It’s still hot but at least we got some rain in the past few days, though I’m not sure my lawn will ever be green again. My workload has returned to near-normal so I may actually get this blog posted Wednesday afternoon, shortly after the puzzle arrives in your inbox. Fingers crossed for that, and for a smooth solve of this weeks offering.
- Name: High Fashion
- Size: 15×15
- Entries: 72
- Difficulty: Medium Hard (my solve time: 7:45)
“High Fashion” leads one to believe that the theme will have something to do with clothing, and it does. The themers are all pieces of clothing, clued straight, that are worn “high” – all four are tops as the revealer shows:
- 17A: [Garment for a proud bodybuilder]: MUSCLE SHIRT – A muscle shirt is designed to show off the wearer’s physique – tight fitting and usually with very short or no sleeves.
- 24A: [Garment for a ’60s hippie]: FRINGED VEST – I will neither confirm nor deny that I ever wore clothing adorned with fringe.
- 35A: [Garment for Mr. Rogers]: CARDIGAN SWEATER – Fred Rogers always started his children’s show by entering his home and taking his cardigan sweater out of the closet and putting it on.
- 46A: [Garment for a Tour de France youth]: WHITE JERSEY – I knew this was a jersey, but the only colour associated with a Tour de France jersey I was familiar with was yellow (or maillot jaune) for the winner of he previous day’s stage. Now I know that there are also green, polka dot, and white jerseys awarded each stage as well.
- 57A: [Motown quartet suggested by this puzzle’s theme answers]: THE FOUR TOPS – The revealer. The Four Tops were from Detroit and were one of the most successful American pop music groups of the 1960s. Coincidentally, and sadly, the last living member of the original quartet passed yesterday.
This solve started out slowly and it took a while for me to break in, then I settled into a fairly smooth rhythm and had only a few holes to mop up at the end. But then the dreaded “The grid is now completely filled – Did you get all letters correctly?” pop-up appeared. I did a quick scan of the grid and in the NW I remembered making a mental note that I thought 1D was misspelled, though it worked with the crosses. Then I saw that the clue for 14D had “Var.” tacked on and knew it started with Y rather than I. Bingo – correct and I got the happy pop-up without too much time lost.
Canadian content:
- 11D: [Marshland of Canada’s north]: MUSKEG – In other areas this type of landscape is called a bog, fen, swamp or mire. But in Canada and Alaska the term derived from Cree and Ojibwe is used.
- 34D: [Margot Kidder’s Canadian birthplace: Abbr.]: NWT – Margot Kidder was born in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.
- 55A: [NHL’s Elias Pettersson’s country: Abbr.]: SWE – Elias Pettersson has played his entire NHL career with the Vancouver Canucks, so even though he’s Swedish, I’m counting this as Canadian content.
Other stuff:
- 14A: [Classic hunch-backed aide: Var.]: YGOR – As mentioned above, I missed the “Var.” in the clue. The only Igor I will ever think of when I hear this name is Marty Feldman, and this is my favourite scene in any comedy movie hands down.
- 18D: [This can’t be right]: LEFT – Took me a while to see where this clue was coming from, and it didn’t have the question mark indicating it was a pun, so had to get a cross or two before seeing this clever entry.
- 25D: [___-Lite (“Groove is in the Heart” band)]: DEEE – This song is still a banger with an excellent video all these years after it came out, and yet it apparently never registered to me that the first word in the band’s name is spelled with three Es.
- 30A: [Mary Tyler Moore’s sitcom costar]: ED ASNER – With all those often-used letters in his last name, you frequently see it as an entry in crosswords, but rarely if ever have I seen his first named used as well. Mr. Asner gets this week’s quote.
- 42A: [“Frankenstein” prop]: TORCH – With 14A in here, should have used ‘”Young Frankenstein” prop’ as the clue.
- 42D: [Annoying jerks]: TWERPS – I immediately put TROLLS in here, so had some cleaning up to do as I worked on the crosses.
- 54A: [“Baltimore” bird]: ORIOLE – Woot! Let’s go O’s!
- 57D: [Working together, in HR-speak]: TBO – I have no idea what this means – team based organization? Google returns a gazillion other possibilities: “total benefits outsourcing” doesn’t sound like working together, trajectory based operations is used in air traffic control, but who knows?
Quote of the week:
“I don’t believe in God, though I’m not prepared to call myself an atheist either. You know the old phrase: ‘There are no atheists in foxholes.’ I’ve never been in a foxhole, and if I ever find myself in a foxhole, I’ll let you know if I believe in God or not.
– Ed Asner