Great puzzle, but with five long Latin phrases and other answers like OLLAS , I'm not sure I understand how this ended up on a Monday.
@DJ All the Latin phrases I feel are in common enough usage by English speakers to make them fair game on a Monday. YMMV of course..
@DJ OLLA is classic old crosswordese. Remember it, it will show up again.
Wow! That was a Monday? A lot more resistance than the usual Monday! I found 7D to be extremely flippant and tone deaf given the current state of the world.
@Andrew @DW Had the same initial thought about 7D but of course the puzzle was probably submitted months ago. Not sure how close to publication date any final editing happens though - perhaps any constructors or editors lurking here can weigh in
Fun puzzle. Imagine most vets will agree this was a Tuesday, not a Monday, though enjoyable just the same. Some original cluing too which is a bonus for early week. Thumbs up!
@Gallay Eh, felt like a normal Monday to me. Could have also been run on a Tuesday, I guess, but the boundary between any two days is bound to be pretty blurry. In part because I don’t think the goal is to aim for the exact same level of difficulty on any given day, week after week…and in part because that would be impossible to achieve, even if it was the goal.
Designer of this puzzle has a dark sense of humor joking about the threat of WWIII.
@Chris 3D a bit dark as well
@Chris I’m guessing these crosswords go through some period of review so I’d love to know when that process started. Some timing to get published!
@Chris Print version probably has a lead time of around a week so it can get typeset for the paper. We have had constructors who have submitted puzzles which have been accepted, only to wait over a year for their puzzle to be used. They try to keep the clues the save for the print and online versions. I've seen them change online clues once or twice in the ten-plus years I've been doing the puzzle. Quantity of submissions and approvals, especially of the appropriate difficulty level, plus lead time, make for the occasional answer a seemingly "too appropriate" correlation with the events of the day.
imagine my shock solving the crossword in the bomb shelter and reading the 7A drone's sound and 7D hypothetical global conflict clues :) aced it
@anya I thought these clues were at best INAPT, and most certainly insensitive to the suffering being inflicted on your country and other countries. Stay safe, sending love.
@anya Wonderful to have a voice from Kyiv here. I hope you are keeping safe. Please spare a moment to post again when you can. Despite the craziness in other parts of the world, many continue to follow reports from your homeland and do what can be helpfully done.
@anya Your comment makes the world real in a much needed way. Our day-to-day lives continue, while yours is fractured with danger and turmoil. You are really there, and not just a story on the news or TV, or any of the media sites we see, which don't resonate in the way your comment does. You are part of our community, and we need to feel that personally. It should be a wake-up call that our country is engaged in a war where people are forced to shelter to stay alive, and that our allegiance should be with the people who share our values as citizens, not with indifferent millionaires who view the world as an opportunity to make "deals." It's too easy to forget what it takes to be truly brave. Be safe, and continue to be strong and resolved, and know that you have touched us.
Lots of Easter eggs for LATIN LOVERS in today's puzzle. NEBULA, ROMANO, even AIOLI and AGUA. And of course OVI which is really a META Easter egg.
This is maybe my favorite Monday puzzle - not hard, but not a long list of stale clues. I enjoyed seeing whether I could come up with the theme answers with no or only a couple of crosses. Great fun!
My five favorite original clues from last week (in order of appearance): 1. Chicken noodle scoop (5) 2. Sticks around for a demo? (3) 3. Hurricane or mudslide (5) 4. Tanning target (4) 5. 5/8 or 2/14 (4) LADLE TNT DRINK PELT VDAY
My favorite encore clues from last week: [Top guns?] (6)(7) [They croak as soon as they grow up] (9) TSHIRT CANNONS POLLIWOGS
@Lewis Hard not to include “Series that has over 200 Emmy’s…and one Oscar” SESAMESTREET Unless you missed the joke, like I did, initially.
