Thursday, July 23, 2026, Damon Gulcynski

Greetings, solvers! Welcome to the Turn - those late-week puzzles that we love so much. It starts with Thursday, where there is often a trick of some sort, and today is no exception. Six letters in this grid are hidden in black squares and must be understood to exist while solving. If you are solving electronically, the letters will show up as white on black when you finish.

So what are we talking about? DARKENERGY (Proposed cosmological phenomenon that could make up 70% of the universe - and six squares in this puzzle's grid?). The "hidden" letters spell out "energy" in order, and are used in both Across and Down answers. And in typical, good-constructing fashion, the entries that use the letters end up being valid entries on their own without them, so while DEATHSTAR[E] is the actual answer to "More than just a disapproving look," the letters without the final E spell "death star." Really nice work, but then, I would expect nothing less from a veteran like Mr. Gulcynski.

In non-theme, I enjoyed "The Devil's radio" (IDLEGOSSIP), "Strong suit?" (ARMOR), "Sphere, e.g." (SOLID), and WACKO (Totally bizarre). We also get another set of paired clues: "Unleavened South Asian flatbread" for POORI (yum!) and ROTI. And I thought it was interesting that "unread" worked just as well as UNREAD[Y] for "Ill-prepared." But, of course, "den" did not work for "Not admit" (DEN[Y]).

How'd you like it?

- Horace 

 

Wednesday, July 22, 2026, Rebecca Goldstein

It's summer, and a traveling carnival could be coming to your town. Or, you might be vacationing in a seaside locale with an amusement park. If either of those things is true, you could find yourself going there on a HOTDATE (Organic chemistry experiment?) (excellent clue), and maybe you'll TRYYOURLUCK at the RINGTOSS. Well, I'd say you'd be better off doing this puzzle instead, because it looks like those circled letters are heading straight for the rebus bottle. And a big PLUSHTOY is just hanging there waiting for you at 11-Down. Hah! It's a fun little Wednesday theme. 

So, I was going to put up a photo of LOX (Deli supply), because I like it, but then while looking for a photo, I came across a page that told the difference between LOX and smoked salmon, and since it was something I didn't know before, I thought I'd share it with you. LOX is brined, never smoked, and smoked salmon is either brined or cured in some other way, and then smoked. So LOX ends up being a little saltier and a little less tough than smoked salmon. I mean, sure, now that I've said that it all seems obvious, but, well, I didn't know it.

In other news, UPC (Seller's bottom lines, for short?) got another cute clue. "Get in bad with?" was a fun one for ABET. And we always enjoy paired clues, as seen at 9-Down and 33-Across today, with "You are correct about that" cluing both TRUE and ITIS. My favorite clue today might be the non-QMC "They're typical" (NORMS). Sometimes those straightforward ones can be very satisfying.

And hey, did I mention that I was in Italy recently? While there, I drank quite a bit of APEROL.

Hope you enjoyed this puzzle. I'll see you again tomorrow for the start of the Turn!

- Horace 

 

Tuesday, July 21, 2026, Kenneth Cortes

Sometimes puzzles clarify the meaning of a phrase for me. Take BADABINGBADABOOM, for example. Would I have been able to say it was the equal of "Easy-peasy!"? I might have just said it meant something like "There's that thing, done." But yeah, I guess it usually does imply simplicity.

So anyway, that was the first answer in today's GOOUTWITHABANG theme. (I like it when the revealer also works with the theme.) The others were SANDBLAST, STARBURST, and REDWINESUPERNOVA, the Chappell Roan song. All solid entries, so full marks there, as I've heard them say on BritBox. 

I was not familiar with the HABANERA Cuban dance style. I see it was popular in the 19th century, which is longer ago than the AUGHTS. (OHYEAH, worked in another entry!) (OHGROWUP, I hear you groan, to which I reply, THATHURT.) 

Funny that RHINOS is in the grid, as I am just now reading Rhinoceros by Ionesco in anticipation of seeing a performance of same at the A.R.T. in Cambridge in a month or so. I am plowing through it in the original French, though the performance, I believe, will be in English.

HER/she (chocolate bar's pronouns in a corny joke) was amusing. I hadn't heard that before. And I'm not too familiar with the term "Backcomb" (TEASE), so that was interesting to learn.

Overall, a fine Tuesday.

- Horace 

Monday, July 20, 2026, Eric Rollfing

I like the theme, but it assumes that one is playing the travel edition of Scrabble, where the tiles are often kept in a bag, and not the more standard board game variety, where the tiles are laid out on the table and don't really need to be groped for. POCKETCHANGE (Cause of some rescreenings in an airport) is the best one by far, because how often are you actually groping for a light switch? Sure, I did it almost every day over the past six weeks while I was staying in hotels, AirBnBs and friends' houses... but normally your hand goes right to it, doesn't it? Also, who plays SKAT? Oh, why am I fussing? 

GROVE (Small orchard) is a nice word, isn't it? So evocative. And that's a nice misleading clue for WOE (Blue state?). It's true on two levels nowadays... sigh. I also liked the long Downs in the SW and NE.

ATHEISM (Faith no more?) made a rare appearance today. Only the sixth time it's been an entry in a Modern Era NYTX. And nice to have it in the same grid with ETHICS.

The other day, my esteemed co-blogger Philbo was on the verge of telling us what he thought about the word EKE, and now we have both it and DEKES in the same puzzle! Though the latter, being clued with "Hockey feints," might be more to our resident Canadian's liking. Could a player EKE out a deke? 

