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Cool, in streaming slang / FRI 11-14-25 / Aesthetic associated with classical literature and vintage fashion / One option in a subscription service / It's different from randomness, mathematically / Command that initiates a chase / Board game that begins with players choosing college versus career / Bunin, 1933 Literature Nobelist from Russia / Ring in many Renaissance paintings
Friday, November 14, 2025
Constructor: Malaika Handa
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: DARK ACADEMIA (6D: Aesthetic associated with classical literature and vintage fashion) —
Dark academia is a literary, internet aesthetic and subculture concerned with higher education, the arts, and literature, or an idealised version thereof. The aesthetic centres on traditional educational clothing, interior design, activities such as writing and poetry, ancient art, and classic literature, as well as classical Greek and Collegiate Gothic architecture. The trend emerged on social media site Tumblr in 2015, before being popularised by adolescents and young adults in the late 2010s and early 2020s, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. // The fashion of the 1930s and 1940s features prominently in the dark academia aesthetic, particularly clothing associated with attendance at Oxbridge, Ivy League schools, and prep schools of the period. A number of the articles of clothing most associated with the aesthetic are cardigans, blazers, dress shirts, plaid skirts, Oxford shoes, and clothing made of houndstooth and tweed, its colour palette consisting mainly of black, white, beige, browns, dark green, and occasionally navy blue.
The subculture draws on idealised aesthetics of higher education and academia, often with books and libraries featuring prominently. Activities such as calligraphy, museum visits, libraries, coffee shops, and all-night studying sessions are common among proponents.
Seasonal imagery of autumn is also common. Imagery of Gothic and Collegiate Gothic architecture, candlelight, dark wooden furniture, and dense, cluttered rooms often occurs. The subculture has been described as maximalist and nostalgic. (wikipedia)
• • •
Plus, in the NW at least, the crosses for the stacks of longer answers were notably strained. POG is bad no matter how you clue it. It was bad as a '90s fad and it's bad now. This particular POG clue (1D: Cool, in streaming slang) ... I honestly didn't even know what "streaming slang" meant. I thought maybe "gaming slang," which was correct, but only in part. It's something that comes from communities on Twitch, where all kinds of things are streamed (even, occasionally, people solving crosswords). I looked up this meaning of POG but quickly wanted top stop reading when I saw that the origins of the term were stupidly convoluted and remembered that I don't actually care. But I have a blog to write, so I persevered. "POG" meaning "cool" (roughly) comes from a Twitch emote ("a small image or icon that represents an emotion, feeling, or action.") called PogChamp, which combined some streamer's surprised "oh cool" face with "the imagery of Pepe the Frog, a popular internet mascot that has sometimes been tied to right-wing ideas." Apparently it was one of the most popular emotes on Twitch. And yet: "The emote was subsequently removed after [the streamer in question] shared some questionable opinions on the January 6th storming of the U.S. Capital." Extreme, predictable LOL. Anyway, POG APIS followed quickly by ISA EELS TSETSE is not an opening that I particularly enjoyed.
The troubliest spots were POG and GOAT (needed every cross to finally "get" it) (GOAT is of course not just an animal but also an acronym for "Greatest Of All Time," which Biles inarguably is). Also struggled with TIER (44A: One option in a subscription service). This def of TIER is just depressing to me. So many ways to take TIER away from the depressing world of payment plans and ONE-TIME FEEs, but no. Capitalism wins again. I also had trouble with the first two letters of "SO DONE," largely because they really Really wanted to be "I'M," as in "I'M DONE," but "I" was in the clue so I knew that couldn't be right. The clue is a complete sentence and the answer isn't and I Hate when clues do that. The phrase is "I'm SO DONE." That is the phrase that is parallel to "I canNOT handle this right now." Cutting off the "I'M" is arbitrary and weird. I'm sure people sometimes say it that way, but again, the clue and answer should match up, grammar-wise. [Unable to handle a situation, in slang]. That would work. Subject-free SO DONE didn't quite work for me. On the other hand, I really (really) loved the clue on SEA SHANTY (69A: Liner notes?). The answer I'm not wild about, but that clue is gold.
Further comments:
- 10A: It's different from randomness, mathematically (CHAOS) — also the vast realm that Satan has to cross in order to find Earth in Paradise Lost, "a dark Illimitable Ocean without bound."
- 27A: Where to set a cocktail garnish (RIM) — true enough, but at home we just drop them in. Hard to drink a cocktail with a garnish poking you in the face or always threatening to slide off.
- 28A: Command that initiates a chase ("GO FETCH!") — had the "ET" and wrote in "GO GET 'EM!" In a harder puzzle, fixing that mistake might've proved very tough. So many letters in common with the real answer.
- 33A: Resource used in 67-Across (ORE) — bizarrely, I got this off the "E" without looking at 67-Across, then went immediately to 67-Across, saw that it started with "M," and wrote in MINECRAFT. Tiny crossference in the W totally opened up the SE. One of the many things that made today's puzzle easier than usual.
- 41A: Board game that begins with players choosing college versus career (LIFE) — I enjoyed remembering this game. Played it a lot as a child. It didn't much prepare me for LIFE, though. For instance, I hardly ever drive around in a plastic six-seater convertible.
