Wednesday, September 9, 2026 — Argh, It's Write Crosswords Like a Pirate Day!

0:00Welcome to Gene and Mike, do the New York Times Crossword. Hi, I'm Gene. And I'm Mike. And today we are doing the Crossword for Wednesday, September 9th, 2026. So, did today's Crossword make you want to reach for a bottle of grog? No, not quite. Not sure what a bottle of grog actually would be. Maybe a Stein or grog would be better. Uh-huh. But no, it did not. Okay. Did it make you seasick? No, it did not do that either. That's a relief. But it did blow me away. Uh-huh. Because of not only its quadrotheme and the vast amount of the themed clues that were included, but the symmetry of the clues was just phenomenal. All the themed clues were in perfect symmetry around the revealer. I just thought, wow, that is really something that they were able to come up with themed

1:03answers that would be the same number of letters so that they could put them symmetrically around the very middle, which had the revealer. I just thought that was great. So, and very beautiful. Uh-huh. So, what do you think of it? It was fine, although my view is somewhat tainted by the difficulty I had in the Midwest area of the grid. Oh dear. Yes. I had 28 across some landscaping equipment. I had it ending in E.R.S. and I thought it's got to be mowers because that's the only landscaping equipment I ever use. No, not quite. The answer there was edgers. Edgers, yes. They won beneath that 35 across plow, plow, puller of old. Well, I wanted it to be oxen. I did too. But I noticed it was singular. Yes. So, I went for team.

2:04Oh. And then I went for kine, k-i-n-e, because that sounded vaguely biblical and I think it referred to possibly teams of some animals of some sort. Anyway, the answer turned out to be mule. That's right. Yeah. And 45 down the minimal paint job I went for pre-coat. Oh. As opposed to the correct answer of one coat. One coat. So, so you can tell there's just this cascade of mistakes here. And so, but the time I sorted it out, it was the next day. Oh no. And 44 across the chat informally. Since I had pre-coat, I had it ending in P, so I thought it has to be up. So I had gin up, which I'm pretty sure is not anything in any language. The correct answer they were looking for was convo crossing with the one coat. And the one beneath the convo paint options.

3:06I know Matt, which is M-A-T-T-E and did not fit. Right. Sheens did not occur to me. So it was a disaster all the way around. Oh dear. Yeah, I eventually figured it out. One of the, another issue just above edgers, creature of Egyptian myth, 24 cross. The answer was Svinks. I was just too tired last night when I was doing this. Because I had it starting with an SP and anyone X. And I was thinking like, Sporx. Is there some sort of Egyptian? Because for some reason, I always think of the Svinks as being real. You know, and this was a creature of Egyptian myth. The Svinks is right there. You can get tickets and take a look at it. So it's clearly not an Egyptian myth. It's an Egyptian reality. Whereas the Sporx nobody has ever seen a Sporx accept me. I can't say that I have seen one of those.

4:08So for the record, it is spelled SP-O-O-R-X. It's important we get the spelling of this non-existent Sporx. Yes, the non-existent creature of Egyptian myth. Whoa. So, you know, and I know there was some sort of theme going on here and it seemed to involve water. But I was too busy drowning in the Western hemisphere there. Oh dear. Yes. Well, your answers were quite clever. And even if they weren't right. Like. I mean, I'm not a consul. I'm a gin. What was it? Gin up. Gin up means something. Like if you sort of add sort of exaggerate something, you gin up something. And it had up in it and I wanted a chat to include the word up. Since you have the beat. I mean, actually, the answer should have been chat up for chat informally, but that would

5:08never pass, Master. No, I don't think so. So I had a tremendously enjoyable period of time flailing about. Oh dear. I runically, I was telling all my students today how important it is to problem solving, the thrill you get when you solve a problem. I experienced that thrill. Well, that's good. About, I don't know, maybe 20 minutes later than I was expecting to expect that thrill. But did you have any problems with this puzzle? I didn't really. No, I'm sorry to say, but no. I got to do it pretty quickly. And even with sports. Even well, I happen to know that the creature, no, the paint options include sheen. You can have a man, you can have a show, you can have high gloss. There's all different kinds of sheen. And so I knew that. See, the only sheen I know is Martin Sheen.

