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