- 50D: Horror character known as the Mistress of the Dark (ELVIRA) — another answer I loved seeing, continuing the darkness of DARK ACADEMIA. I remember ELVIRA as the host of some kind of spooky show ... oh yeah, here we go:
Elvira's Movie Macabre (titled on-screen as Movie Macabre with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark in its original run), or simply Movie Macabre, is an American hosted horror movie television program that originally aired locally from 1981 to 1986. The show features B movies, particularly those in the horror and science fiction genres, and is hosted by Elvira, a character with a black dress and heaven bump hairstyle, played by Cassandra Peterson. Elvira occasionally interrupts the films with comments and jokes, and in some episodes receives phone calls from a character called "the Breather" (John Paragon).
- 59D: ___ Bunin, 1933 Literature Nobelist from Russia (IVAN) — never heard of him. Probably should've been my "Word of the Day." BUNIN has appeared thrice in the NYTXW Modern Era, last time in '08. IVAN, of course, has appeared roughly a gajillion times (132 Modern Era appearances, to be exact, but only one of those IVANs was Bunin).
That's all. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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124 comments:
The big guy covered most of my thoughts. I’ve come to enjoy Malaika’s puzzle reviews here so I don’t want to rip on her but this seemed a little off. Not proper Friday toughness and downright boring - marginal USA Today material.
Playground Twist
The grid is well crafted and clean for the most part - I liked SEA SHANTY and FEEDER TEAM but the other longs just fall flat - the full OREO COOKIE is unforgivable. Most of the time I spent telling myself it can’t be that simple.
One Hundred Years
As the colder weather approaches give me pav bhaji with sarson ka SAAG and I’m good.
Bauhaus
This is well crafted puzzle - but not an overly enjoyable Friday morning solve.
The Damned
It was Easy, but I liked it a lot more than @Rex did.
Overwrites:
My 15A unsolved mysteries were cold CASES before they were OPEN
Like OFL, I initiated my 28A chase with GO gET 'em before GO FETCH
SO gONE before DONE at 42A
FEEDER TEAM (30D) fixed the 28A and 42A overwrites because gEEgER TEAM made no sense
WOEs:
POG as clued at 1D
I'd never heard of DARK ACADEMIA (6D), but it was easy to infer from crosses once I fixed 28A.
In the interest of completeness I should note that I've never heard of Mr. Bunin (59D), but I had IVAN filled in before I read the clue.
What on earth is wrong with POG? It is such a common ubiquitous word for a very large proportion of the population. Does Rex just not like it when he doesn't get clues? The meaning is entirely divorced from the emote now as it is just a word.
I liked 'Pog' as clued. It's genuinely a really widespread and significant part of internet parlance so it's not a surprise to see it on the grid. This was nearly my fastest ever Friday solve so would have preferred more of an all-round challenge.
From our friends...
"I made $50,000 in the stock market today."
"I had twins."
"I went to the poor farm."
"I'm on Millionaire Acres"
That's Life!
I heartily endorse this game.
If today is the day I get roasted by the youths for not knowing POG then so be it. 🥰 Circle of life. Genuinely glad for Mali that some people enjoy that answer.
This was by far the easiest Friday puzzle I’ve ever done.
I had an easier time with this one than most Fridays and even got some whoosh going in the south central. It helped that some of the answers have been around for a while, like MINECRAFT and PALEO DIET ( and ELVIRA !). Heck, I even knew that Beyoncé is the “All the SINGLE LADIES” lady, so I dropped that in without needing any crosses.
I did struggle in parts - DARK ACADEMIA meant nothing to me, for example. I rarely get a chance to manhandle even a portion of the grids on a Friday, so I took my time and enjoyed this one. Yes, it contained the brutally easy OREO COOKIE but what the heck is the adjacent FEEDER TEAM? I obviously can tell what it is conceptually by its clue. Apparently it’s a somewhat generic term similar to FARM TEAM in baseball. If I’ve heard that one in the wild, it just didn’t register.
Conversely, I liked this better than a lot of Malaika's puzzles that I've done, precisely because it did not seek to be cutting-edge hip. Other than POG, everything in the puzzle has established some staying power.
Trust me, once you start playing GO FETCH, there is no way to END GAME. Your arm will fall off before Bramble gets tired or bored.
I once worked on a project in Mexico monitoring populations of small forest carnivores, as part of which got to work with sedated OCELOTS. That fur is possibly the softest thing I've ever felt.
Finished it with one cheat (to get SAAG), but the music never sounded. I know my subscription is paid up. Computer issue?
I’m surprised the editor let 51A in without the leading “¡” since it’s an exclamation in Spanish.
Saw several people on Reddit with crazy fast record times (but unimpressive Friday averages), and knew something was up. Total dud. Below my average by a minute and a half, but definitely not on my wavelength. Never heard of DARK ACADEMIA which affected a lot of crosses, like GO FETCH. Still don't understand SEA SHANTY. FEEDER TEAM seems like a reach, like something someone who doesn't follow sports would say, and SO DONE was slow to emerge. Not knowing Spanish didn't help with POR. Would have never gotten POG if I had needed to. Moral of the story...stay off of Reddit.
Hey All !