@SP -- OMG, I did miss the joke! Thank you for the reprise, and had this not gone over my head it would have been on the list; it should be there! Thank you again... And I'm sorry about that, KAC. You got me good!
... or, riffing off today's theme, mea culpa.
What a delightful puzzle! See how much Latin we all know? Thank you Jamey!
@dutchiris Yup- I learned that I know very little! It was a rough monday for a few of us..
The column photo brought back a couple of memories. Several summers ago while swimming in the pond in our neighborhood, we apparently got a little too close to our resident beaver's home. We saw a little pair of eyes swimming right at us. Respectfully, we turned around and started swimming away. We swam for a bit, turned around, and the beaver was right on our tails. We picked up the pace, checked again, and it looked like we had made no headway. (Cue the "Jaws" theme). It wasn't until we were a good quarter of a mile away, that we saw that she had turned back. Last year, we were out on our canoe on a full moon night. Again we must have gotten closer than they wanted us to be. First, we heard the cannonball like explosions of their tails hitting the water. Then we heard them rubbing up against the underside of our aluminum canoe. Territorial little critters!
@Nancy J. Around 40 years ago, I was fishing alone in a canoe along a Mississippi River backwater on a quiet summer day. All was silent until I was startled by a huge WHAP right behind me. Apparently I had floated too close to a beaver's abode and he slapped his flat tail on the water to express his great displeasure. I practically jumped out of the canoe.
Lovely echo to yesterday’s masterpiece: Jamey’s first NYT published puzzle happened on the Ides of March (the 15th), albeit seven years ago. I never thought about it, but I guess I am a lover of Latin phrases from the simple de facto, status quo, and ad hoc, to the lengthier sine qua non, ad hominem, and deus ex machina. So, this theme gave me pleasure. I liked the play on LATIN LOVERS too. It’s a quirky theme – Latin phrases. The theme of Jamey’s last puzzle (3/29/22) was quirky as well – metonyms. I, a fan of quirky, loved this aspect of both. Finally, I like how the puzzle didn’t autofill as Mondays sometimes can, that is, my brain experienced some carpe diem and cogito ergo sum. Thus, a fun an engaging spark to the week. Thank you for this, Jamey!
Today I learned that there is an alternative - and in my humble opinion far worse - way of spelling the word Epilogue.
@Maddy Because the added value of the “ue” is what?
I remember my grandfather at dinner in the 1970 rather angrily telling us it was HArass, not haRASS. Language changes. Even spelling can change, although more reluctantly.
@Maddy File that away with color/colour, aluminum/aluminium, tire/tyre, center/centre, check/cheque, -ize/-ise, “zee”/“zed”, …
@Maddy What about dialog(ue)? Catalog(ue)? Colo(u)r? Neighbo(u)r? There are many examples of American spellings that have drooped letters from British spellings. I don’t know why either would be considered better or worse. They’re just different.
@Maddy not unlike omelette becoming omelet. language morphs.
If ever there was a Tuesday of a Monday, this was it. Thanks for the non-sleepwalking solve, Jamey.
@Matt Really? It was quick-ish for me for a Monday.
This! "One of the things I love about doing the puzzles is that they force me to accept when I am wrong, correct my errors and move on. I can’t dig in my heels and insist my answer to, say 7A, is right if the fill tells me otherwise. I’m not sure whether this has seeped into the rest of my life, but I like to believe it has. My loved ones may tell you otherwise." Thank you for writing this so plainly, Amy.
So grateful that all these LATIN expressions are mundanely used in Portuguese! I might otherwise have been relieved that they're in a Monday puzzle with easy crosses. Huge shout-out to our very special and lovely (AD INFINITUM) in-house QUILTer, MOL, as well as our beloved and SUI GENERIS LATIN-LOVER, AD ABSURDUM! Thanking Mr. Smith for a fabulous Monday puzzle, I leave you all with Depeche Mode, with a song from their latest album, Memento Mori: <a href="https://youtu.be/2HHc8pNn7x8?si=wrV8EWyAMbqE80l1" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/2HHc8pNn7x8?si=wrV8EWyAMbqE80l1</a>
@subtus vocem Right back at ya(et tu)!
