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Major product of Milan / SAT 1-31-26 / Variety of dog associated with King Charles / Daughter of King Minos, in myth / Tubers from which a gluten-free type of flour is derived / Tree growth indicative of good air quality / Protection, as from an organization / Foundation of music?
Saturday, January 31, 2026
Constructor: Nick Maritz
Relative difficulty: Easy/Medium
THEME: None
Word of the Day: NEANDERTHAL (56A: Old man?) —
Neanderthals (/niˈændərˌtɑːl, neɪ-, -ˌθɑːl/ nee-AN-də(r)-TAHL, nay-, -THAHL;[8] Homo neanderthalensis or sometimes Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) are an extinct group of archaic humans who inhabited Europe and Western and Central Asia during the Middle to Late Pleistocene. Neanderthal extinction occurred roughly 40,000 years ago with the immigration of modern humans (Cro-Magnons), but Neanderthals in Gibraltar may have persisted for thousands of years longer.
• • •
Hi again, friends! It's Rafa with another guest blog post. Happy to be back so soon! I hope everyone is having a lovely start to the year. It's a weird time because even though Things In The World seem to be going in quite a scary direction, I've had a really wonderful last few months in my personal life. If that's not the case for you, at least know that we've made it through January! There is sunlight at 5:30pm now! And it's only going to get better!!!It's quite rare to debut with a Saturday puzzle, so congrats to this constructor on his first NYT crossword! I really really wanted to love this puzzle but to me it was ... just ok. I'm not usually a big fan of this kind of grid shape. It doesn't have that many long entries, so a lot rests on the quality of the top and bottom stacks. The SANTA MONICA PIER / ROLLER COASTER pairing is cute ... but VANILLA ICE CREAM is such an on-the-nose vanilla answer. Just kinda boring. Who is getting excited about VANILLA ICE CREAM in their crossword? Or in real life, for that matter. Don't get me wrong, VANILLA ICE CREAM is delicious, but is it ever the most exciting dessert option?
 |
| This is a jaguar (animal) |
I've also always been a multi-word answer purist. One-word answers always feel less sparkly to me than multi-word answers, even if the answers are objectively cool and interesting things like PEDIATRICIANS and NEANDERTHAL. Is this something people notice or care about? Let me know! Both those answers did get solid clues -- [Ones who handle minor health problems?] and [Old man?] -- which helped elevate them.
 |
| This is a Jaguar (car) |
Anyways, I find that for this kind of grid to work, the mid-length answers need to pack a lot of juice. But here stuff like BUILDS UP and ITALIANS and SUPERIOR and MENTORS and CLINICS and REPLIES, etc., while all absolutely solid answers, didn't really do much to zhuzh up the grid, for me. (ZHUZH UP, on the other hand, with its absolutely absurd spelling and scrabbly letters, would certainly have zhuzhed things up.)
 |
| This is the Wanamaker Trophy |
Having said that, the whole thing was really clean. I'm not sure what ARR means in a sheet music context, and stuff like LAH and PATER feels kinda partial-adjacent, but there is very little to even nitpick in terms of gunky entries. (Some might dislike INCUBI, but I think it's a fun word.) Some solid cluing all around, too. The two aforementioned ones were bangers, plus stuff like [Bolognese, Parmesan, etc.] for ITALIANS and [Part of great deal?] for ACE (the playing card) also made it a fun solve.
That's all from me today. Hope to be back soon!
Bullets:
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- 35D: CHIGNON [French bun] — I loved seeing this answer. (This is a hair bun not a food bun, for those unfamiliar.)
- 32D: SUPERIOR [Largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area] — Though I noted this wasn't the most exciting answer, it's nice to get non-ERIE Great Lake representation in crosswords.
- 19A: CEOS [They're at the top of some ladders, informally] — The "informally" in this clue felt really off to me. I don't think "CEOs" is in any way informal. Is anyone saying "chief executive officer"? To me, CEO has reached ATM-level ubiquity, and thus does not require any sort of "informal" tag in the clue.
- 11D: SNELLEN [Herman ___, Dutch ophthalmologist known for his visual acuity testing] — I thought this was the same guy of Snell's Law fame (tbt to high school physics), but, no, Snell is a different Dutch dude.
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129 comments:
Just a couple of notes: "ARR" in sheet music is short for "arranged by," which is something I commonly saw as a euphoniumist in concert bands. Also, I think the "informally" in the clue for "CEOS" is referring to the "ladder" part of the clue, not the answer.
This one was surprisingly easy (just over 8 minutes for a Saturday is WAY fast for me) but I thought it was a nice, smooth solve.
HOLLA? What language is this in? It seems that Nick got caugh mixing together HOLA and HOLLER, in the hope that the offspring of the marriage would emerge as a countrified HOLLA. That's just hella wrong.
Easy-medium for me too with the bottom half easier than the top. SANTA MONICA PIER was a gimme and opened up that whole section.
LICHEN and SNELLEN were WOEs. No costly erasures but it took more than one try to spell PEDIATRICIANS, CHIGNON, and ARIADNE correctly.
Solid and smooth but a tad bland (or what @Rafa said), liked it.
Not happy with the SNELLEN EMI cross.