A Malaika MThemeless. Liked the NE/SW stacks of 10's. Quite tough to fill cleanly. And stacks of 9's in the other corners.
Got stuck on GINGER ALE/DARK ACADEMIA. Had the GIN_E_ALE, but the ole brain was stuck on GINsomething, totally disregarding the ALE. Silly brain. Plus, I had ARE as ERE, so having DA_KACADEMIe was not helping the situation. Filled in GINrEnALE to just be able to get the Almost There message, then came here to find the error of my ways. So a Finished With Errors (3), FWE.
Nice puz, Malaika. Nice seeing good ole TSETSE again. In the puz at least, wouldn't want to IRL. 😁
Have a great Friday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
I found this so extremely easy that I was sure they accidentally switched a Tuesday and a Friday. Less than half of my usual Friday time. Probably helps that I’m in my late 30s, and I can’t say I disliked it, but it’s nowhere near a Friday difficulty level.
Another hand up for GOgETem. Other than that, see clue, write answer, although never heard of DARK ACADEMIA it filled in quickly from crosses. Same as @Rex with ORE and the M starting MINECRAFT. Do kids still play thar?
Anyway, done in less time than T, W or Th this week. Kinda sad for a Friday puzz....
This grid was full of LIFE, bouncy and fresh.
My favorite part was the SE because I’m a wordplay lover and it had a lovely HEAP:
[Liner notes?] for SEA SHANTY
[Cellular data plan?] for DNA
[Material for a certain pocket] for PITA, and
[It’s badly in need of a pick-me-up] for STY
My second favorite part were the long downs, eight of them, with six being NYT answer debuts. No same-old, same-old there.
My third favorite part was the abutting GOAT and GO FETCH, imagining what it would be like to play the latter with the former.
I liked the dook SOD ONE, and seeing THAW there to balance off row ten (ICE DAMS and SLEETED), and pleased to encounter a worthy TIL – DARK ACADEMIA.
Go my mojo going with this one, Malaika, a great springboard for the day. Thank you!
“Troubliest”? …As for the puzzle, I agree it didn’t feel fresh. And too fast and easy for a Friday. I usually solve on my laptop but today I sat up in bed and solved on my phone… still finished more quickly than usual.
I enjoyed this, but it certainly didn't feel like a Friday to me, but that might largely be a result of me just knowing most of the pop culture stuff. I think it is good, fun and probably necessary long term for the continued popularity of the puzzle to incorporate modernish pop culture into the clues, but this seemed like a bit much.
Very happy for all you kids who found this so easy. I shot myself in the foot instantly with CARBODIET and kept tripping all the way through. Lost track of all the things I just didn't know, but they included POG, SINGLELADIES, IVAN, GOSSIPGIRL, ENDGAME, and especially DARKACADEMIA. I've done enough puzzles to get them from crosses, but there was no "oh yeah, that" even with all the letters in. No fun to feel old even when you are old.
And of course, there was GOGETEM, which had to be right and snarled things almost forever. Sheesh.
In short, a Mega Helping of TIL. I usually like your stuff, MH, but today was "not my jam" to quote my seven-year old granddaughter. Thanks for some tortured fun.
The puzzle was enjoyable, zippy, current. A bit too much crosswordese but I have to think that the tepid response of has to do with the confounding decision to run this on a Friday. This was a fresh Tuesday puzzle, a light Wednesday. Outside of a few fun clues it was basic, straightforward know a title, no misdirection, puzzling out an answer.
I legitimately have no idea how this could be considered a Friday puzzle. Beyond ease it doesn’t categorically fit!
Agreed. I thought for sure I was missing some trickery...
I approve this moral
Super breezy, and def not Malaika’s fault it ran on a Friday - since that seems to be everyone’s main criticism
I don't know if I was just on this puzzle's wavelength or if it really is among the easiest Fridays that's recently appeared, but it played like a slightly challenging Monday or an easy Tuesday for me, and my time reflected that. I instantly dropped in PALEODIET and never really stopped to catch my breath. Only hangup was putting in GDR before DDR on the East Germany clue, but I knew the cross had to be SID and not SIG, so it was easily fixed.
15 minutes for me, so easy-medium. Saw Malaika's name and perked right up. The main thing I noticed about this puzzle was that each section of the puzzle had a real major gimme in it to get me started--so I definitely never got truly stuck. SAAG was a WOE (though I love Paneer!). I've probably eaten SAAG paneer before, but just didn't know/couldn't recall the name. Loved the long stacks--GOSSIPGIRL and OREOCOOKIE and ADDITIVES and ANTIRACIST all great answers, marquis answers in my book. Interesting to have big corners and the middle full of 3s and 4s and broken up--I guess that is part of why this felt so different than a "usual" Friday. Loved it!!!! Thanks, Malaika! : )
Oh, also, add me to the GOGETEM chorus. Clearly, a striking generational divide in these comments. I’m on the wrong/clueless side.
I’m with the professor, pog is completely foreign to me….got it only from crosses.
PS I’m 83.
My grandkids play/ed Minecraft when they were 10.
Never heard of gossip girl or a feeder team.
I guess it depends on your level of pop culture knowledge but this was almost painfully easy for a Friday for me. I feel like something is off with the editing/cluing calibration when my Friday time is faster than my Tuesday time for the week.
