Clues by Enigmatist and Grid by Gin
Theme: Digital root of 9
Winner: Mike Harper
Review of the November 2025 3D crossword
A larger 9 x 5 x 5 puzzle this month with more than its share of mysteries. Nine clues (all the long ones) lack locations and definitions in their clues (we are given them in the legend), and a tenth needs a word spelled by 9 superfluous letters from the wordplay. That sounds like a lot, but thanks to all the checks from the other entries, the solve is smooth.
It’s nice that the undefined clues are distinguishable by their lack of locations. Usually, the hardest part is deciding if a clue really lacks a definition or if you’re parsing it wrong. The fact that we are given definitions in the legend makes it even easier as we go. The biggest hiccup is the extra letters in the wordplay, which can also cause doubt.
My usual “in” for extra letters is hidden words or anagrams. Not a lot of luck here on those fronts, though 3 has a hidden word in segments that’s a good start. The anagram parts of 15 and 37 are helpful too. I had a good idea what I was looking for and finding two Hs in a row clinched WITCHHUNT, and, consequently, SALEM at 35.
I marked a bunch of clues for review as I went, but most are because of initial uncertainty over those extra letters. Trickiest was probably 28, where we start with UNEYED and move the Y and ignore the extraneous U to get to NEEDY. 31 was similar in its (ab)use of PAN-GERMAN.
The pictorial clue depicts Mother Goose but not southeast, which is likely an easier clue than the main one for MAGOO at 21.
Vocabulary is generally good with a few well-clued oddities thrown in. I liked GEMEL, though I’d expected the letter GIMEL with those checks. I don’t see GIMEL in Chambers though. (And I don’t see GEMEL in WordWeb.) I think I’ve mostly seen FOSSA used as a step to get another word and not as fill.
Matching the unlocated words with their definitions from the legend is straightforward. Many of them have an obvious year, whereas for others there are a few choices. But our clue is that they all share the same digital root. Not coincidentally, this is the same root as the current year 2025: 9.
A large part of the joy of a crossword is seeing the words fit together. Here we have not only the words but the years fit together in sequence. The cluing was clean (except where it was deliberately dirty), and we got a nice set of longer entries. I found it extremely satisfying and one of my favourites of the year.
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Grid solution
Visual clue
Mother Goose, of nursery rhyme fame, flies in front of a star with the bottom right quadrant scribbled out. Taking a short word for mother and deleting SE (southeast) from GOOSE gives:
MA GOO(se) = MAGOO
Background image
The backdrop to this month’s puzzle of moss-covered tree roots looking like a furry foot is by Michael Reichelt (CC0 1.0 licence).
Clues and explanations
Thematic solutions are indicated with an asterisk.
| Day | Solution | Clue | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CAIRN | 17aw Aged taxmen have power to cage terrier (5) | terrier. CA[IR]N A Cairn terrier is a breed of dog. |
| 2 | CATCH | 13aw Chapter with aspirate missing I hear (5) | hear. C,A(i)TCH |
| 3 | CRAZY | 17up Wacko repeatedly uncovering secret amazed lawyer (5) | Wacko. (se)CR(et) (am)AZ(ed) (la)WY(er extra W |
| 4 | DRAFT | 22up Physician on board, behind plan (5) | plan. DR AFT |
| 5 | FACER | 20up Just a little of a certain problem (5) | problem. hidden: oF A CERtain |
| 6 | FIDEL | 18aw You’d assume a trustworthy chap, though turning over food shop (5) | You’d assume a trustworthy chap. FI rev + DELI extra I |
| 7 | FOOTLE | 18up,2aw-2 Potter on return also integral to German XI (6) | Potter. F[OOT]LE all rev |
| 8 | FORD FOCUS* | Director of Kotch intermittently cuts to my players (4,5) | FORD/(o)F(k)O(t)C(h)/US |
| 9 | FOSSA | 20aw It’s applied to fine bone depression (5) | depression. F OS SA |
| 10 | GEMEL | 4d Aged twin experienced breaking limb when climbing (5) | Aged twin. GE[MET]L rev extra T |
| 11 | GITES | 6d Farmhouses in the process of getting it established (5) | Farmhouses. hidden: gettinG IT EStablished |
| 12 | GREAT MING* | Harsh accommodating energy and mass (5,4) | GR[E]AT[M]ING |
| 13 | HARD TIMES* | Difficult to scrape by (4,5) | HARD TIMES |
| 14 | IMAGE | 5d What represents compiler’s time with us (5) | What represents. I’M AGE |
| 15 | INGLE | 21up Friend of Sir Walter’s son sadly long since abandoned (5) | Friend of Sir Walter’s. INGLE anag LONG SINCE minus SON extra C |
| 16 | JAMBS | 11aw Supports deserted by the rock band Garbage (5) | Supports. (The) JAM + BS |
| 17 | JOAN OF ARC* | Old German’s fine ships not a long way off Cuba (4,2,3) | J[O]A,NO,FAR,C ships = vb |
