Work through the levels. Reveal the Spangram only when you’re truly ready.
Today’s clue: “"Rerouting ..."”
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.
7 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.
Implies a slow, gradual off-course movement, while the puzzle favors sharper verbs.
A smooth bend in a path, not a snappy term for the action itself.
Describes a curved shape or turn, but isn’t a verb for redirecting.
Means to wander from a set route, yet it doesn’t match the abrupt synonyms here.
a textbook decoy
The clue ‘Rerouting ...’ makes the theme immediately clear, but the difficulty lies in guessing the less common synonyms like TACK and ZIGZAG, which don’t spring to mind as quickly as TURN or VEER. Once you spot a couple of obvious words, the spangram CHANGECOURSE emerges to anchor the grid, and the remaining short words cluster around it. ZIGZAG in particular stands out as a pattern word rather than a single turn, which can throw solvers off until the last few letters. The puzzle rewards vocabulary recall and pattern recognition in a tight 6×8 space.
The clue ‘Rerouting ...’ mimics the alert you’d hear from a GPS when you deviate from the planned path — it’s a playful nod to the entire concept of changing course. The ellipsis hints at ongoing movement, just as the theme words describe actions of turning and swerving. The spangram CHANGECOURSE is the literal phrase behind that alert, turning the puzzle into a dictionary of directional shifts.
The editor chose a mix of generic and specialized verbs for changing direction, from the mundane TURN to the nautical TACK and the graphic ZIGZAG. This selection prevents the puzzle from being a simple list of synonyms and forces solvers to recall less obvious terms. The spangram CHANGECOURSE acts as the umbrella phrase, making the set feel cohesive even as the words range from everyday to technical.
