Tuesday, November 10, 2026, Sam Koperwas and Jeff Chen

0:07:57

One can hardly object to the the object of today's theme: heteronyms! It's quite the exploit to exploit them five times like this. For quick review, I now present the theme entries present in the puzzle:

TEARSHEET - Kleenex?
DOESTHATMATTER - Important female deer?
PUTTINGITMILDLY - Soft touch on a golf course green?
GETSTHELEADOUT - Prepares for a dog walk?
TAKESABOW - Prepare to shoot like Cupid?

It's a pity that such an august achievement should appear outside the month of August, but it must be supposed that November is where this is supposed to have run.

Ok, I'll stop. I shan't tarry in getting on with the review, lest I end up tarry from angry comments.

One often sees heteronyms in clues (see: "Appropriate" (APT)), especially in cryptic crosswords, so it's fun to find them in the answers today. My favorite is the absurd DOESTHATMATTER, but TEARSHEET is also strong. And I found myself looking around the grid for more that could be theme adjacent. At first I thought I couldn't find any, but then I said, "I CANTO!" Yeesh. Sorry. 

I'm probably close to losing you with all this tortured wordplay, so I'll close now, but I hope you will, like me, refuse to say that there was any refuse in this puzzle.  

- Horace 

Monday, November 9, 2026, Leslie Benson

0:04:01

FAIRANDSQUARE is the revealer today, clued with "Honestly ... or a description of the shaded letters?" The shaded letters, arranged in squares, spell out "expo," "so so," "pale," and "just," all words that can be interpreted as "fair." 

I had several missteps today, including "shot up" for SOARED (Rose quickly, as prices), "pAcE" instead of RATE (A mile a minute, e.g.), DJing instead of DJSET (Performance with turntables at a nightclub, say), but they were all corrected by crosses. 

A clutch of quality C-level entries included CAVORT (Prance about), CONJURE (Make appear as if by magic), and CHASTE (Pure as the driven snow). And I enjoy any reference to Horace (ARS Poetica), but speaking of language arts, I fear the clue "Something that 'perks up' when you're attentive" (EAR) only serves to dull the keen edge of English. There's no reason to avoid "prick up" there.

- Horace

Sunday, November 8, 2026, Simeon Seigel

MIXED RESULTS

It took me a long while to grok the theme today, but once it came into focus I enjoyed it quite a bit. I will try to explain it like this - Where the equals signs appear in the grid, one side of the equation is given an additive clue, the answers to which are combined (one circled, one not) into a new word or phrase, and that new phrase becomes the clue for the word on the other side of the equals sign. Phew! Perhaps an example might help.

96-Across is clued with "Online broadcasts + Obvious," and the answers, "streams" and "patent" are combined into SPATREATMENTS, which in turn clues 100-Across, FACIALS. See? Nothing to it.

One more: "The Great Lakes, e.g. + Computer gurus" yields "quintet" and "it pros," which are combined into QUITINPROTEST which clues WALKOUT. It's really quite convoluted, yet there's a beauty in it.

In addition to all that, the puzzle had a lot of really nice cluing. My thinking was far removed from AACELLS when I read "Remote power sources," and "Take an inch from a yard, say" (MOW) took me a while too, but got a laugh when it finally did come together. Speaking of laughing - "Impaler of note" (VLAD) is just so absurd, isn't it? And "'I'm done explaining myself!,' to a mathematician" was an amusing way to get to QED. Hah!

For me, ALIVE didn't quite equal "'Bumping,' as a party," but "Petty cash holder?" for MISER was inspired, and "Attempt at a royal flush?" (PALACECOUP) was cute. I also enjoyed the paired clues "Washington, but not Lincoln" (STATE) and "Washington or Lincoln" (CITY), and the (sort of) paired answers BEMUSE (Stump) and BEFALL (Come upon) that came one after the other.

It's interesting that TWOBIT means "Third-rate" isn't it? And is "Bean or gourd" (MELON) referring to the head? If so, that's a really nice Non-QMC.

Overall, I found this to be a very satisfying Sunday. I hope you liked it too. It's good to be back at the keyboard, and I'll see you all again tomorrow!

- Horace 

Saturday, November 7 2026, Adrian Johnson

Rounding out my blogging week is a gem of a Saturday crossword.  Not that it was super difficult - the solve itself was only moderately challenging - but I tip my hat to the two quadruple stacks in the NW and SE corners, with long Down clue pairs in the other two corners.  Furthermore, I felt like I learned way more stuff than usual from this puzzle.

Stuff like TREEPOSE, where one leg is perpendicular to the other.  (I don't do yoga.)   Or that EPEE literally means "sword".  Or the Hawaiian word for "family" is OHANA.  Or a group of Mediterranean appetizers is called a MEZE.  Or that THEWHO's "Live at Leeds" album went double-platinum.

The cleverest clue today, I think, was "Someone who might need to get a life?" (GAMER) - which works on multiple levels - in a gaming context and also from a broader perspective.  Another fun QMC was "One looking over a shoulder?" (ROADWORKER). But not "First to seven?" (ESS).  Boo!!! 

My brother ran a GOATFARM of sorts for a while in the interior of British Columbia.

For those not familiar - in pro tennis, a SERENASLAM is what you call four Grand Slam titles in a row *ending with* the Australian open, which in the modern era takes place in January, so the "Slam" spans two calendar years, as opposed to a "Grand Slam", which must be contained in a single year, and was last accomplished by the incomparable Steffi Graf back in 1988.  Serena Williams completed her eponymous Slam twice - in 2002-2003 (defeating her sister Venus in all four finals!) and again in 2014-2015.  Testament to the longevity of her dominance!   And, per the clue, Novak Djokovic picked up where Serena left off and did it in 2015-2016.

