Home for the holidays! It’s Thanksgiving here and the house smells of baking pies and other wonderful things. Having a Thanksgiving eve early dinner with out-of-town friends so need to knock this out and have it posted in time. Here we go…
- Name: A Man of the Cloth
- Grid size: 15×15
- Number of entries: 74
- Difficulty: Medium (my solve time: 7:10)
I was curious when I saw the title, wondering if the theme would be about some cleric – maybe St. Francis or a Benedictine monk. But of course, it wasn’t that straightforward, and it took getting a couple of the themers before I got it. The themers are all common phrases clued punnily to make them describe a tailor:
- 20A: [Tailor’s reply to a complaining customer?]: SUIT YOURSELF – Yeh, if you’re going to complain to me about it, you can just go make your own.
- 27A: [Tailor’s remark about scissor snips?]: CUTTING REMARKS – Now if you make snide comments about paper cutting art (which I just learned is technically “scherenschnitte“), those would be doubly cutting remarks..
- 42A: [What the hesitant tailor did when shortening pants?]: HEMMED AND HAWED – According to this site “hem” comes from an imitation of the sound of throat clearing, and “haw” is “related to the term haw-haw, which references a haughty British accent.” It, not surprisingly, is of American origin.
- 50A: [Female tailor?]: MATERIAL GIRL – Of course the first thing that comes to my mind is this video. Very clever clue.
I had an easier time with this one than I did last week, but still found it a bit challenging. It took me over a minute to find the error I had at 13D/19A. I had the tense wrong for 19A, and didn’t catch that 13D didn’t make sense as a name until I took a second look at it. Otherwise I solved as I knew things and ended up meandering around the grid, leaving a few blanks in NW, E, and NW to fill in. I initially thought my error was in SW as I have no idea who 53D is, and thought there could be multiple variations of 61A.
Canadian content:
- 6D: [Onetime Expos manager Felipe]: ALOU – The vowel-rich Alou family often appears in crossword puzzles. Ironically, it’s not their actual name.
- 7D: [Towers seen on Alberta’s landscape]: OIL RIGS – The oil industry makes up a significant proportion of the economy of Alberta.
- 9D: [News anchor Lisa controversially fired for not dyeing her hair]: LAFLAMME – This was controversial enough to merit a few stories in US media.
- 47A: [Montréal’s rue ___-Catherine.]: STE – We were supposed to take a trip to Montréal in the middle of March 2020 and I imagine we would have enjoyed strolling along Rue Ste.-Catherine. The pandemic had other ideas…
Other stuff:
- 2D: [Word before “of flowers,” often]: LIEU – I can never remember whether it’s I before E or the other way around…
- 28D: [Horrid, old style]: UGSOME – This is such a perfect word for the concept it conveys that I think I’m going to start using it.
- 35D: [Manx man?]: TOM – I kept trying to remember where Manx was and what the word for “man” would be there. And finally realized the clue referred to a cat.
- 59A: [“You are released, go!”]: BE FREE – I had the “Get out of here!” meaning if the clue in my mind, so initially put “Be gone!” in here.
Quote of the week:
“There’s only two things people hate: Change, and the way things are.”
– Overhead from an anonymous bureaucrat