Jean & Mike Do The New York Times Crossword

Sunday, July 20, 2025 - Famed mystery author ... Mary Westmacott???

• MP • Season 13 • Episode 66

This was a fun crossword by Michael Schlossberg. The theme gave us an opportunity to -- at last! -- use the word "idiom" in a sentence without sounding like an idiot 🙄, and the clues gave us a chance to exercise our little grey cells (as Mary Westmacott (or, to be precise, the writer whose ALIAS was Mary Westmacott) would have put it).

Among our favorite clues not heretofore mentioned were 55D, More than wanna, GOTTA (three cheers for colloquial English!); 66D, Mast attachment above a gaff, TOPSAIL (we hope that that the spelling of gaff wasn't a gaffe 😉); and 4D, Chinese symbol of hope and prosperity, KITE (the one with the string, not the bird).

Show note imagery: The father of Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo EMERSON

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