Tuesday, October 6, 2026, Adam Vincent

I've just about had it with this trolling! Here I am in the middle of a difficult bathroom renovation, and what's 1-Across? "What a leaky faucet has" (DRIP). Harrumph!

But seriously folks, this ACTION FIGURE theme today amused me. We've got four examples of phrases that use a verb and a number: PICKSIX, TAKEFIVE, HANGTEN, and CONNECTFOUR (Strategic disk game played on a vertical board). Speaking of that last one, it might not surprise you to know that when I went through a phase of playing CONNECTFOUR online many years ago, I found that there had been significant work done on its opening theory. Furthermore, it has since been "solved," meaning that white, playing perfectly, can always win. (Spoiler alert: start in the middle.) 

In good fill we include IMPROMPTU (Spur-of-the-moment) (also brings to mind Chopin, which is never a bad thing) and HAYDN (Nice letter combination. Also, music). And "Midnight's opposite" (NOON) was fun, and it reminded me of the quote from Mary-Kate Olsen talking about her sister: "To me, the difference between us is pretty obvious. She thinks the opposite of fire is water, and I think the opposite of fire is no fire." 

I had never really thought about TON being a "Suffix in the names of many U.S. cities," even though the nearest major city to me - Boston - uses it. 

Fun Tuesday. Keep 'em coming. :)

- Horace