Greetings fellow puzzle solvers! The days are getting shorter and shorter and snow is periodically in the forecast. But there’s a fire in the fireplace and warm beverages at hand, so let’s get into this week’s offering.
- Title: It’s a Mixed Up World
- Grid size: 15×15
- Number of entries: 74
- Difficulty: Hard (my solve time 10:09)
“It’s a Mixed Up World” is this week’s puzzle, and I scratched my head quite a bit while solving and for a few minutes after completing the puzzle trying to figure it out until I got the “aha!” moment. The themers are world capitals with the city name spelled straight but the country name anagrammed (“mixed up”) to another word and clued in an amusing way:
- 17A: [Irritants in a Mediterranean capital?]: MADRID PAINS – I think I’d find it hard to be irritated in Madrid, Spain.
- 24A: [Vocal complaint in an oil-rich Middle East capital?]: MUSCAT MOAN – “Ooooh, I’ve never been to Oman, waaaah.”
- 37A: [Jet in a Himalayan capital?]: KATMANDU PLANE – I guess you would take this as transport to Nepal.
- 52A: [Foe in an Arab Spring capital?]: SANAA ENEMY – I’ve also seen it spelled “Sana” but either way it’s in Yemen.
- 61A: [Wet forecast in the former Persia’s capital?]: TEHRAN RAIN – Seeing as Tehran, Iran only gets about 9.5 inches (244mm) of rain per year, this would be a fairly rare forecast.
I tried to figure out the theme during the solve but it completely eluded me. Obviously something to do with capital cities, but the ending words didn’t seem to have any commonality. As I was reviewing the themers for the third time I said to myself “Muscat, Oman” and realized “moan” was an anagram of “Oman” – AHA! While I wouldn’t say it felt too difficult, I did have problems with some of the Canadian content and a few other things, so my time is on the slow side (for me).
Canadian content:
- 4D: [French 101 verb with a “hat”]: ETRE – or “être” as it would be taught in Quebec.
- 13D: [“Black Velvet” singer Myles]: ALANNAH – I knew this one as I really like this song.
- 34A: [T.O. gallery, Canada’s largest]: ROM – This one stumped me – I had MOM in for some reason until I got 25D correctly. I’m guessing it is the Royal Ontario Museum – yep, a quick Google confirms it.
- 45D: [Pro led by Nick Nurse]: RAPTOR – I think I learned who Nick Nurse was from a previous ClassiCanadian puzzle, so It came to me rather quickly that he is the coach of the Toronto Raptors.
- 51D: [Crosby known as “The Kid”]: SIDNEY – I could picture him and I knew he played for the Pittsburgh Penguins, but I blanked on his name for a while until I got a few crosses.
Other stuff:
- 3D: [Show named in part for a NYC ad biz area]: MAD MEN – I think most everyone is aware the “Mad” in Mad Men refers to Madison Avenue in New York City. I’ve finally gotten around to watching Mad Men and have really gotten into it. I start the final season tonight and will miss it when I’ve finished.
- 16A: [In the, in Italy]: NEL – I had DEL in here for way too long.
- 18D: [Lodge on a river]: DAM – I kept wondering of there was some special Canadian type of river lodging for fishing or hunting or something else. Then realized a beaver builds a lodge to live in along with the dam.
- 26D; [Dijon “dear”]: CHOU – I had always seen this in the plural for some reason, so avoided entering “chou” as I thought it was always “choux.”
- 44A: [“Oklahoma!” aunt]: ELLER – I did lights for a high school production of Oklahoma! but couldn’t remember Aunt Eller, and had ELLIE in at one point but knew it was wrong.
- 48A: [Heartthrobs]: BEATS – I couldn’t get the “sweetheart” meaning of heartthrob out of my head so had BEAUS in here at first.
- 65A: [She played “Wawa” on “SNL”]: OTERI – Back to back Cheri Oteri sightings! Once again, as my followers on Twitter know, whenever Cheri Oteri appears in the #NYTXW, and now here, I always post this picture:
Tip of the week: Ravens by 2.5.