs. For the second day in a row I liked it a lot more than OFL did.
Fairly easy and fun. Initially missed POKERTELL because I had entered Hot for HIP and didn’t look back, but otherwise smooth sailing. Agree with Rex that POKERTELL is kinda redundant, but then our language is full of them, tho only one other comes immediately to mind: taxicab. LAKETROUT is a variety of fish well known to the fishing community.
I have never heard of Monday as laundry day. At an inn or B&B, that probably makes sense as you get more guests on the weekends. At home I would think it is generally on the weekend, rather than trying to squeeze it in in the morning or evening before/after work.
Some research later ... apparently it is comes from the days when laundry was a multi-day event and you had to be sure everything is dry by Sunday, when you are not allowed to work. I can only imagine people lived in very humid areas, as even the most relucatant items take no more than 72 hours to air dry here.
Got my brain workout in trying to guess the revealer without reading its clue. Went through the theme answer initials – no luck – then wrenched my brain trying to figure out what the theme answers had in common. Nada.
My first concession followed: looked at the revealer’s clue. Scoured my mind for phrases that meant “at stake”. Crickets.
Finally started uncovering the revealer’s letters one at a time and after “ON THE”, the answer came, but not just as a simple realization, but more like an eruption, simultaneously getting LINE and seeing its connection with the theme answers. An awesome “Aha!”
Lovely serendipities followed as I scanned the grid:
• Parts of the body – HIP, EAR, TOE, TRI, and sure, SPARE TIRE.
• Rare-in-crosswords five letter semordnilap (EVIAN).
• Things people ingest (TROUT, PIE, BEER, EVIAN, OLIVE).
• That EAR to the ground.
Came to the box in everyday mode and left alive and kicking. A sterling outing. Thank you for this, Ryan!
Also on the line:
Tightrope walker
Wrinkle makeup
A fair tennis ball
Certain staff notes in music
A train
A word in a poem
One in a row of people
One in a row of cars
Feel free to add to the list!
Another hand up for POKERface, even though I knew it didn’t fit the clue. That slowed me down only a little, since I solve Mondays downs mostly (i.e., with occasional peeking at across clues, i.e., cheating).
I’ve been doing laundry for about 43 of my 50 years and have never heard of this supposed tradition it is done on Mondays.
I didn’t have the same visceral reaction to POKER TELL as OFL did (I know very little about the specifics of poker, but have heard the term used in that context before).
I also thought we had an LT-centric theme and dropped in LEAD where COLD belonged, which led to some hijinks down in the SW while I parsed that all out. It was kind of nice to extricate myself from that mini-mess on a Monday, even if the foul-up was totally on me.
I suspected SPARE TIRE from just the leading S, but waited for a cross or two to confirm it - ironically, if I had exercised the same due diligence in the SW, I could have saved myself some effort - but my tribulations there actually spiced up my Monday morning solve a bit.
Hmmm. I dunno about 50A. I've found many of them to be rather warm and friendly.
Hey All !
Nice MonPuz. Different meanings of (something) ON THE LINE. We get fishing, football, chore, telephone. Missing the pick-up LINE.
Got an extra Blocker in today. 40 as opposed to regular 38. The two aren't chester squares, but almost act the same. They are the Blockers twixt THEN-ERR and OXO-ATOM. If you took them out, you'd have to basically rework the whole puz to get workable answers. I'm sure it was tried, but I hold no animosity toward the constructor for adding them in. Easier to fill is a blessing.
Funny enough, I like to look at every clue, regardless if it auto-fills from crossers. Today, I wanted RARitY at first, but quickly realized it would be RARELY, but never changed the I to an E, as seeing IRR as a real possible answer. I forgot to look at it's clue, and of course got the Almost There when I finished puz. Went to the clue immediately and saw that the one clue I didn't read was the culprit. Amazing.
Y'all have a BEER later for me. 😁
Have a great Monday.
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
POKER TELL made a lot of sense to me. Yeah it’s not as common a phrase as poker face, but I certainly wouldn’t consider it as outlandish or weird as Rex did. Agree that it’s not exactly Monday cluing, but it’s not so crazy I’d rant about it.
