Greetings from yet another undisclosed location. For those playing at home, last week I was in Chicago, Illinois. This week I’m somewhere very different and much warmer. Oddly, for the climate being so much more temperate than Chicago, they are nuts here over their hockey team, which is doing quite well in the playoffs. Go ahead and guess in the comments as to where I am. Now on to the main event…

• Title: Dizzy Spells
• Grid size: 15×15
• Number of entries: 82
• Difficulty: Easy (my solve time: 5:55)

An unusual puzzle this week – while the grid is “standard” 15×15, it has 82 entries (the “normal” for a 15×15 is 78 – I put these words in quotes as this is the New York Times guidelines for their puzzles, so it’s somewhat arbitrary). Also, it has no entries over 7 letters long and no themers – the theme is that there are 4 sets of circled squares – the letters in these squares spell SPINNING – so they are “dizzy spells.”   

As my time indicates, it was a pretty easy solve for me, starting in the NW and pretty much following the layout of the grid zig-zagging down to SE. No real snags, though I left the 7D/21A cross for the end where I successfully guessed the letter on the first try; otherwise I would have had to run the alphabet.

Canadian content

• 21A: [Northwest Territory First Nation]: DENE – The Dene nation resides in Denendeh, the Land of the People.
• 33D: [The Argos, on a scoreboard]: TOR – This is also the abbreviation for the Blue Jays and probably the Raptors, as well as the Toronto Argonauts.

While there are only 2 distinctly Canadian entries in this grid, I get an overall Canadian vibe from it that I can’t quite put my finger on – maybe the nod to hockey in 5D and reference to a beaver in 34A and a few other things – give me your thoughts in the comments.

Other stuff:

I’m a bit pressed for time so may not be able to call out interesting entries, but here’s a clue to my whereabouts this week: This city was settled by Cuban cigar makers who relocated with their factories in the 1880s. It’s now home to this brewery.

Thought of the week:

What strikes me about walking around _____ is that so much of the city’s history is gone, but they’ve memorialized it with plaques and memorials rather than preservation.