Sunday, July 6, 2025, Zhou Zhang and Kevin Curry

I filled in everything but the lock in about 13 minutes, but then I couldn't figure out the lock, so I let Frannie look at it. She realized that FOURSQUARE could point to the square with the four in it in the puzzle, and put an X into the second spot. Once that was in, she knew it was EXIT. Then we went back to figuring out why.

Working from the end, DOESNTHAVEACLUE refers to 76-Across, TEE, which has only a dash for a clue, so that's the T. UNDERTHESEA, phonetically, refers to the only C in the grid, and under that letter is an I. For ENDOFTHEROAD, all we could come up with is the "Famed street in Beverly Hills," RODEODRIVE, which ends with an E. And there you have it.

The puzzle starts strong with the MARX quote "The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape," and it's interesting to learn that ELPASO is the "Only major Texas city not in the Central time zone." "Lover of Shakespeare" is a cute clue for ROMEO. Likewise "Fruit picker of old" for EVE. 

I never was a fan of the switch from TAN to blue in M&Ms. TAN is just a better color for food, especially a chocolate food. There, I said it.

- Horace