- Horace

Sunday, July 19, 2026, Michael Lieberman

RAISING CAPITAL

What a cool theme! I had no idea what was going on with this theme for a long time. I knew that dash clues usually mean that an entry is continued into that space, but it took a long time to realize that they were going up, and it wasn't until after solving that I realized that the vertical section of each twisting answer, read from top to bottom, was a world capital. Wow. Let's see if I can find them all:

Lima (Peru)
Bern (Switzerland)
Cairo (Egypt)
Oslo (Norway)
Rabat (Morocco)
Rome (Italy)
Riga (Latvia) 

The crooked entries containing the capitals vary in "goodness," with THANKS/AMIL/LION ("I really, really appreciate it!") and VICT/ORIAC/ROSS (Britain's most prestigious military decoration) being on one end, and EREC/TABAR/RIER (Block someone's passage, say) being on the other. But none is terrible, and really, for this kind of a stunt, they're all perfectly acceptable. And I guess I will say the same for DECLARANT (Person providing a sworn account), and OUTSCORE (Defeat in competition). 

 I enjoyed the literalness, literally, of "Word order" for PHRASING, and in QMCs: "Judge of diamond value?" (AARON) was very good, "Plastic cap?" (CREDITLIMIT) was fun, and "Peak of religion?" (SINAI) got a chuckle. My favorite Non-QMCs were "It's in the pipeline" (GAS) and "They're often covered with dirt" (SEEDS). Apt! 

As for "You're doing it every day" (AGING) ... Too soon!

- Horace 

 

Saturday, July 18 2026, Ryan Judge

Dear readers, I cannot lie : I was somewhat underwhelmed by Saturday's puzzle.  What do I look for on Saturday, and to a lesser extent on Friday?  Difficulty.  Misleading clues, echoing my esteemed co-blogger Colum.  I want to have to chew and chew on a corner until the answers finally reveal themselves.  (This is less fun, mind you, when there's a timer counting down the seconds in the corner of one's eye.)  I wasn't feeling it today, as I filled in the grid, and I don't think it's "me" - I know I've plateaued as a solver.  I do know this asks a lot of setter + editors.  Maybe I'm guilty of taking some things for granted, y'know?

So to the puzzle.  Like probably all of you, I was inclined to enter ORC at the very top as a "Lord of the Rings" extra.  But no, I thought, too obvious - so I entered ENT instead, and that wasn't right either - it was ELF.  Hmmm .. maybe I should rethink the opinions stated above, at least on the misleadingness front...

To be sure, there were many neat discoveries today.  My family donated to OXFAM every year and I never really knew much about it.  Collection of NGOs based in Nairobi??!  Huh.  If I did SITUPS regularly, maybe I'd know about the "butterfly" variation with one's soles pressed together.  Sounds kinda painful...  

QBERT was one of the many video games separating me from my quarters in my feckless youth.  I was surprised to see it pop up today!  To clue a SITAR as "held at about a 45-degree angle from the player's body" is to plumb deep into the canon of sitar knowlege... I liked HOARDED for "Overtook?", which would also be a good clue for "ODED".  And indeed, a BONGO could certainly add flavour to a salsa.  I was going to get all worked up about the extra 'Y' in BLUEY, the "titular animated dog of children's TV", but Google rescued me - there is such a TV show and it's not Blue's Clues at all.  

I have a few friends who do ULTRA marathons.  They're crazy, all of them.

And on that scattershot note, my week of blogging ends; Horace takes over this Bat Channel tomorrow.  Have a great week everyone!

-philbo

Friday, July 17 2026, Coz Berlin

Initial thought on Friday's puzzle : You have to hand it to Coz Berlin, and any setter capable of *three* full-width triple stacks in a single 15x15 grid!  Today's geometry led to a sandwich of those stacks, almost completely decoupled from one another - connected by only three single-letter overlaps between layers.  Almost like solving three separate mini-puzzles!  Ordinarily I'd expect this to necessitate some awkwardness in the crossers, but not the case today - I found this to be silky smooth from top to bottom, a six-stop solve, in units of my subway commute home from work.

The very first clue was a mystery to me:  "Savory Chinese dish prepared on a griddle".  Thanks to the fairly straightforward Down content, it was quickly revealed as SCALLIONPANCAKE, which I've never heard of, though my lovely wife has.  That was really the only thing resembling a hiccup today, if you don't count my entering EARTHA ("Kitt who played Catwoman") in the wrong place.  

The French seafood topping SAUCEAMERICAINE was not known to me either. Next time I'm in a French restaurant, I now plan to try it out.  I had heard about LEONARDODAVINCI's means of learning human anatomy (via dissection of corpses).  Gruesome!  Did the ends justify the means?  I'm thinking probably yes.

I appreciated some inventive cluing today.  Who knew that a Martian DUNE was commonly crescent-shaped?  Well, we do now!   On the QMC front, "Dated many years ago?" (OLDE) was clever, as was "Unearthed?" (ERODED, where I originally entered EARTHA). "It lacks a permanent host, for short" was a clever way to clue the near-ubiquitous SNL.  And tragedies do indeed often start with ACTI!

I have opinions about the word EKED, but I think I'll just keep them to myself today.  Very fine smooth crossword overall.  See ya on the flip side!

-philbo