Jean & Mike Do The New York Times Crossword

✓

Claim

Rachel Grey and John Kugelman have collaborated on a very clever Thursday crossword, based on a dizzying theme that it took both cohosts no little time to suss out. Fortunately — and we have proof — one did not need to grok the theme in order to solve the puzzle.  The clues that surrounded the them…

Listeners may recall that the appearance of ROTI or NAAN in the grid immediately drives us to xwordinfo.com to check out the number of times each has appeared in a crossword. As a consequence of today's fine puzzle, ROTI is up by one, so ... yay, ROTI!  😀  We consider ourselves to be up by muc…

This was definitely a Tuesday crossword, and we say that not just because of the calendar. The clues were slightly trickier than yesterday's, but still eminently doable with a little cogitation (and a few well-placed crosses). While not everyone is familiar with, say, 14A, Classical Persian po…

It's been a hot minute since Chase Dittrich's last NYTimes crossword, but he's here now with a fine Monday effort. The theme was engineered for Monday solvers, and while most of the answers were common enough, there were a few that neither cohost had heard before — always a good thin…

Kathryn Bale's absolutely fabulous debut crossword is in honor of a holiday that we had no idea existed until tackling Kathryn's puzzle. In our defense, the holiday first came into existence in 2020, and its appearance in today's crossword appears to be the first time it's been …

Kameron Austin Collins, aka KAC, specializes in tough Friday and Saturday crosswords. Today's is a perfect example, with cunning clueing everywhere you look in the grid. We can't say enough good things about it, but we gave it the ol' college try in today's episode, so ... enjoy…

This was a perfectly crafted crossword to wrap up the work week — not too hard, not too easy, but juuuuust right. It included some awesome clues, for example: 57A, Figure with three faces, in Dante, SATAN (not, as Mike originally theorized, CERBEBUS);  44D, Beads for an athlete, SWEAT (cool! ... w…

Jill Singer's fourth NYTimes crossword was a great way to start October, with a legion of edutaining clues — and if that's not a real portmanteau, let's just call it slang and move on 😀. We certainly were educated and entertained by 9D, Great Basin tribe, PAIUTE; likewise by the very…

Unsurprisingly, themed crosswords rise and fall on the strength of their themes. In this case the theme causes the crossword to rise, but there are a slew of other clues in the puzzle that make it soar. Besides the awesome ones covered in today's episode, there was a clue written for onomatopo…