.png)
Indian tourist city on the Taj Express route / MON AUG 8-4-25 / Accra's country / "___, amas, amat..." (Latin 101 conjugation) / When Hamlet duels with Laertes in "Hamlet"
Monday, August 4, 2025
Constructor: PATTI VAROL
Relative difficulty: EASY (Appropriately?)
THEME: A+Vowel Progression — Each theme answer is a phrase where the first word starts with an A followed by another vowel, progressively in alphabetical order (AA, AE, AI, AO, AU).
Word of the Day: ANGI (65A: Home services app that lists local vendors) —
This article is about the website. For the Davey Graham instrumental, see Anji (instrumental). For the parent company, see Angi Inc.
Angi (formerly Angie's List) is an American home services website owned by Angi Inc., a publicly traded subsidiary of IAC. Founded in 1995 by Angie Hicks and William S. Oesterle, it allows users to search for contractors to provide paid home improvement work.
• • •
Hey everyone, it's Eli filling in while Rex is about 90 minutes up the road from me (if traffic cooperates). I know I'm not alone in feeling like the Times puzzles have been getting too easy recently, so I was interested to see what today would feel like. It turns out to be a very straightforward theme, to the point that it doesn't even need a revealer. However, I felt like the difficulty level was appropriately Monday-level. Let's take a look!Theme answers:
- AARON JUDGE (18A: Yankees slugger who hit a record-setting 62 home runs in 2022)
- AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY (23A: Image from a drone)
- AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN (39A: "Keep dreaming!")
- AORTIC VALVE (53A: Outlet from the heart's left ventricle)
- AUDRE LORDE (62A: Poet with the essay collection "Sister Outsider")
Speaking of which, I checked and I did in fact blog Patti's last NYT puzzle in March! Sorry I'm apparently your personal blogger, Patti. In things that are only interesting to me, that puzzle contained LITTLE LULU, and this one includes LULU (35A: Doozy).
This puzzle felt SO clean to me. It's well-balanced, not including too much pop culture or proper names or trivia - just the right amount of each. If I'm nitpicking, the 31D/32D pairing feels pretty old fashioned. I don't know that anyone uses GAY to mean "Merry" much these days, and sticking it next to HIE (32D: Go quickly, quaintly) just highlights the anachronism. My only other negative note on my notepad is ANAG (24D: Scrambled word: Abbr.). Abbreviating a wordplay felt a little egregious, especially when the end result is ANAG. And I guess some constructors have been having more fun with OREO than "40D: Black-and-white cookie", but whatever.
Everything else I wrote down is a positive. I loved the clue for UPC (36D: Short lines at the register?). I don't think I've seen the trivia in the clue for ENO before, either (8D: Musician Brian who has an asteroid named after him). I also like that ROGER (12D: Slugger Maris) crosses AARON JUDGE. The fact that Judge's clue mentions he hit 62 home runs makes this feel especially intentional, given that Maris is famous for hitting 61(*?)
 |
| Yes, I work for HBO. No, this is not an ad. |
Great start to the week! All things considered (not intended to be a reference to NPR, but support NPR), this puzzle gets an enthusiastic rating of GOOD (16A: Like a grade of B+, say).
Stray Thoughts:
- 30D: Wool-producing ranch (ALPACA) — When I was going to high school in Snellville, Georgia, there was a farm near my house that had some alpacas. Very cute, very soft, highly recommended.
- 17A: Seed covering (ARIL)— I can never keep ARIL and ANIL straight. One is a seed cover and the other is (looks it up)... plant that is the source of indigo dye! My brain doesn't want either to be a word, so it just combines them in one.
- 13A: "Skyfall" singer (ADELE) — Because PAUL F. TOMPKINS wouldn't fit:
- 46A: Home of the New York Mets until 2008 (SHEA)— There's a joke in The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (Eric Idle and Neil Innes' Beatle's parody if you don't know) where The Rutles play their final concert at Chez Stadium, named for Cuban guerrilla leader Chez Stadium. I think of that every time I think about the Mets' former home.
- 51D: "Harold and ____" (1971 black comedy) — I love Harold and Maude, and I'd love to spend some time talking about it, but I have promises to keep:
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️:
- Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️
- Lollapuzzoola 18 (NYC) (Sat., Aug. 9, 2025)
- Midwest Crossword Tournament (Chicago) (Sat., Oct. 4, 2025)
📘 My other blog 📘:
- Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)
Save And Share :
67 comments:
Shocked to see this ranked as easy. Hardest Monday I’ve maybe ever done, personally. Know zilch about baseball so AARON JUDGE means nothing to me, and although somewhere in my brain pan AUDRE LORDE rings the faintest of bells, she’s also a complete unknown to me. Also totally missed the theme sans revealer. And ANIL?? Just the opposite of my wavelength, this one.
