Extra! Extra!: NYT Sunday Crossword of March 9

March 20, 2025

Here are my notes from solving the New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle of March 9, 2025. Spoiler alert: if you plan on solving this puzzle, you can stop reading now.

This puzzle by Michael Schlossberg was titled Extra! Extra!. Like last time, I was thoroughly defeated and had to look up a lot. I’m starting to question if it will ever be possible for me to solve these without research since there were a lot of obscure words and definitions here.

The theme of the crossword was newspaper headlines; there were four clues giving a newspaper and a date. When I started the puzzle, I was excited to see what headlines would be revealed. Here is my journey.

Chicago Daily Tribune, 11/3/1948

This was one of the first I got, with some helpful crossings, since it was a headline I was familiar with: “Dewey Defeats Truman”.

Variety, 10/30/1929

Here I was expecting something about the Great Depression, and managed to guess it started with “Wall Street”. I originally tried WALLSTREET but some crossings invalidated that, so I went with the abbreviated WALLST. But the final letters were not making sense; it seemed to end with _NEG_ and I couldn’t imagine what word could fit there. Answers like “renege” or “an ego” or something about “negative” didn’t make sense. It was also shaping up to have something like _AY in the middle which I imagined could be something like “pay” or “day”. Finally it clicked: “Wall St Lays An Egg”. I was not familiar with this famous headline, and I feel the phrase “to lay an egg” meaning “to fail badly” is uncommon today.

London Herald, 4/16/1912

I was thinking perhaps something about World War I, but that would have been off since the was started in 1914. Once I had enough crossings, I could see “Titanic Sinks” without too much trouble.

New York Post, 4/15/1983

This was the most interesting one for me. It was given as a pair of clues:

• 113-Across: [With 115-Across, New York Post, 4/15/1983]
• 115-Across: [See 113-Across]

I didn’t know what would be notable in 1983, and suspected maybe a NASA mission. For the second half, 115-Across, I could work out INTO at the beginning, and BAR at the end, and it looked like PLES was emerging from the middle. “Topless bar” was too tempting not to try, and to my amusement INTOPLESSBAR did appear to be correct. I had no idea what historic event could be involved though.

113-Across was one of my last fills, so this mystery lingered throughout my solving. I could see DY at the end, and BODY seemed to fit, so I guessed something about “somebody in topless bar”. The beginning was something about HEA, though, and I couldn’t think of a name or thing that could match that: Hearst? Heath? Eventually it clicked: “Headless body in topless bar”, a grisly headline but with amusing symmetry, though I had to look it up to verify this was actually correct. Apparently, this is a famous headline, despite the event itself not being as historically significant as the others.

New York Daily News, 10/30/1975

I could see FORD at the beginning, but the ending was difficult, partly because I had an incorrect OHMY for [“Jeez, I can’t catch a break”], resulting in YAD at the end, which looked implausible. Eventually I worked out something like FORDTOCI___RO__YAD, and was looking for starting with “Ford to CIA”. With some luck I could divine “Ford To City: Drop Dead”: FORDTOCITYDROPDEAD, turning the OHME into OHMY. I also had to look this one up to see if it was correct.

The New York Times, 8/9/1974

This was unsatisfying because when looking at the following week’s paper’s Sunday crossword section, as I’m behind on crosswords, I glimpsed NIXON in the solution to this week’s. I remembered NIXON and it wasn’t hard to think of NIXONRESIGNS.

All together, the headlines were:

• 25-Across: [London Herald, 4/16/1912]: TITANICSINKS
• 27-Across: [The New York Times, 8/9/1974]: NIXONRESIGNS
• 39-Across: [Chicago Daily Tribune, 11/3/1948]: DEWEYDEFEATSTRUMAN
• 64-Across: [Variety, 10/30/1929]: WALLSTLAYSANEGG
• 91-Across: [New York Daily News, 10/30/1975]: FORDTOCITYDROPDEAD
• 113-Across: [With 115-Across, New York Post, 4/15/1983]: HEADLESSBODY
• 115-Across: [See 113-Across]: INTOPLESSBAR

Behind the scenes, I had to look up a lot of words and facts. Here are some things I want to note for future reference.

