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There’s Nothing but Love for Tennis Player Clues

With the U.S. Open finishing, we take a look at the tennis names that fill our puzzles.

The U.S. Open winds up today, and it’s been a good one, for both tennis fans and crossword fans alike.

The men's side has mostly seen the big guns emerge on top -- DJOKOVIC, ZVEREV, and MEDVEDEV all made it to the semifinals, with names too long and Scrabbly to be of much use in puzzles. My horses in the race were #8 seed Casper RUUD (loving those double-U's), 23-year-old Frenchman UGO Humbert, and Germany's Oscar OTTE. None got very far, though.

The women's side had much more crossword-friendly action: ARYNA Sabalenka made it to the semifinals; not quite enough to make her puzzleworthy yet, but it's a start. ELINA Svitova really needs to win a major sometime, as we don't really have a good Elina yet and it'd be extremely useful with its alternating vowels and consonants.

Couldn't ask for much more from yesterday's final, though, where EMMA Raducanu and LEYLAH Fernandez squared off. Always nice to have another Emma for clues, and LEYLAH is handy enough that crossword writer Ben Tausig tweeted himself adding her name to his wordlist:

Any U.S. Open wordplay you'd like to share? Tweet it to #beastxword so the whole stadium can see.

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