Never recognized the theme, but it didn't matter. Mostly Monday-easy, except the TAPA/JPOP cross was briefly an issue. Good Monday puzzle.
I agree with Eli: fun puzzle, no hang-ups, Monday appropriate. I thought it was themeless until I came here.
Very nice write up, Eli, but could do without the moving video links.
I didn’t even notice the theme - forgot all about it in fact. My only nit is my aversion to grammar and vocabulary tests in foreign languages - they are here to stay and with us on a daily basis, but try as I might, I’m just not able to get used to them.
I personally thought the fill was pretty clunky and old-school. LANAI/ANGI is an absolute Natick for me. Two baseball names crossing in the NE is pretty obnoxious. Have never seen LULU with that meaning before, or a barcode referred to as a UPC.
A slower-than-usual finish for me, mostly due to those complaints.
Always happy to have an Ode to Joy sighting in the puzzle.
AGRA, AMO, ANGI, ARIL, AMFM, ANAG; staying with today's theme, this is just the junk in this grid that starts with A. If this is Eli's idea of a clean puzzle, I'd hate to see one he considers junky.
Hey All !
Goodness, the ole brain is failing faster then imagined. The SB regularly kicks my behind, every time I check what I've missed from the day before, they're common words with a "how could you have missed this?" reply to myself.
And now today, I missed the Theme! Did not see the AA, AE, AI, AO, AU. Hadn't an idea of what the Theme was, but just came here to find out. Maybe the ole brain is reversing learning, and headed back to being 4-5 years old,?
Liked this puz. Simple Theme (if you find it!), wasn't an auto-fill for me. Wasn't tough, but took slightly longer than normal.
They say (at least they used to) that TV rots the brain. I do watch a lot of TV. But I'm lazy, so there's that. 😁
Anyway, have a great Monday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
I think 8D is meant to be a bit of challenge in that Brian May of The Who, an astrophysicist by profession, also has a celestial body (asteroid?) named after him.
Dios no!
Heh. Is this what an easy themeless Friday or Saturday feels like to the weekend grumblers? Like, "Hey, wait, what the heck was that?!" Followed by a mental breakdown on the blog?
Maybe the theme is THE FONZ? "Aaaaaa!" AMFM, AGRA, ARIL, AARON, AERIAL, ARC, AIN'T, AORTIC, AUDRE, ADULT, ANGI, ANAG, ADELE, AGUA, ANA, ANY, AWAIT, ALPACA.
Three baseball clues on a Monday and a rotary phone. Creak.
I'm suspecting the very small millionth is pretty ginormous if you're into subatomic particles.
It's cute the clue editor still believes the presidency has a four year term. You know the orange man is planning to stay forever, right? And there is no SMOG; the new EPA won't allow it to be noticed.
😩 ANAG. Scrambled word abbreviation? Gawd. It's an old horse. It's an idea that won't go away. It's a bossy person. Its ANA Gabriel or Gasteyer. It's sanskrit's multitudinous GANA scrambled. And what happened to the sliced off RAM?
People: 7
Places: 3
Products: 7
Partials: 7
Foreignisms: 4
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 28 of 78 (36%)
Funny Factor: 0 😫 {wow}
Tee-Hee: GAY ADULT BRA.
Uniclues:
1 Indian metallic dress tossed off a bitchen glint.
2 Where to access experts on how to be more perky and uplifted in the morning.
3 Let's go steal all their underwear.
4 Knife accompanying a poem in case it's so gawd awful you can't go on.
1 SARI SHONE GOOD
2 DIAL BRA PANEL
3 ADULT RAID IDEA (~)
4 SHARPS NEAR ODE
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Emulates mountain lion with TikTokker in the forest. NABS EBOY AT CAMP.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
A completely acceptable puzzle but one without a lot of fire IMO. Very bland
No comments to read at 8:27 a.m.—wow! I thought it was a clean, fun puzzle, but I had no idea there was any kind of theme. Oh well. Like Eli, I was surprised by the dull OREO clue, which could have sparkled with just a bit more effort. I don't recognize Audre Lorde so to me she didn't seem like a Monday entry, and I don't know REY from Star Wars, so thank goodness for the doable crosses. But all in all it was a nice way to start the puzzling week.
