15 years ago and before the age of smart phones for entertainment, my ex-military boyfriend (now husband) and I were stuck at the airport for what ended up being a 10 hour long flight delay. After finishing our books and us wondering around the terminal for hours, we ended up sitting down and he taught be the NATO alphabet to pass the time. Maybe its because that incredibly boring experience ended up being a happy memory in our courtship, and maybe because I have found this random knowledge to actually be pretty useful - but I really enjoyed today’s puzzle 😉
ALFA ROMEO is another possibility for [Agent] with the correct spelling! 🙂
@Aidan Deshong Great find! Well done
N.B. Independently discovered earlier... <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/4hs958?rsrc=cshare&smid=url-share" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/4hs958?rsrc=cshare&smid=url-share</a>
Giving it a shot: Smother ---> SIERRAMADRE
Matt, Nice one! You gave it a shot, I’ll try a [Dram] DELTAFORCE
I always eat some chocolate when I golf. Bar for the course! (Probably a Putterfinger.)
@Mike If it's a chocolate donut instead, you'll get a hole in one!
@Mike If one bar is good, why not have fore? Or did a little birdie tell you not to? (It's two for tee and tee for two You for me and me fore you.)
@Mike if you pack a club and a sand wedge, does that make a club sandwich?
Ebay: ECHOCHAMBER That's the only one I could come up with
@Steven M. Great job! I've been trying for a while and can't come up with anything good.
@Steven M. Best I could do was Max—MIKE HAMMER—which isn’t quite right either
@Steven M. In a post, I suggested Smother --> SIERRAMADRE
Fun puzzle. I especially like [Training aids for a lab, say]... My high school at the time I was there didn't have AP Calculus, but our highest math class did wander briefly into calculus. I was astonished that the area under a curve, like y = x**2, could actually be determined...it's a CURVE! How can you measure the area under something that is constantly changing its slope? I thought calculus bordered on the magical.
@Francis, I remember seeing that integration derived in my first calculus class in college, the area under the curve approximated from the areas of infinitely smaller rectangles. It was a magical moment, seeing that explained on the chalkboard.
@Francis From a previous conversation, here is Copilot's answer: (Happily, it agrees with what we both said (mostly) To convert 1 gram of liquid water at its boiling point (100 °C) into steam at 100 °C, it takes about 539–540 calories per gram of energy . This value is known as the latent heat of vaporization for water. Why this high value? At the boiling point, all the added heat goes into breaking the hydrogen bonds between water molecules, not into raising the temperature. For comparison, 540 cal/g is roughly 540 times more than the energy needed to raise the same mass of water by 1 °C (which requires ~4.186 J/g or ~1 cal/g). To melt 1 gram of ice at 0 °C into 1 gram of water at 0 °C, it takes 334 joules of energy. In calories, this is about 80 calories (since 1 cal ≈ 4.184 J) Energy value: 334 J/g or 0.080 kcal/g . Type of energy: Latent heat of fusion — the energy required to change a substance’s phase without changing its temperature Why it’s needed: Ice has a rigid crystal structure held together by hydrogen bonds. Melting breaks these bonds, allowing water molecules to move freely as a liquid. This process doesn’t raise the temperature — all the added energy goes into breaking the bonds . My take: That it takes exactly 1 calorie to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree sounds like a definition. This exercise also explains why we use kilocalories when we're using MKS units.
@Francis My HS had a class simply called calculus (without the AP) and jokingly referred to as, cal-clueless. I was in it my senior year and failed miserably. Took again my freshman year at uni and got an A.
@Francis me too! Before our first was born, I spent a chunk of time in hospital (happy ending, she's in her thirties and we're both thriving now)... Rebuilding the lovely logical formula for calculus first derivatives got me through several long nights in that shared room, so long before personal electronics .... Still think math formulas (and yep, our offspring) are really beautiful!