Hecka hard for Monday. Though I am comfortable solving up to Wednesday so I mostly managed to finish, with the exception of needing the N in PEEN / ORONO which is just obscure knowledge frankly.
max, PEEN is obscure knowledge? No shop class for you?
@max Our toolbox had two hammers--a "regular", and a ball peen. I've known that word since childhood. Different wheelhouses. I've spent enough time in New England to know that UMaine is in ORONO (FWIW Bowdoin's in Brunswick and Bates is in Lewiston). But even though you're not from there, keep ORONO in your pocket; like WACO it's useful in a grid.
@max and ORONO is, alas, the OREO of college towns with all those vowels so just memorize it (along with AIOLI--did you know that one?)
What happened to easy mondays for beginners? I’m still learning and I look forward to mondays. NYT editors….. don’t forget….. beginners pay your subscription also. Give us one day please!
@Matt Even as a non-beginner I found this more difficult than a typical Monday.
@Matt cras est alius dies Find solace in the archives, and we'll see you mañana.
@Matt agreed! I’ve gotten to the point where Mondays are normally no look ups but this one was impossible.
What a great revealer for what is a very sophisticated Monday theme. This is perhaps the first Monday puzzle I've ever seen where I think that if I'd had this puzzle idea myself, I would have leaped out of bed shouting "Eureka!" Of course I would have expected it to be slotted for a Tuesday. But if this is where Monday puzzles are heading, I'm certainly not complaining. Question: Are these Latin phrases familiar to every English-speaking person from every sort of background? I wonder. For me, three are phrases I've used often myself in casual conversation. AD INFINITUM and POST MORTEM and QUID PRO QUO are useful phrases for me. MAGNUM OPUS is a bit ironic, perhaps leaning slightly towards pretentiousness? Nonetheless, I've said it. The fourth, SUI GENERIS, I have never used in conversation or writing or in anything at all. I think there will be people who will complain the puzzle is too hard or even unfair. But you won't hear that from me. I loved it!!
@Nancy, yep - SUI GENERIS tripped me up. I hadn’t run across that. Should have been solvable with the crosses, but I drew a blank on 11D (not enough coffee?), and tried to make the themed ending GENEsIS.
Nancy, I'm with you on SUI GENERIS. I've read it and heard it, but never written or spoken it.
@Nancy For a LATIN LOVER like me, SUI GENERIS is a lovely was of saying "one of a kind" or "unique" or, more literally, "a family unto itself".
@Nancy I wouldn't know how to use SUI GENERIS in a sentence, that's for sure, but I've seen it before. Resolved to look it up later, but never did.
@Nancy The Duke Ellington translation of sui generis: beyond category.
@Nancy I actually do use SUI GENERIS irl. I had an architect friend who had read it enough to know what it meant, but had never heard it. He assumed it was French, and when he dropped into a conversation he pronounced it "zhon-REE". My family were/are avid readers, and over the years there have been many words where we knew the meaning but mispronounced the word when using it in conversation. We keep a list, and with each new generation it's a badge of honor to get a spot on the list--it means you're reading at an advanced level. Some of my contributions were apostrophe, catastrophe, amalgam, haphazard, and cacophony.
@Nancy yes I didn’t know sui generis either so tried veneris since to see is venir in French, and since I didn’t know what letter kind of suits pilots wear. I’m bummed that a Monday got me but it did. Cool puzzle though. TIL
SUI GENERIS is probably the one I have encountered the most times of all today's themers. It's used ad nauseam in Polish legalese...
@Nancy That’s the one I didn’t know, too! If I’d ever read it, I must’ve forgotten it.
I am tempted to complain to Jamey, but it is not her/his choice to assign a day. This is NOT a Monday puzzle! Once I figured the theme, I did okay but up to that point I thought there was something wrong with me! Alas, thanks for a fun, well constructed puzzle!