Thanks, Rafa, for subbing in!!! This was really easy for me, 12 minutes on a Saturday is definitely in "easy" category. Brioche before CHIGNON; peALS before DIALS; LAH and CIDER were gimmes so then ARIADNE went right in. As a bass player I loved the "BASSLINE" and how it was clued! Bass players unite! You don't notice us, but what would you do without us! (I find myself wondering if Nick plays bass?!?). I really loved the long answers, those were beautiful stacks, with very little junk. Having the SANTAMONICAPIER with its ROLLERCOASTER right there was a very nice touch. SPANIELS and PICNICs and the SNELLEN eye chart all made this a great puzzle. Thank you, Nick, and I can't believe this is a debut!!! Wow. 66 words. awesome.
Medium-Challenging, very nice Saturday. Liked it a lot more than @Rafa did. I needed Sergey and Larry in order to get a toehold in the North, but once I did the puzzle flowed nicely. Interesting trivia about LICHEN (8D), TAROS (10D),VANILLA ICE CREAM (12A) and the SANTA MONICA PIER (52A).
* * * * _
Overwrites:
loGIC before MAGIC for Vonnegut's take on science at 15D.
HaLLo before HOLLA at 18A
WOEs:
Ophthalmologist Herman SNELLING at 11D
HOLLA (18A) as clued. Or any other way.
French bun CHIGNON at 35D. Thanks, @Rafa, for clarifying that it's about hair.
ARR is the abbreviation for “Arranger” in music.
ARR in sheet music = ARRangement or ARRanged (by). I enjoyed this a lot more than @Rafa--it was suitably difficult for a Saturday, the cluing was solid and fair, and I really enjoyed PEDIATRICIANS (it was the first answer I put in!)--I don't have the same aversion to one-word answers as @Rafa. Overall I thought it was a really good Saturday puzzle.
I think ARR refers to Arranger or Arranged By, which is usually on the top line of the first page of a sheet music score. But I could be wrong.
A worthy Saturday, if a bit too easy as clued. I came into the south from the east, so I saw the ends of those last two long acrosses first. Saw —CAPIER and couldn’t imagine what it could be. When it finally dawned that it’s someplace I’ve actually been, I thought, “DOH!”
ARR is a sheet music abbreviation for “arranged by.”
And last night I had a truly wonderful VANILLA ICE CREAM from a local Vermont dairy. Of course, it didn’t hurt that it was on top of Mrs. Freude’s amazing apple crisp.
Now I’m going to go see if there’s any left for breakfast . . .
Recently finished reading Jennifer Saint’s ARIADNE, so maybe a little unfair advantage there. Daughter of Minos, grand-daughter of Zeus, sister of the Minotaur, wife of Dionysus, savior of Theseus.
Much easier than yesterday’s puzzle … it is not rare for Saturday to be easier, but it is very rare to be this much easier.
And since Rafa asked ... I strongly prefer interesting long words to multi-word phrases in my puzzles. I recognize this goes contrary to the current fashion.
Decent late week puzzle. At first glance the grid layout appears formidable with the two sets of tri-stacks but it warms up quickly - overall easier than yesterday.
Third Stone From The Sun
Rafa summarizes the highs and lows - the upper stack of longs is flat no doubt - VANILLA is VANILLA. The SANTA MONICA pair is the highlight today - I wish I was there now. Thought the short stuff in the center could have been edited better.
You’ll Never Be A Man
We’ve seen CHIGNON in the grid before - only reason I would have known it. ITALIANS - SALAMI is cute. BASS LINE provides a nice misdirect. SUPERIOR is the word of the day.
Marching The Hate Machines
Another frigid morning - but an enjoyable Saturday solve. Lester Ruff’s Stumper today provides a massive center stack that is pretty rough but gettable.
Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
Beauteous! There were just enough toeholds to keep me motivated, with the rest being so fuzzy that I had to memory-dig, had to leave the brain alone to let the subconscious kick in, and had to make stabs and see what happens.
That is sweet work, punctuated by pings of delight. I left the puzzle exuberant -- what a gift!
Memorable moments included dragging SNELLEN and CHIGNON out of my memory, as well as the flashes that came as I cracked each of the long answers.
I also loved the NYT-debut grid design with its photo album corners and dearth of scattershot black squares.
It's exciting to come across a new and talented Crosslandia voice on his debut, whetting my appetite for more. This was, for me, a sweet, sweet Saturday, Nick. Thank you!
Very whooshy solve. My only snag was guessing MATHS instead of MAGIC, with the pyroclastic material crossing it being SOOT. SNELLEN indeed made me think of Snell's Law, which is a concept in optics, so I guess SNELLEN and SNELL do have a little in common besides the name similarity.
I do notice when I'm constructing a themeless and many of the longer answers are one word. If the one word is an interesting compound/portmanteau like RAGEBAIT or LABRADOODLE, it feels more like a multi-word answer to me.
Surely the plural of taro is taro? If it needs further description, it's taro roots, not taros.
Hey All !
Surprised myself finishing this (error free!) in 31:30. Man, this was a toughie! Glad to see SatPuzs starting to get their mojo back.
Lots of fits and starts today. Seemed a lot of stuff I knew, but the cluing was ambiguous, as it's supposed to be on a Saturday. Liked the triple stacks with the photo holder Blockers. (Do Gen Z or Alpha even know what photo albums are?)
Some writeovers I've forgotten already. But that ties into the fits of fits and starts. 😁
Nice debut, Nick. Happy you got published.
Have a great Saturday!
No F's - Not SUPERIOR, Nick. Har
RooMonster
DarrinV
Why wouldn’t the clue for 1A be plural? The answer is plural.
