.png)
Beverage featured in "A Christmas Story" / FRI 11-7-25 / Illustrator of the Tammany Tiger / Bygone office assistant / In an awesome way, slangily / Victuals, informally / Domesticated insect entirely dependent on humans for reproduction / Novelist Fannie who wrote "Imitation of Life" (1933) / The Brady household including Alice, e.g. / Muscleman of 1980s TV
Friday, November 7, 2025
Constructor: Kelly Morenus
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: Fannie HURST (1D: Novelist Fannie who wrote "Imitation of Life" (1933)) —
Fannie Hurst (October 18, 1889 – February 23, 1968) was an American novelist and short-story writer whose works were highly popular during the post-World War I era. Her work combined sentimental, romantic themes with social issues of the day, such as women's rights and race relations. She was one of the most widely read female authors of the 20th century, and for a time in the 1920s she was one of the highest-paid American writers. Hurst actively supported a number of social causes, including feminism, African American equality, and New Deal programs.Although her novels, including Lummox (1923), Back Street (1931), and Imitation of Life (1933), lost popularity over time and were mostly out of print as of the 2000s, they were bestsellers when first published and were translated into many languages. She also published over 300 short stories during her lifetime.
Hurst is known for the film adaptations of her works, including Imitation of Life (1934), Four Daughters (1938), Imitation of Life (1959), Humoresque (1946), and Young at Heart (1954, a musical remake of Four Daughters). (wikipedia)
• • •
STENO TEAT ATSEA NSA ADES ... plus a no-longer-famous author of yore (HURST) and neo-crosswordese ELOTE (I still like ELOTE, both as a food and as an answer, but it really is starting to proliferate like an answer that's going to wear out its welcome, eventually—first NYTXW appearance in 2023, one more appearance in 2024, and now four appearances in 2025 (with ~eight weeks still left in the year). I'd include NAST in this crosswordy onslaught as well (20A: Illustrator of the Tammany Tiger) (I actually learned who NAST was from crosswords, way way way back in the early days of this blog—Jan. 23, 2007: Puzzle: [Tweed twitter Thomas]. Me: "!?!?!?!?!"). It was hard to appreciate the longer stuff in the NW with so much tired short stuff to hack through. But then I, and the puzzle, put the PEDAL TO THE METAL, and whoosh, off I went.
 |
| [ENNEAD, i.e. a set of 9] |
Did the fill improve? Yeah, a bit, but it still had a leaden, draggy feel here and there. It's probably strongest in the NE and into the center: FLIP OUT ON and LET IT RIDE are a great pair, and there's no compromises with the crosses up there. Things get a little uglier at ENNEAD and T'NIA Miller, a name I'm hearing of for the first time right now (and a debut answer). She seems to be a successful British actress who is in a lot of things I've never watched, mostly things I didn't know existed. If you say "Fall of the House of Usher" to me, I think Poe, and if you say "no, the movie," I think "Oh, Vincent Price! Cool!" But no. There was a TV show? Oh, a Netflix show. Shrug. Not a subscriber any more. And even when I was, I couldn't keep up with all the damned shows. Today's Fall of the House of Usher was actually a miniseries. I think I'll just stick with King Vincent, thanks.
The clue on PEDAL TO THE MEDAL felt bad, in the sense that it's not a complete command in that form, the way the clue suggests (8D: "Step on it!"). You need "Put the" at the front for it to be a plausible command. I guess I can imagine shouting the phrase without the "Put the" at the beginning, but it feels pretty contrived. The clue on LIKE A BOSS also felt slightly off to me (34D: In an awesome way, slangily). Something about "awesome" is too vague and not competence-specific enough. If you do something LIKE A BOSS, you do it with confidence, skill, and authority, which I suppose falls under the umbrella "awesomely" if you squint hard enough, but the clue just isn't on-the-nose enough. Anyway, "in an awesome way" is already slang. [With skill and panache, slangily] makes more sense.
