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Pomegranate morsel / SAT 5-9-26 / Black-and-white debut of 1912 / Portable retirement option / Setup for an extra point / Won land / ___ Kitchen, brand of organic foods since 1987 / Great find in the candy aisle, by the sound of it / 2000 parody of a 62-Across / Skirt with a bunch of leaves / Weighty subject of some children's books / Parlor treat typically serve with the first five letters of its name / Central Plains nation governed by the Nasharo Council
Saturday, May 9, 2026
Constructor: Katie Hoody
Relative difficulty: Easy
Word of the Day: DABO Sweeney (37D: Clemson's ___ Swinney (winningest head football coach in A.C.C. history)) —
William Christopher "Dabo" Swinney (/ˈdæboʊ ˈswiːniː/; born November 20, 1969) is an American college football coach, currently serving as the head football coach at Clemson University. Swinney took over as head coach of the Clemson Tigers seven games into the 2008 season, following the resignation of Tommy Bowden. Swinney's team won national championships in 2016 and 2018. His 2018 Clemson Tigers have often been considered one of the greatest college football teams of all time. He is the winningest head coach in Clemson football history and Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) football history. [...] Swinney's nickname "Dabo" was given to him as an infant by his brother, Tripp, who would try to enunciate "that boy" when referring to Swinney. (wikipedia)
• • •
Not always thrilled by the heavily segmented four-quadrant puzzle, but this four-quadrant puzzle wasn't actually heavily segmented at all—lots of nice flow provided by the crossing central 15s, which are probably the element that make this feel much more like a Friday than a Saturday. They gave the puzzle a good deal of whoosh—access to every corner in very little time. The STRAWBERRY SHAKE clue is clever, for sure, but far too easy (for a Saturday) (8D: Parlor treat typically served with the first five letters of its name). I had the STRAW part before I ever looked at the clue. Got KINDA SORTA MAYBE from pieces of SORTA and MAYBE (38: List of qualifications?). I'm not sure I fully believe in the phrase KINDA SORTA MAYBE. "Kinda sorta," sure. The "maybe" part is taking it a little far, but I trust that enough people say the three-part version of this purposefully redundant phrase to make it a valid expression. I certainly got the KINDA part easily enough, and the whole thing sounds ... fine, so ... fine.
While the puzzle wasn't hard today, it did have lots of twisty language in the cluing. Plenty of "?" clues, and then ambiguously misdirective stuff like 35D: Sound made by many fans (ROAR) ("fans" here are at a sporting event or concert or the like). 67A: Skirt with a bunch of leaves is a skirt STEAK and the leaves are a SALAD. The "dash" in 12D: Statement that may be followed by a dash is a footrace ("I'LL RACE YOU"). The "retirement" in 32A: Portable retirement option is sleep (COT) (lots of initial IRAs there today, I'm guessing). The "won" in 52D: Won land is currency (KOREA). The "setup" in 40D: Setup for an extra point is a verbal setup, a word that sets up a further "point" that you might want to make ("ALSO ..."). The subject in 11D: Weighty subject of some children's books is "weighty" not because it's serious, but because the subject. literally weighs a ton (or several tons, I guess—I've honestly never thought about BABAR's weight). Despite all of this trickiness, I only made two real mistakes today, neither of them serious. For 39D: Bath seat? (ARSE), I wrote in APSE (!?!?). I was thinking there's a cathedral in Bath, and maybe you sit in the APSE? But no, it's just British "ass." My favorite mistake, though, came in the candy aisle. I decided, in all my crossword geniositude, that 51A: Great find in the candy aisle, by the sound of it (SKÖR) must be a "great find ... by the sound of it" because you "see" it ... so ... SEE'S! SEE'S candy! I'll accept my Smart Guy Crossword Medal now, thank you.
Bullets:
- 11A: One making calls on the fly? (BIRD) — needed every cross and still didn't really get it. "So... the birds are deciding who's going to eat the fly? What are these, swallows? I don't get it." But no. Birds simply fly ... and make their ordinary bird calls while doing so.
- 17A: Exclamation of surprise from a host ("YOU'RE EARLY!") — on its own, I'm not sure I would've thought this was the greatest candidate for a crossword answer, but with that clue, the phrase feels perfectly natural. Gives some colloquial sparkle to an already fairly sparkly grid.
