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Spinning ring, informally? / FRI 10-24-25 / Number discovered in the 1500s / Fictional sidekick on a donkey / Plan B, for seniors / Where the monster and Frankenstein cross paths, in "Frankenstein" / Dismayed reaction to a tag / Clarence ___, "The Wire" mayor / Synthetic oil producer?
Friday, October 24, 2025
Constructor: Kelvin Zhou
Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: LASH-UP (55A: Makeshift arrangement) —
noun informal1.a hastily made or arranged device, organization, etc.2.any improvised arrangement (Collins Dictionary)
• • •
The puzzle was trying to get vague and tricky right from the jump, with PARER (a word I hate, mostly because it's a potentially brutal Wordle or Quordle word—you have to really force yourself to remember "R" can go in PA-ER, and add at to "P" and "G" and "L" and probably "V") (see also CORER, another kitchen implement, another pain-in-the-ass word). I wanted CIDER here. CIDER is nicer on every level than CORER. CIDER is also nicer than EDUCE, oof, that's a word only a crossword could love (14A: Draw forth). Lots of trouble getting READY SET GO because "READ" looked like a standalone word so somehow I thought the "starting line" was maybe the "starting line" of instructions, like "READ ... ME FIRST?" or something like that (5D: Starting line at a starting line). STICKER SHOCK is a nice answer, though that ambiguous "tag" really got me (20D: Dismayed reaction to a tag). It's baseball season after all—the World Series starts today—so I thought it was that kind of "tag." I loved "I DON'T KNOW, CAN YOU?"—easily the best thing in the grid—both because it's a great colloquialism and because it deliberately breaks the rule about not using clue words that are also in the answer (namely, "Can") (37A: Snarky reply to a question that starts "Can I...?"). Constructor: "Can I break that rule?" Snarky Editor: "I DON'T KNOW, CAN YOU?" The snark comes from the fact that technically, the questioner should be using "may," not "can." The latter is a question of ability, the former a question of permission. Love a big slab of pedantic snark smack in the middle of my grid.
The hardest part for me was probably the NE. I figured when I got SAFETY up in there, things would just open up, but no. I thought Frankenstein ran into his monster in the Arctic, so ALPS took some doing (6A: Where the monster and Frankenstein cross paths, in "Frankenstein"). Parsing PR TEAM, rough (8D: Spinning ring, informally?). PARACHUTE wasn't too hard, but somehow ART FORGER was. Oh, and THREE PIN, yeesh, just an arbitrary pin number? And no bowling context in the clue? Tough. But I got through, without ever getting completely bogged down, so that makes it probably a pretty normal Friday puzzle, difficulty-wise, in the end.
Bullets:
- 17A: Fictional sidekick on a donkey (PANZA) — I know at least some of you wanted SHREK, even though he's not a "sidekick." Something about "Fictional" and five letters and Donkey (who was the sidekick) screamed SHREK. But no, it's Don Quixote's sidekick, Sancho PANZA
- 41A: Thai money (BAHT) — a gimme except that I always want to spell it BHAT. Always.
- 42A: Returns home? (IRS) — tax returns!
- 43A: Spread followers (BETTORS) — oh, the betting spread. How many points a team is favored by in a given game. You can bet on a team that wins but you still end up losing the bet because the winning team was favored by 7 points and failed to cover the spread (e.g. only won by 3).
- 53A: Number discovered in the 1500s (ETHER) — now this trickery I saw right through. Cluing ETHER as "number" (i.e. something that numbs) is about as old as cluing a river as a "flower" (i.e. something that flows).
- 60A: Clarence ___, "The Wire" mayor (ROYCE) — even if you watched The Wire, you could be forgiven for forgetting this name. He only appeared in seasons 3 and 4. These tertiary characters in bygone TV shows ... you can see how annoying (and trivial-seeming) they'd be if you never watched the show. The Wire ended its run 17 years ago now.
[Rose ROYCE]
- 9D: Plan B, for seniors (SAFETY SCHOOL) — really thought this was something to do with Medicare, which is probably by design.
- 16D: Derivative of sin (COS) — "Sin" here is the abbr. of the trigonometric function "sine." COS = "cosine."
- 44D: Chest: Prefix (STETHO-) — huge "d'oh!" moment for me here, as I confidently wrote in STERNO- (you know, because your STERNUM protects your "Chest"). PATRIOTIC forced a change (56A: Flag-waving, say), but I only changed the one letter and so had STETNO. That "N" really really made TCHOTCHKE (a hard word to begin with) hard to see (61A: Bobblehead, e.g.).