Bullets:
- 57A: Modern identification method (RETINA SCAN) — and here I've been wasting valuable nanoseconds saying "RETINAL SCAN." Possibly because that's the actual term. But in common usage, the "L" gets dropped, it's fine. Slowed me down only as long as it took me to delete the "L."
- 15A: Synthetic upholstery material (ULTRASUEDE) — in Japan it is sold under the brand name ECSAINE, which is the kind of answer I see in my crossword nightmares. The very first paragraph of the wikipedia entry for ULTRASUEDE states that "It is used to make footbags (also known as hacky sacks) and juggling balls." Which is bizarrely specific. Did a hacky-sacker write this entry?
- 51A: Victuals, informally (GRUB) — I wanted EATS. See also CHOW.
- 52D: World capital on both banks of the Daugava River (RIGA) — had the "R" and "A" and completely instinctively wrote in ROMA. The crossword probability part of my brain simply overrode the "look at the actual words that are in the clue" part. Actually, it turns out, ROMA is only slightly more common than RIGA, in terms of all-time NYTXW appearances (309 to 298). This is the fifth RIGA of 2025, making this the most RIGAful year since 2003. Oh, maybe I should add that RIGA, in case you didn't know, is the capital of Latvia.
See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️:
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️
- American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (Stamford, CT, Apr. 10-12, 2026) (registration opens January 8!)
📘 My other blog 📘:
- Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)
Save And Share :
44 comments:
Fastest Friday ever. Zero resistance. I’m elated but also annoyed.
Medium Friday. No real hang-ups, a lot of the same complaints as OFL.
Overwrites:
ghENT before TRENT for the 4D council site. I'm no historian.
My 18A hot pair were aces before they were an ITEM
nEt for the mesh at 23A before GEL
Considered eats before GRUB for the victuals at 51A. Never considered chow.
Thought oslo might be the 52D capital but it didn't cross with either eats or GRUB. So RIGA.
WOEs:
Fannie HURST, the 1D novelist
The ULTRA part of ULTRASUEDE at 15A
T'NIA Miller at 29D made me doubt YURTS at 28A
Liked it - yup it started out a little flat but picked up from there and finished strong. The crossing spanners are top notch.
I beg your pardon
The IDLE RUMOR - LIKE A BOSS pair was cool. YURTS, TRANSVERSE, FLIP OUT ON all neat stuff. ENNEAD had me thinking as did SILK MOTH. A true leap of faith with T’NIA.
LET IT RIDE
Enjoyable Friday morning solve.
Another Girl, Another Planet
Easily the hardest Friday in months. Obscure novelists and actors from the 1920s and 1930s (Ok Garbo is not obscure, but unless you're a film fanatic her oeuvre is not well known). Lots of difficult misdirects. Challenging for sure.
Started slowly, but got a foothold in the SE and took it from there (no cheats). I knew YURTS as shelters for wanderers, but was still reluctant to put in the "T" because I couldn't imagine TNIA Miller. She ain't an anagram, she's an actress,
I feel like there are some compromises today to make answers fit. For example, "an oldie but a goodie" would work, and "oldie but goodie" would work, but having the indirect article on only one part feels off.
Similarly, and as Rex points out, "pedal to the metal" is missing its "put the". And "flip out on" feels like it wants to be "flip out".
The NSA/NSC symmetrical pairing is cute.
There was enough to allow me to get a foothold and keep things moving, which is a win for me on a Friday. I stumbled over at the section with YURTS, ENNEAD and AEONS (all of which I am familiar with, but also keep forgetting what they mean, or in the case of AEONS, that it’s actually a word). TNIA didn’t help any there either - not familiar with the spelling so I just thought I had a mistake.
Did anyone know HURST and TRENT as clued, without any crosses? If so, you get the NYT honorary Doctorate of Arts and Letters for today - raise your hand and be recognized (actually, stand up and take a bow - you earned it).