I enjoyed this quite a bit. A nice tight theme that did add to the solve for me—once I figured it out, I had fun trying to guess the other themers. I also found the clues and the entries much chewier and cleverer than Thursdays have been of late, which I really appreciate as well. A word about Ptolemy—this isn’t my field per se, but it’s interesting to note that Ptolemy wasn’t just some ignorant pre-Copernican astronomer who was slavishly confirming to some orthodox philosophy with no scientific basis. In fact Ptolemy created a detailed, mathematically complex scheme for a geocentric theory that really did fit all the available data and plotted the movement of the planets remarkably accurately. It wasn’t just that the planets moved around the earth, he had to create the idea of epicycles—that the planets made minor circular movements in addition to their main orbits around the earth, which explained their occasional retrograde motion—the illusion that they were moving backwards in their orbit compared to the earth. In any case, it was an extremely complex system, and one which stood the test of time for hundreds of years and was consistent with every astronomical observation. So by all means give Copernicus his due, but also give credit to those before him who really tried to make sense of the universe in an intellectually rigorous way as well.
@SP correct about Ptolemy. Just noting also that the polytheistic ancient world lacked orthodoxy. Thinking about the world was not restrictive. Orthodoxy comes later with the spread of monotheism and belief that there is a single divine truth (and a class of interpreters who don’t all agree).
@SP Good tribute to Ptolemy. He was very wrong, but he did almost make the heavens work with a motionless earth. That is quite an achievement. Basically I think what Ptolemy was doing was creating the simplest possible set of motions which would leave the earth motionless and account for the sun, moon, and planets. Why these epicycles and all worked was something I don't think he addressed. Occam's razor cuts a lot out by removing the motionless earth requirement. It flabbergasts me that *to this day* people can't seem to accept that we could be in motion and not "feel" it.
@SP Three cheers for Ptolemy. He was a great astronomer and mathematician of his time. And for those who say he was "very wrong", I'd like to point out that, given the nature of scientific "progress", every great scientist of our time will be "very wrong" when looked at from the standpoint of some future scientist.
Raise your hand if you slapped in PAN for [Go for gold?].
@Lewis Of course! Did you know that the first Gold Rush in the young USA was in north Georgia (centering on Dahlonega)? There was even a mint... The town square has a museum... (Sorry, Cherokees!)
@Lewis My first try was DIG.
@Lewis I actually had RAN, thinking of races.....
@Lewis I had "TAx" ... I think it holds up
This is Joel’s third Times puzzle, and all three have been word playgrounds. If you are a wordplay fan and have not done his first two – (8/28/25 and 5/11/26) – get thee to the archives and get cracking. You will thank me for the tip. Play? Two bits I loved today aside from the mwah theme: • ROE has appeared in the Times puzzle almost 700 times, nearly always given a bland direct clue, but Joel zhuzhed its clue up with the silly fun-to-say “lumpsucker”. Never anything like that in a ROE clue in all Crosslandia before. Bravo! • [Biblical second coming?] for EVE. Even after filling it in from crosses, I still had to think about it, and when I cracked it, I not only blurted a huge aha, but bowed down to the cleverness. This was one of those outings with sticky areas as well as whooshy ones, a combination I love, but above all for me was the pure delight in the wordplay. You are definitely in my radar, Joel, and thank you once again for a splendid outing!
It would have been more fun if Whiskey, Tango, and Foxtrot had somehow been incorporated! IYKYK.
Brilliant and lots of fun. For cluing I liked 'Biblical second coming' and 'took one's breath away'. Nice!
@Federalista I think this is my favorite in the comments.
I thought this was an extremely clever theme, which was opaque to me until nearly the end. I was fortunate enough to get the revealer because I had enough of the short clues at the bottom to see the answer was NATOALPHABET. That helped me get the first part of the answers to the italicized clues, but only later did I see how the NATO letters in the answers meshed with the clues. A nicely put together puzzle that was a treat to untangle. Bonus points for including old friend ENO’s sidekick Robert Fripp in the clue. Fripp is an amazingly eclectic and eccentric musician, whose work with King Crimson is among the best of early prog rock. But he also produced (and added exceptional guitar loops) to the first Roches album. And of course, he’s also a major figure in the ambient field.
