Rung #39 — 2026-07-08

The answer was:

PEANUT

The clue ladder, cryptic to obvious:

5 pts: I flower in the open sun, then bury my own young underground to ripen in the dark.
4 pts: I hail from one of the plant kingdom's largest families, and I conjure my own fertilizer straight out of thin air.
3 pts: A single scientist found three hundred uses for me — ink, dye, shampoo — and weaned the South off cotton.
2 pts: I'm crushed into cooking oil, simmered soft in a Southern pot, or ground into a thick, rich spread.
1 pts: A ballpark crowd sings for me by the bag, an elephant reaches for me, and a monocled cartoon is my face.

Peanuts aren't nuts — they're legumes, cousins of peas and beans, and they grow underground.