That's all. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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44 comments:
Lol I hit just about exactly the same speedbumps as you did.
Except that for me STERNO changed to STERHO because tchotchke didn't throw me but i somehow managed to type in PATRIORIC
Very challenging for me, DNF. Mostly due to the entire NE and mASH-UP at 53A. Because of the latter, I thought 9D's plan B would be some sort of rOOm. Good puzzle, but so far off my wavelength I can't even start to list overwrites and WOEs.
Tough one! I really enjoyed the cluing and was surpised by how quickly I got some weird ones. EDUCE is a word I got fast and actually like! I also strongly preferred CIDER and found LASHUP to be weak. However, I struggled mightily and ended up using the checker on LIMBO/BETTORS/OUST. Somehow my brain forgot the word bettors even exists :(
On 2 hours sleep myself, I had a very similar experience, especially regarding LASHUP. After about 45 minutes I still had a bunch of whitespace in the NE. PANZA & ECZEMA, READYSETGO & ITSMYTREAT all in place, confident of PEPSI, but I really wanted CIDER, and really did not want PARER, so I made breakfast & resumed my insomnia watch of John Sayles' Lone Star for half an hour. When I came back, RUNES made itself apparent, then SPEEDS, and, fine, PARER it is. ADAPT clue also a bit frustrating, definitely wanted something more passive, and finally EDUCE. I had wanted EVINCE which of course doesn't fit & felt there was a similar word I was blanking on, indeed, only a word a crossword could love.
Embarrassing effort from me. Could not get a foothold at all. When SANCHO didn’t fit I even Googled his last name to try to get a jump start, but PANZA didn’t give me much. Just never got going and got the rare time significantly slower than average.
It was the snarky reply that finally gave me a moment of whoosh - it was hard to trust the CAN repeated from the clue, but what else could it be? I put it in with virtually no crosses; without it, I don’t think I’d have had the patience to finish.
It wasn't just you, this was definitely a slog.
I'm with OFL. Lash-up is ridiculous. I wanted cider until the bitter end. Otoh, I read LOTR fifty years ago but somehow had runes. Nevertheless, I liked this one!
Oh yes. “Mwah!” squared. Pinnacle puzzle. What I hope for.
Where when I look at the finished grid, there is hardly an unknown word, but to get from the blank grid to that finished grid, you have to get through a barricade of riddles. Where the brain has to go sideways, has to imagine, has to explore for treasure. Where pings of pleasure await, one after another.
Where the puzzle is not a test of knowledge, but a workout (sweat) and a work-out (unravel mysteries). Where wordplay reigns. I marked 15 clues as special – the highest, I believe, I’ve ever marked for a puzzle this size.
There is talent behind the making of this, and when the constructor indicates in his notes that he is working on more – well, that is most exciting to me.
More, please, Kelvin, and more like this dazzling debut, please. I loved this. Thank you, sir!
Addenda:
• I can’t believe this is the first time STICKER SHOCK has appeared in the 80+ years of the NYT crossword.
• Lovely to see a rare-in-crosswords five-letter semordnilap (PORTS).
I still don’t understand the clue for safety school. Can someone please explain it?
Yes; medium seems right. I had no problem with L:ASHUP but then I grew up in Britain. I did actually wonder if LASHUP would be correct, on the grounds that I didn't think the NYT uses Britishisms w/o a transAtlantic hint.
19 minutes for me this morning, pretty good struggle! Figured out it was a "SCHOOL" but wanted bAckup and couldn't think of SAFETY until almost the end. ART FORGER also was tough to see--I don't really think of that as synthetic--kept thinking about acne or pimples or something there. Loved seeing STICKERSHOCK in the grid today, thanks, @Lewis, for pointing out the debut. ASIA and ECIG and BAHT and (somehow I remembered) ROEG this time helped me get down into the bottom, STENOPOOLS dropped right in. Saw the clue at 29A and immediately thought "Looks like MYSPACE" but didn't put it in because... it seemed so unlikely. But there it is . Agree with @REX about PARER--wanted cidER first. Put in the MAJ at 24 A right away--you figure that "Spring" is not going to be in a minor key, right????, just had to wait for the E to appear. Anyway--really great Friday, good challenge, thanks Kelvin!!!! : )
I can understand Rex’s take that the cluing was a little strained - it was but I kind of liked it. It took a few minutes to get in the groove but once it fell it cleared a lot of things up. The central spanner is top notch.