@David Gropper 100% agree with you. This is NOT a Monday puzzle
Not sure how a puzzle with major clues in Latin (a language I thought was dead) ended up being a Monday
@Jenea Because every one of these Latin phrases is also used in English.
@Jenea As others have noted, it must have been a close decision putting this on a Monday. But I'm glad they did. In XLandia, I'll always lean on the side of toughness. (In real life, I'm a cream puff. Shhh.)
Well, the Classics Minor is finally getting some use this weekend! New PB for a Mon- or any-day, and by almost a full two minutes! (And here I must ask--does anyone else have times listed on their stats page, which are wildly inaccurate? Three-minute Saturdays, and the like? Possibly the result of beginning the puzzle on one devise, and finishing it on another? I don't count those.) A couple days ago, I saw a pair of beavers swimming around the lagoon on Detroit's Belle Isle. And on the riverwalk along the Detroit River (technically the William G. Milliken State Park and Harbor), in a small wetland near, but not flowing into, the river, beavers have appeared to have built a lodge. They've also felled about half the trees around the pond, which didn't have that many to begin with. From the remnants scattered around the entrance to the lodge, the beavers have a fondness for Labatt's Blue and Sutter's Home single-serving bottles.
@Bill Tch! They were supposed to land under cover of darkness.
@Bill Three of my seven daily PBs are incorrectly listed as being sub two minutes. And I only ever use one devise(sic). Me vexat pede.
@Bill -- dam fine beaver update.
@Bill every one of my "best" times is impossibly fast for me--2 under 2 minutes, 4 under 4, and under 11 for Sunday. I'm always jealous when people post about "new PB" or "only ten seconds slower than my PB" because I will never be able to join in that discussion. I solve in chrome on a chromebook, or on my Android phone in the app.
Yes this was not your typical Monday puzzle. How do we improve if we are constantly handed layups. The comments are brutal. Mine took longer than usual like so many others and I’m fine with that. I got my mental gymnastics in for the day and had to work just a bit harder, making the music at the end that much more rewarding.
This was a bit too difficult for a Monday puzzle. Often folks will tell me they're not smart enough for crosswords. We all know that's because they think all puzzles are like The Times Saturday puzzles. I always tell them to start with the Monday puzzle and more times than not they end up enjoying crosswords. This puzzle was fun for a slightly experienced Tuesday player but it's not going to win over any newbies.
It's hard to get excited by a Monday puzzle, but appealing to my love of the Classical world is a pretty good start. I liked all the Latin phrases and loved the revealer. (A good revealer is also the secret to an exceptional early-week puzzle.) The puzzle makes me think about how many Latin phrases there are in popular usage in modern English, and the many ways that Greek and Roman culture shaped Western Civilization. I'll list some of my favorites Latin phrases that didn't make the puzzle (or the Wordplay column) and hope that others add their favorites in the Comments. A priori, ad hoc, ad hominem, ad nauseam, alter ego, alma mater, bona fide, carpe diem, de facto, e pluribus unum, excelsior, exempli gratia, ex nihilo, habeas corpus, id est, mea culpa, memento mori, non sequitur, per capita, per diem, per se, post hoc ergo propter hoc, pro bono, semper fidelis, sine qua non, status quo, verbatim, vice versa,... Did I leave out your favorite? How many of these have you learned from doing crosswords? And, for those who watched the Oscars last night, we'll always have "In Memoriam".
@The X-Phile Cogito ergo sum Cum laude Veni, vidi, vici Et tu Brute? And there are more. ...
@The X-Phile [What mom says when you won't eat broccoli] DEGUSTIBUSNONDISPUTANDUMEST
@The X-Phile Ad hominem. Ok, I will. Homonym.
The inclusion of AGUA in the puzzle just made me think of the lovely AQUA VITAE.