I fell into the LT trap too, confirmed by the L of ASL but then LAUNDRY ended that assumption. BTW, I have always thought of Monday as LAUNDRY day, and assumed it was common knowledge. Guess not. Didn't guess the revealer but I like that the LINES were all different.
No real problems with this one, although I never remember NALA. Learned something interesting about EVIAN, was unbothered by POKERTELL, and got SPARETIRE off the S, yay me.
Today's nit is TRIS, which I guess go with BIS in the -ceps department. Clue should have read "Hall of Famer Speaker".
Nice enough Mondecito, RM. Reasonable Model of a beginner-friendly Monday, and thanks for all the fun.
easy. nice entry level puzzle.
I didn't breeze through this Monday puzzle quite as easily as some, even though I wasn't trying to solve Downs-only. Had LOSES instead of BUSTS for the poker clue, and didn't know the football clue without crosses. Didn't know PEDS; tried PCPS first.
Have never heard of a POKER TELL and doubted it was right, so did some doublechecking that cost me a little time. Oh well, an okay Monday if not very sparkly.
There's an old nursery rhyme, written before the time of modern conveniences...Wash on Monday / Iron on Tuesday / Mend on Wednesday / Churn on Thursday / Clean on Friday / Bake on Saturday / Rest on Sunday.
Downs-only has made Mondays a highly anticipated weekly tussle for me and today’s puzzle did not disappoint. POKER TELL and LAKE TROUT were nothing compared to the difficulty I had in recalling the Ohio U mascot! How many times I must have seen or heard it over the years and yet it was nowhere to be found in my memory banks. “The Buckeyes and the…”? Nope, just wasn’t there. Combined with the tricky for me UNLACES, the NW quadrant was my Waterloo.
Overall, a fun Monday!
Your job . . . A telephone caller . . . A bird on a wire . . .
P.S. I remember that a few puzzles ago we had the singular STAIR that wasn't well clued. This one was (" Part of a flight").
Regarding 38 across I just thought of my grandmother. Every Monday she would do the laundry and hang it outside on the line to drive. Problem is I put washing instead of laundry.
I've always wanted to have massages, mud baths, hot tubs and cold plunge pools around me at all times, so when my working days came to a close I decided to SPARETIRE.
MAGA mini-theme today with BUSTS, SCARES, BRAGS and HATE. Which serves to amplify the error in the clue for RNA, component of former alleged vaccines.
No doubt @Lewis will have embraced the proximity of ORB and BRO with a hug.
True fact: Mrs. Egs was born in POKER-TELL-O. Ergo, she's a lousy gambler.
Before cell phones, people without home phones had to use a phone booth. So in winter, there were a lot of COLDCALLERS. Note to Gen Z and later: There are a lot of now-obscure objects and phenomena wrapped up in understanding this (alleged) joke. Ask your grandparents to talk to you about the days before cell phones. They might get a kick out of it.
I had the exact same problem with my D.O. solve as @Rex did. Thanks for putting it all on the line, Ryan Mathiason.
John Hancock (or signature)
Really? I thought Poker Tell was quite self-evident. And a lake trout might be caught on a line. You don't need a specific fish to justify the "line" angle. I think you are having a grumpy day.
No Thinking Required. ZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
None of the themers were all that long, so I didn't really think about them until the revealer suddenly hit me. Even then I had to go back and look at them all, after which it did dawn on me that they were all on the line.
LAUNDRY is not so often on the line these days, at least in the US--but then, Monday is not usually washday, either, so we can take that as an archaism indicator, fair enough.
Hardest part for me was trying to think of a 4-letter abbreviation for steroids. What on earth are PEDS? Dictionary.com says "a variety of footlet." That wore out my patience for research.
Similar to @Lewis’ weekly top five list, we should start a weekly “best observations” from our resident EGSistentialist - I nominate today’s SPA RETIRE, which may be one of the top five of the month as well.
