Welcome to the middle of July… yes, it’s hard for me to believe that as well. I am starting to get into the swing of summer, taking walks in the slightly cooler morning hours to avoid the heat and the afternoon thunderstorms. Let’s sit back, stay cool, and enjoy this week’s puzzle.
- Name: Getting the Last Word
- Grid size: 15×15
- Number of entries: 74
- Difficulty: Medium (my solve time: 7:34)
It was obvious from the title that the theme would involve some sort of messing about with the last word of either the clue or the answer. The themers are all common phrases with “AM” added to the end and punnily clued for their, um, “amended” meaning, as the revealer cleverly says, to “make amends:”
- 17A: [Airline based in Neverland?]: PETER PAN AM – Pan Am has been out of business since 1991, but still shows up in crosswords with some frequency. Peter Pan will be with us forever.
- 23A: [Junk tossed from a jacuzzi?]: HOT TUB JETSAM – While I guess it’s debatable if “hot tub jet” is all that common a phrase, it’s definitely a thing. Now to figure out the difference between flotsam and jetsam…
- 35A: [Demographic crazy about sweet potatoes?]: GENERATION YAM – I guess I’m of the generation crazy about XAM.
- 44A: [Woman in a sack race?]: HOPPING MADAM – Better to be in a sack race than to be hopping mad, I guess.
- 55A: [Atone for one’s sins …. or how to solve 17-, 23-, 35- and 44-Across?]: MAKE AM ENDS – The perfect revealer, which made me chuckle.
While this was slower than my last few solves, it felt smooth and enjoyable, so I was kind of surprised to see it right about at my all-time average (7:41). I worked outward from NW and finished with a few squares I had wrong so had to seek them out, which took a short while. I thought this was a very clever theme, with genuinely funny themers and one of the better revealers I’ve seen in any puzzle recently. Coincidentally, today’s New York Times crossword used “Am” (Actually the phrase “I am”) as its theme (e.g., 49A: [“”I think therefore I am””]: RENE DESCARTES).
Canadian content
- 1A: [Toronto NHLers, to fans]: LEAFS – If you know one NHL team off the top of your head, it’s probably the Toronto Maple Leafs.
- 26D: [Award won by Arkells and Arcade Fire]: JUNO – While I am very familiar with the Juno Award-worthy work of Arcade Fire, I need to look into that of Arkells.
- 30A: [Summer fair in T.O.]: CNE – Let’s see if I can remember the name of this annual Toronto, Ontario event… Canadian National Exposition, or The Ex.
- 36D: [Diddly, in Drummondville]: RIEN – I figured Bo Diddley wasn’t from Quebec, so it must have been “nothing.”
- 39A: [Shania Twain album “The Woman ____]: IN ME – I didn’t know that Shania Twain was one of the best-selling female artists in country music history and one of the best-selling music artists of all time.
- 42A: [Zorro’s mark, in Canada]: ZED – In most of the rest of the English-speaking world as well, except for you-know-where.
- 43D: [1997 McLachlan hit]: ADIA – Rounding our our Canadian musicians in this puzzle, we have one of my favourite songs of all time. I’ve chosen Sarah McLachlan as the source of this week’s quote.
Other stuff:
- 7D: [Cheese dish with sticks]: FONDU – While I think this is more commonly spelled with an “e” on the end, I think I may have first come across it as a child spelled without it.
- 20A: [Brief meeting?]: SESS – Often see this abbreviated slangily as “sesh” but I guess this spelling is technically correct..
- 27A: [End-to-end measurements]: LGTHS – Tried a few different abbreviations of “lengths” in here…
- 31A: [Monopoly token replaced by a cat]: IRON – I’m kind of torn about this; while I like the addition of a cat as a token, I was always fond of the iron.
- 40A: [Prefix with disestablishmentarianism]: ANTI – lol – I remember in elementary school this was always the word we’d throw out as the “longest in the dictionary” (though apparently there is a new one). And that is a much more clever way to clue “anti” than “Pros opposite.”
- 41A: [Subway map dot: Abbr.]: STN – always put STA in for this and it bit me this time as I missed that it didn’t work with 28D for quite some time.
Quote of the week:
“There’s beauty everywhere. There are amazing things happening everywhere, you just have to be able to open your eyes and witness it. Some days, that’s harder than others.”
– Sarah McLachlan