New York Times Sunday Crossword of March 2

March 8, 2025

Here are my notes from solving the New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle of March 2, 2025. Spoiler alert: if you plan on solving this puzzle, you can stop reading now.

As stated in the previous post, my goal is to solve the puzzles without looking things up, but this puzzle soundly defeated that dream. I had to look up or verify a lot of things, so this post is long.

This puzzle by Adam Wagner was titled Rainbow Connection and came with a note that the “bold vertical lines in the grid represent seven colors, in a manner for you to discover”. I noticed that some answers did not fit into the usual squares where these bolded “color lines” intersected them. For example, ABBA looked perfect for [Band whose name is a rhyme scheme] but there were only three squares. From this, I could figure out that the color lines were extra squares holding letters, and with seven of them I could guess they formed the classic ROYGBIV mnemonic: RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, INDIGO, and VIOLET. Using these color words helped significantly with solving the puzzle.

Here are some clues I struggled with or want to note for future reference.

Words

[One of two, in this clue] was fiendishly meta. I was looking for something like NUMBERS, which fit the number of letters, but it didn’t really make sense. Even when all but a couple of the squares were filled, I couldn’t come up with anything resembling a word. It turns out that an anapest (also spelled anapaest, anapæst, or called antidactylus), is a term in poetry. It is a metrical foot consisting of two short syllables followed by a long one, or two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one. So “one of two” and “in this clue” are both anapests.

Other words:

• The word burg means “town”. I missed this because I thought the word—if it existed—would be berg since some city names end in -berg. Of course, many also end in -burg.
• I had to look up that no shade is something people say, and the answer to [“Don’t take offense, nowadays”]. I’ve heard the term “to throw shade”.
• ASEA was tricky for [Mid-voyage], since it doesn’t look like a word. But a-sea and asea are real words for “at sea”; I guess in the same vein as ashore.
• I had a hard time imagining what would fit for the seven-letter [Binary pronoun options]. It turned out to be the simple HEORSHE.
• A milliner is a maker or seller of hats.
• Harem pants are loose-fitting pants of soft material typically worn by women, and the answer to [___ pants (loose-fitting garb)]. I had most of HAREM filled out but didn’t believe something would be named “harem pants” until I looked it up.
• A Sydneysider is someone who lives in Sydney, Australia. I wasn’t familiar with this word, but I could figure out that the answer to [Sydneysider’s salutation] was GDAYMATES.
• The word formicary means “an ant nest”. For future reference, a formicarium is specifically an artificial ant nest.
• A posy is a “small bunch of cut flowers”, and the answer to [Modest bouquet].
• The word alee is a nautical term meaning “on the side of a ship that is sheltered from the wind”, and may be considered an instance of Crosswordese, so it’s good to remember. Its antonym is aweather.
• A prop plane is a propeller plane, and the answer to [Prop ___].
• I learned that dessert comes from the French word desservir for “clear the table”. I thought maybe this explains the connection between “desert” (as a verb) and “dessert”, but it looks coincidental.
• EELY for [Slippery]: I’ve noticed eel is often featured in crosswords, likely due to its convenient letter arrangement.
• [Word after second or before split] was BANANA. I did not know that second banana means “a comedian who plays a supporting role to a top banana (the primary star)”, or broadly “a person in a subservient position”.

History

• The Jacobins were the political group at the center of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, and the answer to [Follower of Robespierre, in 18th-century France].
• The Taiping Rebellion, also known as the Taiping Civil War or Taiping Revolution, was a civil war in China from 1850 to 1864. In this conflict, a group called the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom sought to overthrow the Qing dynasty and convert the people to Christianity. They were ultimately defeated, but at heavy cost to the state.

Religion

• The ibis was considered a sacred bird in Ancient Egyptian religion, believed to be linked to the god Thoth.
• Eos is the goddess of dawn in Ancient Greek mythology.
• Æsir or ēse are the Norse gods. Here the fill was AESIR.

Sports

• The New Orleans Pelicans are an NBA team. The answer to [Shortened name on a Pelicans jersey] was therefore NOLA. The Charlotte Hornets moved to New Orleans in 2002, and became the Pelicans in 2013.

