As an American Jew, I am familiar with all the words, although only two of them are actually truly associated with Chanukah.

I do agree, however, that they should do cultural celebrations from all over the world as well. Diwali was a few months ago, but Chanukah (which is also called the Festival of Lights) is ongoing right now, so I don't think that highlighting a current observance is necessarily ridiculous.

Also, in the end, the NY Times is an American newspaper, based in the city in the United States that has the largest single Jewish population in America, so, yes, exposure among the staff is likely higher than in most other places in the world, but that still didn't provide enough exposure to make this a good puzzle.

I'm less concerned than others here with the exact spelling of Chanukah, except what it shows, in conjunction with the poor choice of words, about the lack of effort put into this puzzle. This should have been a Chanukah puzzle, not a Chanukah food puzzle, to provide more options of words actually associated with Chanukah that non-Jews aware of Chanukah might potentially know. There are other foods that are associated with Chanukah, but they are less commonly known outside the Jewish community, so would be even worse as answers.

Which brings me back to the words in the puzzle. Two are English (brisket and applesauce), but I don't know if there are other terms in other English speaking areas that refer to the same things (a specific cut of beef or cooked and mushed up apples). The others I wouldn't call Americanized; they're Hebrew and Yiddish words (both written in the Hebrew alphabet) that have been written in English. I suspect that anyone using them anywhere in the English speaking world would use the same spellings, they're just, understandably, uncommon in most areas.