Belated happy Canada Day to all! I hope everyone was able to take a long weekend or make the entire week a holiday to celebrate. Our weather got a little more tolerable this week, though it was still quite warm and muggy and we’ve had several days of afternoon thunderstorms. It looks to be shaping up nicely for the weekend, which will be good as I have several outdoor events on my calendar.
- Name: Hippie Days Are Here Again
- Grid size: 15×15
- Entries: 74
- Difficulty: Very Hard (my solve time: 10:42)
Well, I figured “Hippie Days Are Here Again” would involve some shenanigans referring to the bead-and-tie-dye wearing lot from the 1960s and 70s and I wasn’t disappointed. This week’s quote is from one of the more famous hippies of the era. The themers are phrases (or titles) with another word added and then clued punnily to make the new phrase apply to hippies:
- 17A: [Business attire for a hippie?]: FLOWER POWER SUIT – Power suits were a big thing in the 80s and referred to what the “masters of the universe” wore to advertise their dominance. “Flower power” was coined by Allan Ginsberg in the 1960s to reference opposition to the Viet Nam war. I think I would actually wear a flower power suit.
- 27A: [Colourful style worn by hippie train workers?]: RAILWAY TIE DYE – A railway tie is used in the construction of railroads as a platform for the rails to sit on. Tie dye was a form of decoration popular with hippies, mainly on T-shirts. I’m not sure what railway tie dye would be used for but an engineer or conductor wearing a tie dye bandanna would be quite stylish.
- 44A: [Nazareth hit about the pain of hippie romance?]: FREE LOVE HURTS – “Love Hurts” was first recorded by the Everly Brothers in the early 1960s, but was a hit for Nazareth with their recording of the song in 1974. While free love was popular and associated with hippies, the concept of love unencumbered by legal ties or societal constraints has been around for centuries. I have a hunch that some free love arrangements lead to pain for at least one of the parties involved.
- 58A: [Tolstoy tome written during his hippie phase?]: WAR AND PEACE SIGN – “War and Peace” is a famous novel by Leo Tolstoy set during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. It is often used as idiomatic shorthand for a long book that no one ever finishes, or as a commentary on the seriousness of other books (“It’s no ‘War and Peace'”). The peace sign was designed in the 1950’s to be a symbol of the British anti-nuclear movement – the lines inside a circle represent the semaphore letters “N” and “D” for nuclear disarmament. I don’t know what Tolstoy’s thoughts were about the “continuation of politics by other means” (I haven’t read “War and Peace” either) but I kind of doubt peace signs would show up in his novels even if they had existed then.
I had a hard time with this one from the beginning and all throughout, and a bad pair of entries cost me a clean solve. Even though I got the gimmick pretty early, I had a hard time coming up with the original phrases in the themers so I needed most of the crosses to get them, and the themers take up a lot of the grid, so it was slow going. I got stumped by 37A/D – all I could think of was GST and PST for the combined tax, and didn’t get the meaning that was intended by “Take that!” – I thought it was someone getting or giving a punch. A lot of the fill – even the short fill – was not familiar to me, and there was some crosswordese (11D, 13D) that upped the difficulty level a bit. Or maybe it was just me – let me know in the comments how you found the solve and any particular difficulties you had (or if it went smooth as silk).
Canadian content:
- 15A: [Petro-Canada rival]: ESSO – While Petro-Canada is the biggest gasoline station chain in Canada, Esso appears in far more crosswords.
- 31D: [To be, in Terrebonne]: ETRE – While there is a Terrebonne parish in Louisiana, I’m pretty sure the Montreal suburb is what we’re looking for here.
- 36A: [Edmonton-to-Calgary direction]: SSW– Calgary is about 300 km driving distance from Edmonton.
- 37A: [Blended levy in some provs.]: HST – The Harmonized Sales Tax combines the federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) and the provincial sales tax (PST) in some provinces.
- 39A: [The pride of Parry Sound]: ORR – Bobby Orr was born in Parry Sound, Ontario.
- 53D: [Hanomansang and Fleming]: IANS – Ian Hanomansang is a CBC journalist and was born in Trinidad and raised in Sackville, New Brunswick. Ian Fleming is the author of the James Bond novels and probably visited Canada at some point, but he was born in London, UK.
- 59D: [Winnipeg-born Vardalos]: NIA – Nia Vardalos has written and acted in several films, including the hit “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”
- 65A: [39-Across teammate Phil, to fans]: ESPO – I guess Phil Esposito is the pride of Sault Ste. Marie.
Other stuff:
- 24D: [Guy’s mirror image]: HIMSELF – This hung me up more than it should have – I though Guy was someone’s name rather than a generic “him.”
- 41D: [Supposedly-healthier NaCl]: SEA SALT – I didn’t know sea salt was supposed to be healthier than regular salt.
- 43D: [Bunsen cousins in a lab]: ETNAS – I always thought they were different devices, but “etna” is just a less-used synonym for bunsen burner.
- 521D: [Crossword framework]: GRID – Just noting this so I can link to the glossary.
Quote of the week:
“If you want to change the way people respond to you, change the way you respond to people.”
– Timothy Leary