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Beatles sobriquet / WED 9-17-25 / Ditto, in footnotes / Like some short tennis matches / Sorcerous elder of folklore / Anime style involving giant robots / Rocksteady precursor / Vodka cocktails with orange liqueur and lime juice / State trees of North Dakota / Brand whose name is derived from the French phrase "sans caféine" / "Shreds," in winter sports lingo
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
Constructor: Jackson Matz
Relative difficulty: Medium
Theme answers:
- 43D: Like some short tennis matches (2-SET)
- 26D: Beatles sobriquet (FAB 4)
- anything with a "K"?
In science fiction, mecha (Japanese: メカ, Hepburn: meka) or mechs are giant robots or machines, typically depicted as piloted, humanoid walking vehicles. The term was first used in Japanese after shortening the English loanword 'mechanism' (メカニズム, mekanizumu) or 'mechanical' (メカニカル, mekanikaru), but the meaning in Japanese is more inclusive, and 'robot' (ロボット, robotto) or 'giant robot' is the narrower term.Real mechs vary greatly in size and shape, but are distinguished from vehicles by their biomorphic appearance, and are often much larger than human beings. Different subgenres exist, with varying connotations of realism. The concept of Super Robot and Real Robot are two such examples found in Japanese anime and manga.
Real-world piloted robots or non-robots robotic platforms, existing or planned, may also be called "mechs". In Japanese, "mechs" may refer to mobile machinery or vehicles (not including aircraft, cars, motorcycles and HGV) in general, piloted or otherwise. (wikipedia)
• • •
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| [Bizarrely, LEOI seems to have gotten more popular in the Shortz Era; would not have guessed that] |
No real struggle points today. Always unsure about the exact spelling of "kamikaze" so I left the second and third vowels blank and let the crosses do the work (27A: Vodka cocktails with orange liqueur and lime juice). Also never sure of the last letter on KRONA (71A: Swedish coin), because the Norwegian coin is, in fact, a KRONE, so I waited for the cross there as well. Went looking for a sobriquet (i.e. nickname) for *individual* Beatles before I realized it was going to be a "sobriquet" for the whole band (FAB 4). Pretty sure I had AGAR before AGER. Both answers are regrettable crosswordese, but AGAR is a thickener, not a ripening agent. Really enjoyed seeing AKIRA Kurosawa, as he's among the greatest directors of all time, up there with Hitchcock and Varda and Kurosawa's own countryman, OZU, who (as I apparently do not tire of pointing out) has somehow still never appeared in the NYTXW. It's weird to me that the puzzle has used UZO (Aduba) nine times, but has never once used the legendary Japanese director whose name is just the same letters in reverse.
What else?:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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- 1A: State trees of North Dakota (ELMS) — no idea. I thought "probably ELMS" because, well, four letters, trees ... why not? But then I thought of OAKS, and YEWS, and the fact that I know nothing about the flora of North Dakota, so I waited for crosses to help me out. Sadly, the first cross was no help, as I wanted the Club to be SAMS Club (1D: ___ Club).
- 21A: Brand whose name is derived from the French phrase "sans caféine" (SANKA) — most facts that are billed as "fun facts" are not in fact "fun," but this one is. Do people under 45 even know what SANKA is? Is it still around? I feel like it was a staple of 1970s-80s cupboards, but that's probably just because that's when I was watching a lot of TV and saw the ad campaigns.
[alternate clue for 2-Down: [Former 21-Down pitchwoman Horne]]
- 12D: Sorcerous elder of folklore (CRONE) — wow, "sorcerous," You don't see that word very often. This is its first use in a NYTXW clue. (Never appeared as an answer, unsurprisingly)
- 44D: Contrite answer to "Who put the empty ice cream carton back in the freezer?" ("I DID") — I'll have you know that I was not contrite.
- 58D: Outie's counterpart (INNIE) — Severance clue when!?!
That's all. See you next time.
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46 comments:
I thought it was Easy while solving, but I probably had enough Overwrites and WOEs to get it to Easy-Medium.
Overwrites:'
Ibid before IDEM at 5A
loCKOUT before SICKOUT at 4D.
The incorrect o in loCKOUT (14A) made me remove the correct LEO I and substitute ottO. Until crosses forced LEO I back.
Wasn't sure if Ms. Strug (17A) was KEllI or KERRY.
