Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: December 2025

Constructor: Hannah Binney

Relative difficulty: Medium (solved Downs-only)

THEME: COLD FRONT (64A: Cause of some wintry weather ... or a hint to 17-, 24-, 40- and 51-Across) — "front" (first words) of theme answers are words associated with "cold":

Theme answers:

CHILL PILL (17A: "Remedy" for a riled-up person)
FROZEN ACCOUNT (24A: Penalty for bank fraud)
COOL CAT (40A: Hip person, in old slang)
POLAR OPPOSITE (51A: Antithesis)

Word of the Day: NAURU (11D: Third-smallest country in the world (eight square miles)) —

Nauru, officially the Republic of Nauru, formerly known as Pleasant Island, is an island country and microstate in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies within the Micronesia subregion of Oceania, with its nearest neighbour being Banaba (part of Kiribati) about 300 kilometres (190 mi) to the east.
With an area of only 21 square kilometres (8.1 sq mi), Nauru is the third-smallest country in the world, larger than only Vatican City and Monaco, making it the smallest republic and island nation, as well as the smallest member state of the Commonwealth of Nations by both area and population. Its population of about 10,800 is the world's third-smallest (not including colonies or overseas territories). Nauru is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States.
Settled by Micronesians circa 1000 BC, Nauru was annexed and claimed as a colony by the German Empire in the late 19th century. After World War I, Nauru became a League of Nations mandate administered by Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. During World War II, Nauru was occupied by Japanese troops and was bypassed by the Allied advance across the Pacific. After the war ended, the country entered into United Nations trusteeship. Nauru gained its independence in 1968. At various points since 2001, it has accepted aid from the Australian Government in exchange for hosting the Nauru Regional Processing Centre, a controversial offshore Australian immigration detention facility. As a result of heavy dependence on Australia, some sources have identified Nauru as a client state of Australia.
Nauru is a phosphate-rock island with rich deposits near the surface, which allowed easy strip mining operations for over a century. However, this has seriously harmed the country's environment, causing it to suffer from what is often referred to as the "resource curse". The phosphate was exhausted in the 1990s, and the remaining reserves are not economically viable for extraction. A trust established to manage the island's accumulated mining wealth, set up for the day the reserves would be exhausted, has diminished in value. To earn income, Nauru briefly became a tax haven and illegal money laundering centre.

• • •

Happy December, everyone. This was a step down from recent Mondays, which have been quite good. The concept is fine—any phrase with "front" or "back" ("head" or "rear" or "first" or "last" or the like) is apt to set off theme ideas in a constructor's head. I'm slightly stunned that no one has seen the theme possibilities in COLD FRONT before today (at least no one in NYTXW history). Once you get the idea in your head, all you gotta do is find words meaning "cold" at the "front" or ordinary two-word phrases (ideally, phrases that are not themselves associated with "cold"). COOL, POLAR, and FROZEN do just fine as first words today, as they are all rough synonyms of "cold." Which brings me to CHILL, which is the puzzle's one weakness. CHILL is a verb, or a noun, but unlike COOL, POLAR, and FROZEN, it is much less often an adjective. CHILLY and CHILLED, OK, but even though dictionary says CHILL can be adjectival, it doesn't feel adjectival, probably because no one uses it adjectivally except perhaps in formal or poetic situations. Every example Merriam-Webster dot com gives of CHILL as an adjective has me thinking "but you mean 'chilly'? people would say 'chilly' there" (well, Thomas Gray might not have said "chilly," but Thomas Gray has been dead for 250 years).

The one common adjectival use of CHILL these days is the one that has nothing to do with "cold" (M-W's definition 2.5: "having a laid-back style or easy manner"). Today's CHILL aberration might be a lot less wart-y if the set as a whole was varied in terms of parts of speech—if ICE, for instance, had been one of the first words, or SNOW. But when your revealer is COLD FRONT and you've decided to make 3/4 of your first words synonyms for COLD, that one not-convincingly-a-synonym first word stands out like a thumb that is sore (where did that idiom come from? do "sore thumbs" really stand out so much? your thumb could be quite sore and still look just like all your other digits). Maybe if CHILL PILL had been a truly original answer, I'd've been more warmly disposed to it, but this is already the fourth time I've seen it (first NYTXW appearance: 2011!). Anyway, the concept here was basic and the execution slightly lackluster. The longer Downs add some loveliness here and there—MAINFRAME + OIL DRUM is a colorful pair, and GRACE NOTE adds a nice bit of cruciverbial flair. It's a perfectly serviceable puzzle. Just not as snappy and polished as Mondays have been of late.