Harder than “easy.”
AINTGONNAHAPPEN, a welcome bit of Monday sparkle.
If you did the cryptic in yesterday's NYT, please explain the clue to 28A. The end seems to be the definition, but I don't see the wordplay in the beginning.
Fun for a Monday! I like Patti’s puzzles. Not as easy as some but def Monday level. No gripes.
Actually today very much did need a revealer, as I finished without any clue what the theme was. I noticed a lot of words began with A - not just the long entries but in general.
AUDRE LORDE was a WoE, but all crosses were fair - for me. I would think if you didn't know Harold and Maude that could be an issue.
The Wordplay blog - which I read to find out what the theme was - also griped about ANAG, which I though was fine. My issue is with ORE. ORE is not metal; it has metal in it.
Welp, the indicator says zero comments and it's 9:15 EDT, so I assume something has gone wrong. Maybe no moderator to ok stuff? I actually checked the news to see if some catastrophe had wiped out the grid. Perhaps in honor of the A+vowel theme, AI has taken down the blog as a first demonstration that the singularity has been achieved and AI doesn't like what it sees here. The more I go on, the more likely I think that I have hit on the explanation. So even though there is no one out there to read this, and I am likely the last free person in this new enslavement to AI debacle, I will carry on in honor of my fallen blog mates.
And thanks for a nice Monday, PATTI VAROL.
My wife prints the puzzle in the AM, yesterday and today no black squares printed, makes things somewhat difficult, but not as much as you'd think, symmetry helps get ahead of the game. My printer wants toner, on today's agenda, is it conserving on my behalf? Any body else using pen and paper and having this happen?
Solved with no idea what the theme. Had to come here to learn it.
Patti Varol is the Will Shortz of the L.A. Times.
Queen
I missed the theme but did notice the A+ beginnings to the longer answers, went back and discovered they were in alphabetical order, and decided that was the trick. Pretty cool.
I enjoyed the mini Spanish theme, what with AGUA, TAPA, USTED, ASADA, and OTRA, and I'll leave out ALPACA. Well see if this is allowed in the future now that English is our official language.
Today's "welcome back" goes to ARIL, which I learned when I started doing crosswords about (coughs) years ago. Hello old friend. And a runner-up award to LANAI, which I use in SB all the time but haven't seen lately in a puzz.
Today I met AUDRELORDE, who may be a "crossword staple", but not for me. How do you do?
I thought this was a Monday that knows how to Monday, with a Perfect Variety of old and modern. Well done you, PV, and thanks for all the fun.
LANAI and UPC appear in the puzzle pretty often........
Like many others here on the blog, had no idea what the theme was. Just was glad I’m a Yankee fan who also knew where the Mets played. OREO must have some kind of usage record—I kinda doubt AUDRELORDE will ever challenge it. I think @Roo Monster may have a point—some of our brains may be dumbing down as fast as the NYT puzzle is rumored to be.
I immediately saw the AA, AE, AI, AO, AU progression, but couldn't come up with a revealer. "I bet there won't be a revealer," I thought -- and indeed there isn't.
A nice crunchy Monday that held my attention and interest far more than the usual suspects. I didn't know ANGI, I didn't know AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN, and I sort of don't think I've ever heard the word AORTIC pronounced in the wild. I actually thought it was going to be AORTal, but RIDDLE straightened me out.
To others who may have found this hard for a Monday, no complaining allowed:) Everyone's been bemoaning all week how easy the NYTXW has become for its respective day of the week, so maybe this puzzle balances things out a bit? Or maybe the editors just want a little more day-to-day flexibility. They initially invented the "rules" so they can break them whenever they want -- right? At least I feel that way.
@mathgent, I will email you rather than posting here and maybe end up giving a cryptic spoiler.
Printed yesterday's and today's, no problem.
Haha! If my name was "an die Freude", I might feel the same!
@Eli, "straightforward" was my first thought, too. I didn't know AARON JUDGE, but the crosses filled it easily.
I did misinterpret the theme at first, though. After AAR and AER, I expected the next one to rhyme, with AIR. But, as the next theme answer said: AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN, and I understood that we were celebrating the letter A's power to combine with itself and all its sister vowels (plus Y and W, of course).
