NYT Crossword Answers for March 31, 2025

Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky Clues

MONDAY PUZZLE — This is Ryan Mathiason’s first puzzle for The New York Times and, in keeping with today’s theme, I’m already starting to like what I see. Today’s crossword has some wonderfully original fill, but it all jells. Or gels, you might say. In any case, I hope we’ll see more of Mr. Mathiason soon. Shall we comb-over the puzzle together?

Today’s Theme

As soon as I figured out what was going on, I thought to myself, [“I’m starting to like this”… or a hint to the starts of 16-, 24-, 47- and 58-Across, in order] — in other words, “IT’S GROWING ON ME!”

Each of today’s themed entries begins with a kind of hairstyle (or lack thereof, in the case of 16A), arranged so as to be “growing” as they move down the grid, from BALD to BUZZ to FADE to AFRO. And while I can never tell whether certain entries are intentional winks on top of the theme, I appreciated the mention of HATS at 1-Across, because that’s what one would use to cover a bad haircut.

Tricky Clues

13A/14A/15A. I’m bundling the entire second row of this puzzle into one tricky clue, because all three of its entries are proper names, which are generally pure trivia (i.e., you know it or you don’t). It’s lucky that none of these entries cross with other proper names — I’m not counting CHEEZ-Its (8D), mind you — because otherwise we might be looking at a Natick. Here are the row’s answers, from left to right: OPIE (13A), LEAH (14A) and AMON (15A).

52A. [U-turn from WSW] gives us a lot of information in relatively few letters. WSW is short for a compass direction, west by southwest. To make a “U-turn” from that direction would mean moving toward its inverse: ENE, or east by northeast.