Hey Malaika,
I liked your puzzle. It was fun for me to learn some terms used by generations which have come after this old boomer. My grandsons constantly entertain me with all their current lingo. I hope to see some of those words in a puzzle soon.
I read the clue on 6D as anesthetic - threw me off. First time I've seen a "shape" called GOAT
It's a FARM TEAM, not a FEEDER TEAM. I have never heard of the latter.
What day is it? (Taps watch.) This puzzle felt a little too easy for a Friday. I don't zoom and whoosh that often, but this was zoomy and whooshy for sure, and I didn't even feel deserving of the thrill. And, I didn't even see POG that Rex complained about at such length. The stacks in the NW and SE, just boom boom boom DONE.
The one thing I'll pat myself on the back for today is backing out of mistaken entries more quickly than I usually do, when things weren't working out. For example, GO gET em instead of GO FETCH. GOSSIP GIRL was another: I first guessed GOtham GIRL, based on Manhattan in the clue. And OREO Crumbs was yet another that didn't take too long to undo.
DARK ACADEMIA was unknown to me. Funny how tastes can differ so much: this one left me cold, maybe because the aesthetic sounds so silly and affected (either you live the academic life or you don't -- don't try to fake it), and I inwardly hoped DARK would be more along the lines of Gothic or Noir, and it doesn't seem to be. (Does that make me a "HOPER"? I hope not.)
In view of Rex's sour review, my OPEN question is: how much of the cluing is actually Malaika's? I thought I saw a constructor pop by the other day who said that typically, upwards of 50% of the clues are due to the NYTXW team, so the clues for TIER or SO DONE could well be their doing. Same with ENDGAME, ANTI-RACIST, etc.
No, honestly, I thought Rex was way too harsh with this one. He always says he wants "fresh", so for example MINECRAFT is evidently stale by now (even though it is a certainty that many of the older crowd will not be familiar with it), and yet POG is evidently too fresh for his blood. To me the puzzle felt balanced between the older and the newer, so it was fine on that score. Just too easy.
Happy Friday, everyone!
SEA SHANTY - Think ocean liner, and musical notes. A sea shanty is a song sung by sailors while they work.
Most of these comments feel too harsh to me. My time was faster than my Friday average but I thought it was a solid puzzle - Thanks Malaika
I thought it was really good. Nice work Malaika!
Try teaching at CUNY, where it takes forever to get the lights fixed in a classroom. That's the real DARK ACADEMIA.
This was fastest Friday ever 14 minutes. I'm new compared to most of you, so that probably sounds slow but a good Friday is 30 to 45 minutes for me .
Anyway Elvira's show Movie Macabre in the 80s used to have me rolling on the floor laughing. At the time this type of humor was unique. I think now with all the internet reels and parody shows, this is kind of humor is more common now, the way she would stop the movie and make hysterical comments about it.
I hadn't ever seen anything like that. I think Mystery Science Theater 3000 owes Elvira a lot.
I feel as though Malaika had some sloppy missteps of the kind that she would usually criticire:, e.g. SO DONE (iwthout "I'm" as the answer for "I canNOT handle this right now"); BIT ON A BUN (so old); EDIE Falco / OREO / TSETSE (yet again); and the awkward "They're the subject of more than 200 million catalogs a year" (why include the "They're the"?). The puzzle didn't feel fresh or zingy, to me. KInd of an odd mix of very current and very stale.
I’ve always known it as Farm team too, but feeder team makes sense.
A very doable Friday, which tripped me up in a few places, but didn’t keep me from finishing. Seemed like a HEAP of names and trivia, but really very few of the those clues gave me too much resistance. POG is from the 90s? Wow. Okay. I had STICK for STALK, NONONO for SO DONE, and OKRAS for IKEAS, thinking of spring SEED catalogs. Loved GO FETCH and couldn’t help but think of Malaika and her sweet pup.
I once made a dirt cake for a Halloween party where prizes were awarded for best food contributed and took home first place honors. I crushed the OREO COOKIES and mixed gummy worms into the dirt. Then I put the whole thing inside one of those styrofoam worm farm containers from Bass Pro. It was kinda gross looking but hey, at least I didn’t go with my original idea, which was Tootsie Rolls in a litter box.
The clues for SO DONE and IKEAS bothered me, too. (The clue for IKEAS would have been more Friday-level if it hadn't indicated that the answer would be plural.) I wonder if those were really Malaika's clues. Do the constructors get to review and comment on the edits to their puzzles before they're published?
ELVIRA (or The Vira for @Southside Johnny) always makes me shake my head in a gesture of awe and disbelief because a man named Dallas Frazier wrote a song which became a big hit for the Oak Ridge Boys and contained , in the chorus, the alleged rhyme, "My hearts on fire, Elvira." I guess he didn't think, "Don't spend your IRA, Elvira" had the requisite zip.
I was on a ONETIMEFEEDERTEAM that swore by the PALEODIET, along with a HEAP of OREOCOOKIEs. I never did get to play on a pro field, but I did get to SODONE.
Apple, as you likely know, has gotten into the auto business with the IVAN. Reviews have been so bad, however, that it is already known as IVAN the Terrible. Early buyers say it's a real LEMON.
