.png)
Swanky shindig / TUES 5-26-2026 / What a scare might make you do / Game with the goal of running out of cards / What Thomas Carlyle called "the dismal science," for short
Tuesday, May 26, 2026
Hi, everyone, it’s Clare back for the last Tuesday of May! Hope that everyone had a nice long weekend and that the weather didn’t hamper too many plans (like the rain did for my picnic plans here in DC). I’ve been staying busy with work, as immigration policies keep changing and we keep needing to sue the federal government… Otherwise, I’ve been enjoying the start of the WNBA season — go, Washington Mystics! (And I’m also quite partial to the Dallas Wings.) In the MNBA, I’m rooting for the Spurs to win, as I’ve watched the Knicks and wondered whether they’re really that good or the East is really that bad (I guess we’ll find out). Finally, a shoutout to my sister’s team, Arsenal, which just won the Premier League for the first time in 22 years (my team, Liverpool, did it last year, just for reference😊) and which are in the Champions League final next weekend! Also shoutout again to my sister because she finished walking the 500-mile Camino de Santiago in 26 days!
Anywho, on to the puzzle…
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: BODY OF KNOWLEDGE (37A: What the answers to the starred clues are, collectively?) — The theme answers combine an adjective describing intelligence with a body part
Theme answers:
- SHARP TEETH (17A: Aids for biting)
- KEEN EYE (26A: Attribute for spotting what others miss)
- WISE ASS (49A: Cheeky sort)
- SMART MOUTH (63A: One given to insolence)
Denali, federally designated as Mount McKinley, is the highest mountain peak in North America, with a summit elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190 m) above sea level. It is the tallest mountain in the world from base to peak on land, measuring 18,000 ft (5,500 m). With a topographic prominence of 20,156 feet (6,144 m) and a topographic isolation of 4,621.1 miles (7,436.9 km), Denali is the third most prominent and third-most isolated peak on Earth, after Mount Everest and Aconcagua. Located in the Alaska Range in the interior of the U.S. state of Alaska, Denali is the centerpiece of Denali National Park and Preserve. The Koyukon people who inhabit the area around the mountain have referred to the peak as "Denali" for centuries... In January 2025, the Department of the Interior under the Trump administration reverted the mountain's official federal name to Mount McKinley. (Wiki)
• • •
That was a fairly straightforward and easy puzzle for a Tuesday. The theme didn’t help my solve, but I enjoyed piecing together the puzzle afterward to figure out what BODY OF KNOWLEDGE (37A) was referring to. The synonyms for KNOWLEDGE all worked nicely. And the BODY parts mostly worked. I do find it a little funny that we’ve got three BODY parts that are all on the face — TEETH, EYE, and MOUTH — and then there’s… ASS. Sure, why not! For some reason, I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around BODY OF KNOWLEDGE at first and wanted to make “book” work in some way, but the easy crossing downs there helped sort me out (especially because of my alma mater, YALE (38D: Connecticut Ivy)). I might have preferred having the revealer at the bottom of the puzzle, but having it span the puzzle in the middle works. This puzzle was also one of the easiest Tuesday puzzles for me in recent memory. I’m not sure if it was just on my wavelength or what, but it seemed like the first thing that popped into my head was correct, and nothing gave me more than a few seconds of pause. The place I paused the longest was probably in the SW corner, where I wanted “tie dye” instead of DIP DYE (46D: Technique whereby a shirt is lowered into a pigmented bath) and I briefly forgot TYCO (65A: Tickle Me Elmo toymaker). But everything else flowed smoothly.
I think the ease was also aided by the fact that this seemed like a proper noun-lite puzzle. I count 13 — ADELE, HONDA, TYCO, OREOS, UTAH, ANA, THAI, SETH, DENALI, UNO, YALE, OHIO and SIMON — and none are obscure for crosswords. I wavered a bit because nothing felt uncommon enough to be a “word of the day.” But I decided on DENALI (22D) because I just think it’s so stupid how the Trump administration re-designated it Mount McKinley, ignoring the name the native Koyukon people had called it for centuries. I guess kudos to the New York Times for continuing to call it DENALI instead of Mount McKinley.
The four longer downs — HOTEL SAFE (5D: Spot to keep a passport while traveling), TARGETED AD (10D: Customized bit of marketing), MAD RESPECT (30D: Huge props), and DWARF STAR (36D: A little sun?) — were fine. I especially like MAD RESPECT, and the clue for DWARF STAR is a bit clever.
