January 3: Singsong Syllables (Rachel Fabi, USA Today)
A remarkably tight theme, with a perfect title: each theme entry is of the form _ING _ONG _______, where all the words alliterate. We've got PING PONG PADDLES, DING DONG DITCH, and KING KONG COSTUME (which I'd definitely give some side-eye as a themeless answer, but as part of a theme like this, it works great). As always with the USA Today, the fill's clean, and we've got some nice bonuses in the fill in the form of TIGHT-KNIT and Phoebe Waller-Bridge's FLEABAG.
January 5: Relatively Speaking (Matt Gaffney, New York Magazine)
This one's got an EXTENDED FAMILY theme, where -KIN is added to the end of phrases, with wacky results. The themers are really cute, I think because -KIN is an inherently cute ending. I mean, just look at them: NEEDED A PUSHKIN, PAY AT THE PUMPKIN, SIAMESE CATKIN, THE BAY OF PIGSKIN, BABY BUMPKIN, and POWER NAPKIN. Good fill, too; as is sometimes the case with Matt's puzzles, there are more partials than I like to see, but entries like TIKTOK and ZOO ANIMAL make up for it.
January 7: Year 5 Rows Garden 18 (Joon Pahk, Outside the Box)
Joon rings in the new decade with the seed entry ROARING TWENTIES, and makes room for colorful entries like SWASHBUCKLER, OFFICE ROMANCE (clued as [Working relationship?]), SINGULAR THEY (the American Dialect Society's word of the decade), and ROSEMARY'S BABY.
January 9: Puzzle No. 3520 (Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto, The Nation)
This cryptic's got a mini-theme, where the five W's are hidden phonetically in some of the across entries (Y-INTERCEPT, HOOVER DAM, WEDNESDAY, UNDERWEAR, and ANGKOR WAT), but the real attraction, of course, is in the cluing. The highlights:
- UNICORN: [Mythical creature's simple garment, worn without the front bits]
- DEEP: [Went back into the sea]
- ANGKOR WAT: [Lee faces a choice of initial letters for radio stations at religious site]
- REVISIT: [Consider once again what may happen when playing tag with a member of the clergy]
- CYANIDE: [Candy (i.e. disguised poison)]
- PURCHASE: [Buy tea, mostly in a bag]
January 12: Whose Side Are You On? (Ross Trudeau, Rossword Puzzles)
This one has been officially declared #notacrossword by the Not a Crossword Twitter account, because it breaks a cardinal rule of crosswords: all-over interlock. But with good reason! The grid is divided in two by a column of black squares in the middle, but worry not - there are several doors passing through the column, hidden in the entries TANDOORI, IT'S DO OR DIE, and THE DOORS. That last one serves as the revealer, and as the icing on the cake, references the band's song "Break On Through (To the Other Side). Quite an elegant, layered theme.
January 16: Aries Cryptic 22 (Andrew Ries, Aries Puzzles)
Probably my favorite Aries Cryptic yet, in large part thanks to two clues that cleverly reinterpret in-the-language phrases. TOM BRADY is clued as [Grave-yard shift for long-tenured driver at Gillette Stadium], efficiently reparsing "grave-yard shift." And FLUFFY is clued as [Superficial target of some shots at the beginning of "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"], reinterpreting "extremely loud" as FF and "incredibly close" as the close of the word "incredibly," Y. Genius! Other great clues:
- ADMIT IT: [Playing timid at frustrated interrogator's demand]
- PANTS: [Article of clothing doesn't breathe well]
- DISMAL: [IDs lost prior to returning flight is no fun at all]
- FANTASIZE: [Imagine NAFTA jolted economy, for instance]
- OUTLINE: [Heads of organizations underreporting their losses in net earnings summary]
January 24: Photo Finish (Claire Rimkus, USA Today)
The theme here is, unsurprisingly, phrases that end in synonyms for "photo." Each of the theme entries (WHISKEY STILL, COLD SNAP, SLAPSHOT, and PAISLEY PRINT) uses a different meaning of the synonym, which is a nice touch. But the main reason I'm highlighting this puzzle is that it shows that sparkly fill isn't all about the long answers (the TENTPOLES, if you will). The sparkly short fill in this one includes BAO (which I've seen in surprisingly few puzzles), the TV show POSE, KESHA (whose new album, High Road, came out yesterday), UP TOP, and the Los Angeles SPARKS.
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