Not to say that my son is a trend-follower, but he went directly from GOTH to DARKACADEMIA. His heroine is now Jeanne d'Arc Academia
Well, not much to do around here until the ICEDAMS THAW, so I'll just say Mthanks, Malaika Handa.
I thought you'd like it better than you did. I had fun and TIL dark academia
Also put in GOGETEM. Maybe that wasn't the best clue for that answer
Very hard for this geezer. 24 mysteries, recent Fridays and Saturdays have been around 15. Couldn't finish.
Thank you for the honest review, Rex.
But we don't know how much of the cluing was hers.
I thought this was delightful! Thought Rex was way too hard on the puzzle. Fun, breezy, right in my (elder millennial) language, and ELVIRA! What’s not to love?
Interesting to learn about DARKACADEMIA. THT says either you live the academic life or you don't, but that's not exactly true. I grew up the child of two college professors in a very working class, anti-intellectual city (where I still live), having grown op the child of two academics and knowing everything they dealt with I had no desire to become one myself, but I do use the trappings. Tweed blazers from the thrift store with elbow patches, dropping 4-syllable words into conversations. I think a lot of people who know me casually assume I teach somewhere (and I do, in my living room),
Interesting thing I learned today is how looong the first three sentences of the Gettysburg address are.
FARM TEAM is the minor-league affiliate of a major-league team. FEEDER TEAM is correct for the clue.
tht: Yes, I guess I've come to understand that sometimes the editors change a lot. Do they just make the edits without passing them by the constructors? Whatever, NYTXWs have been feeling really sloppy lately.
I expected this to be a tough one for the out of touch olds who generally cross words ;) but honestly this was disappointingly easy for a Friday and a snoozer despite a promising looking grid.
Easiest Friday I've ever done.
I would just read it as "in the shape of a GOAT". I'm "charmed" by the notion that Biles would wear this, or at least part of me is, but I hope it was a gift. If she bought it for herself, I'd be more alarmed than charmed.
Who knows? Did you get a message like "Oh crumbs, so close" or similar? Or was the clock still ticking without a message? But I'd guess the chances that it was a computer issue are slim to none.
Time should stand still for crossword puzzles. A mix of old and new seems fine to me, even when I don’t know which is which, like POG or whatever that is…highlight for me today is @egsforbreakfast’s review. Love iVan the terrible! And SEASHANTY—never thought of “notes” in the clue as a musical reference. In any case, Malaika did stir up a storm with her wild mix of references.
Literally LOL at the "The"!
Farm or FEEDER teams are also pro teams, so the clue doesn’t ‘t make sense.
For those thinking it should have run Tuesday or Wednesday, the Times doesn't do that with a themeless. I'm not sure how easy or hard I found it -- I only knew one of the long downs without crosses, for example.
I got SEA cHANTY as soon as I looked at the clue, but needed to know the Beyonce song to see it was an alternate spelling; don't think I've ever encountered it before. (According to M-W the official spelling is chantey, but chanty and shanty are acceptable variants.)
I don't much like horror movies, but back in the day I would often watch ELVIRA's introduction and then change the channel. But what I never did was play the game of LIFE, so I needed some crosses to get that one.
I'm baffled by Rex's comment about the "liner notes?" clue. How can you like the clue but not the answer? Or did he mean he doesn't like that particular musical genre?
I'm also baffled by the concept that a chain of stores is the "subject" of its catalogs. But no matter, once I had the K it had to be IKEAS.
Good question. I think the same constructor that I was half-remembering in my 8:55AM comment might have said that they signed off on the team's edits a little too quickly. If so, it would seem the constructor is alerted before publication. But I obviously have no direct knowledge, so don't quote me on that. (The phrase "choose your battles" also comes to mind here, as to how a constructor reacts.)
POG is deliscious ! makes for a great super easy mai tai. 4oz pog, 1.5 oz rum.
pineapple.orange.guava.
GOGETEM and OREOCRUMBS had me stuck forever in the southwest.
I dropped in POG instantly and was excited to see something I was familiar with (but part of the fun was that Rex would be grumpy about it)
A lot of the complaints are the puzzle trending too young, I felt
A little sad to see that our dear Malaika was the author of this waaaay too easy Friday.
Agreed! Beat my personal best, and therefore got that rare thrill of reading Rex rate it at Easy-Medium.
Yes, easy Friday - but I am not complaining, sometimes Fiday's kick my butt. YES "GOgEtem" before GOFETCH. But my big thing is the NYC clue. I am a NYer, never, ever have I heard of Cranberry or Pineapple "Streets". Anybody? what am I missing? Loved the SEASHANTY clue, btw.
Sea shanties are from the age of sail, ocean liners are from the age of steam...so NO.
I know from reading @Malaika's puzzle reviews that our worlds of reference don't overlap all that much, so I wasn't surprised that there were a HEAP of answers I needed another HEAP of crosses to get. So, more of a "medium" for me. I enjoyed learning about DARK ACADEMIA (for me that had previously meant stab-in-the-back departmental politics) and writing in SEA SHANTY and OCELOTS. Like @kitshef 7:18, I got a smile out of the row GO FETCH + END GAME, not so much out of the impending ICE DAMS + SLEETED.