| 18 | KERBS | 9d For auditor, is checking margins (5) | margins. “curbs” |
| 19 | MAGMA | 14to One no good at acting school contrarily hot stuff! (5) | hot stuff! MAG/MAH all rev extra H |
| 20 | MAGNA CARTA* | Cycling brandy from France? How kind! (5,5) | (ar)MAGNAC,AR/TA |
| 21 | MAGOO | 1aw He couldn’t easily see alphabet being reversed before O (5) | He couldn’t easily see. OGAM rev + O |
| 22 | MAYFLOWER* | Fellow can drop round (9) | MAY[F],LOWER |
| 23 | METAL | 8d In company with others, following male lead? (5) | lead? M + ET AL |
| 24 | MISDO | 23up Modish sorts fail to behave appropriately (5) | fail to behave appropriately. MISDOH* extra H |
| 25 | MOJOS | 1d In hearing cut GI’s spells in Alcatraz? (5) | spells in Alcatraz? i.e. “mow, Joe’s” |
| 26 | MONA LISA* | Part of inventory briefly kept by mum (4,4) | M[ON A LIS(t)]A |
| 27 | MOTEL | 8to Stops for room, to rest here and refuel (5) | &lit. last letters: rooM tO resT herE refueL |
| 28 | NEEDY | 7to Blind Head of Year’s back broke? (5) | broke? UNE(y)ED,Y extra U |
| 29 | NO-MAN | 7d His land between the lines? He’s unlikely to agree (2-3) | His land between the lines? NO MAN(‘s land) |
| 30 | OP ART | 12aw Love some stuff from Riley? (2,3) | stuff from Riley? O,PART ref. Bridget Riley |
| 31 | PAGER | 10to For Teutonic people everywhere, man’s donated electronic communicator (5) | electronic communicator. PANGER(man) extra N |
| 32 | POKEMON GO* | Incite Barin’s guerrillas in rebellion here (7,2) | POKE, MONGO ref Flash Gordon stories |
| 33 | REATA | 15to Great Apes have caught the catcher! (5) | the catcher. hidden: gREAT Apes |
| 34 | RHEA | 19aw-4 Idiot wants no help dressing bird (4) | bird. (ai)RHEA(d) |
| 35 | SALEM* | 16aw Unclued (5) | |
| 36 | SEED DRILL* | Consult GP about daughter vomiting? (4,5) | SEE[D] DR/ILL |
| 37 | SMASH-UP | 24ac,25up Serious accident close: reread maps to bypass it (5-2) | Serious accident. [SHUT] in MAPS* extra T |
| 38 | WHAUR | 3d At which location in Scotland Henry and uniform break up hostilities (5) | At which location in Scotland. W[H]A[U]R Scots for ‘where’ |
| 39 | WHISK | 3aw A short short sweep (5) | sweep. WHISK(y), i.e. a short drink |
| Optional | WITCH HUNT | Description of events in the unclued entry (5,5) |
Solvers’ comments
Very enjoyable puzzling out the ten moments in history, and delight when guesses turn out to fit the pattern. Very clever and cunning. [MH]
Another EXCELLENT puzzle. How do you all keep making them up? AMAZING. [RE]
I greatly enjoyed this innovative construction. [NI]
Crafty and cruel in all the right ways! This might be my favourite of the whole year thanks to some clever clueing and so many moving pieces that were delightfully frustrating to fit together. I’m still not fully convinced I found all the correct dates and/or all the extra letters, but I look forward to trying to parse through it several more times before the end of the month. Submitting what I’ve got for now… 🤞🏼Thanks, Enigmatist & Gin! [MS]
Very enjoyable and an interesting theme. Pleased to have completed an Enigmatist puzzle. [GW]
The extra letter clues slowed things a bit. I looked all the “moments” up to check the dates, though it wasn’t really necessary. Wikipedia gives three dates for the seed drill, all giving digital root 9. A few puzzlers: 8, 31, 34. The pictorial clue derives from Mother Goose, I guess. [MJ]
I enjoyed tracking down the items from the ‘root’ years, different to the usual themes. Thanks to Enigmatist and Gin for a fun puzzle. [RS]
Quite a challenge with a few words I’ve not encountered before but all were fairly clued. Thanks. [JT]
A very slow start! Left it for a morning walk around Barmouth. Heavy rain threatened for our last afternoon here so we settled at the kitchen table in the holiday apartment and started to make progress. Before too long, we seemed to have tuned in so, other than a couple of bits of checking (“is that actually a word?” etc), we finished it. What an enjoyable puzzle, and so well put together. And a new word or two, of course. Thanks to Enigmatist and Gin ✔️ [CW]
Fantastic puzzle, really enjoyed it. [MD]
It was indeed a hunt for the word Witch. [KD]
Great fun — though I confess that I did not look up the dates and work out the digital roots. [TH]
Wordplay in clues to days 8, 16 and 17 very puzzling. [RE]
Ingenious construction which caused me a lot of head scratching. [PD]
Great puzzle. I really enjoyed it though found it quite a challenge. I liked having the moments in history to discover. Thanks to all. [BS]
Tough stuff, lots of head-scratching, quite often had the answer (believed correct as it turned out) but couldn’t parse. Took a while but got there in the end. Hopefully! Thanks to Enigmatist and also Frank Paul whose drawing helped (don’t always need it but did this time). Loved it all, as usual. [SC]
