Work through the levels. Reveal the Spangram only when you’re truly ready.
Today’s clue: “All things considered”
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.
A natural guess given the theme, but the puzzle focuses on the content of the mind, not the container itself.
The organ of thought appears within the spangram, but it's not a standalone synonym for an idea.
Part of the spangram, solvers might try to claim it as a weather word, but it's not a theme answer.
A verb closely related to producing thoughts, but all theme words are nouns, making this a misleadingly related form.
a textbook decoy
The moderate difficulty comes from the clue's idiomatic layer: 'All things considered' usually means 'in summary,' but it's literally hinting at things you consider in your head. Spotting THOUGHT or IDEA immediately cracks the theme wide open, because all six words are direct synonyms. The spangram BRAINSTORMING then locks in nicely as the process that generates those concepts, but its 13-letter length and diagonal span can slow solvers down. NOTION is the trickiest theme word because it's less colloquial than the others. Once placed, the remaining answers converge quickly, making for a satisfying solve.
The clue 'All things considered' is a playful phrase with a dual life. In everyday English, it signals that you've weighed every factor before making a decision. Here, however, it shifts into a literal invitation: look at all the abstract things you consider in the theater of your mind. Those things turn out to be THOUGHT, IDEA, CONCEPT, NOTION, OPINION, and PLAN—a fleet of synonyms. The spangram BRAINSTORMING is the perfect storm, naming the activity where you consider all those things freely and furiously.
The editor isolated six pure synonyms for the output of reasoning—CONCEPT, IDEA, NOTION, OPINION, PLAN, THOUGHT—avoiding any terms that edge into emotion or fantasy. This turns the grid into a streamlined mental toolkit, where every word is a distinct yet interchangeable vessel for what the mind produces. By placing BRAINSTORMING as the spangram, the puzzle creates a self-contained ecosystem: the spangram is the method, and the theme words are the results. The result is a puzzle that feels delightfully neat, like a thesaurus entry come alive.
