The answer is SUMUP, five letters. The grid runs the phrase sum up together, and it is what most setters want when they mean Recap as a verb. If the clue wants a noun, try SUMMARY at seven or SYNOPSIS at eight, and if nothing fits, test RESEAL, which reads the clue as re-cap.
Recap is short for a much longer word
In the summary sense, recap is a clipped form of recapitulate, and the short version was in use by 1907. Recapitulate itself entered English in the 1560s from Late Latin recapitulare, to go over the main points of a thing again. The literal meaning is to restate by heads or chapters. At the center sits capitulum, a little head, the diminutive of caput, head, which in writing also meant a heading or a division of a text. To recapitulate, then, is to walk back through the headings. The same little head gave English chapter, by way of Old French, and capitulate, which in the 1590s meant to draw up a document under headings. Because such documents were so often terms of surrender, capitulate had come to mean yielding on stated terms by the 1680s.
That history explains why SUMUP is such a close fit. To sum up is to run back over the heads of the matter, and grids treat the two as a matched pair. Recap has itself been the answer to the clues “Sum up” and “Summary” in published puzzles, so the relationship runs in both directions, and it pays to recognize the pairing whichever side of it you are handed. Television and sports coverage lean on the noun, a recap of an episode or a game, and that may be the sense you bring to the puzzle, but the grid is just as happy with the verb.
The cap sense came first
The literal reading is older than the summary. Recap was in use by 1856 meaning to put a cap on something again, originally a cartridge. By the 1920s it had a garage meaning too: to put a new strip of rubber on the tread of a worn tire, and a recapped tire was itself being called a recap by 1939. The same job is also called retreading, a word on record since 1908, and neither term has anything to do with meetings or television.
That older sense is why RESEAL is on record as a six letter answer. When RESEAL is the fill, the setter has read the clue as re-cap, putting a lid or cap back on, and the summary meaning is a decoy. If the five and seven letter options fight your crossings, test that reading before you start doubting the crossing entries.
Summary fills from five squares to eight
| Letters | Answer | When it fits |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | SUMUP | The verb reading and the default |
| 5 | BRIEF | A noun, a short account |
| 6 | RESEAL | The literal reading, a cap put back on |
| 7 | SUMMARY | The plain noun |
| 8 | SYNOPSIS | A noun, often for a plot or a book |
SUMUP or BRIEF at five squares
Five squares hold two answers that play different grammatical roles, and the single word Recap gives no hint whether it wants the action or the thing. SUMUP is the verb, and BRIEF is the noun, a short account of something longer. Helpfully, SUMUP and BRIEF never agree on a square: S, U, M, U, P against B, R, I, E, F. Any single crossing settles it, so a U in the second square means SUMUP and an R there means BRIEF. Longer slots are easier still, because SUMMARY and SYNOPSIS have different lengths and never compete for the same space.
The recap inside a piece of music
Classical music gives the full word a technical home. Sonata form, also called first movement form, has three main sections: an exposition, a development and a recapitulation. The recapitulation is not a straight repeat. It is an altered return of the exposition, and the second group of themes comes back in the home key rather than in the contrasting key it used the first time. That is a fair model for a good recap of anything, the same main points brought back and settled rather than simply played again.