+1, Breezed though everything but GDR/SIG.
a note on POG: the emote is named PogChamp because the pictured guy making the “oh cool face” made that face in response to winning a POGs tournament, like the 90s game. he was, the POG champ.
Never thought of Elvira as a "horror character" -- She hosted the show; she wasn't a character in an actual horror movie. I remember Simone Biles having a "GOAT logo on her jacket (jersey?) -- Hadn't known about the charm/pendant.
Personally, I care not whether a constructor is gearing his/her "pop culture-driven [ir]relevance, with lots of proper nouns from movies and gaming and book titles and what not" towards Millennials, young/old Gen X/Y/Z/Alpha/Omega or any other cool-and-trendy demographic -- it's all the same trivial, dumbed-down slop as far as I'm concerned, and slogging through it inevitably feels like slogging through a waste dump.
My memory tells me that Biles had the image of a Goat (along with the acronym) emblazoned on the back of her warm-up jacket -- I don't remember any kind of charm or pendant in that shape, but then I probably never saw any close-ups of her where something like that would have been visible.
Redeculously easy
Easy Fridays don't bother me, because I still enjoy just completing them. This one took me under half an hour, lol, so i knew it was 'easiest Friday ever shoulda been Tuesday' material for most of you (but thank you, @pablinnh for some relief there).
Was impressed with myself until getting to the SW. Everyone else's GOgETem was my GOgETit, I mixed up Gaul and GOTH, tried to envision liLy rings, couldn't see IKEAS as a subject, preferred ICEjAMS, and on and on.
But it's Friday, it's Malaika, and I did it, so - great puzzle. Mwah, Malaika.
Easy-medium except for tracking down a typo that really wasn’t a typo for the down clue. I had GDR instead of DDR for the old East Germany, fortunately I remembered not having seen SIg in Toy Story.
Two of the long downs were WOEs - DARK ACADEMIA and ANTI RACIST along with POG, IVAN, GOAT, and ISA…hence the “medium”.
Costly erasure - GO get em before GO FETCH (Hi @Rex et. al.)
Not much junk and more than a modicum of sparkle (especially the long downs), liked it quite a bit more than @Rex did.
Do they sing sea shanties on ocean liners? I associate shanties with the sailing ships of yore. Not quite sure how ocean liners fit with that one.
I was thinking the same thing. I've known quite a few musicians who've gotten gigs playing on cruise ships, and there's nary a shantyman/woman among them.
Originally had OREO CRUMBS, which I prefer to OREO COOKIES.
Your remarks gave me food for thought. I started a full response here but I’m going to make a separate post if you care to take the time to find it and read it. I’d like to point it out to others as well.
I liked this one a lot - maybe because it was right in my wavelength. Old enough to remember Elvira and the Game of Life, young enough (or with kids young enough and the right age) to be very familiar with Ibram Kendi, Minecraft, Gossip Girl, and (my favorite) Dark Academia (really my fave aesthetic). And the TikTok Sea Shanty trend from a couple of years ago. I even liked Oreo Cookie - we see Oreo so much that having the longer answer (and a reasonably fresh clue) appealed to me. Finished in about 7 minutes under my average Friday, 2 minutes over my best, so not a challenge, but I enjoyed the pop culture references and general lack of obscure baseball trivia clues.
In case you missed it, I invite others to note the first sentence of @EasyEd’s post at 10:05. “Time should stand still for crossword puzzles.“ That seems like an excellent approach to solving any puzzle. I occasionally grouse, mostly to myself, about current pop culture or clues that reference things I deem too obscure. But some days I’m also amazed by how much I learn. For example, this past week on Jeopardy, one of the categories was world currencies - rials, rupees, rubles - and I knew all of them. Probably the first time I’ve ever nailed every answer in a category, and I owe it all to crosswords. So maybe by keeping an open mind, I’ll eventually master streaming slang as well. Just a thought, FWIW.
I posted earlier but it didn't show (??)
I liked this a lot. A themeless - no gimmick (which were getting annoying - for me, anyway) Friday. Only Woes were POG, IVAN, FEEDER TEAM. SEA SHANTY was great. Thank you, Malika for a fun Friday :)
My favorite part of this puzzle was slapping in GO gET em, a la Rex, at 28A, which led me to 30D being gEEzER TEAM. Being part of a team training athletes might be a tad hard on the geezers but it was fun to imagine. On the other hand, this left 24D as Tm__. What, are we going to get a plural TMIs today? Horrors. This swiftly got straightened out when DWELL led to THAW.
ICE DAMS: Our solution to this problem was to get a metal roof. Our soffits are unusually wide so it was so easy for that roof-melted water to slide down and hit the much cooler soffit area and then back up , causing a roof leak into the attic to the point where we had a wet bulge in our kitchen ceiling every time it rained or THAWed. Life is much better now and our skylight in the kitchen is no longer getting moldy.
Thanks for some Friday entertainment, Malaika Handa!
Cut Malaika some slack. She's probably having a rough time watching Liverpool implode. (Go Gunners!) I enjoyed the puzzle but agree it was uncharacteristically easy for Friday. I especially liked the number of 9- and 10- word answers that I could actually figure out with only minimal reliance on crosses.