Otherwise, I can’t think of much to say about this puzzle. But I did enjoy it!
Misc.:
- I’ve hiked in Bryce Canyon in UTAH (6A), and it’s absolutely gorgeous. I just wish I’d hiked more of the national parks and actually been into rock climbing when my mom was living there a few years ago so I could’ve explored more!
- Kind of embarrassingly, I looked at 39D: Home of Xenia, the U.S.'s largest city whose name starts with "X" as OHIO for an inordinately long time. I thought it was telling me that Xenia was the largest city in the U.S., and that was clearly bizarre. After reading the clue a few times, I had my aha moment. Google tells me the population of Xenia, OHIO is 26,372, and Xenia is just about the only city starting with X in the U.S. that I can find. It seems there are some neighborhoods and smaller areas that may start with X, but Xenia is the only city I found (please correct me if I’m wrong).
- Oh, I know what PREP (19A: Task for a line cook, informally) looks like in a kitchen — I’ve been watching “Top Chef” and subsequently failing to recreate their knife skills in my own kitchen.
- I also just finished watching the documentary “The Rescue” about the THAI (43A: Cuisine from Bangkok) soccer team that got stuck in a cave in 2018 and about how incredible an effort it was by so many to get the whole team and their coach out safely.
- In other news, I went from a reading slump to somehow already being 40% into “Into the Blue” by Emma Brodie, and I just want to keep reading. So I’ll sign off here:)
Hope you all have a great month of June and official start to summer!
Signed, Clare Carroll, who can’t stop singing “head, shoulders, knees, and toes… eyes and ears and mouth and nose…”
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️:
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️
- Westwords (Berkeley, CA, Jun. 14, 2026)
📘 My other blog 📘:
- Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)
Save And Share :
39 comments:
I live in Alaska and no one here calls it Mt. McKinley. Only tourists do.
Fun today! Also first! Also loved the clue for DWARF STAR. Breezed through today.
Yep easy, more like a Monday. I did not need the theme to finish.
No costly erasures but MAD RESPECT is a new one for me…MAD props OTOH…
Smooth grid, cute/ clever theme, liked it or what @Clare said.
Thanks, Clare, for the great write-up! I too was a bit unimpressed with the "body" we got--just face and butt. Oh well. YALE helped me change BOokOF to BODYOF as well. 9 minutes for me, so more medium than easy on my end. The NW corner slowed me down.... ZERO was obvious, but I didn't think of it at first, and I had no idea ECON was considered dismal--I do like that quote/factoid though! Thanks, Brad, for expanding our BODYOFKNOWLEDGE today!!! : ) (Lewis, I'm sure you'll come up with any other legit options, right? I can't seem to!)
Thanks for the write-up, Clare!
I wasn’t sure if the revealer fully lands, to use Rex’s phrase. But the more I tried to work it out, the more I got a kick out of the fact that knowledge’s body is apparently made up of three facial features and a WISE ASS. A very strange body indeed!
WISE ASS, incidentally, gave me some trouble because the answer so much wanted to be SMART ASS, which I am sure Googles at a much higher rate. Took me a while to find the less common term in my brain. Of course, this ASS is WISE because it is the MOUTH that is SMART. The set seems mostly tight. BRIGHT EYES could have worked, but fine for them to be KEEN.
What I didn’t really like (to channel my inner Rex) is SHARP TEETH, which is 1) badly clued—nothing about “aids for biting” implies sharpness, 2) a bit arbitrary / green-painty, and 3) entirely literal, unlike SMART MOUTH and WISE ASS (and arguably KEEN EYE, depending on the usage), which function as synecdoches, parts standing in for whole persons.
But a mostly enjoyable solve, so no harm no foul.
Super Easy, but it's "logical Monday" since it follows the weekend. Not a bad puzzle.
* * * _ _
Overwrites:
ANi before ANA at 34A. Conflated Ms. deArmas with Ms. DiFranco.
Guessed wrong, because The Pitt features oRS as well as ERS (41D)
No WOEs.
Got mildly stuck after singing my way through the states song and landing on Iowa rather than Ohio.
Also read your blurb about Denali and came to the comments ready to defend Mt Kanchenjunga’s honour - but turns out Denali is more prominent, if not overall taller! Although this does seem to be something Americans made up so they could have a mountain make the top 5
Cute early week theme - overall well filled although it is a little trivia heavy - Clare summarizes nicely. I liked the spanning revealer dead center - SMART MOUTH is the splashiest themer.
