Saturday, September 12, 2026 — An *Effervescent* Saturday Crossword!

It's not often that we get to haul "effervescent" out of long-term storage, dust it off, and plant it where it needs planting, but today is one of those days, for the crossword, by Adam Wagner and Michael Lieberman, was terrific. The puzzle was not the hardest Saturday we've seen — in part because the Pop Culture Meter was close to 0 — but the clues were just delights, every one of them an intricate work of a master crossword constructor / punster. Deets inside. Show note imagery: MOTHRA and ...