Misspelled 47D as KRAcken, figuring the singular and plural might be the same
WOEs:
Didn't know the Bruno Mars album at 43A, but I did know the Beatles (26D) and tennis (43D) so it didn't cause any issues
Jo KOY at 70D
Crossword superstar Paolo Pasco Jeopardy watch, day five.
Five days, five victories. Last night he led throughout, and his breadth of knowledge continues to impress, and he's quick with that buzzer.
Winnings to date: $134,516. Go Paolo!
Neat puzzle. Hardest part was the NE corner. Started out wrong with Sams (Club) instead of ELKS at 1-Down. Fixed that with the crosses, but foolishly entered "14" instead of 24, even though I had figured out the "K" trick and had counted more than 14 in the grid. Enjoyed it despite my carelessness.
Really disliked this one. Too many names and the unexpected (to me) use of a number with all of the “k” fill and the dreck OFL pointed out made this more work than the payoff.
I was excited about the Severance reference, but it could just as well be about belly buttons. Sigh.
My solving route went as follows.
Early: Hmmm, quite a few K’s.
Middle: Okay, the theme is about cramming as many K’s in as possible. But why?
Two-thirds the way through – What can that reveal in the middle be?
At the end – Ah, 24 K’s, perfecto!
Also perfecto … 24K MAGIC was one of my last answers to fill in because I don’t know the song, and right at the end is the perfect time to uncover a reveal, which ties the whole thing together like a bow.
My favorite answer/clue combo was SICK OUT (a NYT answer debut, and it just sounds so right for what it means), and “Alternative to a strike [cough cough]” which was delightfully vexing as well as funny.
Got a KicK out of this, Jackson – thank you!
Surprised Rex didn’t mention the Crone/Krona near-audio dupe.
The record number of a certain letter is a feat done before – notably, Clive Probert did it with B in 2010 and with M in 2017.
David Steinberg did it with 49 R's in 2015 with the terrific revealer FORTYNINERS.
In 1994, Cathy Millhauser made a Sunday puzzle with E as the only vowel (and it holds the "most E's" record). Its title was ELAND. Mwah!
Never heard of this song and wasn't thinking of numbers as a possibilty, and FABS and ASET seemed plausible, so I went with ASK MAGIC.
Sad to see KINKS as an answer not clued to the legendary band.
Too many names. And the parallels Dunn? and Mecha? made Nohit impossible for me. Not quite a Nadick, but close.
Who won the showcase showdown? That’s the best part of the show IMO.
DNF. Stopped when I figured out I had to put numbers in the grid. Not interested.
Rex nails it this morning. Finishing with 1 > 2 > TWO is not my cup of SANKA.
But TIL what Rex and Lena Horne have in common: a mug with their name on it.
Ugh! This was stuffed with names I didn’t know, or didn’t know as clued (so RIHANNA is from Barbados then?) Brooks and DUNN sounds like a men’s clothing store. Did know LENA and AKIRA, but not KERRI, KEKE, or KOY. I of course did know the FAB 4, but not the Bruno Mars album, in addition to which having actual numbers in the grid is so unusual that I didn’t trust that could be the trick. And anyway, I would have been wrong because I thought 1 SET would be a short tennis match, not 2 SET.
I hate Bruno Mars, and I hate the Beatles. No small surprise, then, that I hated this puzzle.
I give it 2 thumbs-down & 4 “Booooooooo!”s.
Amen @twangster, on KINKS. If ur gonna have to POC kink for your puzzle, rule should be….the band.must be clued.
Ks llare kool, and Bruno is kool, the puzzle overall, not very.
Funny, I thought that the revealer was referring to the 2 answers containing 4 K's (KNOCKKNOCK and KNICKKNACK). Thankfully, I never thought to count all the K's in the puzzle.
Hey All !
I noticed getting K after K in the puz, wondering why are there so many? Was going to count them at the end, but after reading Rex, he tells me that the 24K means there are, in fact, 24 K's in the grid. Good for the K, now if only someone did this for the F ...
I cry Shenanigans! at the C of the ends of 24KMAGIC/KROC. Naturally, I had a K there. Regardless if you realized that 24K meant there were 24 K's in the grid, you're not going to count them to see that having another K at that spot was too many. With the Theme going all K-crazy, why would that not be a K?
Grid is 16 wide, the Revealer in the center is 8 letters, if an answer is even numbered in the exact center, your puz can't be 15 wide. It either needs to be 14 or 16 wide. I guess Jackson chose 16 to get in all the K's.