It’s Everly Time
THREE PIN, SKATE PARKS, READY SET GO all solid longs. NATTER ON is just goofy enough be likable. ART FORGER and BETTORS could have been refined more.
Nimrodel
Enjoyable solve on this beautiful Friday morning.
Howard Devoto
Medium, you say, Rex? For me this was a toughie, well over my average time. And an interesting, challenging time it was. Plenty of tricky but fair clueing, just about all leading to familiar words, as Lewis points out, but in far-from-obvious ways. Felt like a Saturday, which is fine by me.
Last letter in today: K, fixing the c in ERIKA, where the name crosses a hard-to-spell word. Grr.
Hard to stay awake through this one. My eyes started to go half-mast when I saw RUNES crossing PANZA. I also got the sense that the clues had crossed the line and were intentionally trying to deceive rather than witty misdirection (the non-bowling bowling clue would be a good example, and Rex mentioned some others).
There were quite a few other answers that would come in handy on an insomniac evening - those music terms like EMAJ really can be anything, and who cares. MYSPACE is basically internet roadkill. The section with ROYCE, KLEIN, LUCIA and LASHUP should have had an OH, NO! instead of an OH YES.
I believe TCHOTCHKE has been used as a clue or answer at least once previously this year. I remember thinking that it is basically a synonym for junk, so Bobblehead is certainly a valid clue for that one. Enjoy your Friday - I’m off to find some caffeine somewhere.
Has MASHUP initially, as well. Great tricky cluing!
Loved the ETHER clue, didn’t get it until I read OFL’s write up. But I was thinking it would be like a Monty Python script if the number was like eight — up until that point everyone just skipped from seven to nine and couldn’t quite figure out why that didn’t feel right…
quite challenging. clues were devious.
Top two thirds, this was a perfectly normal puzzle. Then it all fell apart in the last few rows with KLEIN, ROYCE, and ERIKA.
ERIKA is puzzleworthy, just not for that particular role. The other two are pretty ridiculous.
that was brutal. looked up about 1/3 of the answers.
Hey All !
Epic fail in NE for me today. Ended up with mARACHiT?, and no idea of what it could possibly be. Those crazy Beatles with their YER Blues (I'm sure I've heard the song, but the name is s mystery), plus RIG 100% correct for its clue (Throw, maybe [as in you RIG a game}), and bam, DNF. AMA, APA, AwhateveryousayA. Yeesh.
SAFETY SCHOOL also an unknown here. You can berate me about "how the heck could you not know that?" like I did the other day with EBRAKE. I apologize to everyone, apparently it's not well known.
Who came up with the word TCHOTCHKE? Was it a torture device? Har. I had ArE instead of ACE, with TrHOTCHKE. BAH(T)!
Great clue for ART FORGER. Whoever came up with that one, kudos!
Q, V, X from The Gram.
A @Gary tee-hee: TIT.
Can you have great Friday? I DON'T KNOW, CAN YOU? 😁
One f
RooMonster
DarrinV
Did Frankenstein and the monster "find a stranger in the alps?" Asking as a Big Lebowski fan.
After blowing through last Saturday's puzzle in near single digits it was back to normal last night. It took me 41 minutes to get through today's offering on my phone.
I finished up by backfilling the NE. This was a perfect segue to Thursdays SB if you recall the pangram.
Classic xword riddle clues for PARACHUTE and ARTFORGER. Clues like those and a fair amount of unknowns kept me chugging along on this solve at a much more of a tough Saturday pace.
Plan A, e.g., for a (high school) senior might be Harvard. Plan B might be UMass, their “safety school.”
ADOPT before ADAPT (which both work), then remembered PANZA for the save.
STETHA before STETHO, then remembered KOAN.
Truly tortured clueing today, requiring a bit more focus. Always enjoy seeing TIT to start the weekend, even if it’s a 54D Small songbird. TGIF, all!
Had ALAB before ALPS.
My experience closely matched Rex's, except that I had had a normal amount of sleep for me (which tbh is probably not enough). The NW was the hardest region. Misdirection up to the gills, ART FORGER and SAFETY SCHOOL and PR TEAM being some of the trickiest to see. (And there's LASHUP below, lol.) Not that this is a bad thing! In fact, the clues were well-designed for a nontrivial Friday. I would place it a hair above Medium in difficulty, based on my time.
