Greetings and welcome to March – hope you are ready for the Brier, the Madness, the Green, or the Bunny. With all the events happening this month be sure to set aside time for crosswords – including this week’s. Let’s go!
Name: Falling Behind
- Size: 15×15
- Entries: 76
- Difficulty: Very Easy (my solve time: 5:27)
“Falling Behind” made me think that there would be some sort of word play in the themers, e.g., that one word of an entry would be “behind” another, and clued so that it had a new meaning. I overlooked the circled letters, and didn’t think about them until I got one of those entries entered correctly (ahem, 23D) and saw that the circled letters all make words that are synonyms for a person’s backside, or “behind,” and they are all in Down entries so they are “falling:”
- 5D: [English beverage-with-biscuits fare]: TEA AND CⓇⓊⓂⓅETS – It took me a while to figure out what the clue was even referring to, and I needed a lot of crosses before the light came on for the entry, and then I saw the circled rump. It doesn’t appear they serve crumpets at the famous tea at the Empress in Victoria or it could have been clued as Canadian content.
- 7D: [Backwoodsy folks]: COUNTRY ⒷⓊⓂPKINS – The longest theme entry – a nice grid-spanner – gets the shortest circled word. No bum rap here.
- 10D: [First of Macbeth’s murder victims]: LADY MACⒹⓊⒻⒻ – I know next to nothing about “Macbeth” – a gaping hole in my education, I know. I should get off my duff and read the darn thing.
- 15D: [Niagara Falls hotel room, maybe]: HONEYⓂⓄⓄⓃ SUITE – I’m going to assume this hotel is closer to Horseshoe Falls and therefore is Canadian. Just don’t shoot a moon from the balcony.
- 23D: [Tanning lotion ingredient]: COCOA ⒷⓊⓉⓉER – This one delayed me seeing the theme as I initially put in COCOANUT OIL and NUTO didn’t mean anything to me. So I guess I’m the butt of this joke.
Another quick solve – this is about the 20th fastest solve I’ve had of these puzzles (out of 299 total solves) so in the top 10%, definitely making it very easy (for me). Even without being aware of the theme for a while, I solved steadily left to right with only a few snags. I went fast enough that on review, I didn’t recall solving many of the entries. I was totally clueless on 6D and 8D, so that square was the last to be filled in. I figured a “political grp.” was a party, so plunked “P” in there and got the happy pop-up.
Canadian content:
- 6A: [Danielle Smith’s political grp.)]: UCP – I think we’ve seen Ms. Smith in here before (yep – here and here), but I didn’t remember her nor that she was aligned with the United Conservative Party, so as mentioned above this was last to fall.
- 15D: [Niagara Falls hotel room, maybe]: HONEYⓂⓄⓄⓃ SUITE – There are many places to stay in Niagara Falls, but not sure how many have honeymoon suites.
- 37A: [The Raptor’s org.]: NBA – The Toronto Raptors are part of the National Basketball League.
- 49A: [“Call ___ my cell…” (Drake lyric)]: ME ON – I am unfamiliar with Drake‘s work, so had to guess at this one but it wasn’t hard. I didn’t even know he was Canadian.
- 56A: [Unit in a gas price]: LITRE – I’m calling this Canadian, because you definitely wouldn’t buy gas in those units in the US, and even if you did, you wouldn’t spell it that way. At least neither of us would call it petrol.
- 57D: [Juste pour ___ (Montreal comedy festival)]: RIRE – While I’m familiar with this festival, and recall seeing several TV comedy specials that were filmed there, for the life of me I could’t remember the French for “laughs.”
- 63D: [Alta.’s Mackay, Macleod and McMurray: Abbr.]: FTS – They’re all in Alberta, they all start with Mac or Mc, and they’re all Forts.
Other stuff:
- 1A: [Moved like a frog]: LEAPT – I started off inauspiciously by trying to confidently enter HOPPED in here…
- 21A: [Seeing eye to eye with, in a way]: FACING – One might be tempted to put as tall in here, and one would be wrong.
- 21D: [Ambition, for Macbeth]: FLAW – Since we get two Macbeth entries in this puzzle, and to help fill this gap in my knowledge, this week’s quote is from the play that shall not be named in a theater.
- 34A: [Coll. hotshot]: BMOC – I have distinct memories of this entry appearing in crosswords a lot more often than it does now. It certainly has fallen in usage in books since 2005, and wasn’t as popular in the NY Times crossword as I recall, though it hasn’t appeared there since 2018.
- 42A: [Rub-___ (early reggae)]: A DUB – I knew about ska as a form of reggae but not about rub-a-dub.
- 48D: [Per unit]: A PIECE – You often see A POP in puzzles, so it would have been fun to see it used as the clue for this entry.
- 51A [“The Simpsons” merchant]: APU – In case you didn’t know it, this character is considered problematic – there’s a whole documentary about it.
- 58A: [Bunny hill, for one]: SKI RUN – I’d always heard it termed “bunny slope” – is bunny run a Canadianism? In any event, it sure sounds like this guy.
- 59D: [Fingernails target]: ITCH – At least their target isn’t this (DO NOT click on that link if you have sensitive ears).
Quote of the week:
“Present fears / Are less than horrible imaginings.”
– William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 1.3