January 10, 2026

Title: SHIPWRECKS

Constructor: Catherine Cetta

Editor: Amanda Rafkin

Theme synopsis:

• WAVES HI (20A: Greets with a gesture) and PET DOOR (22A: Entrance with a flap)
• SHEESH (31A: "Good grief!") and IPAD APPS (34A: Procreate and Calculator Pro+)
• HOT SEATS (49A: Tough spots) and HIP-HOP (51A: Genre for Cardi B)
• SHIPWRECKS (62A: Common exploration sites for scuba divers ... and what can be found in rows 4, 7 and 10 of this crossword)

SHIPWRECKS: The word SHIP is found broken apart (i.e. wrecked) and spanning two entries in rows 4, 7, and 10 of the grid: WAVES HI / PET DOOR, SHEESH / IPAD APPS, and HOT SEATS / HIP-HOP.

Random thoughts and interesting things:

• BEAST (4A: He sings "If I Can't Love Her" about Belle) "If I Can't Love Her" is a song written for the 1994 musical Beauty and the BEAST, which is a stage adaptation of the 1991 animated movie of the same name. The BEAST sings the song after he scares Belle away from the castle. On the cast album for the musical, the song is sung by Terrence Mann, who originated the role of the BEAST on Broadway.
• TILE (13A: Azul or Carcassonne) Azul and Carcassonne are TILE-based board games. In Azul, players collect sets of similarly colored TILES to place on their boards. The game's title is the Spanish and Portuguese word for "blue." In Carcassonne, players draw and place TILEs representing the landscape of southern France. Fun fact: Carcassonne, which was first released in 2000, was the board game that introduced the word "meeple" (a portmanteau of "my" and "people") to refer to player tokens.
• ARAB (16A: Many a keffiyeh wearer) The keffiyeh is a traditional headdress worn by men in parts of the Middle East. It is fashioned from a square scarf, and a head cord is sometimes used to keep it in place. The keffiyeh is worn by ARABs, as well as other ethnic groups including Kurds and Yazidis.
• PET DOOR (22A: Entrance with a flap) and CAT (64D: Tortoiseshell or tabby, e.g.) My CAT, Willow is neither a tortoiseshell or a tabby. (She's a calico.) And she doesn't have a PET DOOR (being strictly an indoor CAT). However, she's delighted with the CAT content in this puzzle.

• FUN (30A: "Been number one, but I never had two / And I can't have ___ if I can't have you") The song "Elizabeth Taylor" is from Taylor Swift's 2025 album, The Life of a Showgirl. The song contains the lyrics, "Been number one, but I never had two / And I can't have FUN if I can't have you."
• IPAD APPS (34A: Procreate and Calculator Pro+) Procreate is an IPAD APP for graphic editing and digital painting. As one might expect from the name, the IPAD APP Calculator Pro+ is a calculator app. Interestingly, there's also an Android APP called Calculator Pro+, which masquerades as a calculator but is a privacy APP that hides certain messages. 
• HIP-HOP (51A: Genre for Cardi B) When Cardi B released her 2017 song "Bodak Yellow," it reached the top of Billboard's Hot 100 chart. Cardi B was the second female HIP-HOP artist to reach the top of the charts with a solo song; the first was Lauryn Hill with "Doo-Wop (That Thing)" in 1998. 
• ICE (53A: The "I" in the first-aid acronym RICE) RICE is an acronym used to remember the treatment regimen for soft tissue injuries: rest, ICE, compression, and elevation.
• ANNE (67A: Fiction writer Tyler) ANNE Tyler's novel Breathing Lessons won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1989. She is also the author of Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982) and The Accidental Tourist (1985). ANNE Tyler has written over 25 novels as well as short stories. 
• RERUN (68A: Any "Star Trek: TNG" episode, now) The TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) originally aired from 1987-1994, which means any episode airing now is a RERUN.
• EL NINO (5D: Pacific weather phenomenon) EL NIÑO is a weather pattern associated with warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. The weather phenomenon associated with cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures is referred to as La Niña. Both EL NIÑO and La Niña can have global impacts on weather.
• OREOS (10D: Cookies commonly seen in crosswords) Oh hello, crossword friend OREOS.
• BARON (11D: The Red ___ (Snoopy's nemesis)) In the Peanuts comics, one of Snoopy's alter egos is a World War I flying ace, who is the archenemy of the German flying ace the Red BARON. During Snoopy's fantasies about flying, his "Sopwith Camel" fighter biplane (disguised as his doghouse) is consistently shot down by the Red BARON. "Someday I'll get you, Red BARON!"
• ARI (26D: NPR host Shapiro) ARI Shapiro has been one of the hosts of NPR's podcast All Things Considered since 2015. Since 2020, he has also co-hosted the NPR podcast Consider This. ARI Shapiro's memoir, published in 2023, is titled The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening. My husband and I listened to the audiobook of The Best Strangers in the World (read by ARI Shapiro) on a road trip, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Neither of us were really familiar with ARI Shapiro before we listened. We discovered he is a talented storyteller.
• ASK SIRI (47D: "Maybe your iPhone can answer that") This answer had me thinking about the time I wrote about discovering that if you ASK SIRI, "Why are fire trucks red?" you will get interesting answers (and a different answer each time you ask). Sadly, when I tried to ASK SIRI, "Why are fire trucks red?" while I was writing this, I discovered this no longer works because Apple has integrated SIRI with Chat GPT, and I refuse to give it permission to do so because I'm stubborn and don't like all the energy required to power AI. Ah well, the main think I ASK SIRI to do is to set a timer for me when I'm cooking – no AI needed! Anyway, I digress... Back to the puzzle!

This is a really interesting theme. It's also a rare instance of a USA Today puzzle that uses a revealer (an answer that explains the theme). The title had me looking for the word SHIP. I wondered about a hidden anagram theme, but that didn't turn out to be the case. I had already spotted the word SHIP spanning some of the answers when I encountered the revealer, which then confirmed my suspicions. I did pause for a bit before entering the answer SHIPWRECKS, because I didn't expect the title to be in the grid. I wonder if this would have worked with a different title to avoid that confusion. At any rate, it's a clever idea and I enjoyed discovering the SHIPWRECKS. Thank you, Catherine, for this creative puzzle.