Welcome to March everyone! I guess I’m glad Spring is near, though it doesn’t feel like we’ve really had winter – mild temperatures and barely a dusting of snow. I believe the official winter 2022-2023 snow total for Baltimore is under an inch, maybe under a centimeter for the entire winter. Now I know others have had record snowfall so your experience may be very different – in any event, I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and I hope you’ll enjoy this week’s puzzle with me.
- Name: Fatal Error
- Grid size: 15×15
- Number of entries: 70
- Difficulty: Medium Hard (my solve time: 7:59)
The title went in one ear and out the other after I read it; it would have helped me a bit with the solve if I’d remembered it (or if I’d started from the SE and got the revealer at 60A early on). The themers are all unrelated phrases but taking the first word of each phrase in order makes a new phrase: “blue screen of death” (“BSOD” in the revealer) which is a fatal error on computers running the Windows operating system*:
- 19A: [Work for welders and plumbers, e.g.]: BLUE COLLAR JOB – Not having an idea what the theme was (and even if I was thinking of the title, it wouldn’t have helped), I scratched my head over this a bit. I got 9D right off, but that J near the end added to the head scratching until I got a few more crosses. I’ve idly wondered where “blue collar job” came from and now I know.
- 30A: [Filter out unwanted phone messages]: SCREEN ONES CALLS – The 2nd themer I got, and I still had no idea on the theme; again, remembering the title probably wouldn’t have helped. A minor quibble: I think this is a way of avoiding unwanted phone calls – in the old days before voicemail, you’d listen to your answering machine pick up an incoming call and then see who it was leaving a message before deciding whether to pick up or not. “And it’s all your fault / I screen my phone calls.”
- 37A: [Having modest roots]: OF HUMBLE ORIGINS – Struggled with this one more than I should have. I had “OF HUM” filled in and assumed it was something like “of human nature” so had OF HUMAN in there throwing me off for a while. Finally got it when I figured out ORIGINS was the ending. Kind of funny that the longest entry in the entire puzzle (15-letter grid spanner) was used to get a 2-letter part of the theme.
- 48A: [Life’s inevitabilities, it’s said]: DEATH AND TAXES – So I knew that the phrase “death and taxes” had been attributed to Benjamin Franklin, but I didn’t know it was from a longer statement he made after the establishment of the U.S. Constitution – which is this week’s quote.
- 60A: [Abbreviation for a Windows system failure, formed by the first words in 19-, 30-, 37- and 48 Across]: BSOD – As described above, the revealer.
I hit several snags in this solve as mentioned above; some were due to the difficulty/obscurity of the entries/clues and other due to my own errors (see Other Stuff below). And a trap I’ve fallen into more than once cost me a clean solve – whether “and others” is et alia or et alii – and now that I’ve looked up the difference I dislike et alii even more since it’s gendered.
Canadian content:
- 43D: [Quebec’s _____ Peninsula]: GASPE – While I never set foot on the Gaspe Peninsula, I sailed past it several times and once lobsters were delivered by a Gaspe lobsterman to the ship I was on for a wonderful feast. So I have fond memories of the area (and now I want lobster for dinner).
- 58A: [Ontario town named for an area of England]: EXETER – I have a hunch that clue could apply to numerous places in Ontario (and many other provinces and US states for that matter). But Exeter, ON has one up on that place in England: white squirrels.
That’s all I see for Canadian content this week; I guess I could have assimilated Esa Tikkanen (45A) into this list as he played many seasons for Edmonton and a couple for Vancouver. And Canadian warships may have sported HMS (5A) in their names at one point, but as far as I know they’ve always been HMCS, so probably not. Let me know if the comments below if I’m wrong or missed anything.
Other stuff:
- 4D: [Touristy port in southern France]: SETE – I was totally unaware of this place, but now seeing that it is in the south of France, right on the water, and just down the coast from Monaco, Nice, Cannes, and Marseille I may have to make a visit sometime.
- 8A: [Meaty Applebee’s morsel]: RIBLET – At first I thought RIBEYE, but that’s more than a morsel. After I got 11D and 12D I had a vague recollection of these treats, though I would not have sourced them from Applebee’s.
- 9D: [Dressed to go out for the night?]: IN PJS – No idea why, but this came to me immediately with no crosses. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- 14A: [Carnivore’s red-centred serving]: RARE MEAT – I was thinking of a non-human carnivore so had RAW MEATS in there at first.
- 26A: [Suddenly forgets, with “out”]: GAPS – Blanks, zones, maybe – but gaps?
- 35A: [______-Dazs (made-up ice cream name)]: HAAGEN – This has showed up in several crosswords recently from very diverse sources – must be something in the crossword constructors’ water (or dessert menu, I guess).
Quote of the week:
“Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
— Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, 1789
*In Apple OS X the equivalent fatal error is a kernal panic, which happened so frequently on one of my Macs that I named the machine “Colonel Panic.”