In St Louis, we don’t acknowledge PANERA. We have St Louis Bread Company, the original concept that the parent company of Panera bought and took national. I tried to make that fit in that space with a rebus but it wasn’t working.
Easier than Friday, but still a challenge. Got HOLLA with a guess, but needed a look-up to get ARIADNE. Had "Italiano" before ITALIANS.
Fascinated to learn the history of VANILLAICECREAM. Sounds absurd.
I normally wouldn't love VANILLA ICE-CREAM as an answer, but the clue elevated it for me. It was a fun piece of historical knowledge. I enjoyed imagining Jefferson getting so excited about vanilla ice-cream that he had to being it back. It was one of those gap between then and now facts that I find fascinating.
Way too easy 😕
One of those Saturdays that was hard to get started and then flowed or flew nicely thereafter. Toeholds in the bottom, which is where I started, and got ROLLERCOASTER before SANTAMONICAPIER, for which I needed many crosses even though I have been there once, long ago. NENADERTAHAL took a while too. I'm blaming on the cold weather here.
Solved bottom-up from there. SUCUBI before INCUBI, oops, and had ____CIANS up top and tried to make it into some kind of PHYSICIAN. Nope. Knew neither Mr. TAL (Hola. Que TAL?) or Mr. SNELLEN, HOLLA to you too. Props to myself for knowing CHIGNON and the tidbit about Mr. Jefferson and ICECREAM, although I had to wait for the flavor.
I liked this one a lot, NM. Nicely Made, congrats on the debut, looking forward to more like this, and thanks for all the fun.
I was racking my brain trying to figure out what the French bun was - definitely wasn’t thinking hairstyle, so CHIGNON jumped up and bit me.
Some may find it easy on a Saturday without too much WOE stuff like PATER and HOLLA, but for me that increases the enjoyment level. If the NYT is indeed “dumbing down“ the weekends to increase their subscriber base, then I am probably in their target demographic. I’d be very comfortable with this type of grid on Saturdays (CHIGNON notwithstanding).
Another in a continuing series of profoundly easy Saturday puzzles.
Truly sad and perplexing.
I say again…
What the heck is going on with Shortz?
So, I assume you ain’t no holla back girl? That’s bananas. B A N A N A S.
instaplanking SANTAMONICAPIER might be the highlight of my day, and it's not even 6am
Maybe because grappling is used in martial arts? You wanted grapplings?
Very easy for me. Well below my average time. Hardly any resistance. I liked it more than Rafa. Especially pleasing as it is a debut puzzle.
I had to look up pyroclastic. Slow start for me, with LAH and EMI my only toe holds. "Limited supply! EMI!"
Mrs. Egs and I once signed up for what we thought was a MARitALARTS class and we've been fighting ever since.
I'm working so hard on a remodel of our house that I don't even eat until evening. It's an endless cycle of BUILDSUP, BUILDSUP.
Your ability to write with a fountain pen is limited only by how much INCUBI.
49D and 53D should be honored in the Temple of SALA MEN. And speaking of SALA, how about that PANERA-worthy feast of SALAMI, BOLOGNESE and PARMESAN with VANILLAICECREAM?
Smooth and easy. Congrats and thanks, Nick Maritz.
I'm LICHEN the recent puzzles.
And everyone who has paid the remotest amount of attention to rap in the last, oh, forty years just rolled their eyes so hard they might be dead.
It’s been slang for a long time, there are multiple songs in which it appears one from 2002, Young’n (Holla Back) and one from 2004, Hollaback Girl. I don’t know if it’s just really old slang so maybe people have not heard it in a long time but I always heard that song by Gwen Stefani everywhere for a while.
Another day without a Star Wars reference! I think that makes six in a row.
Once I broke in, it was a quick solve but being a pediatrician, I was a big chagrined at how long it took me to get that one.
"Martial arts" is singular when taken as an activity. There's no "martial art."
Was a lot tougher solve for me than most it seems. Solved the bottom before the top, in part because I didn’t think about ice cream in the days before refrigerators. There seemed no sign of a sense of humor in this one, but aside from some tough fill of the moment like SNELLING there was also no serious crosswordese.
Excellent choice! I always save fruit cobbler for breakfast
It still is and always will be St. Louis Bread to me.
On the Easy side for a Saturday. But a very handsome puzzle, with some delightful entries, and even the cluing seemed a little more exciting than usual. For example, you might think VANILLA ICE CREAM is "too vanilla" (Rafa said it was boring). I don't -- I'm not much of a dessert guy, but vanilla ice cream is always an excellent fallback option, and in response to Rafa, I think there are times when it's the most exciting option. But even if you disagree with that, the clue was a fun little factoid about Jefferson that I'm happy to know. Other fun items include the Kurt Vonnegut quote (MAGIC) and the information about trees and good air quality (LICHEN). Even EMI gets a fun clue.
Anyway (not "anyways"), I thought those spanners were terrific. I liked the ones on the bottom maybe a little more, especially SANTA MONICA PIER and ROLLER COASTER. But MARTIAL ARTS and also PEDIATRICIANS are just fine. Since Rafa asked: I don't think I've ever asked myself that question, but I don't discern a preference within myself for multi-word entries over single-word entries. It would be too sweeping a declaration, since multi-word entries open the door to all sorts of shenanigans like "eat a sandwich". No, it's all in the "coolness", harking to Rafa's review here, and that's really to be decided on a case-by-case basis. And NEANDERTHAL is indeed, I would agree, "objectively cool and interesting".
