Monday, March 16, 2026 - ☃️ 🎵 Snowbody knows, the trouble we've seen, snownobody knows at all 🎶

Welcome to Gene and Mike, to the New York Times Crossword.

Hi, I'm Gene.

And I'm Mike.

And today we are doing the Crossword for Monday, March 26th, 2026.

So, on snowmageddon.

It's snowmageddon day two.

Snowmageddon day two.

Did you find this to be a good crossword to be trying to solve on snowmageddon day?

Well, yeah, if you don't have any place to go.

Anything to do, but stay at home.

Right.

This was a good one.

Yeah, it was sort of, I think it was a good New York Times type theme.

Yes.

Rather, rather, somewhat intellectual and sort of elevates a little bit there.

You think?

Uh-huh.

And I'd like to provide some phrase and Latin to sort of follow up on that.

But the only thing I could think of is Eploribus Unum, which doesn't really fit in.

No, not quite.

So, but at two.

At two, at two Brute.

And there's Lavos Los Menos.

But I, that might not be Latin.

No, that might be Spanish.

So, yes, this was a Latin themed crossword puzzle by Jamie Smith.

That doesn't sound like his name is Latin at all.

But anyway, the themed answers were all in Latin, which sounds daunting.

But they were all pretty much common Latin phrases, like quid pro quo and post-mortem.

And infidem.

And infinitem.

And I, the other two, Magnus Opus, I've heard.

The other one, I'm not sure how it's pronounced.

Sweet, generous.

Sweet, generous.

I believe.

I have seen that, not as often as I've seen the other one.

But anyway, those were the answers to the, uh, the themed clues.

And all of them were just essentially those phrases in English.

One of a kind, masterwork, after the event, as an analysis, and reciprocal exchange, quid pro quo.

Yes.

The themed, uh, revealer was 64 across.

Stereotypical charmers, or those charmed by the answers to the start clues.

And that was Latin lovers.

Yes.

The love Latin, love the language Latin.

You would really love this puzzle.

It was all over the place.

Right.

So anyway, but yeah, very, very nice puzzle, very clever.

And, uh, yeah, I don't know that I've ever seen one where we've had these many Latin phrases.

I don't know.

And I think it would be very hard to, you know, we can use X word info to look up old crosswords by various criteria.

But I think it would be hard to look up Latin themed crosswords to see how many there are.

Uh-huh.

But the person who runs X word info, uh, Jim Thorne, Jim Horn, seems to have a very good memory.

So maybe he just will remember it.

I don't know.

So, and, you know, we've seen these phrases in, in other crosswords, you know, typically there'd be only Latin phrase in the puzzle.

But here they are all together.

Right.

Or maybe just, you know, part of them like Quint Pro Blank, you have to put in the quo.

Well, every, every one of these is listed as having appeared at least once before.

Uh-huh.

The only, almost exception was post mortem, which has appeared four times, uh, but not since, uh, let's see, it appeared today.

And then the last time it appeared was in 1993.

Wow.

Doesn't show up a lot.

Uh-huh.

But I wonder if there isn't like a blank mortem post or, you know, post, post is its prefix.

There probably probably is.

Yeah.

But yeah, I found this crossword to be somewhat harder than usual for a long time.

Or Monday.

Yeah.

Oh, definitely.

Because of the Latin phrase.

Well, I don't know if it was that so much.

It's just like all these other clues, like I just was not on the same wavelength as Jamie Smith or he as in his, as a Latin.

I believe he calls himself Jamie Smithus.

Uh-huh.

But for example, seven across drone sound.

I went for buzz.

Oh, I did too.

Oh, really?

Okay.

All right.

Um, how about for three down locals for the late news, I went for a bit paper.

I'm not sure what an obit paper is, but I went for it.

Uh-huh.

I thought it was a bit page.

Right.

And that was, that was a very clever clue I got.

Yes.

Well, I thought my answer was clever, cleverly wrong.

Because that man, I had trouble with like 31 across.

I had Mappens Mappus.

And I thought, well, you know, my Latin isn't that great.

Maybe there's something called Mappens Mappus.

Mappus.

But it was Magnum Opus as you pointed out.

Mm-hmm.

For four down.

I mean, listen to this.

The clue was, kicks down the road as a decision.

I went for postpone.

Oh.

And then I went for puts off.

And eventually I got around a punts on, but you know, took me like three, three tries

to get at it.

Yeah.

That's not a very common phrase, punts on.

Maybe, but how often you're on a Monday?

Do I have to keep recycling through clues to get to the right one?

Not that often.

I'm not complaining.

I mean, I think it was a good crossword, but you know, you come into a crossword with a certain

mindset.

And I'm thinking Monday crossword, this should be a piece of, and it isn't a piece of cake.

So, um, and, and, you know, the other problem with, with, uh, uh, obit paper was I had for

44 cross the SoCal school whose teams are the Aztecs.

I had S-D-R-U.

No, not mine.

No idea what that's it for, yes.

S-D-S-U.

Mm-hmm.

And it goes safe.

Yeah.

54 down.

54 down was warm bed covering.

I went for duvet.

Oh.

Cause that had to be the right answer, except it was quilt.

Like I said, I just kept missing clue after clue here, even, even, uh, 67 down.

Prefix meaning egg.

Ova.

But it wasn't.

It was O-V.

O-V.

Or O-O-V.

Okay.

Or, or Oive.

