This is going to be short and sweet as I’m just back from a quick trip to Florida and getting ready to host guests who are in town to attend this evening’s Orioles game.
- Name: Double Feature
- Grid size: 15×15
- Entries: 74
- Difficulty: Medium Easy (my solve time: 6:40)
I knew “Double Feature” would likely include two of something in the themers, and I was not disappointed – the themers are two word phrases where the first word is doubled by adding a homonym and then clued punnily. The first two themers are well-known movies; the next two are (maybe?) movies according to IMDB, but much less well-known so I’m not sure if that was Barb’s intention, although “Double Feature” seems to imply so:
- 20A: [Fib-tellin’ Mufasa?]: LYIN LION KING – If Mufasa was a prevaricator he’d be a lyin’ lion king. “The Lion King” was a hit movie that came out in 1994.
- 27A: [Letter opening to Bambi’s pursuer?]: DEAR DEER HUNTER – I guess it could also be addressed to Sherlock Holmes’ cap. No, wait – that was a deerstalker. I briefly tried to remember the name of the hunter in “Bambi” but soon realized it was generic (not sure if the hunter in “Bambi” even had a name, and in any case he hunted Bambi’s mom, so…) “The Deer Hunter” was a 1978 film.
- 42A: [Stable bloodsucker with laryngitis?]: HOARSE HORSE FLY – Horse flies are awful insects, but I’m not sure if they vocalize, so maybe they can’t be hoarse. “Stable bloodsucker” and “stable genius” are probably equivalent. There is a cartoon from 1941 called “Horsefly Opera” and a short from 2012 called “[Horsefly]” but those both seem pretty obscure.
- 50A: [Throw rug made from Fuzzy Wuzzy?]: BARE BEAR SKIN – “Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear / Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair / Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy, was he?” At least that’s how I remember the nursery rhyme. “Bear Skin” is apparently an Iranian short horror film but there’s not much information available about it.
My solve started out roughly as I missed the plural in the clue for 1A and 1D is kind of obscure. But I got a foothold starting with 4D and worked the fill from there – the themers took me a while, which kind of surprised me as I thought the “double” part of the theme would reveal itself sooner.
Canadian content:
- 21D: [Toronto Film Festival entry, often]: INDIE – Independent films are often entires in the Toronto International Film Festival; the 50th festival is being held September 4-14 2025.
- 26D: [Octagonal sign word, in Québec]: ARRET – I love that “Arrêt” signs in France say “STOP.”
- 39A: [Land in Laval?]: TERRE – Laval is mainly set on Île Jésus, across the Prairies River from Montreal.
- 43D: [To be, in Trois Riviérs]: ETRE – Trois Riviérs is where my multiple-great grandfather Louis first set foot in New France back in the mid-1600s.
- 59A: [Meeker or Mandel]: HOWIE – Howard William Meeker was born in Kitchener, played for the Maple Leafs from 1946-1954, and was a Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament. He was an interesting character, so he gets this week’s quote. Howie Mandel was born in Toronto and is a standup comedian and has appeared in several movies and TV shows.
Other stuff:
- 5D: [Pre-paint application]: SEALER – Man, primer fits in here really well so that cost me a few seconds.
- 48A: [Time in space]: LTYR – A light year is a measure of distance, so it’s not really time. But I guess distance is related to time, so let’s not split parsecs.
Quote of the week:
“Feet work, hands work, Super!”
– Howie Meeker