I don’t bake much - my mind originally went to curries when I saw Elephant Ears as a clue. I took it on faith that they were also pastries (and the crosses worked).
The Fall of the House of Usher series on Netflix is excellent. Mike Flanagan doesn't miss.
Exceedingly, unenjoyable triviafest and crosswordese showcase. Very few clever answers. Two thumbs way down from me.
Oh, that lovely feeling when I return to a sticky area in the grid for the third or fourth time and with a boom an answer hits me. That happened several times today to my delight. And – ain’t the brain amazing in how it works under the radar?
Also lovely is when a solve is enhanced by beauty: IDLE RUMOR, SILK MOTH, FLOG (as clued), GRUB, SEEMLY, GARBO, LUCRE, LET IT RIDE.
Those first two are NYT answer debuts, and this puzzle had an ennead of them, with neverr-seen-before clues hitching on to those new answers, bringing spark.
A pastiche for me of easy and hard, hitting that sweet spot between trudge and mindless.
I got magnificently misdirected by [Shipping container], and smiled at the PuzzPair© of PINS near a backward GOLF.
Thus, I was wonderfully walloped by a dollop of good today. Thank you so much for this, Kelly!
My initial “Can’t be!” reaction to TNIA, made that name backward feel appropriate.
OUCH!
What Rick said. 100%.
I thought TNIA had to be wrong, but there you go. Options like Tria or Thia (also weird) made no sense. Overall, on the tough side for me but answers came in spurts.
Hey All !
Couldn't get FLOG. Had PLUG there, even after erasing the P and U, I couldn't come up with anything. For Tandoor, the ole brain just kept thinking a type of bread, unaware it's the OVEN itself. Also had RIBS for PINS, so ended up with two non-words in the Downs. Threw up the white flag, and checked out the completed grid here. Is FLOG really defined as such?
Liked the Central crossing 15's. Off just the T of UTA, put in mosquiTo, laughed at how they could be domesticated. I have one (at least) in my house, biting the shit out of my legs, even have two Zevo's in the living room, but the little bigger will not go quietly into the light.
Tougher FriPuz here. 33 minutes, with errors. Can't win 'em all.
Have a great Friday!
One F (in the one answer I couldn't figure out!)
RooMonster
DarrinV
Out of curiosity, I checked the “Easy Mode” NYT clues for today - for Ms. Hurst, they used basically the same clue with the name of the novel as “Back Street” instead of “Imitation of Life” (I’m glad they cleared that up for me). Apparently, TRENT is the first name of one of the members of Nine Inch Nails.
Funny to see an old favorite Klaatu at the end of the video.
Weird experience today, loved the clueing and no so much the answers. Felt a bit AI assisted maybe, would be good to know.
Bamboozled/ATSEA, blech.
Brady Bunch/ENNEAD, yuck.
Promote shamelessly/FLOG, when everyone says plug.
Saved the worst for last, running the keyboard to get the happy music with the TNIA ENNEAD crossing. TNIA??? If you say so.
This one was a challenge. It began right away with Bamboozled which, apparently, I was. Having only ever heard of/used Bamboozle(d) as an action done against someone else - ie, "she bamboozled me!" - the notion it could also mean lost or confused was, well, lost on me. I was confused. GERM is definitely the correct answer for 30-Down so that threw me as well. Throw in a kitchen-sink of obscure names and ephemera and this puzzle felt curated towards an audience of one, the constructor.
TNIA / ENNEAD/ EGADS!!!
Oof, I found it brutal. Obviously a wavelength thing, but also there were some self-inflicted wounds that took seemingly forever to patch up. "Eats" instead of GRUB being one of the nastiest. I had no idea about either HURST or ULTRASUEDE (gah, what an unpleasant contrivance of a word), and I was stuck on the notion of Worms instead of TRENT which I simply wasn't coughing up without the correct crosses. (The Diet of Worms was something that amused me as a kid, but I digress.) I resisted OVALTINE for quite a while because in my head I kept conflating A Christmas Story with A Christmas Carol, and I thought OVALTINE could not possibly go back to the time of Dickens; it's more an early 20th century invention I think. (Plus, Christmas movies that I instinctively anticipate will be saturated with schmaltz and saccharine are movies I instinctively avoid watching, so I never saw that one.)
