Greetings everyone – you get a pinch hitter this week. Jeffrey was unable to write the blog this week, so you get me – Brian Tetreault, also known as @DamnUWillShortz on Twitter. Though my last name is French-Canadian, my great-great-grandfather moved to the US in the late 1800’s and I live in Baltimore (Go Orioles!). I’ve been doing Barb’s puzzles for several years now, and I think my Canadian knowledge had increased incrementally.

“Acting Out” is the theme of this week’s puzzle, and it’s pretty straightforward – four phrases describing body language “acting out” certain messages:
– 20A [Body language for “Really?? How scandalous!”]: EYEBROW RAISING
– 33A [Body language for “Whooee, that’s sour!”]: LIP PUCKERING – The double P’s threw me for a bit
– 41A [Body language for “Good one!”]: KNEE SLAPPING – for some reason I really wanted to put BELLY SLAPPING in here, no idea why.
– 55A [Body language for “Huh??”]: HEAD SCRATCHING – I was trying to think of a phrase for scrunching up your face in puzzlement before I got a few crosses.

Canadian content:
– 24A [Meat department wts.]: KGS – well, it’s Canadian to me, as I initially put OZS in there.
– 34D [____ Breton Island, NS]: CAPE – I’ve actually been there twice by ship many years ago, but never got ashore – one time anchored just off Sidney, and another sailed through Canso Strait and paused briefly at the Canso Canal.
– 36A [Toronto’s Don Valley is one]: PKWY – Had no idea, but got enough letters to guess correctly. I now know it runs through its riparian namesake.
– 54D [Edmonton or Toronto “hub city” player]: NHLER – Not sure what a “hub city” is, but at least I know both cities have NHL teams, so easy enough to get for this non-hockey fan. (Sorry!)
– 62A [90’s Canucks enforcer Stojanov]: ALEK – Knowledge of a hockey player from the 90s was way beyond me – again, yay for crosses!
Not a lot of Canadian content in this one, but I now know what units to use at a Toronto meat counter having driven there through a river valley, and while waiting in line I can chat with other customers about my (brief) trips to eastern Nova Scotia and reminisce about former Canucks “enforcers” (whatever they are).

Other stuff:
– 10D [Brand prefix with -Flush]: SANI – Googled to see if it was Canadian, and found out that due to environmental concerns, the product was discontinued sometime around 2009.
– 22A [Skating saboteur Harding]: TONYA – I did a mini deep dive on Tonya Harding in the past year (primarily thanks to a fascinating couple of episodes of the “Your Wrong About” podcast – check them out here and here) and she really got a bad rap. So I think “saboteur” is kind of harsh and factually wrong.
– 18D [Corleone cohort who “sleeps with the fishes”]: BRASI – I always want to spell it with a Z (or “zed” 😉 )
– 29D [“____-daisy!”]: UPSA – I’ve always spelled and pronounced it “upsie-” so thought it might be spelled UPSY

Tip of the week:
Never order crabcakes from a restaurant outside the state of Maryland. Trust me on this.