@Marshall Walthew Seeing Robert Fripp in the puzzle immediately took me to this collaboration of his with David Sylvian (a song I haven't heard in ages and that I love – Jean The Birdman): <a href="https://youtu.be/g7q7Igv8HrI?is=5remUN7QVMlZoPLE" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/g7q7Igv8HrI?is=5remUN7QVMlZoPLE</a>
I'm inordinately proud that I was able to get DARIEN after only having the D, thanks to remembering that DARIEN was an archaic term for Panama. I learned this a while back while studying Keats's remarkable poem, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer", in which the poet's experience reading the Greek classics is likened to Cortez's first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. Here it is for all you poetry lovers: Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
@The X-Phile I got it from the poem too. (Memorized it just for fun though my junior & senior high schools-- and my grandfather!--had us doing it too.) Although Keats got it wrong. Balboa is the explorer credited with discovering [sic] the Pacific, not Cortez. (Memorizing all those "discoverers" in high school pays off too.) But I guess it didn't scan.
@The X-Phile each time i see the word demesne, i wonder how it’s pronounced
@The X-Phile This reminds me of a book I came upon in high school many moons ago - New Worlds to Conquer by Richard Halliburton. A fascinating account of retracing explorers' steps in Central and South America.
@The X-Phile I'm another one who got Darien from the Keats poem. With all the current hoopla regarding the film, there have been endless discussions about the relative merits of the astonishingly many English translations of the Odyssey. In one of the more useful YouTube videos, the presenter compares several of the more notable ones--including Chapman's--by providing their versions of the first few lines. I'm glad Keats found Chapman so revelatory, but I'm also glad we now have more modern and readable versions available--Fagles, Mendelsohn, and yes, Wilson.
@The X-Phile Years ago, the New York Public Library had a great exhibition on Romantiscisn (“William Wordsworth and the Age of English Romanticism”, 1987 - I looked it up). One of the absolute highlights for me was an autograph copy of "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer". Not a working draft, but a fair copy in Keats own hand with a single correction. "That deep-brow'd Homer" was written "low-browed", with "low" crossed out and "deep" written in. Almost 40 years later, I still remember the thrill I felt reading that emendation. <a href="https://time.com/archive/6711089/art-sharing-the-poets-obsession" target="_blank">https://time.com/archive/6711089/art-sharing-the-poets-obsession</a>/
@The X-Phile I knew it from the Darien Gap, the uncrossable bit before you hit South America
Shouldn't it be the NATO ALFABET? I did LOL when CHARLIE SHEEN appeared. That was fun. Nice puzzle, Joel.
@Vaer it is actually the NATO Phonetic Alphabet even though "A" is spelled "alfa" per NATO. <a href="https://www.nato.int/en/about-us/nato-history/history-by-theme/symbols-of-nato/nato-phonetic-alphabet" target="_blank">https://www.nato.int/en/about-us/nato-history/history-by-theme/symbols-of-nato/nato-phonetic-alphabet</a> However, having spent a career in the military including stints with other NATO militaries, in practice I have seen "A" spelled as "alpha" as well. Officially it is "alfa" per NATO though.
@DP I was kidding around about the spelling.
A very fine puzzle, reminiscent of Wednesday (not Thursday) puzzles from days past. The theme is multilayered and yet handled perfectly. Was not familiar with ambit (though its Latin ancestry was clear enough), but a GOLFRANGE is indeed a g-ambit. The non-thematic fill is also excellent---that NE corner with HARVARD, OPHELIA and PTOLEMY is just glorious. One of the finer puzzle of the year. Solved it without assistance, but took about 27 minutes. ALPHA, CHARLIE and SIERRA came to mind easily enough, but remembering GOLF for G took a bit of time. OLE! and thanks to Mr. Woodford (who even got his given name into a clue.)
@Xword Junkie Agreed. Despite my distaste for this "alphabet" it was one of the best puzzles in a long time.
Whee, I had not just one, but two of those brain cartwheels where the old bean fastens on a wrong thing that is still somehow right. “Do you read me?” NAVEL! The navel gazer, intent on how fascinating he is. I misread “training aids for a lab tech”. TREATS! TREATS? I don’t remember getting treats. Like, a donut every time you successfully troubleshoot something? P.S. good theme! Waiting to see if anyone comes up with extras.
