Sunday, January 18, 2026 - ¡Hola, MAMI! 😘

This was an excellent crossword by Rena Cohen, a Washington University in St. Louis student. If the university sounds familiar, that might be because another NYTimes crossword contributor, Sid Sivakumar, also hails from there. What are the odds? And we'll leave it to the reader to contemplate whether the appearance of 77A, Sloth in 2002's "Ice Age", SID, is coincidence or the result of meticulous planning.

Today's puzzle had a brilliant theme (covered thoroughly in today's episode) and many, many amusing clues. Among the latter was the informative 57A, Discontinued iPods designed to fit into watch pockets, NANOS; the puzzle-within-a-puzzle 113D, Midwest city whose name becomes a Southwest city if you move the first letter to the end, AMES; and the source of in some cases very cheap goods, 52D, Chinese competitor of Amazon, TEMU.

Show note imagery: An example of the work of AL Hirschfeld, a highly regarded 20th century caricaturist.

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