Two Themers are one worders, KNICKKNACK and KAMIKAZES, two are two worders, KNOCK KNOCK and KARATE KID. EDGY. Har.
Nice puz, different, wondering if it's National K Day or something. Does F have a day?
Oh, get my book as an EBOOK if you'd like. Changing Times by Darrin Vail. Amazon or barnesandnoble.com, or wherever you like to get your EBOOKs from!
Have a great Wednesday!
Two F's (one hidden in 4)
RooMonster
DarrinV
Noticed a lot of K's, never heard of the album, wanted OFL's ONE for the number of sets, and K for Karat never occurred to me. Learned what a KAMIKAZE as a drink is, met KEKE , and now I know what MECHA is, and the next time I see it will probably be in a crossword.
Impressive stunt, JM, Just Make my K's related to baseball and not pop culture, thank you. Thanks for some fun at least.
I had to use an Autocheck on this one because I had two wrong answers and struggled with the theme answer. I have put numbers into puzzles from other sources but I didn’t know it was legitimate for a NY Times crossword. I learned that today. Otherwise the puzzle was fine. It made me think of the Kay Jewelers commercial: “Every kiss begins with…”!
Miserable experience. Anime, numbers, a slog of names. Nothing against Bruno Mars but there was no way I was getting the name of one of his albums. Especially when it had numbers in the title. A massive thumbs down from me.
It is a sign of my age that my first thought for “ear covering” was ‘hair’.
I once submitted a puzzle with 21 ‘F’s. I guess I just needed three more.
I noticed all of the K’s no problem. I also noticed the fill was not going to be in my wheelhouse, which can put a damper on things - I’ve long forgotten what IDEM means, and never heard of MECHA for example. Similar to OFL, I debated the spelling of KAMIKAZES and was hoping for some help from the crosses, but unfortunately I’m not sure what a “Sorcerous elder” even is (another word for “witch”, perhaps ?) - never mind trying to figure out who or what CRONE is/was (except maybe for Julie KRONE, which would have upset the apple cart regarding the K-count).
Obviously, I have no idea regarding a Bruno Mars album but was able to discern from context that we were dealing with a rebus situation over there, but by that time the whole thing had turned into a big yawner.
I probably solve about a half-dozen puzzles a day now, and have noticed that most of the outlets I visit are “consistent” in terms of their offerings. I would characterize the LAT has workmanlike, professional, and rarely “edgy” - although they can and do have a Jekyll and Hyde situation where they will throw some really bizarre stuff at you on Saturdays. The WSJ and New Yorker can vary from easy to difficult, but thankfully avoid the gimmicks and stunts that are pretty much overwhelming the NYT. Evan Birnholz will mix up his offerings over at the WaPo on Sundays (and is no stranger to Meta puzzles, if you enjoy those - one thing that I appreciate about Evan’s grids are the crosses always seem to be fair when he delves into proper nouns and popular culture).
None of the above is meant to be a criticism, just some random observations - I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse that the NYT has embraced technology, and other experimental approaches that I refer to as stunts or gimmicks, probably because I have a limited vocabulary and can’t think of a better way of summarizing it. But today is a pretty good example - building a theme around a 10 year old album title (with a rebus) and a grid chock full of K’s is something that, in my limited experience at least, is just not that common elsewhere.
Agree with Rex. The K’s were neat I guess. But not enough to overcome one of the most boring fills in a while.
Grump/yelling at clouds incoming: One of my least favorite puzzles of all time. Just not for me. Contorting the grid and clues to all sorts of ugliness for the sake of a Bruno Mars album just isn’t my idea of fun or a good challenge.
NE corner was impossible for me, I got everything else but the __KMAGIC and figured I’d reveal that word for a minimal cheat, maybe it’s a clue. Freaking numbers? Screw it, reveal all. No chance I’d have gotten NE.
I agree pretty much with OFL. Why on Earth would you waste an opportunity to make an interesting clue about the Kinks and instead talk about garden hoses??
I'm inclined to agree with Rex: not great. ACTI and LEOI, the P.O.C. DASANIS, but worst of all were those numerals. I see that in Rex's displayed solution, the 2 going down is spelled out, but then logically you'd get "two four K MAGIC" going across, and that ain't right. Meanwhile, a twenty-set tennis match would not be short, so there's really no way to make that right. In my own solution, which the software accepted, I had 24K MAGIC, which is how I think the album title is spelled out, but then you get the truly awful FAB4 going down. Dudes. It's FAB Four, come on, don't be ridiculous.