@Cat Lady Margaret I started out with NaVEL too. Exactly your line of reasoning. But you can't fool me about [labs] any more. I know them to be adorable furry beasts with sad eyes, not clinically clean locations for the pursuit of science.
@Cat Lady Margaret As someone whose job is basically trouble-shooting, I like that image. But I guess I'd get fat.....
It's a bit of a stretch, but how about Hark HOTELSAFE
I loved this puzzle. Meaty with a great theme. As the NATO alphabet is designed for oral use, getting hung up on the spelling of alfa seems overly pedantic. Since I learned it orally, it was a while before I learned that alpha was alfa.
For solvers of Pips or the Midi Crossword, or anyone interested in learning more about how our games are made, Games editor Ian Livengood will be answering your questions tomorrow, right here in the Wordplay comments section. Hope to see you there!
Fun fact: Davis CA has some of LONDON's red double decker buses! They're part of the fleer for Unitrans, the university bus system.
Isabeau — so that's where they came from!
Panama’s park - know it or you don’t - I beg to differ. I guessed that “silent upon a peak in Darien” might be in Panama - and I was right!
@Kris H The Darien Gap comes up a lot in reporting on Pan American migration, and that was how I guessed it!
@Kris H I'm so glad to see that others remember the Norton Anthology of English Poetry. I'm always on Team Keats and I fortunately went to a school that forced us to memorize poetry. A lifetime habit for me.
@Kris H I quoted that line to DHubby when I filled in DARIEN (a thrill!) ...and he looked at me like I had two heads. I did not know the park, but that poem has always been with me ever since I first read it... circa 1965.
Here is the original Grammy-winning recording of "Piece of My Heart" by 41D [Gospel singer ERMA Franklin], Aretha Franklin's older sister: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0QAxIKf8G4" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0QAxIKf8G4</a>
@lucky13 Thanks for that link. I was only familiar with Janis Joplin's cover, which is one of my favorite songs, along with Me And Bobby Mcgee. Kris Kristofferson, who co-wrote Me And Bobby Mcgee is rumored to have said after hearing Janis's version of that song, "Now I know how that song is supposed to sound". Don't know if it's true or not, but it makes a great story.
@lucky13 Was a lucky morning for me, to have stumbled upon your link and decide to investigate. Thank you for sharing it. As I usually have something else playing in the background during my puzzle-solving time of the day, it's a rarity when I actually click on a youtube video. It was moving. I will never un-hear it.
Bravo. Nice Thursday workout - took me a bit to catch on, but then was able to tumble the theme answers. Still wasn't 'dog easy,' but managed to work them all out. Oh, and... ABLEBAKER was an answer once in a Friday puzzle from 1971. And.. the clue was "___CHARLIE." I'll leave it at that. ....
Hi Rich, I was looking for you last night, when this puzzle came in lima charlie.
@Rich in Atlanta Bravo??? I thought this one was at *least* an Alpha minus... (Sorry, I simply could not resist.)
Very creative. Nice clues. CHARLIESHEEN was inspired. I filled in from crosses, well before I got to the revealer. I had no idea the connection, but was excited to try and figure it out. My immediate thought was C Luster. which turned out to the correct interpretation. I just didn’t connect it with NATO until later. I’m sure someone will write a nice piece on DARIEN, specifically the Darién gap. Impenetrable. High achievers made me laugh. I literally brought up Brian ENO the other day. Welcome, old friend. Very well executed Thursday methinks. Thank you Joel
@Weak I love that Brian Eno comes up so often in these puzzles.
Interesting theme, some misdirection - not bad, even if my solve time indicates the difficulty level was that of a gentle Wednesday.
27A could have solved to ALFAROMEO If you insist one should spell a phonetic alphabet ’correctly’ (even for this pedant possibly a step too far). A decent Thursday.
Hats off to Joel for making those themers - it's not easy. Best I can do is: Tart ---> TANGODANCE
@Elbridge Gerry I don’t often read comments, so I just need to say as a former “Header” (MHS class of 1982, but first went through Gerry Elementary and lived in spitting distance to Gerry’s house), I appreciate your moniker and location!
Before I fully understood the theme, CHARLIESHEEN as a Cluster seemed apt. Later I had PREZ instead of PRES, which had me wracking my brains for a common term starting with ZULU Nice one!
