Lisa becomes a Crossword Puzzle master and Homer bets money on her competitions to make up for revenue lost from his couples' break-up company.
Tropes:
- Armor-Piercing Question: When Marge voices disapproval of Homer's break-up service, she asks him, "What would happen if there was someone who could break us up every time I had my doubts about you?" It's after this that Homer ends his business.
- Big "NO!": Homer's response to Lisa changing her last name to "Bouvier."
- Big "YES!": Homer's response to buying band candy.
- Comically Small Bribe: When Bart and Lisa's lemonade stand is about to be shut down for not having a proper license, Bart drops some cents to bribe the inspector. It obviously fails.
- Contrived Coincidence: Homer, Marge, Bart, and Maggie have shirts with the letters to spell Lisa's name and accidentally spell "Ilsa" when Lisa is playing against a rival who goes by that name.
- Creepy Child: When Lisa finds out that Homer bet against her, he asks if she's mad. Lisa responds in an eerily cold tone "No...I'm not mad."
- Disowned Parent: Lisa disowns Homer after finding out he had bet against her in a crossword tournament. She goes as far as to change her last name from Simpson to Bouvier.
- Everyone Has Standards: Homer finds the bartender quite judgmental for taking semi-illegal bets when he shames him for taking a bet against his daughter.
- Hidden Depths: Gil of all people turns out to be very good at crosswords.
- Lemonade Stand Plot: In this episode, Bart and Lisa start their own lemonade stand before the blue-haired Lawyer shows up and forces them to apply for a vendor's license, where Lisa solves a crossword puzzle for the manager, resulting in her becoming obsessed with crossword puzzles and the lemonade stand plot being completely discarded.
- Nom de Mom: When Homer bets against Lisa, it hurts her feelings to the point she decides to use her mother's maiden name out of hatred for him.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: At first, Gil appears hopeless at solving his crossword, spreading Qs in arbitrary squares, and fumbling his glasses. However, the fact that he is in the finals against Lisa should be a strong hint that it is simply a ruse to distract Lisa from winning.
- Obituary Montage: One of the three musical montagues is about honoring the words that were taken out of the dictionary, with "Fanfare for the Common Man" playing in the background.
- Proxy Breakup: Homer does this for a number of people in Springfield.
- Relationship Revolving Door: At some point Edna and Seymour apparently got back together, which we only find out about when Edna is in the process of dumping him again, a task she finally leaves to Homer. This time Seymour's the one who wants to get married.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: A very rare instance with Gil actually succeeding at something, at the cost of him looking like a Jerkass to a child-like Lisa.
- Tranquil Fury: When Homer tells Lisa that he has been betting against her, her initial response is a calm, almost stoic expression that goes on for several scenes. Even though she states she's not angry every time Homer asks her.
- Truth in Television: A child's lemonade stand getting shut down for not having a vendor's licence (despite the child not being legally old enough to obtain one) might sound like an overreaction and/or the Blue Haired Lawyer being his usual self. It has, in fact, happened in real life
. - You're Not My Father: When Lisa finds out that Homer betted against her, she disowns him. Unlike in "Lisa's Pony" and "The Dad Who Knew Too Little", where she was just angry but eventually forgives Homer, she takes her mother's surname to show that she officially hates him on par with her aunts.
