New York Times Saturday Crossword of March 1

March 2, 2025

Here are my notes from solving the New York Times Saturday Crossword Puzzle of March 1, 2025. Spoiler alert: if you plan on solving this puzzle, you can stop reading now.

I am trying to get to the point where I can solve puzzles without research, so here is mostly a memo of what I looked up.

• Atahualpa was the last Incan emperor. I’ve noticed that The Times likes to put Incan and Aztec names as answers, which I find hard to remember—especially how to spell them.
• Anya Taylor-Joy is the actress who played the protagonist Beth Harmon of The Queen’s Gambit.
• Samus Aran is the protagonist of Metroid.
• Lenny & Larry’s is a brand of vegan cookies and other snacks.
• I had to look up the story of Arachne. In Greek mythology, she challenges Athena to a weaving content, wins, and is subsequently turned into a spider by the angry god.
• The latissimus dorsi and the biceps brachii are the proper names of “lats” and “biceps”.
• Farrah Fawcett (1947-2009) was an American actress mostly known for Charlie’s Angels. I vaguely remembered this name but had to double-check.
• Irwin Shaw (1913-1984) was an American author.
• The Eel River is one of the longest in Northern California at 315 km.
• Eric Bana is an Australian actor who played Bruce Banner (the scientist who turns into the Hulk) and Hector of Troy.
• Choi Woo-shik is an actor in Parasite, a 2019 South Korean film.
• Grand Ole Opry is a country music radio show running since 1925.

Some non-trivia tricky clues:

• The answer to [Pines] was YENS. Yen is a verb meaning “to have an intense desire” or a noun meaning “a strong desire or propensity”. I feel like I’ve seen [Pines] before as a clue.
• [Change you don’t see very often] was RARECOIN, with “change” used in the sense of “loose change”.
• [Not from Scotland?] was NAE. I guess nae is a form of “no” used in Scotland. I feel I’ve also seen this in previous puzzles.
• The answer to [Court division] was SET, unless I’m mistaken. I guess the idea here is tennis matches are divided into sets, and are played on courts. This feels like a stretch, though, because the court itself isn’t being divided.

Another thing that tripped me up was that POTATOCHIPS looked fitting for [High-calorie burger toppings], and I even verified that some people put potato chips on their burger. The answer though turned out to be BACONSTRIPS.