Wednesday, September 30, 2026 — A Crossword with a Lot of PANACHE

Unsurprisingly, themed crosswords rise and fall on the strength of their themes. In this case the theme causes the crossword to rise, but there are a slew of other clues in the puzzle that make it soar . Besides the awesome ones covered in today's episode, there was a clue written for onomatopoeia-ists: 57A, Pie-in-the-face sound, SPLAT; another for the math majors in the crowd: 42D, Trig function that can output every real number, TAN; and a brilliant one for fans of all things Norse: 29D, God whose name has one "I," fittingly, ODIN. tldr: A fabulous crossword by Joel Woodford , absolutely worth five squares on the JAMCR scale. Show note imagery: The absolutely gorgeous Isle of IONA, in the Scottish Hebrides. We love feedback! Send us a text... Contact Info: We love listener mail! Drop us a line, crosswordpodcast@icloud.com. Also, we're on FaceBook , so feel free to drop by there and strike up a conversation!