Thanks to RP for explaining THREE PIN. And also ETHER. (I can be such a numbskull sometimes.) ECIG took a curiously long time: it's an odd combination of letters. With that I backed into RAIN, and that too I found was trickily clued.
I had forgotten that KLEIN cofounded Vox. Confound it, my main association with him now is his making the rounds with his book Abundance; the less said about that, the better.
I've been meaning to revisit ROEG's The Man Who Fell To Earth. I fear there's a good chance I'd be disappointed, but I was impressed when I saw it in my late teens.
Anyway, thanks for the ride, Kelvin Zhou! Happy Friday, all!
Like a backup you apply to if Harvard rejects you
High school “seniors” often apply to many colleges, some as their primary choices, some as a “just gotta make sure I get in somewhere” schools (i.e., a “Plan B”). These schools are often derisively referred to as SAFETYSCHOOLS. (Source: me, who went to a school he considered a “safety” and not only got a great education, but benefitted from said school’s steady rise in the national rankings over the past 30 years, to the point where no one considers it a safety school any longer. Also, I now HAVE a senior whose early applications are due in eight days. Eek.)
When I started this puzzle, it felt like a Saturday to me. It’s the kind of puzzle I really felt good about solving. I had to look up how to spell tchotchke, but outside of that, the rest of it I did without any help.
Gotta disagree
Not knowledge?
Royce,Klein,Roeg,Erika,koan,MySpace,Runes…..
Lots of facts…Proper names …tough.
Where your concerned children send you when they worry that you are losing your ability to drive safely.
Safe school is the expression.
Never heard anyone say “safety”
I believe if you’re a senior in high school you apply to safety unis in case you don’t get into the uni you really want.
High school seniors apply to "safe" schools they know they can get into if they are rejected by their first choices.
Great point. I put the M in right away but hesitated on MAJ or MIN. You're right about Spring though. Related: I did try out MAJ but then entered JUDAS as the down clue. Oops!!
Did not enjoy this at all. Also, I work in a corporation with a PR Dept and no one would ever refer to it as a "ring." So many clues that were inapt.
Anonymous 858 has it backwards. It’s 100% of the time “SAFETY SCHOOL,” never “SAFE”
First true DNF in a long time for any day of the week, including Saturday. Could not figure out the whole North section. cidER was rude because it was such the right answer to that clue, and PARER is awful in comparison. SAFETY SCHOOL is the perfect answer, but even with the "...TY SCHOOL" in place I could not figure it out. And the clues were too tough on the other big answers. Had TRAY but that was kinda it. Bad day.
Now granted, I quit vaping years ago, but last I checked, ECIGs do in fact have filters.
Loved the cluing. Great puzzle. Just didn’t enjoy LASH-UP.
plan a: good school, quality education, might reject you.
plan b: yale. or duke.
Excellent, tricky cluing...for TRAYS, ARTFORGER, SKATEPARKS, and especially SAFETY SCHOOL...and also PRTEAM, which I just couldn't get. Also didn't know "YER Blues," had Rig for "Throw" instead of RUG, didn't get ALPS...so the whole NE made it a DNF for me. Darn! Felt like a Saturday puzzle for sure.
I started out thinking 'what a slog' then gained "some" momentum (with cheating :( WOES- LASH-UP, THREE PIN, spelling of TCHOTCHKE (I know it's Friday but really??). I did, however, like PR TEAM, ETHER & IRS.
Congrats on your debut, Kelvin
(Can't help adding - I miss a RobynW Friday!).
Wow, just wow. I haven't needed that much time to solve a Friday in, I think, decades. I did it on paper so I don't know for sure but I'm guessing the NE took 3/4 of the time.
SAFETY SCHOOL, never heard of it.
Like Rex, I thought the monster and Frankenstein were at the POLE, or on a SHIP or anywhere but the ALPS. (Actually, I considered, off the initial A, that 28A would be ALPS before ASIA made much more sense.)
Stupid S that I threw in at the end of 21A, anticipating the plural of the clue, made sure I didn't see THREE. That might have helped PARACHUTE to open a tad sooner.
Kelvin Zhou, you got me! At least I didn't have to cheat though it was becoming very tempting.
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