@The X-Phile Where a priori goes, a posteriori is sure to follow. ;-) And then there's all the footnotes: idem, ibidem, opus citatus. And of course, at the end of every ĺist, et cetera.
Not a proper Monday puzzle by any means. Way too difficult.
In fact, Amy, I don’t think OLLA is in Sam Ezersky’s Spelling Bee list. I think I tried it once in the past couple weeks to no avail. (OLLAS would probably not be, because the letter S is generally avoided.)
Welcome to the NYT Crossword Puzzle Complaint Hotline. Please press "one" to say the puzzle was too difficult, or press "two" to say the puzzle was too easy.
What, they couldn't find a way to make ET TU BRUTE a theme answer?
Doesn't fit the theme set, Steve (but I think you knew that), and Caitlin worked ET TU into yesterday's cutline. I thought it funny enough to follow up a CAESAR Sunday with a LATIN Monday. Well played, editors. And well done, Jamey.
Bit rough for a Monday, I thought.
I believe this may outrank all of the Mondays I’ve encountered for the 15+ years I’ve been attempting to solve NYT puzzles! Great theme and very nice cluing. Hope to see more Mondays of this caliber!
Dear Amy Virshup, thanks for travelling to this part of the world! FWIW I've entered OLLA in Spelling Bee many times, but it's never been accepted. Maybe one day. But I doubt we'll ever see OLLAS accepted.
@ad absurdum most definitely mumbled something about spelling bee while entering this answer; came here to reaffirm non-acceptance.
Inappropriate theme for a Monday. If your shtick is going to be increasing difficulty with Monday as your entry-level day, theming your puzzle around Latin phrases is a boneheaded decision. Should have run on Tuesday. On a personal note, I didn’t jive with this constructor at all. Didn’t care for the WWIII “joke.” It’s interesting how much we can pick up from people just by completing a puzzle. For me, I hope I never encounter this person in real life. Ta-ta!
@D You mean "jibe," In fact, you did "jive" the constructor. Delicious puzzle. Perfect for Monday.
@D It truly is interesting how few words can say so much about someone. As for hoping to never encounter certain people, the feeling is mutual. Yikes.
@D I agree today’s puzzle felt more suitable for a Tuesday or even Wednesday. What I can’t agree on is the rest of your statement. If you think it’s inappropriate to hope for no WWIII in our lifetime, then one can only assume you’re actually hoping for it.
@D Here’s a thought: back when I started doing the NYT crosswords, I would buy the actual newspaper, read the newspaper, and finish up with the crossword if I had time. I didn’t feel like it was my prerogative to judge that the crossword was too hard, or too easy, or just right; I did the crossword because I wanted to, if I had the time. That approach to solving might be more agreeable to you.
7-down is a bit intense for a random Monday given the US escalation in Iran.
Today’s theme had me thinking about that classic Latin phrase: SEMPER UBI SUB UBI.
@Strudel Dad You had me looking for my "haha" response button.
I am curious about NEBULA, which wasn’t included as one for LATIN LOVERS even though it is a Latin word (meaning cloud). POST MORTEM is what we Brits normally say instead of autopsy. The former is Latin (“after death “) and the latter Greek (“see for yourself”). Both are part of forensic pathology, which itself mixes Latin roots (forensic: to do with the court, or forum) and Greek roots (pathos + logos). It took me a while to get to the answer - i was thinking “post hoc”, “a posteriori”, even “ex post facto”.
@Petrol I agree. i didn't like the weirdly vague translation of POSTMORTEM. I suppose a death does qualify as "an event," and I suppose there are metaphorical deaths that merit analysis without being, you know, actual deaths? Still, I found the clue unjustifiably oblique, especially for a Monday. They might as well have gone with: "something one or more living beings might do, or not do, after somehing happens, or doesn't happen, depending upon circumstances."
