Happy New Year! 2024 is starting out a mixed bag. After a nice week mostly off with lots of good times with family and friends, it’s back to the regular grind. Many of my colleagues are taking this week off, but January is shaping up to be a crazy month so lots of work for me. At least I can hope the busy-ness will make it go by quickly. It’s already Wednesday*, so this week is more than half over – time to get to the puzzle.
- Name: Hockey Match-ups
- Size: 15×15
- Entries: 72
- Difficulty: Very Easy (my solve time: 5:51)
I was pretty sure what the theme would be from the title, and it was definitely a big help with the solve, even though I don’t really follow hockey that closely. The themers are two word entries made up of the names of National Hockey League teams, clued to define the resulting phrase:
- 20A: [Sign of electrical storm fires]: LIGHTNING FLAMES – Not sure “lightning flames” are a real phenomenon (though they appear to be a weapon in a game of some sort) but the Tampa Bay Lightning and Calgary Flames are real NHL teams. I once went to a Lightning playoff game in Tampa.
- 31A: [Airshow daredevils]: WILD FLYERS – I think aviators doing aerial acrobatics actually control their planes pretty well, but the maneuvers they pull off sure appear wild. I remember when the Minnesota Wild were called something else and I drive past the Philadelphia Flyers arena when I go to visit family in Pennsylvania.
- 41A: [B.B. King, Etta James, John Lee Hooker and others]: BLUES STARS – These artists are indeed blues stars, but that’s not a term you hear used that often – not sure why. An office I use to travel to for work is a block or two away from the St. Louis Blues arena; but I would have been hard pressed to name the Dallas Stars.
- 55A: [Savage hunters of sea monsters]: KRAKEN PREDATORS – Seems like a complicated way to say “octopus hunter” but I guess if you want to be precise… Being a former resident and frequent visitor to Seattle, I was glad when the Seattle Kraken were established. I thought the Nashville Predators were a basketball team (so you see I don’t follow that sport either).
With 8 teams in this week’s puzzle, hockey had to be the inspiration for this week’s quote. And while researching a good quote I may have found the most Canadian picture ever.
I was pleasantly surprised when I saw my finish time – while it was a smooth solve I expected it to be around 6 or 7 minutes, as I jumped around a bit and didn’t get all the themers right off, even though I knew what the theme was. There was also a good bit of croswordese (1A, 5A) and some relatively obscure entries (12D, 56D) so I guess I know more than I think I do.
Canadian content (I’m counting the Canadian team in one of the themers as Canadian content but not specifically calling it out here):
- 24A: [Canadian director of “Ararat”]: EGOYAN – Well, I didn’t know the film Ararat so I shouldn’t be surprised I didn’t know the director Atom Egoyan.
- 28D: [Danielle Smith’s prov.]: ALTA – Danielle Smith is the Premier of Alberta, sworn in on October 11, 2022.
- 65A: [Iroquois name of a Toronto College]: SENECA – Apparently I knew Seneca was an Iroquois name, because I’m not familiar with Seneca Polytechnic.
- 66A: [Lac ___ Bois (N.W.T. lake)]: DES – I’ve heard of Lake of the Woods (which I’m pretty sure is larger and more well-known) but not Lac Des Bois.
Other stuff:
- 5D: [Potter’s studio fixture]: KILN – For a moment, all that came to mind was the device potters throw clay on to shape it and I tried to think of a four-letter name for that.
- 8A: [City nicknamed Beantown]: BOSTON – I almost made this Canadian content, as Boston and Halifax have a close relationship, dating back to the explosion of 1917.
- 8D: [Outhouse]: BIFFY – I thought this was an Australian slang term for outhouse, but turns out it is of American and Canadian origin.
- 19A: [Weird interest in, as shoes]: FETISH – Hey, no kink shaming here.
- 43D: [Pulled a one-eighty]: U TURNED – I shudder to think that this could someday be the clue for the entry UIED or UEYED.
- 48A: [Five-alarm chili eater’s cry, maybe]: ITS HOT – But is it heat-hot or spicy-hot?
Quote of the week:
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
– Wayne Gretzky
And there are a bunch of other great hockey quotes here – it was hard to pick just one.
*I was unexpectedly delayed by work and family matters so this is being posted a bit late, on Friday.