Saturday, August 8, 2026, Kyle Dolan

 Saturday Themeless by Kyle Dolan

Today, Kyle and I celebrate our silver anniversary, as this is the 25th puzzle of his that I've blogged. As I looked for a good entry point, the southeast corner filled in quickly, and I thought I was headed for an easy solve. Not so fast, I did enjoy Kyle's clever puzzle but the word easy does not describe the required effort! 😊

Kyle's quirky cluing kept the left side full of holes until, on my way to a haircut, the fill GREET came to me for the clue "Receive," and everything fell into place. The fabulous word SENTIENCE completed my Saturday assignment! As you will see in by blog I did contact Kyle to be reassured about some of this clue/fills and he kindly let me in on what he was thinking.

A note from Kyle which included this picture taken at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History.:

Hi Gary,

I hope you are doing well. My inspiration for the puzzle came from eminent themeless constructor Robyn Weintraub, whose crosswords I admire. She has often used a design similar to the one seen here, and I wanted to see how I could fill such a grid. I began with ANY QUESTIONS, which is a lively conversational entry that is making its LAT debut (unless I am scooped in the next two weeks :-D). 

Thanks as always for your kind words and interesting reviews of my work.

Best regards,

Kyle

Across:

1. Kitchen drawer?: AROMA - 😀 Kyle went pretty far down the list of definitions for this use of drawer! 

6. Follow: OBEY.

10. NYC venue whose final show featured Patti Smith: CBGB - The Country Blue Grass Blues club shut down after 33 years.

14. Economic justice topic: LIVING WAGE.

16. Willie who broke the NHL's color barrier: OREE.

17. Forest formations with mythological associations: FAIRY RINGS - What they are and what causes them

18. Crux: MEAT 

19. Useful element in making connections: AND 😀

20. Group in Mercury's orbit?: QUEEN - Oh, that QUEEN and that Mercury

21. Causes of spiraling, at times: FEARS.

22. Their feet may have claws: TUBS. 😀

23. Writers commissioned for tributes: ODISTS.

25. Tightens, perhaps: RETIES.

28. Down for drama?: FOURTH - 😳 Wow, what a Kyle special!

29. Stuff: ITEMS.

30. Chrysler that won the 1978 Motor Trend Car of the Year Award: DODGE OMNI.

33. Receive: GREET - My key to completing the left side

34. Offline: IRL - In Real Life

35. Threw a pity party, perhaps: CRIED.

36. Feature of HAL 9000 in "2001: A Space Odyssey": SENTIENCE - A sentient being doesn’t just detect stimuli and react automatically. Sentient means having the capacity for subjective experience, particularly the ability to feel sensations like pleasure and pain. Here is HAL showing a sign of SENTIENCE.

38. Nephric: RENAL.

39. Coin bearing a bear: TOONIE - A C$2.00 coin whose name is a portmanteau for two and the loonie Canada's C$1.oo coin

40. Bear claw, e.g.: PASTRY.

41. Volunteer: SIGN ON.

42. Result of productive talks: PACT.

43. Some bookmarks: SITES.

44. "Find out": GO ASK.

46. Mercury, for one: GOD - Not Freddie this time.

49. Nursing spot: TEAT.

50. "Perfectly reasonable": I CAN SEE WHY - I CAN SEE WHY Kyle's choices might ruffle a few feathers. 😀

52. Some Indigenous Canadians: INNU - We very recently had the CREES.

 

53. Clue in evolutionary history: MARKER GENE.

54. Cobbler's tool: RASP.

55. Around: OR SO.

56. Maker of the One SL speaker: SONOS.

Down:

1. __ Romeo: ALFA.
 
2. Filmmaker Johnson: RIAN - This was the third film in RIAN'S Knives Out series.

3. Poet frequently referenced in "Don Quixote": OVID - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Cervantes refers to himself as “nuestro español Ovidio” (Our Spanish OVID) in a sonnet addressed to Sancho Panza 

4. Bygone orbiter: MIR.

5. "All clear?": ANY QUESTIONS - Kyle's seed entry

6. Boo-boos: OWIES.

7. Curse: BANE.

8. Spaetzle, e.g.: EGG NOODLE - Made in southern Germany and Alsace

9. "Uh-huh!": YES.