- 62A: 2000 parody of a 62-Across (SCARY MOVIE) — another perfect clue. Nice use of the self-referential strategy.
- 59D: Kilo follower (LIMA) — NATO alphabet: "... Juliett, Kilo, LIMA, Mike (Mike!?!?) ..."
- 63D: New ___ University of Knuckleheads (fictional institution where Leslie Nielsen lectured about the Three Stooges) (YUK) — a very long way to go for YUK but I really enjoyed the journey. That is, I enjoyed (finally) discovering the answer. Nice callback to MOE, too (6D: One of the Three Stooges).
That's all for today. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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47 comments:
I found it a lot more Challenging and a lot less fun than @Rex did. Probably more Medium-Challenging. Too many overwrites and WOEs to list, but I don't have to: I fell into Every. Single. One. of the traps OFL outlined.
* * _ _ _
Agree with Conrad. Both yesterday and today were medium-challenging.
Great puzzle, thanks, Katie!!! Tough one for me.... While yesterday's was tough, for me today's was a bit tougher. I couldn't finish last night and somehow my timer didn't pause, so it says 6:53:01.... Now that's challenging! No googles though. I give up too early sometimes... I know ALOO is Indian potatoes, and I know PANEER is Indian cheese.... so even though I hadn't heard the full phrases, those both ended up easy. Yeah, took forever to see STEAK in STEAKSALAD.... Had literally S____SALAD before I figured out the misdirect. SKOR is one of my favorite chocolate bars, so that was easy. readysetgo at 12 Down held me up for far too long. Finally this morning I took that out, and then the NE came together (BLOG, ARFS, ALOO... then I could start to see the downs). ALCHEMISTS pretend not to be MEREMORTALS, but when their pots of boiling metals explode in a fatal conflagration, St. Peter says "YOUREEARLY!".... Proud of myself for plopping HERE right in. STRAWBERRYSHAKE took me a while to figure out, so that was a terrific "Aha" moment! Nice write up, this morning, @REX, thanks! And a terrific puzzle. I've lost count of the starwars clue counter.... where are we, 12 day without a StarWars clue???? It certainly is a record for 2026....
Challenging until you get on the constructor's clueing wavelength, then it fell fairly easily and was most definitely fun.
Harder than yesterday's puzzle for me. I battled in all four quadrants and thought I might have to put the puzzle down and come back to it later. I had to work for every one of the twelve 10-letter answers, and I had several wrong initial answers (e.g., ANIL --> ARIL, TAU --> RHO, IRA --> COT) to recover from. But I eventually got enough correct to get traction in each of the quadrants. This one fought me.
Medium-challenging because of the clever cluing. I had so many write-ins I was sure of.. only to be erased. Enjoyed it!
Loved this, and I did yesterday’s. My favorite Friday-Saturday pair in quite some time.
— Sir Hillary
One could parse “KINDA SORTA MAYBE” as a more literal “list” of qualifications, if you don’t buy it as a singular cohesive phrase
Easier than yesterday for me and mostly enjoyable. I had SEED for a long time for the pomegranite morsel and didn’t know the word ARIL. I still don’t really get the clue for SKOR and why is KOREA a “won land”?
Another hand up for finding this one challenging. If this keeps up, Gary can start a list of modifiers for “hard”: refreshingly, surprisingly, gratifyingly . . .
Much harder than yesterday for me, but a mostly fun kind of challenge. Familiarity with the proper names makes a huge difference—I’d like to think with AMYS in place, for example, those three long acrosses in the NW would have emerged more quickly.
I agree with Medium -Challenging AND Rex's Four Stars, making it, IMHO, the best Saturday of the year so far,
Very gratifying to get through all the puns and double entendres. Really enjoyed it although I thought today's was medium-challenging and yesterday's was easy. I guess ya know what ya know!
My ideal Saturday puzzle. Challenging (especially the NE) with soooo many great clues.
Hey All !
Proper tough SatPuz here today. Was stuck practically everywhere. Didn't panic, however, and managed a slow and steady solve without resorting to having to cheat.