[OK, it looks like Brian ENO, of all people, would like to have a word with me about "CHILL"'s adjectival potential... not now, Brian!]

The fill gets rough (tired, stale) in many places today because of the preponderance of 3-4-5s. Lots of ASLAN-TAKEI-ECO-type patches. The SW is probably the most conspicuously unimaginative. You've got a small corner there but somehow have managed to pack it with crosswordese: AHA OHARE IRENE SEXTS and ENT? Doesn't feel like the constructor's really trying here. If pulling that "X" makes the corner even a little bit less dreary, for god's sake Pull The "X." There's nothing here that's gonna make you want to quit, or throw your puzzle across the room, but there's an overall flatness to the fill that makes the solve mostly ho-hum.

As a Downs-only experience, this wasn't too tough, except in the NE, where I got an extremely small country next to an actress I have never heard of (10D: Actress Noblezada of "Hadestown" = EVA). Not used to seeing actresses I've never heard of On A Monday, but ... I guess it happens. Shrug. Bummer to get shut out by what ends up being just another piece of crosswordese, but luckily I could infer all the letters of EVA with relative ease—that first letter was a total guess, but EVA seemed much more likely than IVA (a name that lives at the front of my mind because I've read The Maltese Falcon a million times, but one that is far less common than EVA irl, and in the grid). As for NAURU ... bah. Just couldn't dredge it up very easily. Had the terminal "U" but the only thing that came to mind was MACAU, which is a special administrative region in China, not a proper country. But once I got DIG IN and SLEPT into that corner, MACAU came out, and with MAGIC ACT in place, I could see GAUGE, and somehow that "U" jogged NAURU loose in my brain. No other part of the grid gave me any real trouble. It took a lot of inferred crosses for me to see MAINFRAME, but it often takes a lot of inferred crosses to see long Downs when you're solving Downs-only. Nothing unusual there.

Bullets:

14A: Ingredient in some smoothie bowls (ACAI) — so glad I didn't read the Across clues, because wtaf is a "smoothie bowl"??? I know what a smoothie is and I have at least heard of an ACAI bowl, but a "smoothie bowl." LOL at the phrase "some smoothie bowls," like I've been encountering them all my life and know them by subsets. Apparently this is some social-media-driven trend—eating with a spoon what you formerly just drank with a straw? Mkay. Enjoy. I'm gonna stick with oatmeal or granola with fruit, yogurt, nuts ... unblendered, thanks. I looked up "smoothie" bowls and half the descriptions feel like they were written by A.I. Are we sure "smoothie bowls" aren't actually an A.I. hallucination. Here is a representative description. Hopefully you see what I mean.

moothie bowls are trendy worldwide, providing both nutrition, the possibility to enjoy them, and endless creativity.

59A: "You should come foraging with me, because I'm a ___" (bad pun) (FUNGI) — again, thank god I wasn't reading the Across clues. "You should come foraging with me," that's your premise / come-on line? No one who talks like this is, in fact, a fun guy. Also, the pun sucks on the page because FUNGI is a plural. Only guys named Gus may use this pun. "I'm a FUNGUS!" Sure you are...
69A: Sends an eggplant emoji, say (SEXTS) — no. stop. this is corny. I get that eggplant emoji means "dick" but I thought SEXTS were supposed to be actually sexy. Is anyone getting horny from looking at an eggplant emoji? That might make someone laugh, but I have trouble imagining it would turn anyone on. I would love to retire the word "SEXT/S" in general, as it moved from novel to overused long ago, but once OOXTEPLERNON (the god of short bad fill) gets a new and useful letter combination in his maw, it's hard to get him to let go.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. a reminder that ELI Selzer, one of the writers who fills in for me here at the RP blog when I'm on vacation or otherwise indisposed, is going to be on Jeopardy! tomorrow night (Tuesday, 12/2/25), so look for him!

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