Saturday, August 15, 2026, Barbara Lin and Jess Rucks

 Themeless Saturday Puzzle by Barbara Lin and Jess Rucks

Me and Jess

Barb

I was very pleased to see Jess's name come up today as a co-constructor. I have had the fun of blogging her Saturday themeless puzzles before and am always amazed by her work and, uh, creative clues 😀, a tradition she maintained here as well. As you can see in the picture at the left, Jess and I met up on a very cold night in Lincoln for a delightful dinner last year and hashed over a lot of crossword minutiae. She lives in Colorado with her husband and son and  is retired from the Air Force where she was an Urdu translator. Yes, she was a Division 1 volleyball player as well.

Her partner in crime construction is Barb Lin who lives just outside Philadelphia, PA, where she dabbles in gardening and excels in computer engineering. Here is a lovely interview of Barb Jess conducted.

 

                                  

Across:

1. Teddy bear: SOFTY - I thought this might be a brand name but no, it's just a tender-hearted person. Even Elvis knew this: "Oh let me be, your teddy bear". Hey, I heard you sing along! 😊

6. Carousel rider?: BAG 😀

9. Basaltic plain on the moon: MARE - MARE is latin for Sea and here we see the location of  The Lunar Sea Of Tranquility which hosted Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969.

13. Roadside snack: STREET TACO.

16. Driver on a movie set: ADAM - 😀 The answer below is no.

17. Sign that means it's time to turn around: NO ENTRANCE - How it's done in the UK

18. Spam musubi wrapper: NORI - Musubi (結び), translates to “tie” or “bind,”

19. White-hot: SEETHING.

20. Lights up: SMILES.

22. Quick kiss: PECK - Not a BUSS

23. Useful spot: PSA - Here's a Public Service Announcement from the 50's about saying Good Night after a date

24. Some sci-fi villains: ETS.

25. Multipurpose tool: SPORK - We really like KFC, but we opt for real silverware.

27. Verb coined in "Stranger in a Strange Land": GROK - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  Author Robert Heinlein said GROK is a Martian word that literally means "to drink" .Metaphorically, it means to understand something so completely and deeply. Jess is fluent in Urdu but not Martian. 😀

28. Hindi honorific: SRI.

29. Berry grown in Ohio?: HALLE - She took her stage name from Halle's Department Store in Cleveland.

30. Jordan who won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay: PEELE.

31. Org chart leader: CEO.

32. "Sure, that tracks": I SEE WHAT YOU MEAN.

35. "J to __ L-O!": 2002 remix album: THA - Some hip hop slang 

36. Replacements after leaving marks?: EUROS - Germans now use EUROS for currency after having used marks since 1876.

37. Huffs and puffs: PANTS and 40. Huffs and puffs: RANTS.

38. __ de deux: PAS - a ballet duet, literally translating from French as a "step of two", typically performed by a male and a female dancer. Below is the Grand PAS de Deux from the Nutcracker. Play as much of this 5:37 cut that you like to beautify your day.

39. Mass agreement: AMEN 😀

41. "Yes, captain": AYE.

42. Clear (of): RID.

43. Clear of contaminants: PURE - Clear in the clue is an adjective and not a verb

44. Varied: RANGED.

46. Opportunities to learn the hard way: MISTAKES - Do guys like this ever learn?

50. Mil. no-show: AWOL.

51. "Mine! Mine! Mine!": I WANT IT ALL.

53. "The Goonies" role for Ke Huy Quan: DATA - Saturday cluing for sure, Ke is in the bottom row, second from the right. 

54. Brings the temperature down, maybe: TALKS SENSE.

55. Googly-__: EYED - From a cartoon first published in 1919. A popular song of the day was, "Barney Google With the Goo, Goo, Goo Googly Eyes"

56. Fashion letters: YSL.

57. Trapped, in a way: TREED.

Down:

1. Fed. IDs: SSNS.

2. Della Warrior's heritage: OTOE is the first and only woman to date to serve as chairperson and chief executive officer for the Otoe-Missouria Tribe.

3. Priceless?: FREE.

4. One-night stand, perhaps?: TENT POLE 😀

5. Frustrated expression: YET HERE WE ARE.

6. [All of a sudden!]: BANG.

7. Stanford's gp.: ACC - With all the conference alignments up in the air, Stanford and  Cal Berkley (formerly in the Pacific 10) had to get into some conference even if it was on the other coast (Atlantic Coast Conference).

8. Disbands?: GOES SOLO - Michael Jackson had great success when he left this brothers 

9. Digital art, informally?: MANI 😀

10. Juvenile: ADOLESCENT.

11. Special indulgences: RARE TREATS.

12. Targets of smog checks: EMISSIONS.

14. Bridge unit: TRICK - 😀 A trick in a card games is a single round of play where each person plays one card, and the highest card wins.

   
15. Choke: TANK - These are both failures. In sports, if a player chokes, he might fail to make a winning play even though he is trying. If a player TANKS, he also fails but might be trying to lose or throw a game.

21. One who tries not to overshadow the star?: MAKE UP ARTIST 😀 Gotta love this one!

23. Feeds (on): PREYS.

25. "Shantay, you stay" opposite: SASHAY AWAY - During our dinner in Lincoln, Jess said she enjoyed RuPaul Drag Race and this phrase is part of that show.

  

26. "This is important": PLEASE NOTE.

27. Mount: GET ON - How The Lone Ranger accomplished this with Silver.

29. Top tunes: HIT PARADE - When The Lone Ranger was mounting Silver in the 50's, The Hit Parade was telling us the top songs of the week. Listen to as much of this 30-minute show (complete with cigarette commercials) as you like from over 70 years ago.

30. Trimmed (down): PARED - By the first game, NFL teams must have PARED down to a 53 man roster from the 100 or so that are trying out.

33. Hair curler?: HUMIDITY.

34. 1982 Hall & Oates song: MANEATER.

40. Shows signs of age: RUSTS.

43. Chappell Roan's "__ Pony Club": PINK - A fav of my granddaughters. 

45. Chuffed: GLAD - This is more of a UK expression.

46. Edina, Minnesota is home to the first U.S. indoor one: MALL - 1956. This would go along with The Lone Ranger and Your Hit Parade!

47. Lucci role: KANE - Susan Lucci played Erica Kane on All My Children for 41 years.

48. Conditional word in Python: ELSE - Barb is a computer engineer

49. Blair Braverman vehicle: SLED.

52. Portrayed: WAS - I first had DID, as in an impersonator DID Cary Grant.

More from Jess: Barb and I met at ACPT in 2025, and since then have been wanting to make a puzzle together. We finally made that happen with this one! Barb did a lot of the heavy lifting on the gridding and we collaborated on the clues. Hope you enjoyed it :) This one was fun to make. Barb is a great constructor, so I felt some pressure to push myself working with her -- I tried to clue with more wordplay and generally at a higher difficulty than I may have on my own. She clued, too, but I clued more of the entries since she ended up making more of the grid. 

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.