Sadly, I don't know Paris, having spent only one lovely weekend there, so I'd guessed "beer GARDEN" before ROSE GARDEN. Not especially smart. I think beer gardens are maybe more a thing in German or German-adjacent culture.
T'NIA was disconcerting to the nth degree. The idea that the NYT would publish a puzzle with a typo is nearly unthinkable, but TNIA looked so unlikely that I searched up and down for my mistake. Not being a poker guy, LET IT RIDE was new. It has a kind of jazzy ring to it (reminding me of "ride or die"), which I like, but it wasn't anything I put in with confidence. Plus, and speaking of poker, I thought I'd heard of "a hot pair of aces", and so that was the hot thing I'd put in before ITEM -- another self-inflicted wound. (I also nicked myself with wEb before GEL, but 'twas a mere scratch, not a gash.)
Well, you get the idea. My time was about 60% or so greater than a typical Friday. Still, I think it's mostly a neat puzzle. That stack of tens in the SW is lovely. I really like OLDIE BUT A GOODIE. I am less enamored of PEDAL TO THE MEDAL, but in answer to a point Rex made, I interpreted the clue "Step on it!" as one of those clues that ask you to identify the "it" -- I dislike those sorts of clues but I'm used to them by now -- so a noun phrase would fit with that. To wrap it up, I emerged bloody and beaten, but I learned a few things along the way, and it was all good in the end.
Happy Friday, y'all.
29 minutes for me, so that makes it challenging for a Friday. I definitely had more trouble than OFL. TNIA looked like a misspelling of TINA (but of course with the apostrophe T'Nia it looks great). FLIPOUTON to me means someone going loco--losing their marbles over something. Doesn't indicate anything about patience to me. Thank God for OVALTINE and SILKMOTH and RETINASCAN. And especially PEDALTOTHEMETAL. Those were my anchors today. And HOURS. I wanted 62 across to be something like a rebound relationship.... so that took me a while. Finished in the NE; had a big blank up there until LEVY got me some traction, saw GYMS, finally saw FLOG. Still don't understand what PINS have to do with spare????? I'm sure one of you on here will help me !!!! : ) Thanks for a fun and challenging Friday.
Flog? Really?
Enjoyed the way the puzzle unfolded, was able to drop in PEDALTOTHEMETAL and then RETINASCAN (Rex, that usages seems ok to me) and things flowed. But the WOE'S were plentiful: HURST, ELOTE, TNIA, ENNEAD and for me, the rare usage of FLOG. Looked up TNIA and ENNEAD to be sure I was right, needed help on HURST and FLOG. Medium.
A challenging solve for me. The NW was the one easy section. ELOTE and STENO. Kicked things off. Seeing ELOTE in a puzzle is galling as it's one of the many words that the Spelling Bee eschews.
My write overs were GABOR/GARBO (and anagram I've somehow never noticed), GERM/SEED and EATS/GRUB. That last one froze me out of the SW corner for awhile.
TNIA was completely from the crosses. This was a good late week solve and the lively long material more than made up for the short crosswordese.
Just as PEDALTOTHE METAL doesn't work as a directive without "Put the" in front of it, OLDIEBUTAGOODIE doesn't work withut "An" in front of it to make AN AOLDIE parallel with A GOODIE. Surprised Rex didn't call this out.
The puzzle seems to be getting sloppier and sloppier lately, in terms of phrasings being parallel as they should be. Disappointing.
