| 100% | BLED | 4 | What I always did to the car brakes after changing the fluid in those days when I was a DIY car guy (I no longer am!) |
| 30% | NODOFF | 6 | At midnight when I'm still writing clues for the puzzle that absolutely has to be in Florida by 8:00 am, I have a tendency to do this |
| 29% | LAP | 3 | What a runner will do to another when they're more than 400 m ahead in the 5,000 m |
| 28% | COAL | 4 | ___ car, red train card in the board game "Ticket to Ride" that is named after a fossil fuel |
| 27% | SPOT | 4 | Parking ___, place in the car lot where you might be parked, and something that seems impossible to find when you're in a rush |
| 27% | WORKINGMYWAYBACKTOU | 19 | What I am doing when spelling out six long answers in this puzzle? |
| 27% | STORY | 5 | “I’ve always known when I start a ___ what the last line is”: Amy Hempel |
| 27% | RECAP | 5 | What my wife always demands that I do after using the toothpaste |
| 27% | MARCHING | 8 | When the saints go __ in, I want to be in that number |
| 26% | DIE | 3 | What a laptop battery will do in the long run? |
| 26% | ROOT | 4 | When tripled, what to do for the home team in “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” |
| 26% | MEMORY | 6 | Answer to the riddle "I form in an instant and last a lifetime. What am I?" |
| 26% | OIL | 3 | Liquid that needs to be changed regularly in a car |
| 25% | DELOREAN | 8 | DMC ___, car model that was modified into a time machine in "Back to the Future" |
| 25% | MOVEDOVER | 9 | Change a map of southern England? … or, when parsed differently, what you need to do to the answers to the starred clues |
| 25% | STAINEDINSTEAD | 14 | What was done to the back deck this time after the fiasco a few years ago with the paint and the raccoon? |
| 25% | PITS | 4 | "If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries What Am I Doing in the ___?" (Erma Bombeck book) |
| 25% | ERMA | 4 | "If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?" writer Bombeck |
| 25% | RUTH | 4 | Book that begins "In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land" |
| 25% | ERMA | 4 | Bombeck who wrote If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? |
| 25% | TOW | 3 | What you would do to a car that has broken down |
| 24% | REEDIT | 6 | What you might have to do when you find your earth-shattering column on dandelions is 372 words too long for the space allowed |
| 24% | DEUCESWILD | 10 | Card game declaration, and a hint to what can be found in the four other longest answers |
| 24% | BACK | 4 | "It's no use to go ___ to yesterday because I was a different person then," quote from the children's book "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" |
| 24% | CARBONOFFSETS | 13 | They fund projects that remove a gas from the atmosphere, which is a hint to what's happening in four Across answers |
| 24% | SNEEZED | 7 | What Fred Ott did in the first movie to be copyrighted |
| 24% | LAW | 3 | What the bill wants to be, in "I'm Just a Bill" |
| 24% | STIRUPDRAMA | 11 | Create tension in a group, and a direction that was followed when forming the answer to each starred clue? |
| 24% | HERO | 4 | *Person who saves the day... and a word you may use to describe those being celebrated in this puzzle |
| 23% | GATE | 4 | Let's go to the 1930s! What will you see here? The Golden ___ Bridge, landmark in San Francisco that you can see after 1937 |