Fun challenging Thursday. Figuring out the revealer NATO ALPHABET wasn't that big a help to the starred clues because I had two of them before I figured out what it meant and I have never heard of the word "Ambit" before so I had to get that all with crosses. Good cluing overall. Top left was kind of tough. OLDPRO/PRES especially felt like reaches, that was the last square I got. But I'd never heard of HOSEA, that I got entirely with crossings. That area was challenging. Also my first guess for 1D was PASTOR, not RECTOR. But overall, great 'Aha' clues, clues that make no sense at first then make sense when you think about it in a different way.
@Chris I knew of Hosiah? Something like that, but wasn't sure of the spelling, crossers for me on that one as well as Ambit. I looked it up, but have doubts as to whether it will remain in my memory. :p
@Chris And I spent my time trying to figure out how to get WOODFORD into six spaces.
Nice, well balanced Thursday. No ungettable clues running across one another. Took a second to realise the theme, but it's a quick solve after. Well done to the creator and editor!
Fun puzzle. I would have to know the NATOALPHABET to be able to use it in my everyday life. As an alternative, I live for the occasions when I am spelling something on the phone and I get to say, "Z as in xylophone". Never would have gotten DARIEN, and it took me a little while to figure out what went before CALC. Plenty of corrections along the way, but I got there in under my average. Also, as I just SHARED in a reply, enjoy 13D: <a href="https://youtu.be/xe7y7ByOrwQ?si=NkxEiH_jUJ46UBlA" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/xe7y7ByOrwQ?si=NkxEiH_jUJ46UBlA</a>
@Jack McCullough The Band—that definitely came to mind when I filled that in. As sleepy as I was…
@Jack McCullough The "Darién Gap" was much in the news in connection with the route taken by migrants attempting to reach the USA from points in South America. That's what helped me get DARIEN.
Fun solve though it took a bit for the lightbulb to come on. GOLFRANGE was my first theme solve and "ambit" did not resonate with me. Eventually an "aha" moment at SIERRA CLUB and the rest filled in nicely. And after a post-puzzle Google search, I now know the meaning of "ambit". Always a good day when you learn something. 😎
"Joel Woodford’s puzzle comes in loud and clear." Make that lima charlie. Hi, Rich.
Enjoyed it, even if 13 down implanted Taylor Swift in my head the rest of the night.
@Alex M Let's see if I can help you out with that. <a href="https://youtu.be/xe7y7ByOrwQ?si=NkxEiH_jUJ46UBlA" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/xe7y7ByOrwQ?si=NkxEiH_jUJ46UBlA</a>
I had fun with this, really liked a lot of the fill and completed the puzzle but never figured out how Charlie Sheen and the other themers made sense. The constructor's original Ptolemy clue was stellar, shouldn't have been changed.
@Ed You take the first letter of the clue and substitute the NATO alphabet equivalent, then add in a word that's equivalent to the remainder of the clue. So: G ambit = GOLF RANGE
@Ed With you on the eliminated clue for Ptolemy. Clearly superior to what the editors provided. The Great Easening continues. 🤨
Thank you for giving me that aha moment I always anticipate on a Thursday!
Loved this puzzle, and a great feeling when the theme finally clicked - genuinely satisfying. Thanks Joel!
Very nice puzzle. I got ALPHA MALE from the crosses, but still didn't understand until I got the revealer at 65-Across. Then I rued the fact that my knowledge of the NATO alphabet isn't all it should be. I knew that C was CHARLIE, thanks to Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, and that cleared up my confusion at 18-Across. But G and S wouldn't come to me. But that made for a more puzzling puzzle, which is a very good thing in my book! Thanks, Joel Woodford, for an excellent Thursday puzzle!
@The X-Phile I got a bit hung up because I tried "alfa" - which is sometimes used in the NATO alphabet.