Loved all the ambiguity in the clues. Made the ole brain think in the third dimension... I mean the third definition.
12D - Statement that may be followed by a dash, of course had me thinking the dash (-), not a race.
32A - Portable retirement option, naturally sent you to IRA, as you can move it around to other investments, hence portable, and it's got the retirement right in the clue. But, it meant sleeping-retire.
52D - Win land, wanted to put usurp in there, but had the O already, Won is the monetary unit.
Some others like that, but you get the point. I like seeing neat cluing like that.
Apologies to SIXERs fans, but as a non follower of bball, I had LAKER at first. umps-BIRD, ira-COT, STRATa-STRATI, Rahs-ROAR, think that's it.
Good puz, Katie, made you think but was still solvable.
Hope y'all have a great Saturday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
I enjoyed this puzzle a lot!
“Won” is their currency.
If you like the Skor candy bar, you might yell “Score!” when you see it in the candy aisle. South Korea’s money is called the won.
Never having listened to NPR, I, for one, am much more familiar with DABO Sweeney than IRA SHAPIRO.
This is how I parsed it.
I had a good bit of fun with this one. STEAK SALAD made me smile. NE corner had me stumped for awhile, since I always forget ALOO = potato and BLOG/ARFS both seemed too easy.
As a huge college football fan, I enjoyed seeing DABO pop up. All in all an enjoyable Saturday (if a bit easy), letting me beat my average by a good 4 minutes.
The majority of commenters so far disagree with Rex on difficulty - - and I'm, with them. I'd put this in the top quarter by difficulty over the last 10 years. I was also hung up on SMOR crossing MOREA that was really SKOR crossing KOREA. Forgot that SMORE has an E and figured that since MOREA is a place it must have been 'won land' but.... (while I think of it, in what sense is 'KOREA' really "won land"? Oh! The currency.... DOH! Now THAT is a good clue.)
SKOR is a chocolate bar.... kind like a heath but a little more caramelized. So you "score a SKOR" at the store? Won is the name of Korea's currency
One of those times where I had trepidation visiting this blog. "Oh, I hope Rex gives this four stars". TRUE!
Only three four-letter answers, two of them referencing the Three Stooges. Hand up for IRA before (wonderfully clued) COT. Also hand up (and head down) for Ira before ARI SHAPIRO. Ira Glass; Ira Flatow; ARI SHAPIRO. Got it.
Found it harder than Rex, though, due to so many clues with misdirection and clever wordplay. The puzzle came together SORTA Willy-nilly, one-off answers all over the grid, eventually coming together with much satisfaction.
In addition to the crossing spanners, twelve (!) ten-letter answers, in neat three-to-a-column stacks. IMHO, this is the kind of feat that makes for a great puzzle from a solver's standpoint. Agree with earlier post, wonderful Friday-Saturday combo; ended the week on a high note (after a disastrous first three days).
Almost every week I find the Friday puzzle harder than the Saturday. Perhaps because I’m expecting all the misdirections in the cluing?
Slightly, but not significantly, easier than yesterday. Really bad PPP start in the NW with AMYS and LEOI, but that turned out not to be typical of this generally well-filled grid.
The cluing was top-notch today.
A segmented grid with limited travel opportunities, so each section played like its own mini puzzle. Fortunately, I knew ARI SHAPIRO, and the other sections had reasonable long answers like ROOFTOP BAR, STEAK SALAD, etc.
I also was on enough of the same wavelength that I handled the potential misdirects that Rex mentioned with unusual ease for a Saturday (stuff like ALSO, KOREA, the “dash” for RACE and even the qualifiers in KINDA, SOTA, etc.).
Not much doubt that for me, this one was easier than yesterday.
Looked over the clues trying to find a starting point and wound up with MOE, ATOLL, and TOGA. Not much. Somehow the "gold" in 1A and the M from MOE led to ALCHEMISTS and the S from ALCHEMISTS led to STRAWBERRY something and boom, there were toeholds galore. Some nice sideways cluing led to some extra cogitation but I want that on a Saturday.
