by Ross Trudeau

[.puz][PDF][Solution] Difficulty: 3.5/5

Greetings from the Saranac Lake, New York Winter Carnival! For the second consecutive year, Jessie and I have driven up into the Adirondacks to enjoy some frigid revelry in the little mountain town where my dad was born and raised. Last year we weren’t ready for just how lit the party was–they don’t call it carnival for nothing, turns out! But this year, gamely accompanied by Keely and Parker, we were ready! (See photos below; the theme this year is “Roman Around Carnival.”)

My thanks to this week’s test solvers Jimmy, Kyle, and Radhika! I appreciate you! Thoughts and spoilers for “Cursewords Live!” below…

Die-hards of the Cursewords Live Twitch stream will recognize this concept as something we mucked about with as a group about a year and a half ago. I think *that* version used even more opaque !@#@&^#% cluing angles, which is definitely *funnier,* but also probably a skosh harder than indicating the theme answer content via a bit of relevant punctuation.

Honestly, this is one of those puzzles that I toyed with sending to Will Shortz on the tiny, minuscule chance that he’d decide, yeah, hey, let’s get a little weird. But in the end I decided against it; this one just felt too much like a blog puzzle.

Happy solving, friends!

-R