People

• Michelle Yeoh is a Malaysian actress who became the first Asian to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her role in Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022). I vaguely knew the name but had to check spelling.
• Robert Siegel hosted NPR’s All Things Considered for 30 years, from 1987 to 2018.
• Josep Maria Sert (1874-1945) was a Spanish muralist, who painted a 1937 mural entitled American Progress in the main lobby of 30 Rockefeller Center.
• Bruce Dern is an American actor who has starred in films since the 1960s. He won the Oscar for Best Actor for Nebraska (2013).
• John Landis is a filmmaker (Animal House, The Blues Brothers) who also directed Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video.
• Carrie Coon is an American actress, who was in The Leftovers (HBO drama series), Gone Girl (2014 film), and The Nest (2020 film), among others.
• Bill Paxton (1955-2017) was an American actor. The “X” in the name looked wrong as it was the last letter of [Spinoff of a popular lecture series], and it seemed unlikely that a word would end in “X”, until I figured out TEDX.

Places

• SoHo, South of Houston Street, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, not to be confused with Soho, the a major entertainment district of London. Probably, learning New York City neighborhoods would be good for The Times crosswords.

Other tricky or interesting non-trivia clues

For [“At times like this, scorching ____, not convincing argument, is needed”: Frederick Douglass], I was unfamiliar with the quote and tried AGONY which fit some crosses. It turned out to be IRONY. However, it was good that agony was top of mind, because it turned out to be the answer to [Extreme pain] elsewhere in the puzzle.

The answer to [Big name in fruit juice, or the first three letters of the fruit in it] was POM, a Californian maker of pomegranate drinks. Coincidentally, there is also a mikan juice brand called Pom (ポン) in Japan. Their name comes from the “pon” of “Nippon” (Japan), as the brand wanted the juice to be “Nippon-ichi” (日本一), “Japan’s best”. The company changed the romanization from “Pon” to “Pom” to reflect the Latin root pom (fruit) which forms the basis of pomelo (a type of citrus fruit) and pomology (the science and practice of growing fruit).(source)

[Mont Blanc, par exemple] hints that the answer will be a French word. Mont Blanc is is the highest mountain in the Alps, which are called Les Alpes in French. The answer was ALPE. I could not find clear evidence that “Alpe” means something like a single mountain of the Alps. According to ChatGPT:

“Alpe” is a French word, but it is not commonly used in modern French. It refers to a high mountain pasture, particularly in the Alps, where livestock graze during the summer.

I’m unsure if this clue is entirely valid then.

Others:

• I was tripped up by [The humanities, traditionally], since I first tried ARTSANDHISTORY and later ARTSANDMATTERS which seemed to fit. The real answer was arts and letters, ARTSANDLETTERS.
• [One tapped by leadership?] was SIR, referring to the tapping on the shoulders of someone being knighted.
• [Mafiosi] looked difficult because I could see it started with MA, but knew MAFIA should not be in the answer as it repeats the clue. With crosses, I could figure out it was made men, MADEMEN.
• [Temper], an ambiguous clue, turned out to be MOOD. I feel I’ve seen it used as a clue before.
• [Go in circles] was difficult because I worked out it was _Y____ and expected something around cycle. It turned out to be GYRATE.
• [Part of an underground network] probably causes one to think of, e.g., a spy, but the answer was ROOT.
• ROYALWE was a fun answer to [Pompous “I”].
• [Sloth, e.g.] occurred twice in this puzzle; once as SIN (from the seven deadly sins) and once as ANIMAL.
• [Is too overwhelmed with emotion to speak] was CANTEVEN, from “I can’t even…”.
• For [What “E” on a gauge means], the obvious EMPTY did not fit. The answer was ADDFUEL.
• [Fighting] was ATIT, which I’ve seen in a previous puzzle.
• The answer to [Shape of the border between yin and yang] was ESS, referring to the sound of the letter “S”. I don’t feel this is a valid clue, but it’s good to remember this answer scheme.
• [Approximate weight of a subcompact car or a medium-size giraffe] was one ton, ONETON. I feel I’ve seen this before.
• [Set new records, say, informally] was DJED, referring to a disc jockey.
• For [Lead-in to a stark reality], I had FACTI_ filled but struggled to realize the final letter was “S” to form “Fact is…”.
• [Retort that sounds like a “Stars Wars” character] was ARETOO, from the “Am not!”, “Are too!” classic children’s quarrelling words, and Star Wars’s R2-D2.
• The answer for [Apt letters missing from “Te_h_ology r_view si_e”] was obvious, but it was amusing to find CNET fits this phrase. CNET actually stands for Computer Network.

Final thoughts

Even though I couldn’t solve the puzzle without research, I really enjoyed the rainbow color theme. It was a clever mechanism that actually helped in solving. I’m looking forward to next Sunday’s puzzle.