Ricky Nelson
MAD RESPECT and DWARF STAR are top notch - things tend to go downhill after that although I like the letter string in SAYS SO. HOTEL SAFE, PSYOPS, TARGETED AD aren’t much fun.
ADELE
Pleasant enough Tuesday morning solve. Here in NY it rained relatively hard from Friday night to late yesterday afternoon and didn’t get above 50 - not an apt kickoff to summer.
Rest in power Sonny
Theme is OK but the best part was MAD RESPECT as bonus fill and the cluing angle on NOTED.
Ese es un buen consejo para el futuro.
Hey Clare! It rained here in Albuquerque too, and we're all freaking out. Water from the sky? When did we start doing this nonsense.
I'll put this in the meh department. I was teetering on the edge of cute, but then I remembered the entirely avoidable "joke" featuring bull fighting.
In my experience, you get more for your money when you look into the $400/hr RATE. The $50/hr ones are a RIPOFF.
Pretty sure there are no UNTARGETED ADS.
Looks like our editors met over coffee and worked really hard as a team to extract and refine the clue for OHM, and I for one couldn't be more proud or more relieved. As a recent PIÑATA against the pitchforks of the Society of the Defenders of OHM, I spilled a lot of candy over Georg, and liberal arts majors, and the state of American reading and logic skills, and I'm hoping never again to be so needlessly amused by such physics units since it IRKS my Chihuahuas.
People: 5
Places: 4
Products: 5
Partials: 8
Foreignisms: 0
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 22 of 78 (28%)
Funny Factor: 3 😐
Tee-Hee: WISE ASS. Cheerleader's shout.
Uniclues:
1 Why you're gnawing on a rasp.
2 What I plan to do after sniffing in downtown Bangkok.
3 Contest to compare the fannies of the well educated.
4 Pointed at @egs.
1 SHARP TEETH PREP
2 RATE THAI AIR
3 WISE ASS-OFFS
4 IDED SMART MOUTH
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Warning about a grampa who likes trains coming through the door. OLDIE NERD ALERT.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Easy except for the SW, where the crosses made me reluctantly fill in MADRESPECT without an inkling of why it means "huge props" (obviously, Clare knows). Enjoyed the clue for DWARFSTAR.
I noticed in the grid that FOOD is right below SHARP"TEETH," SAW and NOTED were below KEEN"EYE," and SAYSSO was above SMART"MOUTH." I was afraid to see what was near WISEASS, but it was just ADELE.
Did Tod fast? No, TODATE.
What do the Irish use to get some of their appetizers green on St. Patrick's Day? DIPDYE.
The clue at 46D -- "Technique whereby a shirt is lowered into a pigmented bath" -- brought back painful memories of how the mob took care of my Uncle Benny.
Sailor, find out what the last two letters in the fiftieth state are.
AYE AYE, Captain.
Did you find out?
Aye Aye.
OK, what are they?
Aye Aye.
The last two letters: You got them?
Aye Aye
So what are they?
Aye Aye
Tell me what they are.
Aye Aye
What are they?
Aye Aye . . . .
Re the puzzle—pretty much everything Clare said, plus kudos to her athletic sister! In life and literature references to the ASS tend to be counterpoints to WISE use of the brain so it’s fitting to have one in this puzzle too.
I agree with Clare’s characterization of today’s grid as a “fairly straightforward and easy puzzle for a Tuesday“. It was a fun one with a theme that was kind of cute in its simplicity. The only two answers that I paused on were DIP DYE and MAD RESPECT, both of which were new to me but all of the crosses were pretty reasonable.
Oahu’s on first?
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Well, that’s one tight theme. If these theme answers were plentiful, we’d see many worthy ones in the comments, but they are spare to none.
I love the constructor mind that came across SMART MOUTH and SHARP TEETH (per Brad's notes), immediately saw their connection, then found two more and produced a perfect revealer to tie it all together. Bravo, SIR.
More props to Brad for sparking the box with fresh never-in-the-Times-before answers, my favorites being BODY OF KNOWLEDGE, DWARF STAR, SMART MOUTH, and the terrific MAD RESPECT.
Today I learned DIPDYE, and found post-solve that it’s also done with hair, where it is a cousin to “ombré” and “balayage” – two more TILs. Got my money’s worth out of this alone.
