Not much to say in introduction – another week has gone by and we have another ClassiCanadian puzzle, so let’s get to it.

• Title: Life Lessons
• Grid size: 15×15
• Number of entries: 72
• Difficulty: Easy (my solve time: 5:20)

Barb and I seem to have different takes on the difficulty of puzzles – she warned me this one might be tough, but I found it among the quickest solves of her puzzles that I’ve had (4th fastest of all time).
¯\_(ツ)_/¯  In any event, I had a hard time seeing the theme; I think it’s fairly subtle – common “life lesson” phrases are clued as advice for specific people: 

• 20A: [Advice to a kidnapper?]: LEARN TO LET GO – “If you love something, set it free” – good advice for life and to a kidnapper.
• 26A: [Advice to a debt payer who’s short on funds?]: DON’T BE SHY – Have self confidence, and pay your debts.
• 33A: [Advice to a court plaintiff?]: NEVER SETTLE – Don’t accept less than what you deserve, and don’t cave in on a court case.
• 46A: [Advice to André the Giant?]: LIVE LARGE – “YOLO” I guess, and I’m not sure André the Giant could have lived any other way. By the way there’s a good documentary out about him.
• 52A: [Advice to a worker in a no-tip restaurant?]: ACCEPT CHANGE – Change is the only constant in life, and I guess not accepting tips is a change a server would have to accept.

As mentioned above, I found this a quite easy solve, even if I didn’t really get the theme. The main snag I had was entering “lo cal” in 21D and not catching it until I’d finished and didn’t get the “congratulations!¸” pop-up. It was pretty easy to see that “CEAST” and “NEVER SETLLE” didn’t make sense, but still cost me a few seconds.

Canadian content

• 1A: [“Monkey on Your Back” singer ____ Nova]: ALDO – While I’m unfamiliar with the song in the clue, I knew the name from his hits (hit?) back in the 80s (who’s title escapes me now).
• 43A: [Canada’s Walk of Fame singer McLauchlan]: SARAH – This is one of my favorite songs of all time, so I knew this right off.
• 44A: [Royal Canadian Navy emblem]: ANCHOR – Pretty easy to guess with the crosses. Interesting to learn that the RCNs motto is “Parati vero parati” which means “Ready aye ready.”
• 65A: [Harper or Chrétien, for short]: EX PM – Paul Harper and Jean Chrétien were past Prime Ministers of Canada.

Other stuff:

I’m going to divert from my usual bullet list of entries that struck me as interesting, and focus on a common word used by solvers: “croswordese.” Basically, croswordese consists of words that appear far more frequently in crosswords than they do in real life. Of course, croswordese is often in the eye of the beholder, and in my mind it is not necessarily a pejorative. Usually croswordese words contain letters that are commonly used, particularly vowels. This helps constructors get out of tight spots or use entries that go with the theme. A few words in today’s puzzle struck me as croswordese:

• 6D: [Actor Bert on the Yellow Brick Road]: LAHR – The actor who played the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz probably shows up far more often in crossword puzzles than in day-to-day communication probably because all the letters are commonly used, but they are in an uncommon order. This can help get constructors out of a jam.
• 18D: [Network on the telly, with “the”]: BEEB – The nickname based on the abbreviation for the British Broadcasting Corporation has those two tasty Es and also the less commonly used Bs at the start and end. I imagine this comes in useful when you have two parallel entries with Bs in just the right places – as in here at 17A and 26A.
• 24D: [Professor in a Nabokov novel]: PNIN – This is one you either know or don’t, and most experienced solvers come to know this one, though it’s usually clued simply as “Nabokov novel” so I was kind of thrown by the fact that the titular character is a professor, having never read the novel.
• 54D [Sailors safe side]: ALEE – Very common letters; technically “alee” is a direction, one would refer to the “lee side” of a ship as the side away from the direction of the wind. Which is the direction the wind is blowing from. And this is about to get far more confusing than necessary so I will stop here.

I may use this space in future blog entries to highlight other terms commonly used by solvers, such as natick, themers, crosses, fill, stacks and stairstep stacks, and others. I’ll keep an eye out for good examples in future puzzles, but please fell free to drop some suggestions in the comments below.

Quote of the week:

Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!

-Yuri Gagarin, first human in space (9 Mar 1934-1968)