Words

• The protective tip of a lace is called an aglet. This puzzle also featured eyelet, the hole where a drawstring is threaded.
• The phrase to chew the scenery is a theatrical term meaning “to overact or be overly dramatic”. The answer to [It might be chewed in a theater] was SCENERY.
• The Latin word ecce means “lo!; behold!”. A famous usage is “ecce homo” (behold the man), by Pontius Pilate presenting Jesus to a hostile crowd.
• A fire hat is another word for a firefighter’s helmet.
• The word hoarfrost or hoar frost is another word for frost, a covering of ice crystals on a cold surface.
• The answer to [“My heavens!”] was IDECLARE (“I declare”) which feels quaint.
• The word laded is an old-fashioned word meaning “loaded” or “filled with cargo”. It was the answer to [Stowed].
• To lollygag is to spend time aimlessly; idle.
• The peseta was the currency of Spain until the adoption of the euro, and historically referred to a Spanish silver coin.
• Sal soda, or washing soda, features either as an ingredient in some cleaning products or as a standalone cleaning agent. It was the answer to [___ soda].
• A vane is a movable device attached to an elevated object for showing the direction of the wind. It was the answer to [It’s blowin’ in the wind]. I was expecting something about Bob Dylan’s song.

Food and drink

• Adobo was the answer to [Mexican marinade], as it’s a marinade that originated in Iberia and spread to Latin America. I was familiar with the term in Filipino cuisine. It turns out that Philippine adobo is indigenous but was given the name adobo by Spanish colonists.
• Bel Paese is a kind of cheese from Italy.
• A yard glass is an outlandishly tall beer glass that holds about 48 oz (1.4 liters) of beer. It’s used in pub games.

Religion

• The Old Scratch or Mr. Scratch is a nickname for the Devil.

Nature

• A gar is a type of fish and was the answer to [Needlefish]. I think I’ve seen this before.
• Myrrh and frankincense are examples of resins extracted from trees. I feel I’ve seen RESIN as an answer before, so it’s good to remember.
• The plantain lily’s scientific name is Hosta.
• A shad is a fish commonly caught for food but also used as bait for larger fish, hence the answer to [Common saltwater baitfish].

Science

• An ion thruster (also ion drive or ion engine) is a form of electric propulsion used for spacecraft propulsion. It was the answer to [___ thruster (physics lab device)].

People

• Al Capone. For [“Scarface”], I originally put ALPACINO for Pacino’s role in Scarface, but the answer was the actual ALCAPONE.
• Chick Corea (1941-2021) was an American jazz pianist and composer. This puzzle featured one of his compositions, Señor Mouse.

Places

• Erie is often the answer to clues about a lake. I just guessed it for [Lake that’s largely fed by the Detroit River] and it turned out to be correct.

Politics

• OAS is the Organization of American States, an alliance of nations in the Americas, founded in 1948. It apparently features frequently in crosswords.

Business

• Aetna is an American health insurance company. I’ve found AETNA or CIGNA are often answers to crossword healthcare clues.

Tricky clues

• [Bouquet] was AROMA, as bouquet also means the scent of a wine or perfume.
• [Breakout performer?] was ESCAPEE.
• [Choice words] was ORS, as in “P or Q”.
• [Service providers?] was PARSONS, because a parson is a minister or priest of a church, which provide religious services.
• [Where people typically go to the mat?] was PORCH, I guess because people often step on porch mats when entering a porch?
• [Drives off] wasn’t about a car, but SHOOS for driving something away.
• [The Second vis-a-vis the First, say] was SON, referring to names like “William the First” and “William the Second”; the Second is the son of the First.
• [Certain spot] was TVAD, as a “spot” is a word for a commercial or advertisement on TV.
• [Geometry calculation: Abbr.] was VOL, short for “volume”. I was expecting something about Euclidean geometry, but I guess this is valid.

Final thoughts

I found this puzzle considerably more difficult than the others. I was practically solving this puzzle alongside ChatGPT since I kept getting stuck but didn’t want to just look up the headlines. I can only hope I can start to get the hang of crossword puzzle clues more! That said, I did enjoy slowly uncovering the headlines, and the suspense of the topless bar mystery kept me motivated until the end.