The answer is SLATE, five letters. Slate works whether the clue is a noun, a list of what is coming up, or a verb, to set something for a date, so it deserves the first pencil mark. Four squares point to PLAN, BOOK or SLOT, and six to AGENDA or ROSTER.
Why SLATE covers both readings
A one word clue like this can be a thing or an action, and most answers only cover one of them. AGENDA and TIMETABLE are nouns. BOOK and ARRANGE are verbs. SLATE is both, which is why it earns the top spot. The noun meant a list of candidates drawn up by party managers by 1842, and the verb meant to propose or schedule by 1883, after an earlier sense of to nominate. Both come from writing on a slate board, where a name could be chalked up and wiped off again. The same board gave us clean slate, a picture taken from tavern accounts chalked up for customers.
The verb sense is the one American readers meet every day, in headlines about films slated for release or votes slated for next week. Grids use it the same way: “Put on the schedule” has been answered with both SLATE and SLOT. With only four squares, look at the opening letter: PLAN starts with P, BOOK with B, SLOT with S and ROTA with R. A crossing in that opening square picks the answer for you, and the rest of the word will fall into place without any guessing.
Both words began as splinters
Schedule and slate come from different languages but the same idea. Schedule traces to Late Latin schedula, a strip of paper, the diminutive of scheda, one of the strips that made up a sheet of papyrus. Behind that sits the Greek skhide, a splinter, from a verb meaning to split, the same verb behind schism. In late fourteenth-century English, a schedule was a ticket or label, a slip of paper with writing on it. Slate comes from Old French esclat, a split piece or splinter, because the rock splits easily into thin plates. The paperwork sense survives in the lettered schedules attached to a federal tax return, and the meaning of a printed timetable arrived with the railways by 1863.
Why Americans say sked
The modern spelling was regular by the middle of the seventeenth century, but the sound took longer to settle. For centuries English speakers said something close to sed-yul. The British shed-yul came in under French influence, while the American sked-yul follows the practice of Webster, based on the Greek original. None of that changes a grid entry, but it is a neat reminder that one clue can draw SLATE in one puzzle and ROTA, a British and Irish word, in another.
Planning words for every slot size
| Letters | Answer | When it fits |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | PLAN | Verb or noun, the general sense |
| 4 | BOOK | Verb, reserving a date |
| 4 | SLOT | Verb, fitting something into a gap |
| 4 | ROTA | British grids, a duty list |
| 5 | SLATE | The default, noun or verb |
| 6 | AGENDA | Noun, items for a meeting |
| 6 | ROSTER | Noun, names with assigned turns |
| 6 | LINEUP | Noun, the running order |
| 7 | ARRANGE | Verb, the longer form |
| 7 | ROUTINE | Noun, a regular pattern |
| 8 | TIMELINE | Noun, dates in sequence |
| 9 | TIMETABLE | Noun, transport or school hours |
ROTA, ROSTER and AGENDA have odd pasts
Three of the nouns carry surprising histories. ROTA, a British and Irish word for a schedule that shares a task among people in turn, is Latin for wheel, a fair picture of duties coming back around. ROSTER was borrowed from Dutch rooster, a gridiron as well as a table or list, which ties it to the verb roast. AGENDA is Latin for things to be done, and it was a theological term before it came to mean the business of a meeting by 1882. Its singular, AGENDUM, has appeared as a seven letter answer to this clue, so it is worth a try if AGENDA leaves one square empty. AGENDA also has a Spanish cousin. Hacienda comes from Latin facienda, which likewise meant things to be done, and the change from f to h is typical of how Spanish developed from Latin.
