Work through the levels. Reveal the Spangram only when you’re truly ready.
Today’s clue: “It's back!”
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.
5 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.
Denim reappears in every generation's wardrobe, so it feels like a lock for a puzzle about things making a comeback — but it isn't hiding in the grid.
This small accessory is the first thing many solvers picture when a puzzle feels retro, which makes it a magnet guess — yet the letters never line up.
A cozy staple with strong throwback associations and only seven letters, so it looks easy to hunt for — but it's not in the grid.
Everyone associates platform shoes with the era's biggest looks; it's eight letters and reads plausible, but it isn't one of the hidden entries.
a textbook decoy
The clue 'It's back!' is almost no help upfront, which is exactly why this lands mid-range — it signals a revival without naming the decade, so the theme has to be reverse-engineered. GRUNGE and NEON are usually the unlock: either one drops you into a very specific cultural moment, and suddenly SCRUNCHIES, TRACKSUITS and LYCRA stop looking like random letters and start looking like a wardrobe. Finding one long plural like SCRUNCHIES shrinks the search space dramatically too, since it consumes a big stretch of the grid and leaves fewer plausible chains for the rest. The spangram, NINETIESTREND, is harder than the theme words: thirteen letters is a long path to thread from one edge to the opposite side, and even after NINETIES surfaces you have to notice it continues into a second half rather than standing alone. What makes the set deceptive is that it mixes scales — a subculture, a fiber, a color, a hair tie and a garment — which don't obviously belong to the same list until you supply the decade yourself.
'It's back!' is the joke of the whole puzzle — it's the phrase you'd use for something that refuses to die, but it never says what 'it' is. The answer is the 1990s: GRUNGE, LYCRA, NEON, SCRUNCHIES and TRACKSUITS are all things that decade made iconic and that are, genuinely, in shops again. The clue is deliberately circular, because revivals are circular. NINETIESTREND is the puzzle saying out loud what 'It's back!' only whispers.
The editor's angle is strictly wardrobe-only: no bands, films or catchphrases, just the decade's wearable vocabulary. Notice the deliberate mix of scales — a subculture, a single fiber, a color, a hair tie and a whole silhouette. Because the words aren't all the same kind of thing, the set only coheres once you supply the decade yourself, making this feel like a memory test rather than a vocabulary test. NINETIESTREND is the umbrella that turns that costume box into a category.
