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Wordplay, The CROSSWORD COLUMN

Helpful Pointer, Say?

Sam Ezersky’s scintillating Saturday puzzle sends solvers in all directions.

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A swan in Wales, wetting his beak before texting his exes.

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By

Caitlin Lovinger

April 24, 2026,

10:00 p.m. ET

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SATURDAY PUZZLE

— This construction by Sam Ezersky is his 23rd Saturday crossword and his 64th puzzle overall in The New York Times. What a prolific young man, I say! So dedicated, for a teenager — oh no, his first grid was in 2012 (a

Saturday collaboration

) and he’s now the editor of Spelling Bee. Time flies. This solve does not, unless you’re on the precisely right wavelength to be buoyed by the peculiarities of its grid.

These include the highly unusual

“up-down mirror” symmetry

, which appears in the Times puzzle quite rarely, and Mr. Ezersky’s energetically misleading clues (which sent me running in the wrong direction, at least). Also, all but one of the long entries in this puzzle, many of which form a thicket in the center, are not very obvious debuts.

Tricky Clues

18A. [What power tools should be designed for] read like a wry clue for “lefties” to me, because of data I’ve seen about

design bias toward right-handed people

. The answer is straightforward: SAFE USE.

27A. What a wicked clue. I initially read [Get one over on] as taking someone for a sucker, but that is not what’s intended. Here, it means getting one over par on a golf hole, also known as scoring a BOGEY.

31A/14D. Both of these entries make their first appearances in the Crossword, which isn’t surprising, as they’re quite specific. At 31A, [Air traveler’s connection] solves to IN-FLIGHT WI-FI — logical, but “connection” is designed to mislead us into thinking of multiple planes, I’d say. At 14D, this [Often-regretted behavior on social media, once] is DRUNK TWEETING. The “once” here is a hint, as Twitter, the brand, has flittered off to social media heaven (and with it, my favorite

app icon

), although people often say “tweet” when they post online. I still think of the blue bird when I see “tweet,” and the crossing of these two entries made me think of geese ordering a little sunscreen online while migrating south.

2D. When I read [“Kids these days …” speakers], I first thought of “get off my lawn,” and then of “grumpy old men” (stereotype

and movie

) and finally of “grumpy old people” (fits and is more inclusive). The answer is much more neutral: the OLDER GENERATION.

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