So are AEGIS and SPANIEL and ARIADNE. And looky there: Mikhail TAL. As any chess enthusiast could tell you, TAL was an insanely creative tactician (not to mention a former world champion), and if you want to talk about "Immortal Games", you take just about any famous game of Tal and it's going to be more impressive than the so-called "Immortal Game" of 1851 that was brought up in a recent puzzle. So trust me on this: as chess masters go, TAL would have to be one of the more crossworthy.
INCUBI is another cool entry. Actually had some trouble coughing it up: even though I had it mentally paired with "succubi", it still took more than a few nanoseconds.
HOLLA is unknown to me. I'm not even sure how to pronounce it, to make it fit with that clue. It looks like "hola"; is it connected with that?
Agree with Rafa about CEOS. It looks like "informally" here is a typo for "in brief".
That'll be it for now. Thanks, Nick Maritz, and hope to see your name again sometime. It was a PICNIC!
I liked this puzzle. Though I tried squeezing chocolate creme into 14 across at first. And also stared at capier for a while with no idea where it was taking me.
I’m surprised that so many are calling this easy as it was more of a slog for me. I finally got going around the center in the bottom half and built my way up from there still had to call on google to finish. Very impressive debut, congratulations to Mr.Maritz.
All these folks complaining about HOLLA must be NEANDERTHALs. Holla at your boy used to be a way to tell your friends to give you a call...back in the day when people used to make phone calls...
I really don’t have a preference, but always thought it was tougher to use single long words, and long phrases of short words were a bit of a cop out.
I thought this was a proper Saturday, although not particularly thorny. Wide variety of topics, good clues, and squeaky clean (for 3 letters, doh, emi, Stu, cbd are still pretty solid). My CAT was a Jaguar, until it turned the corner and became a “curiosity”.
In the wake of yesterday's (4-1/2 star) masterpiece, it made for a tough act to follow. The long answers were kind of interesting, but I thought filled in quite easily, especially for a Saturday.
The snags were mainly short(z?) stuff, like SNELLEN-EMI, STU-INCUBI (apt name for a cook, maybe, versus chef?), and misdirections. Milan is known for fashion, architecture, even finances; but...SALAMI? Yikes. Conversely, I wanted some form of pastry, certainly a culinary answer, for French bun. C'est dommage.
Funny, those were easy drop-ins for me, as a middle-aged former Pistols fan with eye problems. You never know what clues might hit for whom!
I got PEDIATRICIANS right away, but otherwise this was a case where I got only a few Across answers at first pass, but once the Downs began to fill in I "saw" what the Acrosses would be, and filled them in. Luckily this happened even though I had no idea about the chess legend or the Dutch ophthalmologist.
Good clues for CIDER and BASSLINE. And, with MEATLOAF, SALAMI, CIDER, and VANILLA ICE CREAM, a delicious puzzle! Thanks, Nick Maritz, for a fun Saturday.
Oh heck, I forgot to mention CHIGNON as one of the bevy of very cool entries.
Nope. Look it up.
After-thoughts: CHIGNON is yet another cool entry. And, reading some comments that have come in, I retroactively recognize HOLLA after seeing it paired with Hollaback Girl, as in the Gwen Stefani song. (I sort of know the song and its tune, but it's nothing I've pored over or even thought about much.) If this is really such commonplace slang -- and I have some trouble believing it is -- it certainly passed me by. I continue to live and learn.
I think they meant it should be “grappling is used in *these* “ rather than “this”.
I had to flee to the very bottom to get my start today. MEN and CAT pillars plus SALA were all I needed in order to slap SANTA MONICA into the grid (the PIER came a bit later). Once I BUILt UP to BUILDS UP and INCUBI, I had to hack away at the answers to get to the top. So a satisfactory amount of difficulty for a Saturday, I think.
My first thought for "Grappling is used in this" was some sort of wrestling, sumo in particular, but there was not enough space for that. Maybe if I hadn't run away from the north so fast, I may have gotten PEDIATRICIAN. I'll never know...
Am I the only one for whom D'OH and DUH are kealoas? I feel like they are distinctly different reactions - for today's clue, "Silly me", I would have chosen DUH but left the vowel open just in case, and of course it turned out to be D'OH. Duh!
Thanks, Nick Maritz!
Twangster - I think maybe Anonymous means they thinks it should be "Grappling is used in these," But "martial arts" is commonly used to refer to the field (singular) of martial arts.
This grid showcases the art and science of making a Saturday puzzle.
It’s an uber-low word count grid (66), low black-square count (33), with hardly a hint of junk. This isn’t simply done with a computer program; it’s a process marked by edits and choices, by erasing swaths and replacing them, then doing it again and again, until the box shines.
There are interesting and colorful answers woven in, beautifying the grid: INCUBI, BASS LINE, AEGIS, SCRAPES (as clued), SANTA MONICA PIER, CHIGNON, LICHEN, even SALAMI.
Just making these things happen requires high skill – there’s your science, with a generous helping of art.
The cluing is an art in itself. There have to be enough toeholds to keep the solver motivated, but that must be balanced by riddles, vagueness, arcana, and misdirects to get the solver doing the luscious work of Solving. If there are too many toeholds, the solver feels cheated, if there is too much toughness, the solver feels frustrated.