Got a smile out of EYE crossing AYE AYE.
Brad, your three Times puzzles are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so you’re on the way to hitting the cycle in seven puzzles, something only done once before (by Andrew Ries). Go for it! And thank you for a splendid outing!
Well, if Clare found it easy and I found it easy ... it's probably easy, as we tend to have different areas of expertise.
The only DWARF STAR I acknowledge is Sneezy.
Hey All !
Nice TuesPuz. A double-answer type thing, where each half of the Themers come into play. Neat to see PDFS crossing GIF. Just a Q, X and oddly, a V away from the Pangram.
@pablo
No points for me for the kangaroo/HOPPED thing, as I only take points for Rooster related things, as that is the animal associated with the nickname.
Not very verbose this morning. I guess the ole brain is taking the day off.
Hope y'all have a great Tuesday!
Five F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
The word of the day blurb made me sad; I had been living with the delusion that Trump's name-change of DENALI had been blocked by some international body in charge of mountain names, spurred on by the howls of protest from everyone in Alaska, but apparently it's at least semi-official. It's still in DENALI National Park, though.
I think the revealer is a bit off -- there's a famous insult said by someone about someone else, "He knows everything...and understands nothing." I.e., knowledge is not the same as intelligence. Close enough for crosswords, I guess, I did enjoy the theme--even if I did put in SMART aleck before MOUTH.
I'm no expert on dated vernacular, but I've only ever heard "mad props." But OK, mix 'em up, I'm sure it's done.
At 11-D, the equivalent of "Yes, Captain!" would be "AYE AYE Sir!" "Yes on board" would work as a clue.
But I'm getting too picky. It was an enjoyable, lively puzzle.
Many great visionaries have spotted DENALI from the KEENEYE Penninsula.
Chica: Let's go out after work.
Chico: Sorry, but mi MADRESPECT me home for dinner.
These days a guy without substance is said to be "All Tik, NOTOK."
The sexiest girl in my high school was Elsa Fe Daniels, commonly known as HOTELSAFE.
Tobacco research has shown that the effect of nicotine DWARFSTAR.
At the garment factory, the boss SAYSSO, the workforce SEWS. La lutte continue.
It's about time that someBODYOFKNOWLEDGEable disposition submitted a puzzle. Thanks, Brad Lively. And thanks @Clare for a nice write-up.
The mountain visible from Anchorage is Mt. McKinley. In 2015 the name was changed to Denali. In 2025 it was changed back to McKinley. I’m not happy about it but it is what it is. Wikipedia is not a reliable source.
The Tuesday puzzle came on quiet and without much deceit. It carried a theme in it though a man could go a fair ways before needing to reckon with it. The starred clues stood in the grid like fenceposts set out across dry country. Aids for biting. Attribute for spotting what others miss. The sort of language that asks little of you at first and then later asks whether you had been paying attention all along. The clues plain enough. The answers willing. A puzzle that did not seek to shame a person but only to walk beside him a spell.
There are Tuesdays that strain after cleverness and come away smelling of effort. This one did not trouble itself overmuch. The clueing moved with a kind of decent restraint. No dark trickery hid in the crossings. No scholar’s vanity laid up in obscure names waiting to humble the inattentive. The grid opened steady as a gate swinging loose on its hinge and before long whole corners had yielded up their little secrets with the calm certainty of weather. It was easy enough that a man might wonder if he had grown sharper in the night and then think better of it.
When it was done there remained no astonishment. Only a mild regard. The sort reserved for useful things made with care. Coffee gone cool beside the page. Morning light in the room. The puzzle not grand and not forgettable neither. Only competent in the old sense of the word. Equal to the hour asked of it.
Enjoyable solve, theme worked fine, peppy answers and clues.
Always refreshing to hear from you, Clare. Happy for Arsenal, and glad overall the Premier League is so competitive with different teams popping up for several years. It was boring for a while with the Manchester teams dominating.
I walked the Camino 15 years ago, and at that time there were primarily two groups walking: 20 somethings getting up early and making 25 miles per day, and us 50- and 60-somethings struggling to make 15 miles. Arriving in Santiago was amazing, but it was all about the journey. Kudos to your sister, she'll remember it for a long time
Thanks Brad for nice start to the morning.
