Saturday, October 24, 2026, Robert Logan

In a reversal of the usual order of things, I completed today's puzzle in half the time of yesterday's. Maybe the shape of the puzzle meant that everything was in my wheelhouse. :) I was able to drop in PEACENICKS and HYDROPONICS, 1A and 10A respectively, which made almost all the Down answers across the top immediately gettable - all that is, except for 3D: "Butter up?" Even with the AR start and an answer of only five letters, I was not able to predict the outcome. It was in the stars that I would eventually discover the answer was ARIES, but I did not immediately understand *why* it was the answer. In time, the answer to this particular Question Mark Clue (QMC) resolved from a series of letters to the image of ARIES as a ram, an animal that could be considered a "butter," which, as a constellation appears up in the heavens. Ha! That's some MENSA level work.

Another fun QMC was "Tip of Baja?" for PESO, a nice twist on clues relating to local currencies. I enjoyed  two other QMCs, "Singer who had us at 'Hello'?" (ADELE), and "Drawings of various states?"  for LOTTOS. 

In the non-QMC category, "Perfect place to be" for EDEN and its companion, "Perfect places to be" for UTOPIAS were spot on. Another fun pairing was 7D: INEPT ("Like Inspector Clouseau, despite all of his successes" and 5D: EPT ("Opposite of 7-Down, humorously"). I especially liked the clue/answer pairs "Likes and dislikes, collectively" for TASTE, and AWARE for "Witting." 

With a PILEON/PYLON of three-letter answers, clueing makes a difference, and in this category, standouts were "Attribution word" for PER, the ambiguous "Connection letters" for DSL, the self-referential "Crossword clue type" for PUN, and "Basic logic gate" for AND. Nerd much? :)

The only thing that RAMONEs to be mentioned is the round of fine long answers including ROYALPAIN, SLEEPDEPRIVED, and NONLINEAR. All in all, a virtually STAINLESS end-of-the-week puzzle.

~Frannie.