Thursday, September 10 2026, Simeon Seigel

A fun Thursday puzzle with a neat, inventive theme involving a fairly elaborate bit of wordplay.   I've been mulling over how best to describe it.. maybe just dive in:

The five theme clues are easy to spot, being italicized QMCs with certain letters replaced with underscores.  Quick inspection reveals that in each clue, it's multiple instances of the same letter being replaced.  For example, in 51A "Grou_ of _or_oises?", the missing letter is clearly 'P'.  Well, I suppose it could be 'T', though the clue wouldn't make much sense if it was.  And then, via diligence with the crossers, the answer reveals itself as PEASINAPOD.  Which makes sense if you read PEAS as P'S.  The missing letters are the P's in a POD!  which as we all know is the word for a group of porpoises (or other whales)..

So the thought process must have gone something like this (using another actual example):

1. Think of a word that's a homophone of a pluralized letter, like EASE.
2. Think of a common phrase starting with that word plus a qualifier like 'IN' or 'OF', like EASEOFOPERATION.
3. Think of a synonym of, or phrase synonymous with, the end of the phrase, like "Procedure" for OPERATION.
4. Take the E's out of the synonym, leaving "Proc_dur_?" as the clue.

I love this, and I bet the theme answers were fun to come up with.  The other four are:

• "Per_w_nkle?" = EYESOFBLUE
• "Min_sc_ule quantity?" = USEINAPINCH
• "Pla_e for a _ase?" = SEESINCOURT

Having flogged the theme to death, here ... I found the rest of the grid a bit tricky in spots.  On the W side, "New Year's date, concisely" was JANONE, or so I thought, and held on grimly to that belief until ONEONE was forced upon me. A bit lower than that, I had OFFGAS instead of OUTGAS (which I've never heard of) as "Release volatile compounds to the air".  This correction finally shed light on "Portmanteau for a radical environmentalist" as ECOTEUR, another new word for me.  So a little messiness in that area. 

"Remote power source" (AAA) was nice and tricky.  I didn't love WICK for "Locale for an old flame".  Why does it have to be "old", other than to make the clue read better?  Also not on my love list was the questionably pluralized TEAS ("Leaves for drinks").  "Bad spelling, perhaps" (CURSE) made me smile.

That's all for now.  Great theme today.  On to the choppy waters of Friday and Saturday!

-philbo

Wednesday, September 9 2026, Dario Salvucci

Ahoy mateys!  Today's crossword brings a bit of a nautical theme to the party.  Six clues - two across and four down - are italicized - and they clearly have something seaborne in common, each referring to something to with boats, or the water on which they float.  The Across answers were straightforward enough:

• "Unsecured artillery that can slide across the deck" : LOOSECANNON
• "Equatorial ocean area notorious for lack of winds" : THEDOLDRUMS

These are easily recognizable as non-nautical idioms.  Much less straightforward are the Down answers:

• "Stand barefoot in formation along seams of deck planks" : TOETHELINE
• "Drift with the natural flow of currents" : TIDEOVER
• "Bosun's whistled call signaling a shift change" : PIPEDOWN
• "Flattened against the masts in a changing wind" : TAKENABACK

Neat!  I didn't know the seafaring origins of any of these.  Love it when I come out of the other end of a crossword having learned something!  Incidentally, there is a revealer, dead centre in the grid : "Completely lost..." (ATSEA), identifying the literal origins of all these idioms.  I think we could almost get away without it.  What do you think?

What else did I make a note of... A couple of clever QMCs:  "Worker who's behind the Times?"  (EDITOR), and my favourite today for its cheekiness:  "Character in Monsters, Inc." (COMMA).  I liked the inventive cluing for OHIO ("Its three largest cities all have names starting with C").. 

Since when is a bug's ear CUTE?  Do bugs even have ears?  I think they have, like, sensors on their appendages or something.  And the hoary old standby EKED makes another guest appearance today..

On to Thursday!

-philbo

Tuesday, September 8 2026, Sunny Maharjan

At first, I was a bit mystified by Tuesday's puzzle.  One expects a theme on Tuesdays, and theme answers are the long ones, right?  But the grid is devoid of long entries - just one 9-letter and a couple of 8's.  What to do, but to just get down to it...

Easy going for the most part.  As a Canadian born in May, there were a few gimmes for me:  I do my part to make ONTARIO our most populous province; NOVA Scotia was easy, and despite my utter ignorance in most things jewelry-related, I do know my birthstone's an EMERALD.  (I will accept the misspelled LITERS for "Soda bottle units" 😁 )  

I blew through the central 9-letter entry, barely registering that it was the revealer : "CVS rival... something something about the perimeter", for which I had enough crossers to write in WALGREENS.  It was only after completing the puzzle and sitting back that I twigged to what was going on - the grid is entirely rimmed with types of green - a WALL of GREENS if you will:  JADE, PINE, SAGE, the aforementioned EMERALD, FOREST, MINT, LIME, MOSS, SEAFOAM and JUNGLE.  So neat!!  Once again quelling this vague feeling I get sometimes, that one of these days we're going to run out of themes.