I don't think @Carola has my email. So after she explains it to you, @Mathgent, can you please email me with the answer? Thanks.
Easy-medium. No WOEs and no costly erasures.
Haven’t seen ARIL in a while.
Simple familiar theme, low on junk grid, liked it or what Eli said.
Croce Solvers - Croce’s Freestyle #1033 was pretty easy for a Croce, or about what a tough NYT Saturday used to be. Good luck!
I didn't even notice there was a theme but it was so smooth & swooshy - I enjoyed it a lot - & wish we'd see more like these even though "Monday easy" so others wouldn't complain that "it was too easy."
Thank you, Patti - a Monday puzzle from a pro (LAT Editor? :)
And a nice write-up, Eli - thank you as well.
But AARON -- at least here in NYC -- doesn't have the AIR sound of hair, pair, and AERIAL, It has the vowel AA sound of maximum; parallel; tariff (sorry!); castle; and taxi.
A fine, if somewhat bland, Monday offering. AINTGONNAHAPPEN is great; it more than makes up for some of the weaker parts (looking at you, ANAG).
Depending on your viewpoint on Y as a vowel, Ayo Edebiri, Ayrton Senna or Ayn Rand would have made a nice themer. Symmetry and grid stress issue would probably make it impossible, but I can dream.
Huh, I believe that, especially for UPC. I must always just solve them by the crosses. Not possible with LANAI/ANGI.
@Nancy, so interesting to me! In previous discussions in the comments, I've found it fascinating that what sounds the same to me, a Wisconsinite sounds different to a New Yorker (and probably others). The last discussion I remember revolved around "merry," "marry," and "Mary" - identical to me but, I now know, not to others. Today my AARON is definitely an "airON."
I didn't know you were from Snellville, Eli. Where Everyone is Someone...with a long commute! That's my Snellville joke and Diana DeGarmo was your Queen.
Kinda feisty, MonPuz-wise. The two name themers were pretty much no-knows, at our house.
Woulda been cool to have some sort of funny revealer, givin us justification for such a basic AA-AU puztheme. Not sure what it could be , tho. ...AVOWALS?
staff weeject pick: UPC. Mostly cuz it was the only entry in the puz that had a ?-marker clue bestowed upon it.
Nice weeject stacks, on the E&W middle sides, btw.
fave moo-cow eazy-E MonPuz clue: {Bills with George Washington's face} = ONES.
other faves included: MILLIONTHS. LULU. WALTZ. AINTGONNAHAPPEN.
TDRUN? Slight Ow de Speration bouquet ... scores a har.
Thanx for the A+ vowel run, Ms. Varol darlin. Good job.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
... theme in this here pup is awful subtle, too boot ...
"Jaws of Themelessness #24" - 9x7 12 min. almost themeless runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
Simple mnemonic for ARIL/ANIL: seed coveRing vs iNdigo
OK, we've got 5 words starting with A followed by one of the five vowels, in alphabetical order, as AA, AE, AI, AO, AU. If ever a theme cried out for a revealer, this is it; but as far as I can tell, there isn't one. For me, it falls flat.
I did like AARON JUDGE crossing the previous AL season homers record holder, and the idea of a non-musical OCTET of bears watching TV in their DEN while sharing a TAPA.
EPA has banned a thousand or so pesticides by now, but DDT is certainly the one we know about, so OK. And the ODE to Joy was written by Schiller; Beethoven set it to music. But again, it's OK because of usage.
As for "one of 26, approximately," WTF? If you know that you know (or can deduce) that it's 26.2. People put the number on bumper stickers, T-shirts, and probably coffee mugs, so why make it approximate?
About as dull as theme as one could imagine: AA, AE, AI, AO, AU. Whoopee. And it includes the ghastly ANAG at 24D. It also includes ANGI, an app totally unknown to me and so, solving downs-only, I had to take it on faith, thinking it might be short for angioplasty or something. Some people just seem to impulsively shorten everything.
Have been to NYC a few times, but can’t remember ever having to find my way to Roosevelt Island (59D TRAM). I have a few old NYC transit maps tucked away in a drawer here in my studio - I use maps in my collages - but finding them didn’t seem worth the effort.
Liked 4D MILLIONTHS and 39A AINTGONNAHAPPEN.
@Nancy, I too could not think of a revealer--until I read the comments here. A couple of people (Egs, Pablo, and M&A) referred to it as A+. And then we have GOOD clued as "B+." So the revealer could have been "Excellent vowel run."
