Friday, December 19, 2025 - Let's Make Some ILLINOISE!

If crosswords had moods, we'd classify this one as feisty. It took both cohosts, working independently as always, longer than usual to get to the happy music. But the journey is the reward, as they sa...

10 Marras 202519min

This was a good Saturday workout: not the hardest Saturday ever, but engaging, with some truly effervescent cluing. We covered the best-of-the-best in today's episode, but we would also like to note 2...

9 Marras 20258min

This was a challenging crossword for both cohosts, as both -- solving independently as is their custom -- ended up in the same area of the grid, temporary waylaid by the crossing of 40A, The Brady hou...

8 Marras 202512min

For you polyglots out there, the NYTimes has written a love letter, cleverly disguised as a crossword -- today's, to be precise, a magnificent opus by Sam Brody. For the rest of us, the crossword was ...

7 Marras 202512min

The first author of today's crossword, Chad Hazen, had over 40 rejections before finally getting a crossword published -- but when he did get it published it was in the New York Times, so there is tha...

6 Marras 202513min

This was a debut crossword by Patrick Hayden, and a very nice one, to boot. The theme was sly, and the author has a knack for writing novel clues for common answers. We covered many of them in the pod...

5 Marras 202515min

If you fear crosswords with large swathes of white squares, infrequently interrupted by a black square or two (and psychiatrists have a technical name for that: "normal"), you might want to give this ...

3 Marras 20258min

This was a sweet Saturday crossword by Michael Lieberman, filled with his characteristically witty, and fresh clueing. We've covered the best in the podcast, but we also were enamored with 37D, Atypic...

2 Marras 202516min