We hope you don’t get bent out of shape by this puzzle!
SUNDAY PUZZLE — Hello everybody! We are Tobin and Kiran and we are so excited to share our first collaboration with you! We’ve known each other for almost a year now — having met when we both joined the games section in Fall 2025 — but the time was never quite right for both of us to work on a puzzle together, until now! We can be reached at tobinsax@umich.edu and kvparekh@umich.edu respectively, or you can email crosswords@umich.edu for any general questions or concerns. Huge thank you to the copy desk and we hope you enjoy the puzzle!
Tricky Clues
14A: Every crossword usually includes one random geography clue. One of this puzzle’s is the SINAI peninsula, which connects Asia to Africa!
32A: I (Tobin) am a huge sitcom fan, so any opportunity to include a reference is a win for me! “Actor Braugher of Brooklyn Nine-Nine” is ANDRE Braugher, who plays my favorite character, Captain Raymond Holt.
47A: I am not one for epic poems, and if you aren’t either, you might not know that the difference between the Aeneid and the Odyssey is that the Aeneid is ROMAN, while the Odyssey is Greek.
51A: One type of wordplay crossword clues are ones that use a common phrase or idiom to indicate something else. In this case, “It’s a small world!” refers to a GLOBE, which is literally a small version of the world.
66A: One thing I enjoyed about making this puzzle with Kiran was that, since he created the puzzle fill, I got to clue some first-time crossword entries. If you don’t always read the constructor notes for our puzzles, that’s okay, but you should definitely always read the BEST BY DATE on your food!
2D: A SITREP is a jargon term to describe one’s status in the military, being shorthand for situation report.
33D: If you aren’t a math buff, don’t worry! An “ordered list of values in math” refers to a N-TUPLE.
40D: Firstly, if you don’t know what portmanteau means, it refers to a word that is created by blending the sounds of two other words together. For example, brunch is a portmanteau of breakfast and lunch! Anyway, this “portmanteau for an ideal society that prioritizes the environment” is ECOTOPIA, which combines ecological and utopia.
Today’s Theme
For this collaboration, I came up with the revealer BENDING THE RULES at 39-Across, but the wonderful Kiran came up with the revealer words: edict, command, mandate and bylaw, which are all synonyms for rule and are bent into a “Z” shape in the puzzle’s four corners.
Answer Key:
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