DABO Sweeney is one of my favorite sports names, along with Mookie Betts. Mookie is another mispronounced first name, it's actually Markus. Didn't know AMYS, was thankful for crossword friend ALOO, had PANE something and was thinking of the PANERA guys, but that was an easy enough fix. A couple of crosses even led to remembering ARIL, yay.
I liked your Saturday very much, KH. A King-sized Helping of fun, for which many thanks.
I usually like Katie’s puzzles.But this one was impossible for me.I’m surprised that Rex and others found it easy. Rex, would you please explain 62 Across?No🎈for me.
The Won is the basic Korean currency. I know that well, having been to Korea 5 or 6 times, and I still couldn't get it without lots of crosses!
This was more challenging than yesterday even considering the usual step up from Friday to Saturday. It's always nice when they get the difficulty progression right. I recall the NW to be the easiest section as I found ALCHEMISTS to be an obvious answer. The SE was the most resistant. I had to wait for the fog It's clues set up to clear. The one for KOREA was probably the most baffling as I read "Won" as a verb until the last letter went in.
I don't recall the clue for DABO mentioning that it was a nickname. It would have made little difference as it was a complete unknown.
Loved this puzzle!!
Also: who knew that HITTHEROAD has the same letter count (and a few common letter placements) as WENTONTOUR? Anyone else get tripped (!) up on that?
This one was really hard for me; I just couldn't see a lot of clues. I spent a lot of time wondering whether 16-A was naan or roti, until I finally noticed the potatoes. But ALOO didn't help me A LOt; I wanted hippo or rhino before BABAR and rental caRS before DOG SITTERS. I went on and on like that, slowly filling in things like RHO and SPRY. I'm not a sports fan, but I know who Julius Erving is, and even that he plays basketball, but not his team. Fortunately, I do know that the nInERS are football, so the crosses helped me when I had enough.
At last I had enough crosses to see BERRY, and soon after was able to put in the STRAWS. The rest was relatively easy; but only relatively. If you don't know anything about Indian food those two paratha dishes must have been real stumpers.
It was fun all the way, though. Each difficult clue was a joy to work out.
Great puzzle. But it's a little arrogant to use "You or me, e.g." to clue MERE MORTALS. Speak for your self, puzzle!
Me, too
14D is an unusually long KEALOA – it could be PETSITTERS, CATSITTERS or DOGSITTERS.
I found that corner tough and had to google ALOO to finish.
I still don’t get the 62 across clue. Could someone explain
Won is Korean currency.
My times for today and yesterday differed by less than 10 seconds, both a few minutes less than my Friday average. I found both of them fun and fairly wooshy.
webwinger
BTW, I think the clue for SKOR was punning on “score”, and Won is the currency of Korea?
Definitely challenging for me — and one of the most fun puzzles I’ve done in a long time. Loved all the wordplay. “Won land” is inspired.
Every day I’m stunned how many of you comment without even bothering to read the blog.
"SCARY MOVIE" is the title of a movie that parodizes the scary movie genre.
Me too. Especially the less fun.
So much easier than Friday's puzzle, which makes no sense.
I loved the cluing in this puzzle. STRAWBERRYSHAKE and SCARYMOVIE and ILLRACEYOU and STEAKSALAD were all absolutely brilliant. I had no qualm with KINDASORTAMAYBE, which is a phrase I've at least heard verbatim.
“Scary Movie” is the name of a movie that is a spoof of scary movies.
Easy?????? I mean, I know we can't all be on the same wavelength all the time but sheesh. I usually target 15 minutes for Saturday and often beat it now that they've decided to court more subscribers by backing way off on the end-of-week difficulty (oddly, the LATXW has been stepping up the difficulty to where it's often harder than the NYTXW, which never used to be the case). But this one took 28 and change. DABO was a huge roadblock, among others. Just not the kind of name you're gonna guess-without-knowing. I loved all the oblique cluing, had some wild guesses on the long answers that proved out, so it was definitely enjoyable. But I had a lot of time staring at huge blank areas.
Cruel that TERRY GROSS has the same number of letters as ARI SHAPIRO
ARIL is really *reaaaally* old-school crosswordese. Means "seed covering," and usually clued as such without any misdirection as it's not exactly common outside XW-land. Pomegranate seeds have a fruity coating that's actually the part you eat. Hence "pomegranate morsel."
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