Sunday, September 12, 2021 - 😉

From Jean & Mike Do The New York Times Crossword MP

Today's puzzle ought to put a smile on your face ... because there's a smile in the grid! A winking smile, to be precise, the emoticon ;-). Rather than using PUNCTUATIONMARKS, however, the ;-) is ingeniously spelled out (SEMI, COLON, HYPHEN and PARENTHESIS, all arranged in the appropriate shape in the grid), and it must've taken forever to get this right. We salute the author, Alex Rosen, for a job well done - 5 squares on the JAMCR scale. Besides the PUNCTUATIONMARK artistry, there was some ...