With respect to the venerable MARTINI:  I have it on good authority that its preparation must involve stirring and not shaking, so as not to bruise the gin.  "But what if it's a vodka martini?" you ask.  To which I respond, the door's right over there...

Cheerio!

-philbo

Monday, September 7 2026, Jeff Chen and Stephan Prock

Was it just me, or was Monday's crossword extra harmless today?  (Exhibit 1 : "What a hen lays" (EGG).)  A cute hidden-word-type theme, expressed in the Down answers: each of the four long answers contains a music genre, two in the downward direction, two upward (i.e. backwards).  The revealer makes sense of this - "Uplifting tunes?..." (ELEVATORMUSIC), which describes those hidden words, going up and down.  I like the punnish definition here, too, by the way.  Couple of examples:

• 3D "Electric with excitement" = ALLATINGLE (downwards)
• 32D "Dive offering slices" = PIZZAJOINT (upwards)

I mentioned how easy the grid was in general, but that didn't stop me from blundering away.  Right from the get-go, I put in EVADE instead of ELUDE for 1D "Deftly avoid".   65D "Kisses, symbolically" was XXX for a while until it was XES.   Was "'Beats me!'" NOIDEA?  Nope : NOCLUE.  Scribbles abound on my printed copy, here!  

Miscellaneous - I did not know aobut ODESSA's more modern spelling (ODESA, evidently)...Have you ever wondered how VINES find things to climb?   Google it - I found it fascinating!...I suspect YOWZAH is one of those words whose spelling is whatever you need it to be...

See ya tomorrow!

-philbo

Sunday, September 6 2026, John Kugelman

Hi folks!  Philbo here, back from a three-week hiatus from not just crossword blogging but crosswords altogether.  It's been a busy time.  Jumping straight back into it, today's puzzle promised to be a fun one, with six theme clues presented pictorially.  The theme being "Crossover Films", I was looking for movie-related wordplay, and so it was.  Each is an artist's rendition of the silly phrase resulting from two overlapping movie titles.  I found them all pretty funny - I wanted to put my favourite in here, but I can't decide, so here's one at random : A SHOT IN THE DARK, overlapping THE DARK KNIGHT, yields A SHOT IN THE DARK KNIGHT, depicted by a drawing of Batman getting an injection.  Ha!  

If I'd been more on my game, I'd have tried harder to guess the movies from the pictorial clues, but as it was, I just worked around them with the filler clues until the answers were obvious.  Probably cost me a few fun points in doing so, but oh well.

The rest of the grid was fine, more or less.  I found a few points of awkwardness; e.g. YESANDS ("Follows the first rule of improv") - not sure this is a pluralizable phrase.  And UNITER seems a bit clunky as a "sort of person who brings people together".  But I quibble.  There was much to like - a handful of clever QMCs like "Clearing account?" (ALIBI) (my fave!) and "Burn unit?" (KILN) - and also a couple of evocative entries for me:  In 1988 I toured Europe with my then-girlfriend (now my wife of 9-days-away-from-35-years) via EURAIL passes.  More recently, my ACPT friends Horace and Frannie and Colum and I, plus assorted plus-ones and other friends, have made it a bit of a habit to dine on Indian food on Tournament Saturday, which of course features NAAN along with aloo gobi.

SCLERA ("White of the eye") is an excellent word.  As for ANYHOO for "So-o-o, as I was saying...", I like it better as the anagrammatic ANYWHO.  Canadian thing?  Speaking of national identities, are DANES just so naturally polite that they don't need the word "please" in their language?

That's it for this review.  I didn't exactly CRUSHIT, I know, but I'll blog my way back into fighting form.

-philbo

Saturday, September 5, 2026, Fritz Juhnke

Wait, what?

He's learned his lesson? He managed to get his review published in the morning? An old dog can learn new tricks, it turns out.

And what a fun Saturday. Easier for me than Friday's, but very enjoyable. It boasts four grid-spanners, which in time-honored fashion, I will now rank based on how much I personally liked them.

4. 12D: Primary follower (GENERALELECTION). A fine answer, with no trickiness to the clue.

3. 3D: Incident so dramatic it feels like a movie (HOLLYWOODMOMENT). A better phrase, with a clue that essentially gives it away.

2. 17A: Nay sayers (ALLTHOSEAGAINST). A nice clue, using a recognizable idiom in a literal way, and a good answer.

1. 63A: Sarcastic response to boasting (ARENTYOUSPECIAL). Just a great phrase.

LION Dance

I had any number of errors during the solve which slowed me down. I wanted ICEcAstlE instead of ICEPALACE. I had Ette at 62D: Diminishing return? (ECHO). I do like my answer, but it doesn't quite work ("ette" as a diminutive, you see). I had TErn instead of TEAL (which should have been more obvious with the clue).

I very much liked 52D: The sound that concludes "The Sound and the Fury" (LONGE). So good! Also, 16A: What you might hear when you get someone's goat? (BLEAT). Hah! Did you get 46A: Toy popularized by Queen Victoria, familiarly (POM)? Referring to the dog breed, Pomeranian.