I'm probably alone in this, but whenever I think about the NATO alphabet, I think of the scene in an old Jack Nicholson movie, "The Last Detail", in which Randy Quaid is trying to escape from his navy captors taking him to jail, and signals to them in semaphore: BRAVO YANKEE, BRAVO YANKEE. By-by!" <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7eCz10vbZI" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7eCz10vbZI</a>
Quick. Which of these is not like the others? I'll give you a hint: "I waxed and buffed my car today, trying to give it a lovely CHARLIE SHEEN." See? All the other theme answers also adhere to the Cryptic-style trick, but none of the others involve a pun. As Cryptic-style answers go, the others are pretty straightforward once you've figured out the trick. CHARLIE SHEEN threw me off because it was first -- and I was expecting the names of famous people in all the answers. I was very, very happy when it wasn't that. Nor did I need to know a thing about the NATO ALPHABET; I just treated the puzzle like a Cryptic. I've done zillions of those, I always enjoy them, and compared with those, this one was easy. For one thing, all the letters in this puzzle are checked. And for those of you who don't do Cryptics, this will be good practice. Enough Thursdays like this one and soon you'll be an OLD PRO. For me, the biggest trick in this puzzle was TAN instead of PAN at 21A. And I originally had SNOOTY instead of SNOTTY, preventing me from seeing NATO ALPHABET sooner. Is SIERRA CLUB a "team"? I don't think this puzzle is scrupulously fair, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Nancy, CLUB = team. S = SIERRA in the NATO alphabet. (Or is that alfabet?)
rarely do i think that 1 square makes the whole puzzle, but the first square of 21A reeeaaally tickled me while doing my fly-specking and correcting the P i originally put there! a double misdirect.
Fun puzzle! After this weekends dust-up about accepting that different generations will be more familar with certain words, I wanted to comment on why puzzles can be delightful. For one, "mea culpa" though common enough, took me back to my high school Latin classes and reading Horace - I was not good at translating so I had to memorize thirty of his poems. I was born in 1960, so the NATO alphabet has been in the air throughout my life, especially during the Cold War. I still had to work for Charlie and Sierra though. And when it comes to that kind of knowledge, or who John Foster Dulles is, I see that everything is flux and how my understanding of the world is passing. Not for the worse, though I have lived in interesting times. I teach high school in The Bronx, so this puzzle also brought up for me my immigrant students from Kosovo and their lives, and my efforts to teach them science such as the march of human understanding from ancients through Ptolemy(and how to spell that) and beyond. It brought me back to Bob Ross who I believe painted pictures on PBS back in the day? And there was the delight of the solve, the tricky clues - "lets" which I thought meant lets do this, "shark's mark" which only came to me after several crosses, or talk radio which I only hear leaning right. Land of elephants was tricky, thinking of Africa, until I remembered a childhood visit to The Bronx Zoo where I saw a smaller Asian elephant. Now I'm going to look for Mike's puns.
"... or talk radio which I only hear leaning right." Dave, Try WBAI.
@Dave Absolutely. The figure I found from 2007 is 91% "conservative" talk radio, which seems pretty low and has certainly grown since then with the disappearance of the Air America experiment in 2010. This is a prime case of bothsidesism when there is effectively just the one side, unfortunately. At lease there are podcasts and formerly-public radio.
@Dave Conservative talk radio is commercially viable because it provides an alternative to what's constantly spoon fed by the mainstream media. There's no similar itch to be scratched for the other side.
Awesome Wednesday puzzle!
TIL AMBIT. Never heard of it before.
With apologies - one late puzzle find. This one just all up my alley, but I was so surprised to come across it. Anyway... I can't remember if I ever mentioned this before but my company in Vietnam was generally referred to as "hard luck alpha," as we always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyway... a Tuesday from April 27, 1976 by Sidney L. Robbins. Two answers in that one (not related to each other): HARDLUCK ALPHA Hmmm... Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=4/27/1976&h=20a" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=4/27/1976&h=20a</a> ....
Rich, Cigarettes can be hazardous to your health.
This one made me work, but it was fun and rewarding. I only got half the theme til I read the column afterwards. I had to decide between snobby and snotty but I agree with whoever said snooty is even better. Thanks!
@Steve L Came here to say that. NATO alphabet uses alfa, not alpha
@Steve L Since it's a phonetic alphabet, it hardly matters. I have looked at printouts of the NATO alphabet and found it both ways.
@Steve L It's the NATO Alfabette, so...