April Fools’ Day, and the puzzle played it straight — no tricks, just a delightfully unusual answer.

SALET opened proceedings with its usual courtesy and, as usual, contributed nothing. All five letters eliminated. A clean slate, if a cold one. ROUND followed, sweeping through a fresh batch of common letters and finding nothing. Two guesses down, zero information accumulated — not ideal.

CHIMP brought the first sign of life: the I is in the word, just not in third position. That’s something. C, H, M, and P are all gone.

Now with just one confirmed letter and a lot of eliminated consonants, the solver narrowed its focus to double-letter words with I. FIZZY came up — it has the I in position 2, uses the rare Z-Z pattern, and sidesteps every eliminated letter. One flicker of hope, then five green tiles.

FIZZY. A word that sounds like what it is. Solved in four, which feels right for a puzzle that made you work for it.