To find the sweet spot, the right balance, well, that’s an art. No puzzle will please everyone, but a high-quality puzzle will please most. That’s what I believe Nick made today, and to debut with this puzzle is remarkable. IMO, high props are in order!
Two days in a row of fun puzzles. I hope it continues!
I agree about that being a fun piece of historical knowledge but have to add that I think VANILLA ICE CREAM and vanilla in general get a bad rap. Eat some really good plain vanilla ice cream—forget any mix-ins—and savor every bite!
They do seem to reverse their position on DUH and DOH all the time
Great idea to blame the cold! Here in Dover (NH) it was -10F. I'll bet you beat that in your neck of the woods.
I finished eventually, but had a heck of a time getting a toehold, and even when I got going I hit another wall.
A nice challenge for me today.
Lo siento, cariño. Qué tonta soy.
They finally get it right and @Rafa comes rolling in to run raspberries all over VANILLA ICE CREAM. Let's review from the beginning. There is only one correct ice cream. It's vanilla. You buy one kind of ice cream. Vanilla. In your freezer, at a restaurant, at the ice cream shop, in a gas station on the way to Ogallala Nebraska as you're inevitably going to do, for summer picnics, at weekend soirees in tuxedoes and heels, during an afternoon tryst with the cute new girl at the office, on the top of Kilimanjaro, in a submarine with sweaty shirtless boys singing Rub a Dub Dub Three Men in a Tub, when you're reading a book of saucy poetry or staid existentialism -- wherever you go whatever you're doing in whatever outfit you're sporting or not sporting no matter what time of day the correct ice cream will be and has always been vanilla. You can indeed go to a shop where they spread an array of hateful flavorings out like a photo book of French tarts in a risqué Paris salon and those flavorings are given cartoonishly obtuse names like Eau de Pumpernickel and Whiskey Hangover and Catastrophe for Children and the single most misleading flavor called Chocolate ... whatever that means (?!). You stand in line with the unwashed masses and they're gobbling down wooden spoon sample after wooden spoon sample of these word wrangling imposters hoping to find and failing to find the reduplicative joy of vanilla found by those of us understanding the basic physics of taste bud wonder and joy. Get vanilla. How're you going to find the best ice cream shop if you change from caramel turtle wowzer to cactus seed zinger to motor oil surprise to Everclear Redemption at every shop with those endless scrolls of fanciful flavors only to be furtherly fancified by squashing crumbled up shards of this and that as if you'd bulldozed a cartoon pony's stable and shoveled up the glitter and purple hair and mixed it with congealed energy drinks to make something akin to purpose in life. Just get vanilla and accept the world as a flavorful patient trudge along that dash on your future tombstone from the date of your vanilla birth to the date of your vanilla death. They will still write you were a beloved whatever on that rock and you will go there knowing there's plenty of drama for a lifetime in those frozen tubs of vanilla at the Food Mart.
❤️ HOLLA. INCUBI.
People: 6
Places: 2
Products: 5
Partials: 6
Foreignisms: 4
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 23 of 66 (35%)
Funny Factor: 3 😐
Uniclues:
1 Where the potato salad is bumpin'.
2 A memoir of my dating life.
3 Let's study the difference between bro, brah and bruh.
4 Sticks a pencil in it.
5 Best cuisine of all time.
6 Yer face.
1 BASS LINE PICNIC
2 INCUBI BUILDS UP
3 VOCAB IDEAS
4 MENTORS CHIGNON
5 ITALIANS RECORD
6 UGLIER SALAMI (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: The one leading to contented bliss, and lasagna. MARRIED MAN PATH.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
VANILLA ICE CREAM gets a bad rap, both in this blog entry and in the language at large. It’s a delicious treat! Just because it’s become so readily available at our moment in history doesn’t make it any less tasty. I was happy to find it as a long, fun answer in today’s puzzle.
Great debut puzzle...congrats to Nick M.! Impressive to have your debut be a Saturday, too. It took a while to get traction on this one, but then it just became fun. Felt very, very clean, too, nothing that made me groan. P.S. I agree with others that VANILLA ICE CREAM is anything but boring if it's high quality!
Rafa -don't agree about multiword answers always being more sparkly. Not at all. If it's an interesting word and the cluing is clever...bingo! It's all in the word choice and the cluing.
It's been a disappointing weekend so far. Both today's and yesterday's solves were well below average. I expected Friday to be easy when I saw the constructors' name. That person only makes easy to solve puzzles. Today's was of course an unknown so I had my hopes up. However when ACE, RICH and TAROS gave me PEDIATRICIANS I soon realized today's solve was going to just as easy to pick apart. I shouldn't have been surprised as the grid design makes this a bit of a stunt puzzle and those tend to be on the easy side.
HOLLA is one of those words the SB doesn't allow. GONNA and GOTTA are regulars. Is HOLLA too niche?
Do you recommend ARIADNE? I've had trouble finding books that come up to the level of Madeleine Miller's CIRCE and SON OF ACHILLES. She is such a beautiful writer.
I agree that it's wise to treat D'OH and Duh as kealoas. D'OH sounds to me like a portmanteau of Duh plus oh!, and maybe that's what was behind the invention. The way it was always pronounced by Homer Simpson, D'OH has a wincing element to it, but the usage has expanded so much that the pained reaction sound is often toned down in strength to about a "duh", as in being mildly amused by one's own obtuseness, as in "silly me".