10. Settles: COMES TO REST - No matter how hard you yeet throw something, it will COME TO REST

11. One may be taken on a date: BREATH MINT 😀

12. Shift workers?: GEARS.

13. Kalshi actions: BETS - 90% of its BETS are placed on sporting events but it also takes BETS on politics, finance and about anything else. It has made its 29-year-old founder the youngest female billionaire in history, passing even Taylor Swift.

15. Some bait: GRUBS.

21. Party poppers: FIRECRACKERS.

22. "Cock-a-doodle-doo!": TIME TO GET UP.

24. Vibed on: DUG.

25. Fixes: RIGS - Perhaps the most famous example

26. Peut-__: French "perhaps": ETRE - Peut-ÈTRE qu’elle a oublié la fête. (Perhaps she forgot about the party)

27. Animated superhero series featuring the voice of Tara Strong: TEEN TITANS ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

28. Word in Beaufort readings: FORCE.

30. Setting for some on-line orders?: DINING CAR - 😀 I had to ask Kyle about this one. He said:

DINING CAR should be interpreted as a generic name for a place to eat on a train, not a specific restaurant. The clue is a pun on the idea that you go to the dining car to order food on a (rail) line.

31. Close: NEAR.

32. How much scrolling is done: IDLY - I'm approaching an addiction

37. Producer on seven U2 albums: ENO - The only British record producer I know

40. Dated: PASSE - Is opening a door for a woman now PASSÉ?

41. Italian home of the world's oldest bank: SIENA - It appears they might have been able to loan Columbus a few lira.

42. Coat put on in the kitchen?: PANKO.

43. Verb in a polenta recipe: STIR - The spoon is still in the bowl

45. Sticks in the water: OARS.

46. Longtime "PBS News Hour" anchor Ifill: GWEN. 

47. "Gah!": OH NO.

48. Top jobs?: DYES 😀

50. Letters expressing personal thoughts: IMO.

51. Team challenge: EGO.

Saturday, June 13, 2026 Kyle Dolan

 Saturday Themeless by Kyle Dolan

I liked Dr. Dolan's puzzle and never felt I was not going to solve it. My issue became trying to decipher what Kyle meant by his "off-the-wall"cluing. As has become my custom with Kyle's puzzles, I did have a one-cell problem where you see the red cell in the grid. That high intensity exercise crossing an obscure "legal term" was never going to happen. I always wonder whether terms like that are already known to the constructor or a happy result of a desperate search of a piece of crossword software. Follow me as I embark on blogging my 24th Dolan Saturday themeless.

Across:

1. Sign of puppy love?: TUMMY RUB 😀 Ah, it is an activity by someone who actually loves a puppy.

Uh, are you sure you know what you're doing?

9. Folded dish: OMELET.

15. Evidence that may not be fully reliable: ANECDATA - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯   In casual conversation, business, or media, "anecdata" refers to anecdotal evidence presented as objective fact. The Problem: It relies on a very small sample size (e.g., "My grandfather smoked three packs a day and lived to 100, so smoking isn't harmful"). It ignores biases, coincidence, and statistical anomalies. 

16. Mottled: CALICO.

17. Mud slingers?: BARISTAS - Even in this election year, Kyle is referring to the euphemism for coffee 

18. Shiver: TREMOR. 

19. Deuce follower: AD IN - I held onto TREY but eventually the cows came home. AD IN is simply overtime in tennis after the game ends tied which is called deuce.

20. Level: SHIM.

22. Teatime bite: SCONE.

23. Pacific nation whose national sport is rugby: TONGA - Rugby is also the national sport of SAMOA that are both Pacific nations ending in A, but...

25. Server reset?: LET - Kyle comes in with another tennis term. A LET is called when a serve hits the net but lands in bounds. The reset is that the server gets to serve again with no penalty. To reset the server in my house, I do the "unplug/plug back in" strategy.