Jazzman, I agree the clue isn't quite right. And "Ship notes?" would have worked as a misdirect, because people would think of captain's logs first, I think.
It’s a theme less - only themeless days for this size grid are Friday and Saturday
Maybe you inadvertently turned the music OFF in settings. I HATE the damned music and purposely turn it OFF. Also see tht response.
Twice as fast as my usual
Friday time. I’ll be 80 next week. Go figure.
Same. Got the swoosh going and it was done in no time.
I agree! Btw…I worked puzzle late and prob won’t separately post, but I LIKED the puzzle!
At 1 down I thought: oh a young constructor today; sure enough it's our beloved Malaika! It was fairly easy except for the Unknown Names in the clues and answers.
I finished without getting the Happy Pencil and took a while to find my error. For "Liner notes?" I had confidently put in SEA CHARTS and thought: clever! It worked just fine with the Unknown Name IVAR, but not so well with the Unknown Beyonce song.
Oh, and that Gettysburg Address clue for 56 across ARE is just bizarre. Even though I'm Canadian, I almost know those 3 sentences word by word but would never have guessed it.
Happy birthday King Charles!
I had all the same issues as you, including “I’m done”
And yet, this came together as the easiest Friday ever. Literally, my fastest ever Friday - almost a third of my Friday average and only a handful of seconds slower than Tuesday
Enjoyed it though!
What the heck...this was fun, but too, too easy!
I kept double checking that this wasn’t an early week puzzle!!
I hate argue against niche clues as they are fair game but the internet says Twitch has 35m daily users worldwide. Current world population is about 8b, so not a very large proportion (0.4%).
Feeder teams aren't really used by the main pro sports in the US, although you could consider all college teams as feeder teams. The term is used in football in Europe (more feeder club tho) and at lower levels in the US (travel teams feeding HS varsity teams)
totally agree- 10 minutes-it felt ez. In contrast- sometimes I'm proud of myself for getting it in 30+ minutes and rex says ez
@jberg. I found your comment about cHANTY vs SHANTY interesting because I have never seen it with an initial C. So I had to go searching and I found that chanty, or chantey, are older versions replaced by the much more common shanty. Chantey, by the way, is presumed to have arisen from the French chanter (to sing). Makes sense.
Cranberry & Pineapple streets are in Brooklyn.
Today's was soooooooo much easier than yesterday's. I am sure it was more difficult in some sense, but it was a puzzle, not a game. Thursday's xword is a game. I hate games.
I'm in my mid 30s and the entire puzzle felt extremely easy, probably the easiest Friday I've done. I've also played video games for most of my life, including Minecraft when it was first in beta ~15 years ago.
Despite being quite online since 2000, I had never heard of POG as anything other than pineapple orange guava / the collectible disks Milhouse traded Bart's soul for (of which I had a few back in grade 4). I guess I'm just getting old!
Ha ha ha, I was led down the same geezer path! "Wait, something's off..."
Such curmudgeonly comments as I make sometimes do not deserve to be taken too seriously. :-) I truly mean no offense and only that the answer didn't excite me as it might others. In the current circumstance, one could do a whole lot worse: the people dressing in DARK ACADEMIA fashion no doubt look very snazzy. I approve.
Nice puzzle, Malaika! Lot of debut entries. Don't mind me stating the obvious, but... puzzles with multiple long-stacks are typically quicker to solve. Trickier clues would have been welcome, but then you'd have a portion of solvers complaining about the obtuse clues crossing a proper noun. GOSSIPGIRL starts all the acrosses in the SW, so those across clues would have to be on the easy side (to accommodate those unfamiliar with the show.) Anyway... enjoyed the solve! Was surprised to see POG as clued. I knew the reference - but don't call me a young'un. Kappa
@tht I saw your earlier post but decided to reply here instead. Malaika's constructor notes (from xwordinfo):
The seed for this puzzle was 6-Down, which was stuck in my head after reading The Secret History for the first time. My favorite type of entry is one comprised of two known words that, when stuck together, create a standalone phrase that means something a little more specific. See also MOVIE MAGIC, DIVA CUP, etc.
I submitted this on August 26, 2024 and it was accepted 80 days later on November 14, 2024. It ran exactly a year later on November 14, 2025.
There are 72 clues in this puzzle. Forty-seven (65%) were kept identical. Ten (14%) were updated slightly. Fifteen (21%) are new from the NYT editors.
My original clue for FEEDER TEAM was [Certain underage club?] and my original clue for GOTH was [Dark look?]
I am a software engineer, and one of the things that I like about computer science (especially from a pedagogical standpoint) is how (similar to my first bullet point), regular words that we are all familiar with get repurposed to mean something a little more specific. My original clue for both HEAP and for LIST was [Computer science term for a certain collection of objects]. I like how even though that's technically jargon, it also works on a definitional level. Alas, both of these clues were cut.
I write easy puzzles, but I also really want to hit for the cycle (except for a Sunday lol). I tried soooo hard to make this puzzle hard. When the editors accepted it, they accepted it to run on a Saturday!! I was so excited. A year later, just before it ran, they told me that test solvers had felt it was simply too easy for a Saturday. Ah well. Enjoy your personal bests, y'all.