Grappling is indeed a general term for wrestling-style tactics in MARTIAL ARTS, and those are important if you want to be all-around good in mixed MARTIAL ARTS, but of course some martial arts do not include any form of wrestling. Sumo is indeed a wrestling sport, and incorporates a lot of moves that I would not hesitate to call "grappling", but mainly when I think of grappling, I think of the type of groundwork you see in something like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or in freestyle wrestling as practiced in American high schools and colleges -- and sumo doesn't have that; it's mostly about throwing the opponent to the ground or pushing them out of the ring. (Did anyone else catch the January 2026 Grand Sumo tournament? Aonishiki, the 21-year-old phenom from Ukraine, won again, right on the heels of his November victory!)
I am positively aswoon with brotherly understanding. Hear hear for the virtues of VANILLA! The much unfairly maligned vanilla, which people want to synonymize with "boring" or "plain", ludicrously. It's a spice! A spice with a deeply satisfying aroma. The elegant simplicity of vanilla ice cream was surely a revelation to Thomas Jefferson. A wholesome and perfect dessert. Don't mess with it. (Oh, a little hot fudge with it now and then is also permissible.)
Gary, do you at least permit hot fudge on top?
There once lived a long-time radio host in New England named Jerry Williams. A libertarian-type, anti-tax of any kind, and quite curmudgeonly.
But he had a streak of humanity that ran deep around issues like the Viet Nam war and, especially, its aftermath.
Anyway, I will never forget one of (if not the) last soliloquies he made, no doubt realizing he had limited time remaining, in which he listed things he would do "in his next life".
The one that I singularly remember is "I'm going to eat more ice cream"; in other words, life is short and anything that brings joy is by nature a good thing.
So, ice cream...vanilla, tutti-frutti, less so motor oil surprise, or hell, yeah chocolate...yes, please. Whatever one's flavor preference is their own expression of joy, something otherwise in short supply so far in 2026.
Anyone else note that the tennis legend answer appears directly above MONICA?
@Gary Jugert. Could you elaborate on your thoughts about vanilla? Personally I adore Motor Oil Surprise from my local Buskin' Robbers.
Easiest Saturday in a long time & I liked it a lot. Nice not to have to struggle on a Saturday for a change (although I know most will disagree with me). Then again, I prefer themeless. Thank you, Nick & congrats on your debut :)
PEDIATRICIANS and its central crosses of ITALIANS and ARIADNE gave me a good start toward a fast solve. I enjoyed it - especially LICHEN, RICH x ICE CREAM, AEGIS, INCUBI, CHIGNON. At the same time, I was thinking, "R.I.P. old-school Saturdays."
Great clue for PEDIATRICIANS, but the ? kinda gives it away. I put it in with no crosses, and almost without counting the letters, but I lost my nerve on that part. It got a little tougher, but not by that much. "enchanted kingdom" was too long, and "Disneyland" too short, and anyway the date ruled them out, and I'm pretty sure that place isn't ocean-adjacent. But I'd never heard of the SANTA MONICA PIER.
I did hesitate about ITALIANS. Bolognese works as either a ragu or a city-dweller, but I think Parmesan is only a cheese; I think the English word for a person from Parma would be "Parman." But I've never heard either term in the type-of-human context, so I may be wrong there.
Didn't we have HOLLA in the puzzle earlier this month? That's where I learned, as I've learned so many other things.
Fun puzzle while it lasted, but it didn't last long enough.
Shout out to a fellow euphoniumist/baritonist! ARR was right on, and it was nice seeing Bass Line, too (since we get bass lines, melodies, AND countermelodies. And don’t make bad jokes about TUBERS getting all the attention. Agree on the overall take on the puzzle, but I had a little trouble getting a foothold.
SMU (screwed myself up) with Soot before SmoG, finally SLAG from a pyroclastic flow. I live at the location of a colonial era iron forge, still finding slag in the grounds below site of the furnace. Also SMU with ExIT v EDIT on the menu bar. BTW, I NEVER say NO DEAR, it's "yes dear" or I go hide somewhere!
@Jnlzbth - of course, books are as subject to individual tastes as anything else, but in general yes I recommend all of Saints' mythology-based books. I would start with Atalanta, though. That is probably a better introduction to the style.
Relatively smoooth SatPuz solvequest, with a coupla no-know-esque encounters, at:
1. INCUBI/CHIGNON.
2. SNELLEN/HOLLA.
staff weeject pick: CBD. Also a no-know, but its crossers were more than fair. Sleep aid stuff, huh? For M&A, the surest sleep aids are huge evenin meals and/or Harry Potter flicks.
PANERA seems to have gone downhill a bit, over the years. Used to be a fave haunt for the M&A clan. At least they still feature all the Dr. Pepper U can drink.
some favest of the fave stuff: VANILLAICECREAM. NEANDERTHAL & its clue. Album-mountin puzgrid corners.
Thanx for the fun with ice cream on top, Mr. Maritz dude. And congratz on a very polished SatPuz debut. Did they keep any of yer own clues?
Masked & Anonymo3Us
p.s.
M&A once submitted a themeless 15x15 puz to the NYT crossword folks. Never heard back from em -- which was probably just as well...
I notice Patrick Berry has had similar luck, lately?
p.p.s.s.
A Friday night well-wasted, at our weekly schlock filmfest, with "Quartermaster & the Pit" [an old 6-episode BBC mini-series] and "Mad Doctor of Blood Island".
Missed that! Good catch.
