Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and happy holidays to all! I was celebrating with family out of town the last couple of days so am a little late getting to the puzzle. So I’ll make this quick – let’s go.
- Name: Christmas Team Members
- Grid size: 17×17
- Entries: 94
- Difficulty: Very Hard (my solve time: 14:18)
Appropriately for the holidays “Christmas Team Members” is here with a crowd of Santa’s non-elf helpers – the reindeer. We get a glimpse of their personalities in the themers, with their names used to describe them:
- 19A: [Santa’s debonair reindeer?]: DASHING DASHER – I guess if he was running. he’d be dashing as well as if he was well-dressed.
- 26A: [Santa’s pie-eyed reindeer?]: BLITZED BLITZEN – I guess Blitzen got into the liquor cabinet and had a snootful.
- 45A: [Santa’s boorish reindeer?]: RUDE RUDOLPH – I guess if he wasn’t allowed to play reindeer games he’d have a right to be rude to the other reindeer.
- 65A: [Santa’s bellicose reindeer?]: COMBATIVE COMET – Combative Comet makes me think of this parody trailer for a fake holiday movie from the film “Scrooged.”
- 77A: [Santa’s malicious reindeer?]: VIXENISH VIXEN – This one gave me a hard time – I didn’t know vixenish meant malicious.
Tough one for me this week – I didn’t have a clean solve and had to ask for a letter. Two areas in particular hung me up – NW and SE corners. I had (and still have) no idea what 2D and 3D are, but finally figured out what the variant for horrify at 22A was. But I was totally at sea with 72A and 73D. I don’t think of a louse as a “sucker” – more of a biter, and uxor – just, what??? The larger grid size also means more entries, so that added to the time as well, but I still should have done better.
Canadian content:
- 3D: [Post-sec. tuition fund]: RESP – I’ve never heard of the Registered Education Savings Plan so this was four miscellaneous letters to me.
- 5D: [“___ for Loneliness” (City and Colour song)]: A PILL – City and Colour refers to Dallas Green, a singer-songwriter whose stage name is cleverly derived from his first name (Dallas) and last name (Green). He was born in St. Catherines, Ontario.
- 6D: [CRA tracking info]: SIN – The Canada Revenue Agency uses the Social Insurance Number to track taxpayers.
- 13A: [CFL 3-pointers: Abbr.]: FGS – A field goal will get you 3 points in the Canadian Football League.
- 28D: [Quebec ski area, Mount Saint-___]: BRUNO – The summit of Mount Saint-Bruno is 218 m (715 ft) high and is 23 km (14 mi) east of downtown Montreal.
- 34A: [“Who ___ the Wind” (W.O. Mitchell novel)]: HAS SEEN – W.O. Mitchell was born in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. “Who Has Seen the Wind’ is his best-loved novel, and it portrays life on the Canadian Prairies from the point of view of a small boy. He was also a CBC broadcaster, known for the radio series “Jake and the Kid.”
- 37A: [Vancouver research sch.]: SFU – Simon Fraser University is known for its excellent programs in Computer Science, Criminology, Business, Health Sciences, Engineering, and Social Sciences.
- 55D: [RCMP rank above cpl.]: SGT – A Sergeant is senior to a Corporal in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Quote of the week:
“In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”
-Carl Sagan