DNF at the LIKEABOSS/LIMO crossing. I had LIKEABASS (short for LIKEABADASS)/LIMA. I like my answer better. Bad asses do things awesomely. Bosses don’t. As Rex pointed out, “awesome” doesn’t quite fit when describing how even a good boss does things. I would go even further and guess that at least half of working world think their bosses and how they do things are the opposite of awesome. Maybe LIMA doesn’t fit the across clue as well as LIMO, but Lima, Peru is a long way to go from here.
Yeah, that unmatched indefinite article really bothered me, too. I'm surprised Rex didn't mention it. It was easy enough to get, but the cheating to make it fit took the fun out of it, at least for me.
This Rick agrees with the other Rick! challenging.
nevermind.... PINS is from bowling. Doh
I liked it! Mostly medium. Nice mix of new and old-fashioned entries.
I meant the stack in the SE, not the SW.
The other possibility is that the clue "Step on it!" is one of those clues you often see that asks you to identify the "it", hence a noun phrase. I'm not a fan of those clues, but there's ample precedent.
JOUISSANCE? Seriously?
This one started out very rough. It seemed like all the painkiller words (analgesic, ibuprofen..) were a letter too short, I put in hype instead of FLOG (a better answer, admittedly), never been to or heard of that particular Parisian park, so I had no sure answers until NAST--whom, unlike Rex, I enjoyed remembering. He was in my high school American history textbook, I'm pretty sure, so I didn't learn him from puzzles, unlike ELOTE. Then OVALTINE helped (and I wanted "oval" for the elliptical thing, too).
But the MOSS/MAILER combo shook my mind up just enough to get on the constructor's wave length with the trick clues, and I started having fun.
nEt before GEL gave me a lot of trouble. I still don't get it. Is it gel as a variant of jell, and mesh as in gears? It's still a stretch.
But it had to be GARBO--I don't know her oeuvre either, but a 1920s actress playing a "mystery lady" and well-known enough to be puzzleworthy, that's her.
I thought I'd never heard of Fannie HURST, but reading the word of the day bit, I realize I have --never read her, though.
I already complained about the extraneous A in 37-A, so I won't repeat myself here.
e
The pin that secures the spare tire in place?
Has TNIA officially gone viral? Check out 19A in this Atlantic Friday puzzle and then 29D in today’s NYT grid. Can’t be coincidence. Somebody is trolling.
https://www.theatlantic.com/games/daily-crossword/
GEL and mesh as verbs, as in "come together."
That's pretty funny, that "easy" clue for Fannie Hurst. There are other Hursts out there. I wonder whether Bruce Hurst would have been easier for more people? I'm not a baseball watcher, so I wouldn't know.
Saw The Only Ones in NYC 100 years ago. Great band. Thx for jarring the memories.
I hope this puzzle didn't run in Texas, because TRANSVERSE has been banned there, along with gay verse and queer verse.
If you LIKEABOSS, you should check out Springsteen.
I sure tried a lot of ways of spelling "naugahyDE" before deciding to reupholster with ULTRASUEDE.
@Rex thinks the puzzles have gotten too NASTy.
Ike was absolutely infatuated with Tina's derrière (and possibly also TNIA's). In fact he once wrote a memo titled RETINASCAN.
Mrs. Egs recently found a UPS shipping container holding a copy of "The Naked and the Dead" on our doorstep. "Honey," she cried, "your MAILER MAILER is here."
Wouldn't it be kinda true to say that Guns n' Roses put the PEtALTOTHEMEtAL?
Nice puzzle. Not by any means easy for me, but rewarding in the end. Thanks, Kelly Morenus.
I've often heard the phrase "it's an OLDIE BUT A GOODIE". I've never heard "oldie but goodie". To me it doesn't sound right: the "goodie" is a noun, not an adjective.
"Can". Har. Tee-Hee. (There's also "cans" for TEATs, but a memo about a can in isolation would be a reach.)
Petal to the Metal -- nice.
Bowling pins. Bowling spare.
Post a Comment