Nice one Liveprof.
Egs, enjoyed your whole comment, but paragraphs 2 & 3 had me laughing the most.
I couldn't believe some called this a Tuesday level puzzle. I'd never head of many of the answers. And I still don't understand DarkAcademia - Not so much the "aesthetic" as why it is called that.
And pog sounds far too uncool to mean cool.
Jazzmanchgo
I am pretty sure that sea shanties did not last long in the ocean liner era. But to me it is irrelevant.
The clue had a ? , telling us there is a trick. As I like to say, it’s a puzzle not a dictionary.The answer is close enough for crosswords. ( as a former longtime commenter used to say).
Liner notes I thought was a great clue.
I love that this puzzle trends young because I’m old and found it easy - and fun! Thank you, Malaika! I got GOSSIP GIRL, POG and DARK ACADEMIA from the crosses
Lewis the
I liked the puzzle but …
Reading your comments I just realized how many clues I never had to read. Very unusual for a Friday. DNA STY.HALO SSN
But I agree some good clues like . Liner notes. Maybe the editors over edited?
Rex complained but I liked seeing TSETSE
As pabloinnh says it’s a n old friend.
Pabloinnh
Thought you might mention TSETSE. An old friend, no? I had no clue about IVAN but . 4 letters, very obscure clue easy puzzle try IVAN Lucky day maybe.
Well, no one can accuse Rex of playing favorites.
I enjoy seeing Rex skewer puzzles that I don't love, but in this case, I thought the puzzle was fine (not particularly exciting, but fine), and he was much harsher than I would have expected.
As a sometimes iconoclastic retired academic, I ordered a book I thought might interest me. It arrived a few hours ago. The title: Dark Academia: How Universities Die. I understand the title now better than I did when I ordered the book,
Four words I never read the clues for. Liked the puzzle but a bit too easy. Maybe blame the editors. But overall I liked it.
Never heard of DARKACAdEMY. Reminds me of the PREPPY craze in the’80’s pushed along by the best seller, Preppy Handbook.
I have never done a Friday in 12 min! And I’m in my 60s, so not even the target audience! Super easy.
Way fast and I’m twice your age
Another for GOgETem. “POG” was a WOE, as was “DARK ACADEMIA” (I’m 61). Still a personal best in terms of time but way too many cultural references. Glad so many enjoyed.
I really really liked this puzzle and the clueing. Broke my Friday record by about 2 min, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing!
I look forward to Friday puzzles, so it was a little disappointing that a Tuesday puzzle was published on a Friday.
@PH. Thanks for the info!
No puedo hacerme cargo de esto ahora mismo.
Well, I guess I officially have a crush on Malaika. An easy Friday, DARK ACADEMIA, and a SEA SHANTY. This is how you find a way to make a themeless less sucky than usual.
Nothing would've prevented them from running this on a Tuesday so we could complain about the themelessness.
Nothing would prevent them from running a 12 square puzzle with ELVIRA crossing MICDROP.
I just checked and nobody discussed randomness versus chaos. This seems like the most interesting topic in the grid, but as usual my interests seem to have me in the weeds picking dandelions while everyone else is weeping about their speed records.
On team GOGETEM. I'm on team saag aloo, but paneer is okay too. I'm on team 32-inch inseam. Pretty sure if you've ever used POG unironically you're on team unPOG -- the unPOG POD.
❤️ [Liner notes?]. [Fast time?].
People: 7
Places: 0
Products: 9
Partials: 5
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 22 of 72 (31%)
Funny Factor: 3 😐
Uniclues:
1 A pancake with syrup.
2 Taxes on an upset stomach.
3 Grabbing a slobbery tennis ball and saying, "Drop it," with an earnest tone.
4 Plastic furniture and an annoying maze.
5 Catholics.
6 Einstein Bagels.
1 PALEODIET CHAOS
2 GINGERALE RATES
3 GO FETCH END GAME
4 IKEA'S ADDITIVES
5 LENT FEEDER TEAM
6 SESAME SEED STY
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Your skin. DRACULA RIND.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I enjoy Malaika’s commentary her so much, and was very happy to see her byline today. Usually, her puzzles are witty and clever with several real marquee answers and some nifty wordplay. Alas, much of the content today just wasn’t in my wheelhouse, and I agree with the weak spots @Rex highlights.
And also like OFL, I thought “Liner notes” is a fantastic clue that constructors will likely be stealing; it’s that good, and is what I expect from a clever Maika oeuvre. I think it needs to connect to an answer related to an actual “Liner,” though. Maybe an answer like DANCE BAND? Oh well.
The one answer that still puzzles me though is that at 61A we are talking about an IKEA catalog that hasn’t been published for quite some time, and had its “200 million copy” heyday in about 2016, not to mention that we are talking about plural IKEAS. What? Although not by design, I solved the SW on downs and didn’t read the clue or notice the answer until I finished. Is there an alternate explanation? I’m all ears, folks.
@GaryJ: the uniclues really sparkled today!
super easy unoffensive WSJ puzzle today I'm a New Yawker one for the books dont miss absolutely beautiful just a fan thats it
Me too! 😂
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