| CANADIANS | The nine theme celebrities, by birth |
| DOCUMENTARIES | What the nine theme answers are anagrams of |
| SPACEFORCE | New government agency pushed by the White House in recent weeks -- or, collectively, what this puzzle's four theme celebrities might be called |
| FANMAIL | Correspondence sent to celebrities by their admirers: 2 wds. |
| EXCEL | You vex celebrities by showing a way to surpass them (5) |
| HALLOWEEN | Day on which each of our five theme celebrities was born |
| VET | Word appearing in all nine theme answers |
| LPS | Records "broken" in this puzzle's nine theme answers |
| PRECINCT | The "Nine-Nine" of TV's "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" |
| FIFA | Org. staging the Women's World Cup over the next few weeks in France; you can find four of the nine stadium locations in the circled letters |
| OTHELLO | Disc-flipping board game hinted at by a word ladder formed by the answers to the nine starred clues |
| FORMATION | Following the nine black squares in the center of the grid, a hint to five pairs of answers in this |
| ENNEAD | From the collective name for the nine deities in Egyptian mythology including Atum, Osiris and Set, a group of nine (6) |
| FLIPFLOPS | Questionable political moves suggested by the answers to the nine starred clues |
| AMUSED | Held the attention of one of the nine sister goddesses in the commercial |
| PETER | With the valet Bunter, Dorothy Sayers' amateur sleuth character Lord Wimsey who participates in a nine-hour change-ringing session in The Nine Tailors (5) |
| TOLKIEN | Author and philologist whose "Tea Club and Barrovian Society" allegiance during his school days inspired the nine-member Fellowship in his The Lord of the Rings novel (7) |
| THRONE | An angel of the third of the nine orders into which the angels are traditionally divided in medieval angelology |
| ERATO | From the Greek for "lovely" or "desired", one of the nine Muses of the arts and sciences, who specifically presided over love poetry (5) |
| TEN | Card between the nine and the jack |
