Belated Happy Canada Day! And greetings to you all from US Independence Day! I used to live in Detroit and I loved that they had a week-long celebration of both holidays call Freedom Festival. The ship I was on would go out and anchor in the river to help enforce the safety zone for the fireworks, and as a result we had front row seats for the show. I hope however you are celebrating these holidays you are doing so safely and with friends and family. Off the to puzzle!
- Name: Alternative Music
- Size: 15×15
- Entries: 70
- Difficulty: Very Easy (my solve time: 5:27)
From the title I knew the theme had something to do with music – the themers are all common phrases (except for one, at least to me) not related to music that are clued punnily to refer to music:
- 20A: [Pare down the violin section?]: PULL SOME STRINGS – If your orchestra’s budget got cut you might have to pull some strings out of the ensemble to save the expense of their salaries.
- 32A: [Is a well-prepared conductor?]: KNOWS THE SCORE – A well-prepared conductor had better be very familiar with the score for the pieces that will be played in a concert they are conducting.
- 37A: [Measured Bach’s composition against Brahm’s?]: COMPARED NOTES – I guess you could count the number of notes in each composition and compare them that way. “Too many notes.”
- 53A: [A quartet of burly flautists?]: FOUR STRONG WINDS – I’m sad to say I’m not familiar with this song so this one took me the longest to get. It’s also Canadian content.
This was my fastest solve time since the beginning of May, and it felt like it – just cruised through solving from top to bottom pretty much in sequence. A couple of unfamiliar-to-me entries were minor snags, but no major problems, even being unfamiliar with the last themer.
Canadian content:
- 16A: [Trivial Pursuit token]: PIE – Trivial Pursuit players move a pie-shaped token around the board and win coloured “pieces of pie” for answering trivia questions. The game was invented in Niagara on the Lake, Ontario in 1979 and released commercially in 1981. One of my claims to fame is that I once won playing the Canadian version against a team of Canadians. The final question was something like “What letter begins postal codes of Alberta?” I had no idea, but had noticed that the letters in Canadian postal codes went alphabetically from east to west, and I correctly guessed “T.”
- 19D: [Canadian rail line]: VIA – Via Rail operates intercity passenger trains in Canada.
- 30D: [Canadian poet Crozier]: LORNA – Lorna Crozier was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. She was was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2011 as one of Canada’s pre-eminent poets and for her teaching service at the University of Victoria. She’s the source of this week’s quote.
- 45D: [Sings à la Michael Bublé]: CROONS – Michael Bublé was born in Burnaby, BC and I have never known how to pronounce his last name.
- 46A: [Petro-Canada rivals]: ESSOS – ESSO appears frequently in crosswords, so while we no longer have Esso gas stations in the US, they are still well-known (at least to crossword solvers).
- 52A: [Word on the street in Québec?]: RUE – Rue is French for street.
- 53A: [A quartet of burly flautists?]: FOUR STRONG WINDS – This song was written by Ian Tyson, and the first words of its lyrics are “Think I’ll go out to Alberta/Weather’s good there in the fall.”
Other stuff:
- 1A: [Run with two sharps]: D SCALE – The first thing that might come to mind might be “running with scissors,” but I was primed by the title to think musically, so immediately put in “scale” and left the first letter blank to get the actual key later (as I can never remember which scales have how many sharps or flats).
- 11A: [Pt. of U.F.O.]: OBJ – I initially read the clue as “pilots of UFOs” and thought the answer was “ETs.” But I then read the clue more closely and saw that Pt. was singular and isn’t a common abbreviation for “pilot.”
- 56D: [Slang for a superfan of all things Japanese]: WEEB – I don’t think I’ve ever heard this term used before. Apparently it is a shortened version of a nonsense word that was developed to replace a derogatory racial term that was in use on certain internet message boards.
Quote of the week:
“Though I would never have believed it as a teenager, you do move past things, outgrow the person you were. Sometimes, just by staying alive, you find you have become someone who can live in the world after all.”
― Lorna Crozier