Thursday, January 1, 2026 - Happy New Year! 🥳🎇

It's a new year, so why not start it off with a new constructor? That may or may not be Will's reasoning, but today's crossword is indeed a debut for Topher Booth, and it is an auspicious beginning. We were keen on the theme (and yes, there's a trace of a pun there), and found the rest of the clues to be just right for a Thursday. Apart from those mentioned in the podcast, we'd like to salute 47A, Prefix with genetics, EPI (ok, if you say so!); 54D, Kind of wind ... or an alternative to wind, SOLAR (brilliant!); and 46D, "Sit!", PARKIT (😀). In short, this was a fine way to kick off 2026, and hope that Topher's got some other puzzles in the hopper, so to speak.

Show note imagery: How many works of art have been immortalized in Emojis? Three: the Statue of Liberty (🗽), Moai (🗿), and today's puzzle entry, Edvard Munch's famed masterpiece, THESCREAM (😱).

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