Work through the levels. Reveal the Spangram only when you’re truly ready.
Today’s clue: “Now we're cooking!”
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.
6 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.
It feels like a cooking sound and may appear near the grid, but it names a visible vapor, not an audible word in this set.
A stovetop term that suggests quiet cooking, but the puzzle is built around sharp, specific onomatopoeias instead.
It sounds like a stovetop noise, yet the listed answers focus on simpler, more iconic kitchen onomatopoeias.
It matches the food-appraisal mood of the spangram but is an action of enjoyment, not a cooking noise.
a textbook decoy
The puzzle sits around a 5 because the clue points clearly to cooking, but the spangram SOUNDSTASTY only clicks after you've placed one or two onomatopoeias and realize the grid is about noise, not foods or methods. SIZZLE was my unlock: once it landed, HISS and CRACKLE became obvious, and BUBBLE and GURGLE filled in from neighboring letter patterns. SPLATTER stayed tricky because it feels less like a clean stovetop cue and more like a mess being made, forcing the category to widen from frying sounds to kitchen sounds broadly. The spangram was moderately hard to spot because it reads as a jokey compound across an 11-letter stretch, and its fused words are not a standard dictionary phrase.
On the surface, 'Now we're cooking!' is that little idiom you drop when things finally start going right. Here it also works literally: the moment food hits the pan, it starts making noise. That is the whole joke behind the spangram SOUNDSTASTY — the answers are the audible signs that a meal is underway, not the food itself. The clue's 'now' is doing a lot of work, pointing to the first sizzles and sputters rather than a finished dish.
Tracy Bennett's set is tightly curated around cooking sounds, not processes or ingredients. BUBBLE, CRACKLE, GURGLE, HISS, SIZZLE, and SPLATTER are all onomatopoeias from the stovetop or sink, but they range from gentle bubbling to aggressive splattering. That range is the clever part: solvers must gather a noisy ensemble, not a single dish. The spangram SOUNDSTASTY seals the pun by suggesting the meal is literally making delicious sounds.