I, uh, sort of my reaction to the entire crossword.

What about 56 down?

What did you have for earthen pots from the Spanish?

Olas.

Really?

Yes, I knew that.

You didn't think, cause I started.

Maybe that from the crossword.

Cause that's been, it's been in many a crossword that I have done.

I went for tarot as in terracotta.

Oh, uh-huh.

No, they actually have a name for those.

Olas.

Olas.

Isn't that how you say hello to someone in Spanish?

That's Ola.

Yeah.

So if you say hello to a bunch of people, you're really saying, hey, earthen pots.

No, I don't think so.

Okay.

Uh, 29.

Okay.

Would you put for 29 down recipe unit?

Which one was that?

Uh, 29 down.

I put, well, it started.

I had to see.

So I thought, well, it's gotta be cup.

Okay.

Well, there.

So I went for that one.

I went immediately for TSP.

Oh.

Cause it was three letters long.

Mm-hmm.

And that meant that the, um, 28 across the Bronx born, born congresswoman elected in 2018,

familiarly, was AOT.

No, not quite.

And I had AOC.

So I had to see so like, well, you know, we measurement the stars that they see is cup.

As far as I know.

Is AOC living in the Bronx?

I thought she was like in many, for Minneapolis.

No.

Oh, okay.

She's from New York City.

Okay.

Well, in any event, I had AOT, uh, which would be sort of like America online except

America.

And I don't know what it would stand for.

Clearly not the right answer.

City that's home to the University of Maine.

34 down.

Orano.

Orano.

I, I take it from that tone of voice that you knew it.

I didn't know that.

I've never heard of Orano before.

I had a colleague who talked and what she was actually an extension specialist.

Cause that's their land brand school, uh, at the University of Maine.

Really?

So yes, I, I know it from knowing her.

Well, it's a period, uh, 251 times.

So you think, you think I remember it.

But in my defense, uh, it is only shown up about four or, uh, let's see.

Six times this deck.

Yeah, six times this decade.

Oh, okay.

So it's not really that common.

But for the record, it first appeared in 1944 when it was cleverly clued as seat of

University of Maine.

Yeah.

And again, that was back in the era when they had periods at the end of each clue.

Uh-huh.

That was by written by Waldo Ranson, by the way.

Haven't seen Waldo Ranson lately.

Has anyone seen Waldo Ranson?

Hey, that could be a, that could be a book.

Could be.

So, uh, a, a good crossword.

Uh, I, like I said, got everything wrong.

I mean, uh, one last example, 36 across wide-eyed and eager.

I went for avid, because I, I sort of concentrated on the, on the eager part.

Yes.

And turned out to be a god.

A god, yes.

Like I said, just, it's just like, I, I don't know if this bodes well for the rest of the

week or some sort of, it's some sort of an omen, but.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

So, all right.

Uh, that is it for the crossword.

And again, an excellent crossword by Jamie Smith, or in his Latin, uh, form,

Jamie Smithus.

And it is Monday, which means it's time for Jim Katwa, the Jean and Mike crossword of

the week award, where we go back through the crosswords of the previous week, debate,

and then pick out what we deemed to be the very best.

And today, we picked Wednesday, March 11th.

Wednesday, March 11th.

A day that will live in infamy.

No, that's not quite right.

Carry on.

Why did we pick Wednesday, March 11th?

Well, I think we mostly picked it for the very unique theme, uh, which included clues that

describe happy chances, things that happened thinking they could go one way, but they

went the other way and thank goodness they did because it made people vote loads of money.

Yes.

That's one reason it made the world a better place.

Made the world a better place.

Yes.

The story of the Post-It Notes, the discovery of penicillin from mold that was found in a laboratory,

the microwave oven, the chocolate bar that melted in the man's pocket when he got near to

a magnetron.

And then finally, the silly putty, which was found when they were trying to develop a synthetic

rubber for the world, for World War II.

So anyway, yeah, just some wonderful clues.

Interesting.

And it was just fun to try to figure out what the answers were to them.

Yes.

And beyond the ones that you mentioned, I mean, there were lots of great clues throughout the

grid.

There were.

Yes.

I really liked 29 down that was having streaks stripy.

Yes.

I think that was my favorite clue.

Even though it's spelled S-T-R-I-P-Y, and I want to say stripy, and I'm going with stripy,

and then we had clues like 20 lacrosse, one in 100, sender, and five down, 10th score after

juice, addin, which I thought was going to be a debut, and it appeared 182 times.

Yes.

So not quite a debut, but just a fun crossword all around.

It was.

It was.

This was by John Gazetta, his 41st New York Times crossword, so experience shows.

And congratulations, John, on winning the Gem Cutwa.

If you feel so inclined, drop us a line, crossword podcast at iCloud.com, including a shipping

address, and a shirt, T-shirt size.

And we will have your Gem Cutwa certificate, a T-shirt, and some magnificent Northeast

Wisconsin swag.

Once we can get out.

Once we can get out.

Well, we'll also send you some snow, because we have enough that we can start exporting.

And so again, drop us a line, crossword podcast at iCloud.com.

Anyone else listening to this podcast, who wants to do the same, please do.

And remember, when you're listening to this podcast, we would love to have a five-star

review wherever you're listening to it.

That'd be great.

That is it for today.

Okay.

Thanks everyone for listening.

We will be back again with our cutting-edge analysis of tomorrow's crossword tomorrow.

Bye-bye.