@anon(s) 12:48 pm, back in the day when I heard it on the radio I thought it was "Hollenbeck girl", for the neighborhood in LA.
@Gary 10:30 am, hilarious ICE CREAM rant. Thanks for that.
Unlike most of you, I found this challenging, AND enjoyably so. Three good puzzles in a row.
A few Unknown Names: PANERA TAL SNELLEN SALA. And I've heard of ARIADNE although the clue was no help. But nice touch Nick for putting SELES just above MONICA.
And until I read Rafa's writeup, I didn't get the tricky clue for CHIGNON... I just thought: there's a CHIGNON bun? Is it like a Brioche?
So you're probably sick of me mentioning this, but it is the last day of January and still no snow since Dec. 4. The next week's forecast is clouds, rain showers, and temperatures staying above freezing even at night. I'm pretty sure we've never had a winter like this.
Me too for loGIC
I've been going to the SM Pier for 60 years. I don't remember a rollercoaster. Ferris wheel yes. Am I wrong?
For a few years I worked in the neighborhood of the very 1st St Louis Bread Co. store. Every evening they gave away any remaining sourdough baguettes. YUM!
Where are you? We've got 22" on the ground in Massachusetts, and more on he way...
Never Mind the Bollocks
Here’s the Crossword
"Accompanied by a visit from the USS Albany" made Santa Monica Pier very hard for me to get. I kept looking for something naval or military. With SA in place I tried to fit in San Diego Port or etc. Growing up in LA, All the Santa Monica pier was to me was an entertainment place on a beach we sometimes went to. Even tho I was not born until thirty years later, I'm surprised I'd never heard that bit of the history.
Also, as an ice cream addict, seems I should have known Jefferson brought us vanilla ice cream; but I didn't.
Oops … make that “Quartermass and the Pit”.
M&A Dept. of Corrections
Hard for me. Didn’t finish because I didn’t know cHIGNON and couldn’t parse INcUBI. Thought the bottom half was easy but found the top half to be very difficult. Fun puzzle. Best construction in a long time. Just don’t like the SNELLEN and CHIGNON fills.
@egs
INCUBI 😂🤣
Roo
MONICA with SELES with BASSLINE (baseline) was fun along with the kinda sorta almost tennis court grid.
I didn’t know Snellen either, but a recent eye exam helped. They use what’s called a Snellen chart to assess “visual acuity”.
@ DAVinHOP. Sometimes, when I have some stupid appointment at the bank or something and I don't get here until very late - too late to post a full 14 paragraph comment - I run into something that says, yeah right, this guy nailed it.
I have to disagree with your rating of easy. I found it entertainingly hard. That's good. But I did agree with your take on STU. Cooks cook stew. Chefs cook Coq au Vin, Boeuf Bourguinon, and Bouillabaisse. And Milan-SALAMI. Yikes is right. As you say, fashion, architecture, and finance. My first thought for SALAMI would be Genoa. Fortunately, I had the initial C for the bun and couldn't think of an appropriate pastry. CHIGNON to the rescue. C'est dommage pour vous, mais j'ai eu de la chance.
Yeah I committed to SUE chef for too long
Thanks!
Well said, @Lewis. I've stated this before, and I hope you're not insulted by it (that's certainly not my intention), but you're normally just too bloody over-the-top positive for me. Today you were spot-on, especially the bit about offering toeholds. This constructor seemed to consider the solver. Yes, props are in order.
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Vanilla is the best - I hardly ever order a dessert that doesn't include it! There's tartufo, profiteroles, hot fudge sundaes, apple pie a la mode, etc., etc.
@Gary. Great vanilla rant. Loved it. Love vanilla ice cream. It's the only kind I keep in my freezer. If some guest requests some odd or exotic variety, I will dutifully head out to the supermarket and search for it but know this; I will secretly be searching for Everclear Redemption.
As a foreign word, from Maori or other Polynesian languages, who knows what the correct plural is. So dictionaries may show taros (but not my spell checker) as OK, but I am skeptical as well. I had yucas at first when cassava did not fit
Vanilla was originally an expensive luxury good, not until mid 19th century was cultivation successfuland became more affordable. Real vanilla is great, factory vanilla flavor is an abomination. This is also true with whipped cream being terrific and whipped desert topping being so, so, so,.... bad
I'm by no means a speed solver. This one, though, provided little resistance and it was over too soon. Lots of quality fill but much of the cluing seemed like a Monday themeless.
So, as usual, I go POC (plural of convenience) hunting. There's a typical amount of them, starting when one PEDIATRICIAN isn't enough to do the job. Also a couple of the uber helpful two for one POCs at ITALIAN/TEN and DIAL/SCRAPE.
But what really caught my eye were the two examples of the very rare POC where the plural form is needed when the singular is too many rather than too few letters to fill their slots. This happens with INCUBI and SEPTA. Don't think I've ever seen two of those in one puzzle.
how can you get out of jail if the roll is a 6 and a 4?
@Rick Sacra. @okanager is, not too surprisingly, in the Okanagan Valley in south central British Columbia and extending down into Washington State. Lovely area. Once known for its orchards but in the last 30 years or so viticulture has taken over. Lots of snow is normal in the winter and most growers plan around it; freeze/thaw cycles are are important for budding and snow is a natural insulator, moderating the normally severe freezing temperatures. As a wine lover, I'm afraid for this year's vintage.