I still call the RFK bridge the triboro, but that’s not its name. Similarly, I call Mt. McKinley Denali, but that’s not its name anymore . The Times should strive for accuracy not political correctness.
I'll give them a pass on Denali, since the only reason for the name change was to troll. See also: Gulf of Mexico
I had a coworker that was originally from Xenia, Ohio. He informed me that they rebuilt the town after being struck by a devastating tornado in the seventies. The history of the town is more interesting than just the unique spelling of its name.
Expected Rex to say NOT OK for body parts consisting of three facials and a...but...he took the day off.
Channeling @Lewis here in pointing out the plethora of long-O ending words: ZERO, OREOS, MAYO, SAYS SO, TYCO, UNO, ECHO, OHIO, DOH and finishing with STOW and OHMS.
2029 will hopefully restore the name DENALI and countless other aspects of world sanity disrupted by this corrupt administration.
Can we not have anything other than straightforward clues on a Tuesday? Monday I get but a little more wit would be greatly appreciated--DWARFSTAR was about it for me. I'd never heard of DIPDYE but the clue explained the process so well that it became obvious. I did confuse ANA with ANI (Hi Conrad) which led to MIDRESPECT, hardly "huge props". Easy fix though.
I did like the themers and the revealer. Best parts of the puzzle. And I'm finally starting to recognize PDFs and GIFs thanks to crosswords.
Liked your writeup Clare. We've been following Arsenal since we went to a game at The Emirates while we were in England for my son's wedding. Good season for them although it got a little dicey there at the end.
OK Tuesdecito, BL, But Left me somewhat less than thrilled. Thanks for some fun at least.
It’s ok @jberg. Everyone in Alaska (as noted above, AND by my daughter who lives in Anchorage) and while I’m sure SOME kool-aid drinkers in the lower 48 call it Mt. McKinley…most are quite happy to call it Denali. AND although it’s rare to be able to see due to cloud cover conditions…I personally saw it at my daughter’s place one morning around 2-3 am when I was still jet-lagged in the “twilight” of late May. Amazing!
I think you will like Carlyle's term much less when you realize he used it in an article to critique the contention of economists like John Stuart Mill that all people are created equal; Carlyle argued that this belief was not only decidedly wrong, but "dismal." Carlyle then used his contention that humans are inherently unequal as the basis in the same article to promote a racist hierarchy in support of his main point: the restoration of slavery.
Sadly, people throw around the expression frequently, freely and out of context, blissfully unaware that it is the explicit grounding for a racist philosophy and for an argument for the restoration of human slavery based on race.
I call the RFK Bridge Hell.
Nobody asked for my opinion, but why do mountains need names? So that some president half the people hated (or his descendants) can enjoy ego trips?
It would look real nice painted gold.
Nice Tuesday and although a former Marine had never heard of a psyop. Yes, I also call the RfK the Triboro but do not call JFK -Idlewild.
My question is why we should sue the federal government? Is it because of the contaminated water at Lejeune or our blatant use of agent Orange.?
Noted, and damned decent of you, but I'm still leaning toward a partial for PAOLO.
Thanks for the great write-up Clare! My experience today was very similar to yours. A bit on the easy side but with some great long fill. Those long downs - all top notch in my book.
I also looked sideways at the revealer for a hot second and had to scan through the completed grid before it fully hit me. But when it did, it was a very nice moment. The revealer being a spanner didn't hurt either.
DIPDYE is new to me but the cluing made coming up with it almost foolproof.
I'd rather not be reminded of the "sport" of bullfighting, but maybe that's a Hugh thing... but I'm thinking there might be other cute ways to get us to HORN.
For the record, the Knicks ARE that good! Bring on the West!!
Thank for this one, Brad. This was fun with a lot of personality!
Always enjoy your observations, Lewis. And obviously the week is still young with lots of times for great clues, but if the clue for DWARF STAR makes your best-of list next Monday, it’ll be a lovely moment for me to smile at it once again. Definitely the best clue of the day, as several others have noted. You should publish a book of the top clues you’ve gathered—it’s a great service to solvers to be able to enjoy witty clues a second time.
@Rick -- I couldn't come up with other good theme answer possibilities, except for "bright eyes", but EYE is already in the grid. The constructor, in his notes, mentioned "quick-footed", suggesting that "quick feet" would work, and maybe it would, but I don't think it's as common as the ones in the grid.
@Dr Random -- It's on my list of possibilities, for certain.
Post a Comment