Greetings from Atlantic Beach, Florida! Not my favourite weather here – a bit on the hot and muggy side for me – but still quite pleasant. I’m here for a work conference and about half the attendees are Canadian. Haven’t met anyone who does this puzzle, but I’ll spread the word and maybe we’ll get some new subscribers.

  • Name: And That’s Vinyl!
  • Size: 15×15
  • Entries: 68
  • Difficulty: Easy (my solve time: 6:17)

Filled in crossword grid for ClassiCanadian Crosswords 08 May 2024

“Vinyl” isn’t used to denote much more than records, so I had a pretty good idea what it was about. It still took me a little while to see what the theme was but that didn’t slow down the solve much. The themers are two word phrases where the last letter of the first word is “L” and the first letter of the second word is “P” – LP is short for a long playing record, and LPs are made of vinyl. So each of the themers is a record holder, as we see in the revealer:

  • 15A: [Banff, Jasper and Wood Buffalo, e.g.]: NATIONAL PARKS – I knew Banff, and I could guess that Jasper and Wood Buffalo were all parks. This is also Canadian content.
  • 21A: [’90s slogan for young feminists]: GIRL POWER – I remember seeing references to “grrl power” in the 1990s so had that in for the longest time until it was obvious that 1D (which I didn’t know) wouldn’t work with that spelling.
  • 33A: [Materials for Rembrandt]: OIL PAINTS – For some reason I had in my head that Rembrandt was a sculptor, so it took me longer to get this than it should have.
  • 49A: [Major hassle]: ROYAL PAIN – I got this one right off; I don’t think I had even one cross.
  • 56A: [Guinness book people, or literally, the answers to the starred clues]: RECORD HOLDERS – I initially thought of the brewer, but quickly realized it was the publication I and my friends were obsessed with when we were kids that was being referred to here in the revealer.

This seemed harder to me during the solve than it actually turned out to be, but there were a couple of doozies that gave me pause. I mentioned 21A above and the cross with 1D; 54A was a complete head scratcher to me, especially as I had an alternate spelling of 53A (deyo).

Canadian content:

  • 4D: [Great Lake city across from St. Thomas, ON]: ERIE PA – My niece’s boyfriend (soon to be fiancé?) is from Erie, Pennsylvania and I visited there once many years ago on a ship.
  • 7D: [Compact Canadian-made trailer brand]: BOLER – I though I had seen this in a recent puzzle that I had written the blog entry for, but it was back in 2020 when Jeffery was the blog author. In any event, they are neat looking little camper trailers.
  • 10D: [“Gimme ___!” (start of a Riverdale cheer)]: AN R – I’m assuming this is a reference to a school in the Toronto suburb that was the setting for a TV soap opera.
  • 15A: [Banff, Jasper and Wood Buffalo, e.g.]: NATIONAL PARKSBanff is well-known and is also part of a UNESCO World Heritage site. While I’d heard of the town of Jasper, I was unaware there was a national park there. I’d never heard of Wood Buffalo – it is Canada’s largest national park and one of the largest in the world. Just for something different, this week’s quote is actually a collection of top Instagram captions about Banff.
  • 28A: [Labour Day mo.]: SEPT – Since it’s spelled with a “u” it must be referring to the Canadian holiday.
  • 44A: [Odometer units, for short]: KMS – Kilometers (or is it kilometres?) are used to measure road distance in Canada.
  • 49D: [Weak in the Knees” singer Serena]: RYDERSerena Ryder was born in Toronto, and grew up in Millbrook, ON.

Other stuff:

  • 54D: [Ancient chest]: ARCA – Whew – no idea on this one and luckily I just had to guess a different vowel in the cross with 53A to get it right.

Quotes/captions of the week:
– Take me to the mountains, take me to Banff.
– I’ve got a case of Banff wanderlust.
– Some places just feel like home. Banff is one of them.
– I’m in a good place right now. Not emotionally, I’m just in Banff.
– If the question involves Banff, the answer is yes.