Friday, August 21, 2026 — It's a Proper Noun Playground! 😱

This, Adryel W. Robles Ojeda's second NYTimes crossword, was uber difficult, thanks to a plethora of relatively obscure names, abetted by some rather cryptic crosses: we loved it (as today's podcast makes clear). As an example of the cryptic crosses, we had 29D, Diamond wear, MITT (nice one!); 49A, Especially ornate, ROCOCO (we definitely had to dredge that out of long-term storage); and 7D, Sport similar to pétanque, BOCCE (a clue that helped ...not at all 😀, which was surely the point...