The edition of Saturday, September 5, 2026

The Correct Form

Eight Signatures. Everyone Was Where They Said. One Entry Still Cannot Have Happened.

The last two puzzles failed on geography and on a clock. This one has nobody in the wrong city and nobody moving faster than an aeroplane, and one entry is impossible anyway.

Seven Signatures. Two Are Impossible. One Of Them Is Only The Clock.

A reader broke last week's puzzle in fourteen minutes and then found a flaw the setter had not intended. This one states where every registry stands, because that was the flaw.

A Trawler Crew Watched Something 27 Metres Long For 41 Minutes. It Never Blew.

Nineteen men on a krill trawler watched a white object the length of a blue whale lie on the surface of the Southern Ocean without breathing once. The bridge log, four thermal stills and the water temperature are printed here.

162,000 Jobs Surprised The Market At 8:30. Seven Accounts Bought Dollars At 8:23.

Seven accounts bought dollars six minutes before Friday's jobs number and were paid when it surprised. They have been on the right side of every release for fourteen months. The odds of that by chance are one in 16,384.

The UN Gave Africa Its Size Back. Nine Men Voted It Away In 1923.

A wall map making Africa the size of Greenland hung in classrooms for a century, and a committee chose it knowing that. Its minute book records the vote, 9 to 2, and the reason: show the world as it is held.

Kansas Is Planting A Grain That Needs No Seed. Sumer Ploughed It Under.

Farmers in Kansas are planting grain that comes back each year without seed, because the weather has turned. A quota tablet from Ur records one field doing that in 2040 BCE, and the order that ended it: plough, sow barley, count.