6:11So I was just at C, so to speak, and that would be 41 across, which was actually the revealer of the theme. So why don't we talk about this vaguely nautical crossword here? Okay. Okay, yes. The theme was located right in the middle of the puzzle, 41 across completely lost or where the now idiomatic answer to each italicized clue has a literal meaning. And the answer to that was, of course, at C and surrounding that at C were six, six count, um, themed clues, themed answers, I should say, the themed clues were in italics, they were definitions of things related to the seed, to nodical terms. And I had no idea that these idioms that we use all the time, I have used probably each

7:14one of these. I did not know that they were all from, you know, a nautical background. The six, the six themed answers were to the one line tied over loose cannon, pipe down, taken a bath and the doldrums. So I did know the doldrums had something to do with the seed. Right. The rest of them, I mean, they have words like tied and, and, um, no pipe, which was related to the bosom's pipe that, that he played. And, you know, so the, and then told the line, um, related to, um, you know, the line that, that you would have on a ship, but I never really made that connection with, with most of those. And so I learned a lot and I left, I left classrooms or I learned things and, um, and yeah, I learned

8:15quite a few nautical terms that are actually idioms that we use in language all the time. We know some of these clues, the answers seemed obvious and to follow directly. Like for example, unsecured artillery that can slide across the deck, that definitely sounds like a loose cannon. And the equatorial ocean area, notorious for lack of winds, the doldrums. I mean, to me, that's just a definition. But then they had one like bosom's whistle call signaling a shift change pipe down. Right. That, to me, that just, you know, I haven't spent a lot of time on ships. And when I have, when I have, it's generally been in a car in a, you know, being ferried across a lake. And so, or, or in a kayak in, in which I generally don't need to whistle a call to myself. Um, and so pipe down just didn't really resonate at all. Like what, like, never think of that as a, as a nautical, um, term, but, you know, there we go.

9:21Likewise, 21 down, drift with the natural flow of currents was tied over. I, I don't understand that at all. I mean, I understand drift with the natural flow of currents, it, but tied over. Not a real term, I guess, it's tied over. Right. Also, uh, let's talk about the spelling of toe the line. It's T O E, the line. Right. I think it's supposed to be toeing in the line with the W. Well, um, I, I always thought it was that too, but not anymore. Oh, I know. Uh, let's read the, the definition there was stand barefoot information along seams of depth playing. So I really do think they are standing up, they've got their toes up against the planks. I don't know if this is supposed to be some sort of, uh, pedicure inspection or what's going on here that they're barefoot. Maybe they're just a call to, uh, to call to the deck and they all line up and they told one, but these decks are wooden, right?

10:21They're going to get slivers. Well, I mean, I mean, be reasonable captain. Get them wear socks at least. I think a lot of sailors of old didn't wear a lot of shoes. I think they should have been allowed to wear 35 down soft leather shoes for short mocks. I think mockasins, of course, that might be a little slippery. Yeah. Maybe they want something with cleats. Uh, huh. Yeah. But anyway, I, I found it a very interesting solve and just, uh, marveled at the cemetery. Yeah, I hope it's again. I just like, wow, you know, it's hard enough, I think, to think of themed clues and answers to them to have the answers all, um, you know, a varying links that you could make a nice pattern around the middle there was just phenomenal. Yeah, the two bad, they couldn't have made it sort of like swirl like an, like an eddy or something like that. Right. So this crossword was by Dario Salvucci.

11:21And it was fine. Yeah. I think that's probably it for today. Okay. Thanks, everyone for listening. Thanks for helping make this be one of the most popular parts of the New York Times crossword to come out of Northeast Wisconsin. Thursday's crossword's going to be out. In fact, it's out now. We're going to tackle it. Hope you will too and come back and hear us talk about that tomorrow. Bye.