Greetings everyone – another hectic week (this seems to becoming a habit…) so let’s jump into the puzzle and see how it goes.

  • Title: Members of the Board
  • Grid size: 15×15
  • Number of entries: 74
  • Difficulty: Medium Hard (my solve time: 8:23)

I really needed the title to get the theme, as I didn’t see it at all once I finished the solve. The themers are all common phrases where the last word is part of a board game:

  • 20A: [Prep veggies, as for salad]: SLICE AND DICE – You slice and dice vegetables for meal preparation; you roll dice in games like Yahtzee and backgammon.
  • 27A: [They’re use to hang nappies out to dry]: CLOTHES PEGS – Clothes pegs are what we in the US call clothes pins; pegs are used to keep track of the score in cribbage.
  • 47A: [Bathtub wall pieces]: SHOWER TILES – My brain kept reading the clue as “Bathtub show pieces” so it took me a while to get this one. Shower tiles are a nice way to finish the walls in the washroom; tiles are used in many games like Scrabble and Rummikub.
  • 53A: [Manure once used for fuel on the Great Plains]: BUFFALO CHIPS – Man I bet that stunk… Chips (hopefully plastic or some other material than manure) are used in poker for betting, and in games like tiddlywinks and Othello.

This whole solve seemed slower than usual for me, with quite a bit I didn’t know until I got a few crosses. And the SE completely stumped me – I still don’t know what 59D is so had to run the alphabet to get it and I had a (wrong) singular spelling for 58A. And 67A – c’mon. I probably could have rated this Hard and would have if my time had been much slower.

Canadian content:

  • 1A: [Rideau Canal city]: OTTAWA – I just saw a comic yesterday that featured the Rideau Canal.
  • 15A: [Tuna type, or Canadian folk singer]: AHI – I knew the tuna; never heard of the singer.
  • 33A: [The “S” of Canada’s N.S.]: SCOTIA – Knew this one right off, and probably didn’t need for Canada to be specified.
  • 43D: [Alberta-Manitoba expanse]: PRAIRIE – I guess this is where they burned buffalo chips for fuel…
  • 52A: [Honest ___ (flashy Toronto discount store, 1948-2016)]: EDS – I knew this pretty quickly, as I had learned it from a previous puzzle.
  • 55D: [“Our House” quartet, in brief]: CSNY – Calling it Canadian because of the Y – Neil Young. All I could think of was this song and I wracked my brain for the name of the band and how it would be shortened.
  • 63A: [“That’s Hockey” channel]: TSN – I know of one Canadian sports channel, and now I know they host “That’s Hockey.”

Other stuff:

  • 10A: [Outgoing email initials]: SMTP – I was trying to think of initials that would be on the “send” button in an email application, and finally realized it was the abbreviation for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.
  • 26A: [Adolescent, slangily]: TEENER – I’m not sure I’ve ever heard or seen this used, so maybe this is a Canadianism – let me know in the comments.
  • 57A: [As commanded, as a deed]: ON ORDERS – This is another potential Canadianism, or at least maybe UK English that’s used in Canada. I don’t recall seeing this used in deeds in the US, but it’s not like I spend a lot of time looking at deeds, so…
  • 58A: [Rancher’s loops]: RIATAS – I know lassos, lariats, and thought I knew riatta. So that threw me (ha!) for a while.
  • 59D: [Small dots on land maps: Abbr.]: TNS – I have no idea what this is and I spend a lot of time with maps. There’s only one Tennessee, and it’s not a dot, so it’s not that.
  • 60D: [ISP since 1983]: AOL – I was positive this was going to be a Canadian internet service provider, so never really thought of AOL until it was the only thing that worked.
  • 61D: [Björn Borg’s ctry.]: SWE – I would have sworn that the great tennis player was Austrian. He’s the source of this week’s quote.
  • 64A: [Sarcastic reply to “Are you awake?”]: I AM NOW – I put the correct entry in first, but then had so much trouble with everything else in SE that I changed it to I AM NOT, which I guess is more aggressive than sarcastic.
  • 67A: [Strand, as a castaway]: ENISLE – Wow – it is an actual word. I bet this stumps a few folks…

Quote of the week:

“If you’re afraid of losing, then you daren’t win”
― Björn Borg