Quite the most obscure and complicated puzzle for a long time. Hats off to the brain that can come up with this level of difficulty and make it work! [SF]
Difficult and all the more enjoyable for it! Loved unravelling it and working out the key events. and for once the drawing helped – I usually find them impenetrable haha! Fun work out. Thanks to Enigmatist, Gin and Frank. [JC]
I found this to be one of the very best Calendar Puzzles since I started solving them in 2018, mainly because of the sheer breadth of the interesting and ambitious theme, but also because a lot of thought, as well as skill, evidently went into making the clues both challenging and fair. Congratulations to both Enigmatist and Gin. [AB]
Definitely some hard times here, google helped me through, but submitting with one answer very iffy! For all that, thanks for such an interesting puzzle. [SB]
Quite a challenge with so much going on, but a really clever idea and great fun to solve, thanks. [AR]
Having tried and failed on a few occasions with the end of year grid competition, I can only imagine how long it must have taken to compile this (find appropriately numbered dates for relatively well known historical/cultural references, matched to centuries… and then do the very clever clueing with extra letters, and fit it all so neatly into the grid). So hats off to Gin and Enigmatist! As the second numerically-linked puzzle of the year, it almost feels like another dimension being added to challenge us, as if three weren’t enough. I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge, which i confess did involve a lot of googling to check dates! And I am still unsure of how some clues work, or where extra letters are, so submitting a little blindly and in hope… [MS]
Another magnificent feat of engineering and invention by the setters. My wife thinks you have too much time on your hands! I’m submitting with quite a lot of question marks over some answers and will resort to Hints and Tips if I’ve not cracked them all yet. Wonder why the Easter Egg has become optional on the submission page. I’m told the the seed drill was ‘invented’ by at least 1400 BC, but am prepared to give Jethro Tull some credit for what he did in 1701. Have just this instant seen the point of Frank Paul’s drawing – inspired! [EF]
Wow, very tricky. I got the 8 and 10 letter ones first as they could only go in one place, although in either direction, but was able to figure that out. Then bit by bit the others came to light. I got the 10th event description without finding all the letters for it. I still don’t know where some of them are hiding. Brilliant. [SB]
Loved the idea and Magna Carta was an easy way in as an obvious document. However, I found the parsing of several clues difficult and looking for the missing letters meant that there could be no laziness here. I will be amazed if there are no mistakes. What a clever crossword! Thank you as always. [HH]
Understood perfectly what a digital root was but disappointed to find it didn’t help at all with solving this puzzle! It took a lot of perseverance and not sure how I finally cracked it but hope I have! [JB]
It took us a long time to complete this puzzle as enigmatist puzzles are tricky. In the end we really enjoyed it even if we did get some answers wrong. [JM]
An excellent puzzle, seemingly impossible at first, then gradually yielding up its secrets. I needed the tips and tricks to nudge me over the line. [RP]
Wow! That was tough. Still not sure I’ve got everything right but it was really enjoyable pitting my wits against Enigmatist and Gin. Maybe the hardest one this year in some ways, but I just have to express my gratitude to the setters for such a satisfying challenge (even if I haven’t solved it fully). [JA]
Love seeing digital roots! Extremely clever to find nine events mostly with nine letters too. Loved it. [DM]
Liked the years and roots but we really struggled to identify extra letters. Which made us think very hard about the parsing rather than just guessing the answers. [J&JH]
Found this harder than others. Had a couple I couldn’t fully parse but entered the only word that seemed to exist that fitted with the crossers. Day 15 in particular I couldn’t parse. The hints and tips explained to me about the extra letters for the events in the unclued , but I couldn’t work out where I could get a spare ‘C’ from any of the clues from days to 19. [JC]
Whew. [JS]
Hard [RL]
Loved the theme and the clues without knowing where they fit. Totally stumped by the Day 15 clue though! [HM]
Wow, that was tough – thanks to E and G… I got there in the end, but not sure how in some cases, so looking forward to the solution and parsings… [MC]
Always good to complete Enigmatist! [PA]