Wednesday, October 7, 2026 — In the Great ROTI v. NAAN Contest, ROTI Scores Again!!

Listeners may recall that the appearance of ROTI or NAAN in the grid immediately drives us to xwordinfo.com to check out the number of times each has appeared in a crossword. As a consequence of today's fine puzzle, ROTI is up by one, so ... yay, ROTI! 😀 We consider ourselves to be up by much more than that, for this was a wonderful Wednesday crossword with some sharp cluing. A few entries that stood out were: 18A, Well-manored men?, EARLS (ha!); the debut 3D, Sly reply to "You ca...