Smile: It's time to do the crossword! This week's puzzle was constructed by Erik Agard and Kelsey Dixon, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Kelsey is a crossword editor for The Atlantic (magazine). Erik is a crossword editor who has been in the Atlantic (ocean). The tallest person whose hand Erik has ever shaken is Ralph Nader, who is 6-foot-4, but he was sitting down. Kelsey has shaken hands with Artis Gilmore, who is 7-foot-2, and he was standing up! They hope you enjoy this puzzle however you feel most comfortable!  Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX, r ..read more

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — I chuckled when I saw the words printed on the giveaway T-shirts at Finals Game 2 in New York on Sunday afternoon: “NOT DONE YET.” A kinder reading goes that all contenders think like this, no matter their situation. In the shadow of a Game 1 win, those words might have projected a noble kind of focus. We won’t rest on our regular-season laurels. Job’s not finished. Eyes on the prize. Giveaway shirt production lead times are probably not such that the Liberty ordered thousands of these to cope, anyway. But the shirts took on a slightly grimmer, funnier meaning i ..read more

BERLIN — My toenail ripped five miles ago and the pain is overwhelming. The looming dark skies make good on their threat as rain begins to sprinkle. The wind picks up. My heart quickens. I am in the middle of every rollerblader’s nightmare. All around, skaters skid and slow for fear of falling or colliding. A few feet ahead of me, a far-too chipper man in a white helmet races up to a woman as she cautiously makes her way down the road, her legs shaking harder with every glide ..read more

The Jacksonville Jaguars are on a precipice. Or maybe some sort of bluff or enlarged dune. Definitely not a cliff of any kind. The Greatest Show in Teal continued in London on Sunday and the Jaguars were decimated by the Bears to the tune of 35-16. Afterwards head coach Doug Pederson said his 1-5 team was on the verge of something. Greatness? Doom? "We're on a slippery slope, or right on the cusp of that slope," Pederson said. "At some point we've got to [say] enough is enough, and you've got to have enough pride and figure out a way ..read more

On Saturday, in three separate college football games, I saw a personal record three onside kicks recovered by the kicking team. Our once-beautiful and vibrant (OK, maybe it was never beautiful or vibrant) onside kick culture has suffered some real blows in the last year. The NFL effectively banned surprise onside kicks with its new kickoff rule, which allows onside kicks only in the fourth quarter and also requires the kicking team to declare they are onside kicking. But yesterday, these guys kept the culture alive. Let's consider their onside kick strategies: 1. Rocket It Right Off The Other ..read more

The challenge of pitching is to stay unknowable—to keep hitters guessing, to never be timed up or figured out. By the end of the Tigers-Guardians American League Divisional Series, which featured a considerable number of relief innings even by the standards of postseason baseball, it did feel like these teams, who had met 13 times already in the regular season, were each becoming quite familiar with the other. The resulting sights could be something unfamiliar to fans: Detroit’s Beau Brieske, who hadn’t given up a home run off his fastball all season, serving up a go-ahead meatball to David Fr ..read more

The Lynx were down 15 points with five minutes left to play, a deficit from which no team had ever overcome in the Finals. But a blend of tactical changes and clutch plays erased the Liberty's lead—and my memories of it ..read more

Earlier this week, the Sun did its big one, producing the largest solar flare in nearly two decades. In its aftermath, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a severe geomagnetic storm watch for Thursday and Friday. This storm could not only temporarily disrupt power and radio signals, but also trigger stellar spectacles across the world known as aurora borealis. Last night, as I traversed the streets of Brooklyn, photographers worldwide turned their eyes to sky ..read more

Standing in front of Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawings, I felt my body go all fuzzy. My eyes followed the precise lines that crossed each other again and again, each on its own predetermined path but also existing as a component of the whole. Humble straight lines drawn in pencil or crayon, multiplied to such a dizzying degree that when you stand back, they blend together into a wiggling mass that comes into and out of focus like an optical illusion. I wanted to run my fingers over the lines; I imagined I would be able to feel the ridges they made in the wall, the way my handwriting does in my notebo ..read more

Major League Baseball has been broadcast regularly on television in North America for more than 70 years. By now, you figure it could be done pretty well. This is because humans tend to get better at things through repetition. You give me enough chances to learn and refine the doing of something, even something that involves wires and buttons and so forth, and I am going to be way better at the thing after a few decades at it. Recently I replaced my home's wireless router, all by myself! From the accumulated experience of having occasionally replaced routers over the years, now you can just ha ..read more