And 2SET going down looks just as awful. ACK, ARG, what a mess.
Pit-a-pat (an SB stalwart if ever there was one): that means RACE, really? I thought it had something to do with the pitapat of small feet. So then: a specific type of "race" pertaining to toddlers? (Looking it up, I see it's short for "pitter patter". OK, OK, anyway, this is not a hill I planned on dying on. Still I find the cluing clunky as all get out.)
Jo KOY: complete unknown to me. That's probably more on me than on him (his first name is Joseph, his last name Herbert). I was mildly curious about this bombing at a Golden Globes ceremony, in a rubbernecking way, and discovered from this article that it was pretty egregious even by bombing standards, with Mr. Herbert throwing his joke writers under the bus at one point, and with the audience staring on in mute horror (I presume; some celebrity reactions included head-shaking expressions of disgust, and maybe I'm wrong that the attendees were all that mute). That write-up was enough to satisfy my curiosity.
Never a good thing when at some point of life, an INNIE herniates out to an outie, like a turkey thermometer popping out. Here I want a sound effect, something like "bing!". Certainly not a BONK; if my experience is any guide, it's much more subtle and stealthy than that -- it just sort of catches you unawares and you think, "well now, that sucks".
Thanks for keeping us posted!
A good enough Wednesday but I would have liked it better with fewer proper names, and some of them seemed A TAD obscure for a Wednesday. I’m looking at you, AKIRA, KERRI, MECHA. Even the revealer, while not obscure, was completely unknown to me - both the album and the artist
Interesting that RP used elm/oak/yew in his tree discussion. If you’ve been following Paolo on Jeopardy, one of the questions last night featured a tree. The first wrong answer was ELM, then oak, and the correct answer was yew.
The name of the album is 24K Magic. It's not Two4Kmagic. If you're going to use actual numbers in your puzzle (FAB4), at least be consistent with it, especially when it's the CENTRAL TENET OF YOUR THEME! I had it figured out when I got FAB4 and knew 2 sets of tennis was the answer. Why on earth did the constructor think using TWO4 was defendable? Unbelievable
This puzzle's proliferation of Ks immediately made me think of last week's major event. It's weird how many Ks there are in the name eriKa KirK
Glad he had a laugher after Monday's squeaker.
I put a “2” instead of “two” and the site accepted it as correct, presumably the puzzle accepts either the numbers themselves or the spelled out words as rebuses
Numbers turned me off
You stopped 2 squares away from completion?
BONK ARG ACK! OKOK.
Need I say more?
If you have a gimmicky puzzle it better be in service of something worthwhile.
At least EIEIO is there - phew! That really raises bar.
Very irritating…
There's something kinda theme adjacent in NOHIT being the answer for [Perfectly pitched?]. A "perfect game" is a no hitter wherein no batter reaches base. There have been 326 no-hitters in MLB history, of which 24 (glances at Bruno Mars) have been perfect games. Of course the symbol for strikeout is "K", so a more literally perfect game would be a 27K outing. Alas, the record is 21 Ks by Tom Seaver and it was in an imperfect game of 16 innings.
None of this is meant to put down Bruno, and I really think Mars is cool, but the MOONROCKS.
Trump's instructions to Hegseth in prepping for the Great Memphis War: THINKTANK. It makes me SICKOUT of my mind.
Nice to start the day with some Special K. Thanks, Jackson Matz.
Shredders are snowboards, not skis.
Good one. And then two more when you consider her uncanny resemblance to Tammy Faye Bakker.
You can put numbers in??
So the theme is a constant stream of weak to bad fill to force 24 of a somewhat uncommon letter into the grid?
'K.
Lewis is a treasure. Wonderful recounting of previous similar puzzles.
I also went with MAGIK/KROK and I couldn’t find the error.
I had no chance with this puzzle. Never dreaming that numbers would be accepted in the grid and the no-know-ness of 43A means that I failed to solve this with no errors.
Of course the abundance of K's was obvious from the KNOCK KNOCK joke. And the revealer certainly does a great job of explaining the theme. It's cute.
Thanks, Jackson Matz, for an interesting Wednesday puzzle.
At this rate, Paolo maybe able to put on the American Xword Tournament instead of winning it again!
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