Well, this was a fun week. Philbo, take it away!

- Colum

Friday, September 4, 2026, Julian Xiao

And no lessons were learned. 

Yesterday's fiasco is repeated today. Who needs reviews posted in the morning? Apparently not me, who found the morning slipping away from him due to the need to walk dogs and get ready for work. Are there any other possible solutions?

Tune in tomorrow to find out!

Meanwhile, a really challenging Friday crossword puzzle made me work double hard for a solution. Literally, it took me about twice as long as usual. Start with 1A: Result of a tense build-up? (JENGATOWER). And with NATIONALTV just a couple of rows below, the NW corner was a real challenge, despite the gimme of NATASHA Lyonne. 

The amazing ETTAJAMES is the link into the NE corner, where SOJOURNER and 28A: Cooking term whose name is composed of two synonyms for "criticize (PANROAST) are excellent entries. I also liked 13D: Adjective that becomes its own synonym after its first letter is dropped (EVILEST). Hah!

GUINEA and Sierra Leone

I know Horace enjoyed the unexpected pairing of DATIVE and LATIN. He's not actually the well-known Roman poet, but he has studied the works of his namesake.

ATARIGAMES is a callback to my youth. We played both of these games on my Atari 800 in the early 80s. That's a long time ago now.

SRILANKA and 46A: Longtime Pixar character who says "I might be old, but I still got a spring in my step!" (SLINKYDOG) round out this chunky and beautifully constructed grid.

How can Saturday top this?!

- Colum

Thursday, September 3, 2026, Zhou Zhang

Turns out I'm not very good at remembering to write these posts in the morning when I'm on service in the hospital! My apologies for the delayed review. We work hard to get these things out early so that people can refer to them if they so please. And I need yet another angry email from Horace like I need another hole in the head!

Just kidding. The emails are more disappointed than angry.

But speaking of holes in the head, the theme today is phrases with the word "hole" in them, but where the word is replaced with the letter O. To add to the complexity, the phrases refer to objects that can be found inside of the corresponding answer which contains the O in the across direction.

Sometimes I think explaining themes is more complex than practicing Neurology.

You see, 2D: Slangy "mouth" found in a 20-Across (PIEO) refers to a "piehole," which can be found inside 20A: Noodle (NOGGIN). Cleverly, 32A: School unit (CLASSROOM) contains both a CUBBYO and a OPUNCH. I particularly like that the two phrases start and end with "hole."

The other two are OCARDS, found in a POKERGAME, and MANO, found in a ROAD.

HYENACUB

For fun clues, we get 5A: She's possessive (HER) - very nice; 72A: Letters found near some bars (LTE) - that's on a cellphone, you see; and the vague 47D: 2, 4, 6 and 8, e.g. (AGES).

I do like me a tricksy Thursday.

- Colum

Wednesday, September 2, 2026, Mac Motz

Many merry manifestations made by Mac Motz!

Doesn't it feel like this should have been a Monday puzzle?

Likely inspired by his own name, Mr. Motz has created a puzzle where every clue has two words that start with the letter M, and four "theme" answers which are made of two word phrases both starting with M. The revealer is helpfully placed at 1A: "Melts in your mouth" candies ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme (MANDMS).

It's an incredible feat of construction, even if it doesn't necessarily translate into the most entertaining of themes. So, hats off to the constructor. I bow in respect.

SAM Cooke

I read an interesting web comic about one mother's reaction to J.K. Rowling and her anti-trans sentiments; to the point - what should a parent do when a child is interested in the Harry Potter series? I bring this up due to 38A, an excellent example of the double M clue and answer. In the end, her point was that we can be honest with our children and point them towards better fiction, and not continue to support the Pottermerch universe.

Meanwhile, I think we can still continue to support MICKEYMANTLE.

Great clue at 39D: Mild-mannered characteristic? (HYPHEN). Very nice.

- Colum

Tuesday, September 1, 2026, Paul Hudes and Margot Kohn

Rabbit, rabbit!

Is what I did not say this morning, at the same time as I did not write this blog post. Delayed in every sense. I blame Washington.

But on the positive side, we have a nicely absurd theme today, where actual URLs are the clues, but the answers are silly puns based on different synonyms for a webpage. Thus, 17A:  https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil? is BURIALSITE, while 26A: https://www.hot-dog.org is SAUSAGELINK.

I applaud the use of the secure version of the websites (https), but also am reminded of the scene in Only Murders In The Building (call back to yesterday!) where the two old guys laboriously type in https and www only to be told by the young woman that it's not necessary.

ADELA Rogers St. Johns

I love the setup of this grid. It's got a great flow from section to section so that the solver is rarely relying on a single letter wide entry into a segment. There are a nice pair of long down answers in the NE and SW corners, including NOSPOILERS and SETHMEYERS. 

And for the overall win, you get 39D: Pulled down a pair? (PANTSED). Hah!

Fun Tuesday.

- Colum