In this case, the point of the revealer would not be to reveal the theme, but to make it sparkle a little.
@M&A, your revealer idea is great!
LANAI, one of the SB words that I almost always overlook until the end and then I say d'oh. There was one in today's SB that is the same, always forgotten. Someday...
I did see the theme after finishing. I think you could do it with the letters E or O but not I or U.
Thanks, Patti Varol!
Seth, LANAI shows up in the puzzle fairly often. Totally understandable if you’ve not traveled to Florida or Hawaii much, but all the “back” open, shaded porches (lounge area) are called the LANAIs.
12A is the one baffling me. I'm pretty sure I have the answer but don't know why.
If you thought Croce Freestyle 1033 was pretty easy (which it was), wait until you try 1034.
Roo, I paid zero attention to the theme today too, and EVEN if I’d had the time to look for it today after solving, I can be so unobservant that I’m not sure I would’ve seen it. Oh. In case I again get distracted and don’t comment individually…I DID enjoy the puzzle and pretty much agree with Eli.
Wow. I knew Brian May is an astrophysicist but THAT didn’t even occur to me since ENO is ALWAYS in the puzzle. Good catch!
Can’t believe I never put that together:( Very clever!
One of my ironic memory devices is “M as in mnemonic”
Hmm, they’re dumbing down fridays and saturdays and ramping up Mondays to make the whole week an indistinguishable blur eventually. I liked this one.
... never mind, got it.
Thx Dan P, that will help next time
Can someone please explain LULU? Trying to google just gets me lululemon results
Did ya get your Real ID? I saw your response yesterday. Well, I also live in a densely populated metro area…BUT I was able to “reap” the results of a huge scandal in my state’s BMV program. Tons of time was spent on streamlining and upgrading it here. Prior to that…yeah…doing anything at the BMV was a waking nightmare. And please do not read this as approval of how things are in MY state currently. 🙄
Agree @Carola. I also pronounce Aaron as “air.” I’m a midwesterner so I’ve learned to live with the fact that many on the East Coast figure we have a “bolluxed” AND nasal pronunciation.
Oh, and also on Midwest pronunciations…for whatever reason, my mother was a warrior in terms of me NOT pronouncing “wash” as either “woish” or “worsh” so I DO say “warsh”. Little victories.
It's called a GIF! Though I agree it's distracting.
It’s just a (perhaps old timey) slang word…like, oh man, I had a LULU of a day. The fact that it is also a name makes it tough fer shur.
I did this down clues only, and it was a bit challenging because the theme was completely baffling. (Guessing the theme helps fill in the long acrosses without looking at their clues.) Especially AORTIC VALVE??... what in heck do those 5 answers have in common? I did manage to finish correctly without "cheating", and it was satisfying, but then it took a bit of thought to get the theme. Score one for downs-only being fun!
ANGI crossing VIGIL was my final letter. Never heard of the app, and wanted prayer BEADS or something
Oh. You have to include “slang” in your search. I found this:
“Lulu" is a slang term, primarily used in American English, that refers to something or someone outstanding or remarkable, either positively or negatively. It can describe something exceptionally good, like a "lulu of a performance," or exceptionally bad, like a "lulu of a mistake".
I'm trying to find this cryptic. Is it the case that NYT stopped publishing these online?
Use a dictionary! Or a dictionary site. There are several free ones.
Yikes! It's even worse than I thought! :) Not only "air" but the accent is on the second syllable??? On the ON, as it were? How odd.
Then I thought: Maybe you know an AARON who pronounces his name that way? People can pronounce their own names anyway they like. In France, for example, my name would be pronounced Nahn-SEE.
Which brings me to your own nom de blog. I've often wondered: Is it pronounced KAH-roll-a or kuh-ROLL-a?
I know LANAI because of the Golden Girls. They say it all the time. However, I don't like that they needlessly clued both RAID and ANGI as brands (one of which I never heard of). Solving downs, the theme helped me get AUDRE and AORTIC.
@Nancy, I apologize for the confusion I caused with "airON" - I should have typed "airon" or 'AIRON, which I pronounce AIR-on. I was trying to convey my pronunciation of the first syllable of AARON (using our caps convention to indicate what is correct) while leaving the second syllable alone. But I see it looks like I was emphasizing the ON. Sorry!
As for me, I'm CAR-o-la (car, like the vehicle), so like your KAH-roll-a, but without any H sound.
Post a Comment