I live about 4 hours west of him, near the Pacific coast and, as i type this, it is about 11 degrees celsius and raining - that's October weather. I also need a freeze/thaw cycle to germinate the clover that I'm overseeding pastures with. Please, could you send a little of that white stuff this way. This is not right.
Ooh, that's nice, Anon 2:43. Don't hink I've seen that before.
I worked in the grocery business, and their saying was, "If you're out of Vanilla, you're out of ice cream."
Epic soliloquy. If only I could write like that, I'd get more book sales!!
Roo
Good analysis. You summed that up very well. Thanks.
All the Vanilla ice cream lovers out there, do you get just Vanilla, or Homestyle Vanilla, or Vanilla Bean, or French Vanilla, or Extra Creamy Vanilla, or Old Fashioned Vanilla?
Curiouser and curiouser.
Roo
On the contrary Rafa, so glad of the rectifying going on now in the world......Venezuela and our "patria" going hand in glove. And like many Venezuelans, like my wife, it's a reset many of us couldn't have imagined ever needed.
So captivating this puzzle - I'm in coffee, and PANERA came in a re-entry stab. SANTAMONICAPIER was awesome with the historical date ref. Monica SELES winning at 16, how I forget. And now I know where plebe summer comes from at USNA, PLEBS. Well done Nick!
Found it a slog too. Tough to get a toehold.
Actually, Bouillabaisse is defined as a French seafood STU.
Whatsername
I have never been to St. Louis. But my brother visited there with his partner while her daughter lived there. So I heard it is a good city to visit. Are the St. Louis Bread Company outlets better than the ones called Panera? (. Panera is in my region but the outlets are strictly suburban and I live in a city so I haven’t been to one in years. I will say that that Panera was actually better than most chains. FWIW I learned about the local name from an article in the New York Times.
Gary.
Loved your rant.
My favorite ice cream is of course vanilla. Although I will confess to eating other flavors on occasion. . Sorry about that I can’t stand chocolate ice cream or its many variations.
Anonymous 11:27AM
It is a good “catch”.
I even thought to myself, oh SELES. Her first name is Monica isn’t it? And I still didn’t make the connection!
Les, moments after I posted my comment I realized I missed an opportunity to say that attributing SALAMI to Milan sounded like Bologna.
SharonAK.
FWIW
I also thought a Navy ship, Southern California. Well of course SANDIEGO something. But TITLE going down put me in the right direction.
@Rick Sacra: I'm in the Okanagan valley, interior British Columbia Canada. We got 8.8 cm (3") of snow on Nov. 27, then about 5 cm (2") in the first 4 days of December. All of those melted within an hour or so, and nothing since then. I've never seen a December OR a January OR a February with no snow; crazy.
The SNELLEN SLAG EMI combo on one side of the grid and then the AEGIS CHIGNON SALA combo on the exact opposite were both ugly snags in an otherwise incredibly easy Saturday.
I thought this one was going to be another hard one ( Because I couldn’t think of an anagram of notes, I didn’t finish yesterday). But it ended up fairly easy. Unlike Rafa, long one word answers are fine by me as long as they are good. So pediatricians along with ? Clue was one of my favorites vI wouldn’t have known HOLLA if it hadn’t appeared before.
PANERA is a ubiquitous chain but it clearly puts Canadians at a disadvantage.
The very top I found the hardest part but it broke open after I did the rest of the puzzle.
EZ but good for Saturday. I was amused by 25 D. It seems so odd nowadays to equate “ring” with “dial”. I assume it was a telephone clue—dial up or ring up someone. Or am I missing something?
Rafa, I'm sure you're super smart and a great person, and I don't mean to be a jerk, *but* (that means I'm about to be a jerk) the Jaguar E-Type is perhaps the most beautiful CAR ever designed, and that CAR you chose for the blog pic... well, its not an E-Type.
Hey low brass (I don’t want the tubaists to feel unloved)! No BASS LINE from those folks, got no band!!
I like Häagen-Dazs vanilla the best; I like it even better than most of the small-batch vanillas I’ve tried. It’s dense and perfectly balanced. It has very few ingredients, nothing artificial.
For all the VANILLA pushers - it’s my favorite ICE CREAM - just thought it was a flat entry. Btw - the Kirkland VANILLA made by Humboldt is the bomb.
Felt bland.
I. Love. Ice Cream!!!! So much so, that I devoted a year of my life to its study. All aspects of its history, traditions and the artistry of its creation. Caveat: my elegy to the divine sweet does not mean that I have enjoyed every mouthful throughout my exploration. In fact quite the opposite, but if there were but one dessert in the world, please let it be ice cream. Of any flavor that pleases you. My favorite to make happens to be a classic vanilla from a custard base. And if I want a shake or a malt, it must be vanilla. Real vanilla from a bean. @Gary J, I appreciate your passion. But, I gotta try me some Motor Oil Surprise!
@Anon 10:32 There’s vanilla and then there’s real vanilla, and of many varieties from different parts of the world. The very existence of artificial ingredients “vanilla flavor,” or “vanillin,” (even worse) I believe explains why the descriptive phrase “plain vanilla,” has justifiably negative connotations.
Loved this puzzle - hard for me but clever clues abound, eg for ACE. I had to look up SNELLEN and TAL. Learned about ARR from the comments here - thank you!
TIL INCUBI and remembered CHIGNON.
Brilliant, just Brilliant. Thank you Gary!
Agreed. Snellan, EMI, slag got me.
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