If you smiled all the time that would work as a poker face-- or so I reasoned, but then I got TRAY, so I knew it was TELL (though I didn't want it to be).
I didn’t succeed on the downs-only today, but that happens quite often for me. HOWEVER - Lake Trout is what they are called. Not just trout. And, sadly for them, they are delicious. Also no trouble with Poker Tell, but lots of downs-only hiccups elsewhere.
The clue for 3-A specified blackjack not poker, where BUSTS is more specific.
Had to chuckle, when Rex told his story about Sandra Bullock and the Blindside, after calling the Left Tackle answer somewhat arbitrary because of multiple positions on the offensive line. The clue for that couldn’t have been more precise/accurate. And you had an Oscar winner tell you that exactly.
The Faces OOH-LA-LA should have made the write-up. And OOH did blow my downs only.
I knew Monday was wash day because my Mom would sing the song, Today is Monday which tells you what day of the week you will be doing certain activities, at least in a pre-1970s household.
It always gives me a small jolt, as if perhaps Rex was solving a different puzzle from the one I solved, when Rex or someone in the comments mentions a word in the grid that I didn't see. Today that was STAIR, which filled in so completely from crosses that I never even read the clue. That SCARES me a little.
Super simple puzzle today, but I liked the theme which made me smile once I went back to the theme answers and saw how they worked. LAKE TROUT is something you would be glad to have ON THE LINE if you were fishing in one of the Great Lakes. I've only fished Lake Michigan but my husband and his brothers caught those trout on Superior also.
Thanks, Ryan Mathiason!
I've got to defend the LAKE TROUT, which is indeed a species of fish. When I was growing up on the shores of Lake Michigan, it was the dominant commercial fish of the great lakes. The local dish was the fish boil, where you would cook a whole lot of lake trout in a huge pot and people would line up to get their portion, along with an ear of corn and probably some potatoes. Much more delicious than it sounds. Talented boil-masters made a living at it. They were a big business (they had other uses, as well). Then the St. Lawrence Seaway was opened, some lampreys came in from the ocean on the hulls of ships, bred like mad, and pretty soon there were very few lake trout. The problem was finally solved by poisoning all the fish, including both the lampreys and the trout. Then the lakes were restocked, but to create a sport-fishing industry they were stocked with coho and sockeye salmon, and steelhead trout along with the lake trout. So there are not so many of them. There are even more fish boils than there used to be, but the fish are often imported from the great lakes of northern Canada. They are still a lot of fun.
Continuing in my blast-from-the-past mode, at least one of the summer camps I attended had a campfire song that ran through the days, including "Monday wash day..."
Small quibble re: taking your shoes off. You just need to untie them and loosen up the laces, not take the laces out, which is what UNLACE means.
My sister-in-law just got back from a trip to Door County, WI. She and her friends went to a fish boil where they were told that the fish being served were not caught in Lake Michigan, probably for the reason you cite. I can't imagine salmon working well in a fish boil.
PEDs are Performance Enhancing Drugs (including steroids) - if you take too many of them, it makes you look like your head is going to pop off (I don’t speak from personal experience - but I saw what happened to Barry Bonds - he went from a skinny speedster who could steal 50 bases in a season to something resembling the Pillsbury Doughboy).
Sonidos de objetos pesados golpeando el suelo.
Who does laundry on Monday? Who? I want names.
Having spent most of my life over the line, it'll be nice to have this handy guide for what's ON THE LINE.
You are staring at SPARE TIRE in your computer generated grid. You think, "Sweet." And then you go with [Fifth wheel] instead of [Beer blastin' belly], or [Lush home for an innie], or [Headrest for your honey], or [Kitty launch pad], or [Public pool eyesore], or [Six pack concealer]? Scandalous.
❤️ THUDS.
People: 6
Places: 4
Products: 4
Partials: 8
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 24 of 78 (31%)
Funny Factor: 2 😕
Tee-Hee: Yee-haw! BUSTS.