@Petrol I have only once seen POST MORTEM used as clued today: on a gaming forum, where somebody used corporate slang for the evaluation of the release of a new video game. I was very surprised - why would you use a phrase relating to death in any other context than a mortuary one? This particular Latin phrase is never used idiomatically in Polish, and I've never heard or seen it used here, at all.
@xys I'm glad it did not where I live. That's taking language too far.
@Petrol I've seen/heard the usage "POSTMORTEM analysis" many times, usually in reference to a losing player or team reviewing a just lost game seeking to explain the loss. Common enough in chess and American professional sports, for example.
@Petrol. I’ve heard it used for an in-house discussion of a theatrical production: mostly from the technical perspective, what didn’t work and how to change for next time. I always thought it a bit morbid.
@Petrol we used POST MORTEM for many years in the US corporate world to describe a review after project completion to go over what we did right and what we could do better next time. The term eventually fell out of favor for being…too morbid.
I've seen plenty of evidence of beavers (gnawed trees, etc.), but only one live, actual beaver. It was swimming parallel to the shore as my ex and I were taking a walk along Lake Monona in Madison, WI. We thought it might be an overgrown muskrat, because we have a lot of those--if only we could see the tail. (Muskrats have regular rat tails.) Finally the tireless guy did us the favor of flipping over and changing directions so we could get a good look at it. Beaver tail, all right. I can see from the photo here that their noses are a lot bigger than a muskrat's, too. They're both a treat to see.
@Jeff Z I used to live across from a pond that had a muskrat in it. I got so excited every time I saw it. I named him Mr. Muskrat, because I am super creative.
If you're not too worn out from this one, Patrick Berry has a nice one today at The New Yorker... <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-games-dept/crossword/2026/03/16" target="_blank">https://www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-games-dept/crossword/2026/03/16</a>
@Barry Ancona Thanks for the recommendation. Fun puzzle. My final letters solved 1-Across, which surprised me because it's a film I've seen more than once.
@Barry Ancona Thanks! I always forget to go check out their Monday puzzle, and I usually enjoy it when I do go there.
@Barry Ancona Thanks. That was enjoyably challenging, akin to a proper NYT Friday, for me. I managed to finish without lookups despite not knowing the trivia, which always feels nice.
Andrzej, Patrick Berry is a very talented constructor. You should try some of his puzzles in the NYT Archive. You can identify them on xwordinfo.com.
@Barry Ancona I'll probably get my gluteus maximus handed to me but maybe I'll try...
Here is my POST MORTEM. I thought this was the perfect follow up to yesterday’s puzzle. I liked the fresh clueing and the fill. My favorite was QUID PRO QUO not only for the Qs, but it was one of the things I would investigate when I worked in HR. I solved the grid just slightly slower than my average. Thank you, Jamey. Carpe diem, Crosslandia!
Harder than normal for a Monday, but completely doable. I loved it.
Great puzzle, a very nice surprise to find a Monday puzzle with so much going on! Must have been quite a challenge putting this together, well done!
Very, very nice. Great start to the week.
Great puzzle! I was very relieved to come to the comments and see many people found this more difficult than a usual Monday! Took me longer than average but much less time than when I first started out. :) Hang in there.
Great theme, and pretty challenging! Def don't expect to have to draw on what little Latin I know on a Monday! Really liked the SUI GENERIS clue, such a great phrase.
@Michael B. I too am grateful to my high school Latin teacher. I suspect that this type of puzzle was more challenging to compose because the Latin words have different 'shapes' than English. E.g., vowels ending words more frequently.
Well I’m glad they decided to bust out the Latin words on a Monday puzzle. That woulda been a nightmare later on in the week
Took me longer than usual for a Monday, and felt a bit more challenging as well. PUTSOFF rather than PUNTSON, and ALSOI instead of ASDOI slowed me down. Five thematic entries and a revealer today, and still the fill is quite solid (except, perhaps, for MOPER). And BADPR is an interesting letter combination. Nice start to the week!
More interesting & engaging than typical Monday. Loved the theme, but especially loved the clue for obit pages.