27. Pants, informally: TROU.

28. "That's __ from me": A NO - He made a career out of this phrase

29. Couple: TWO and 35. A couple: GOING STEADY 😀 and 41. Couple: DUO.

32. Day on 10-Down: SOL - From the movie The Martian

34. Scamp: IMP.

38. Place that may have a "no phones" rule: DINNER TABLE.

39. Beer and skittles: LIFE OF RILEY - A 50's TV show starring William Bendix. Derivation of the phrase

40. Kick: JAG - Unrestrained activity (bureau/spree): An informal term for a period of excessive indulgence or uncontrolled emotion (e.g., a "crying jag" or "drinking jag"). Something from which you might get a "kick"

42. Org. preceded by the Cipher Bureau: NSA ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There was a 1939 movie about it.

43. Vane dir.: SSE.

46. Country whose motto was "Workers of the world, unite!": USSR.

48. Best: TOP.

50. Walks down the aisle, casually: USHES - The walk is not casual, the word referring to ushering is.

52. Rafael with a Golden Slam: NADAL - These three men have won the four major tennis championships plus the Olympic gold medal.

54. Clucks: TSKS.

57. Light color: TINT.

58. "Point taken": I GET IT.

60. Nickname for the Southern city whose motto is "Resurgens": HOTLANTA - Resurens is Latin of "rising again".

   

62. Iroquois nation: ONEIDA.

63. "Farewell, mes amis!": A BIENTOT - French for "see you soon" or "bye for now" 

64. Amplify, in a way: REPOST - 😀 Sharing content someone else has posted 

65. "This ends now": WE'RE DONE.

Down:

1. High-intensity exercise method: TABATA - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ TABATA is a high-intensity interval training (HITT) protocol developed by Japanese scientist Dr. Izum Tabata 

2. Dish whose name means "eel bowl": UNADON.

3. Sheep from Spain: MERINO - I learned this doing crosswords and was able to retrieve this from the deep recesses of my brain

4. Running with a mic, maybe: MCING - 😀 The EMCEE runs the show

5. Some penalty units: Abbr.: YDS.

6. "Phooey!": RATS.

7. Jazz venue: UTAH - This NBA team nickname originated in New Orleans where the name fit like a glove and for some reason they kept it when the team moved to Salt Lake City. The same goes for when the Minneapolis Lakers moved to Los Angeles.

8. Pho herb: BASIL - I know Pho is Vietnamese soup and a five-letter word herb starting with a B leaves few candidates

9. Feast of St. Francis of Assisi mo.: OCT - Omelet at 9 Across starts with an O, so...

10. Destination of NASA's Escapade mission: MARS.

11. Pick: ELECT.

12. Long road trip?: LIMO RIDE - The trip is not long, the vehicle is

13. Coach: ECONOMY - This is where all my airplane seats have been

14. Made unreadable, say: TORE UP.

21. Portable cooker: MESS TIN - I felt pretty good with MESS KIT...

24. Took one's medicine, in a way: ATONED.

26. Arrivals for the summer?: TOTALS - 😀 People who do addition arrive at a total that is also called a sum and so I guess these people could be called a summer.

30. Triumph through adversity: WIN OUT - The Knicks two nights ago

31. Common length of a wooden ruler: ONE FOOT.

33. Defensive coordinator who helped the Steelers win the Super Bowl in 2006 and 2009: LEBEAU.

35. Pic file: GIF - I'm a big fan 

36. Warning sound: GRR.

37. Pop duo __ & AJ: ALY ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

38. Finds an extra gear: DIGS DEEP - What the Knicks did Thursday night 

39. Dish often served "al forno": LASAGNE Al forno (Italian for "from the oven") refers to food that is baked or roasted in an oven.  

40. Subordinate: JUNIOR.

43. Worship of entities known as kami: SHINTO.

44. Forwarded: SENT ON.

45. Coffee grounds?: ESTATE -  Coffee can be grown on one ESTATE or plantation rather than on various small operations which are consolidated

47. Pi, for one: RATIO - The RATIO of a circle's circumference to its diameter.

49. "I don't believe that!": PSHAW.

51. Selling point?: STAND 😀

53. Lens covers?: LIDS.

55. Capital city of Hyogo Prefecture: KOBE.

56. Hubbub: STIR.

59. Parlor piece, informally: TAT 😀

61. Greta of "The Morning Show": LEE - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  I'm guessing you can pick out Ms. LEE