Uniclues:
1 One eschewing the right wing.
2 Foodie's feeling after an extended hospital stay.
3 Activity for a traveling Asian corset remover.
1 LEFT TACKLE SORT (~)
2 TRAY HATE
3 UNLACES NEPAL
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: HOHOHO, gawd this sucks, I should've tried harder in 10th grade. MALL SANTA'S BRAIN DUMP.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Major leaguers these days often get suspended for using PED's, Performance Enhancing Drugs, so that was familiar to me. Also familiar was the Monday/washday connection, and now I'm feeling archaic.
jberg! Great story about fish boils.
We have the best LEFTTACKLE in football, Trent Williams. If he can avoid serious injury this season, the Niners have a chance. Christian McCaffrey can burst through the big holes he makes.
I am LOLing quietly to myself over the complaints on this one. A first-time reader might conclude that our host does not realize that all of the answers have to fit into a symmetrical grid, thereby sometimes necessitating extraneous modifiers like "LAKETROUT," instead of "justanyoldTROUT." I found this to be an unexpected amount of fun for a Monday!
Also failed downs-only
Downs only timeline:
1. Assume ON THE LINE is the revealer with all but NW and W done. What kinds of TROUT are there? With -A-E, maybe LAKE?
2. Okay if 20A is -H-N, that's probably a T... what about HALTS for 1D?
3. So HI- (could be many things), AD-, LAKE,
TH-N, SO-T, -> POKERface!!
---
4. tra + ___ + POKERface
So crosses are fRAY, t-eYS, r-c, a-eA.
Maybe res is a science class? (traYS, rec, aseA) okay no fanfare. Try all combos of r + vowel + r or s (areA or aseA)
5. Check the rest of the puzzle for errors... yeah 30D is the only thing I hate
6. Okay, what if I just try to force BIO instead (the thing I wanted before I realized tra + BIO doesn't work), and take out face too...
6. -B-YS -> OBEYS --> OOH --> OIL --> HOLA --> POKERTELL 🎉
But yeah obviously I can see why this is a wipeout for many! Lucked out a little for sure
Easy. No costly erasures and BOBCAT was it for WOEs.
Smooth with a cute/fun theme, liked it a lot more than @Rex did.
Croce Solvers - Croce’s Freestyle #1039 was very easy for a Croce. I had no real problems anywhere. Good luck
Easy. No typos :)
For GPO and others: "Lake Trout" is a recognized classification, just like "Grizzly Bear" or "Sperm Whale." The word "Lake" is not extraneous.
Surely there is a mistake in the Midi today? A word clued as the word clued?? Anyone here doing the Midi?
While I suppose taxicab is a sort of redundancy now, its two parts have completely different etymological bases: it's a shortening of taximetred cabriolet.
My coïncidence of the day was thinking "who does laundry on a Monday?!" just before the laundry machine I myself had filled forty-five minutes before beeped.
HOLA MonPuz, Batman! ... A "What's My Line" theme mcguffin! [I see @RP also thought of that angle.]
POKERTELL sounded a little fishy, but I got it, no problemo. Not talkin downs-only, tho.
staff weeject pick: HIP. Started my solvequest adventure here [after first gettin ADO] with HOT ... which lasted a nanosecond or two, until 2-Down was askin m&e for a state that starts with OD-.
fave moo-cow eazy-E MonPuz clue: {San ___ Fault} = ANDREAS. Fill-in-the-blanks gimmes are always welcome.
other faves: SPARETIRE. BROHUG. SMURF.
Thanx for the puzfix, Mr. Mathiason dude. Always refreshin, to do a few lines.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
... and now, this one should at least be easier to grok the puztheme on ...
"Spooneruntisms II" - 7x7 themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
Hah! Missed ORB/BRO -- lovely catch!
Same problem on POKERTELL but the inferred K eventually helped a lot, along with a conviction that BIO is the only three letter science likely on a Monday. On the other hand, got SPARETIRE cold after taking a moment to remember that there's fifth business and third wheels but fifth wheel would be a misdirect. Seldom for RARELY, ceded for CAVED, and really (albeit briefly) wanting it to be "'sup bro" made for a challenging Monday.
A TV show for coke heads: Where's My Line?
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