Work through the levels. Reveal the Spangram only when you’re truly ready.
Today’s clue: “Split superlatives”
A gentle direction — no specifics.
Closer — the category is coming into focus.
Near-direct — only read if you’re stuck.
Direction only.
Getting closer.
Near-direct.
8 theme words — lengths in random order
Spaces not counted in total
All theme words — shuffled
These words fit the theme on the surface, but aren’t part of today’s solution. Knowing them ahead of time can save you minutes of searching.
A well-known feline compliment uses this word, but the puzzle opts for a different two-word noun pair.
It completes a natural same-structure compliment, but it isn't one of the split phrases used today.
A familiar excellence idiom starts with this word, yet the grid uses older two-word collocations instead.
It fits the clue as a plain superlative, but the puzzle wants two-part idiomatic expressions, not single adjectives.
a textbook decoy
Difficulty 5.5: the clue seems grammatical until YOU'RE THE appears, which turns the board into a stack of old-school compliments. Finding BEES and KNEES unlocks the split-idiom pattern, and then CATS/PAJAMAS and GOLD/STANDARD fall quickly. The spangram is moderate to spot because it reads like a sentence fragment rather than a topic, but its eight-letter run is easy once any themed phrase crosses it. VERY and BEST feel too generic to trust until they are paired, which makes the final group sneakily indecisive. That last pairing, along with PAJAMAS's unusual shape, keeps the back half from collapsing too fast.
The clue 'Split superlatives' is playing on two things at once: each answer is a well-worn superlative phrase, and every one is split across a pair of words. With YOU'RE THE spanning the grid, those pairs become compliments like YOU'RE THE BEES KNEES and YOU'RE THE CATS PAJAMAS. The 'split' also nods to the way possessive forms lose their apostrophes in the grid. It feels cryptic up front, but it is a literal instruction once the idiom pairs appear.
The editor's angle is old-fashioned flattery: each phrase is a hyperbolic way to say someone is wonderful, built from a two-word idiom after YOU'RE THE. The set pairs nouns like BEES and KNEES, CATS and PAJAMAS, GOLD and STANDARD, then closes with the plainest possible pair, VERY and BEST. That makes it a hunt for collocations, not synonyms. These familiar words lock into place only after the shared opening phrase appears.