I leave you with that little tennis nerd-out.  Horace takes the reins tomorrow! 

Friday, November 6 2026, Aidan Deshong

That time of the week has arrived - my favourite two NYT crosswords, back to back!  Today's grid looked very promising, with stacks of long clues both horizontal and vertical; and true to expectation, it was a fun solve, though perhaps a titch on the easy side for a Friday.  And being a Friday, there's no theme to describe - so here are a few of my favourites among the many top-notch clues in the puzzle.

I liked the meta-ness of PRE ("Lead-in to face or fix").  But my favourite clue of the week so far has to be the magnificent, impenetrable "Greenish black rock?", for which I needed most of the crossers to winkle out CLEANCOAL.  Brilliant!!  And how about the two down "'Give me one moment...'" clues side by side?!  BERIGHTBACK and HANGONASEC - excellent cluing!

Didn't love the awkwardly pluralized CAMOS ("Paintball outfits, informally").  But just before it is the delightfully misleading "Apple device":  IPHONE? IMAC?  Nope: CORER!

In today's instalment of Downfall o' the Day:  I'd never heard of BESTCOAST as Californians refer to their own state, nor was I familiar with "'Shockingly refreshing' soda" SIERRAMIST, and so I had them in the grid as BENTCOAST (hey, the coastline IS kinda bent, is it not?) and SIERRAMINT (well, plausible, right?).  Only upon review did I notice and correct that intersecting 'N' to an 'S'.  

A really well-put-together crossword.  Saturday's xword will be hard pressed to match this!

-philbo

Thursday, November 5 2026, David P. Williams

Well, what have we today?  A standard-looking grid with four long-ish Across entries, each containing a circled letter, plus a grid-spanner bisecting the puzzle.  It quickly became apparent that there was some sort of encoding, or translation, going on, as those long answers weren't making sense as their crossers filled them in.  For example - 17A "Hand-held communication devices" was coming out as WALKIHLKIES with the 'H' circled.  Gibberish!  The long middle revealer sheds the necessary light:  "Admission of confusion" = ITSALLGREEKTOME - of course!  replace the circled 'H' with its Greek counterpart ETA and you get WALKIETALKIES, which fits the clue nicely.  Similarly,

• "Songs played on an oldies station" = CLASSIXTS with X --> CHI
• "Juggernauts" = POWEPUSES with the second P --> RHO (but see below)
• "Popular fundraising event" = SILENTCTION with the first T --> TAU

I liked this construction, largely because of its opaqueness - it was not at all obvious what was going on at first.  My one nit here is the equating of RHO with the letter P.  Sure, it looks like a 'P' but it's really more like 'R' phonetically.   For that reason, I originally entered POWERUSES, but then that would make "Galileo, for one" a RISAN, which was definitely not right.  Note that this Greek-to-English translation only applies in the Across direction, which is helpfully pointed out in 59A.

My only real hiccup was mistaking "Comfort" at 6D as a verb and entering SOOTHE instead of SOLACE, so there was a bit of scribbling there.  I was misled by 50A "Digs" (ISINTO) as I was looking for some sort of residence.  ..  Is "Vernacular" really the same as PATOIS?  I guess so, though I suspect one is more about vocabulary and the other is more about delivery.   ASIAGO was cute and punny as a "cheese that comes from northern Italy (and not another continent!)"..  ANGSTROM tickled my geeky physics-y fancy as well.

Favourite clue of the day?  "Letter indicating ownership?" (ESS).  Took me ever so long to understand the reference - to the possessive 'S' at the end of a noun ...

A fun puzzle overall.  Back for more tomorrow!

-philbo

Wednesday, November 4 2026, Peggy Sue Marlin

Today's crossword is all about the revealer at 56A.  The three similar-looking theme clues point the way : "56A on a store/elevator/interstate".  Not much to go on!  So one approach here would be to go straight to 56A, work out the answer and then, armed with that, revisit the first clues.  Or...just blunder down the grid so that by the time the revealer is exposed, so is most everything else and it's just a matter of looking back and seeing how it makes sense.   And so it was for me.  "That spells trouble!" reveals ITSNOTAGOODSIGN, and I'd already worked out the other answers...

• SORRYWERECLOSED - bad sign on a store;
• OUTOFSERVICE - bad sign on an elevator; and
• EXPECTDELAYS - bad sign on an interstate

Very clever!  Honestly I'm so impressed with Ms. Marlin, and every setter really, for the inexhaustibility of the themes they come up with.

Some nice fresh takes elsewhere in the grid.  "Sensationally detailed" is an excellent clue for LURID.  Never thought of giraffes as having MANES, but of course they do! I also liked the PC key clues side by side (CTRL and ESC) but only because I was solving with pen+paper today.  Clues like that are too "gimme" when you're doing the puzzles online.

"Sourdough starter" (ESS, of course) made me smile.  It was a sliver of a silver lining during the pandemic, that my spouse became a dab hand at making sourdough bread..HAIM ("Rock band founded by three sisters) was new to me.  I must give them a listen!  Intersecting this clue was HERA ("Divine protector in 'Argonautica'"), which was also unknown to me.  And intersecting that was another Argonautica clue, a "Magical ally" this time - MEDEA, also outside my sphere of knowledge. This is the scenario most dreaded at the NYT Xword Tournament.  Evidently, I need to brush up on my classics!

As I write this, the US midterm results are rolling in.  Maybe there's hope for you people after all.  But leave us not prematurely count our chickens ....

-philbo