Happy Pi Day! I woke up this morning and checked my email and realized I forgot to solve this week’s puzzle and post the blog. I thought about doing it yesterday, but kept putting it off…
Name: Not Now!
- Size: 14×15
- Entries: 67
- Difficulty: Medium (my solve time: 7:19)
If the title “Not Now!” makes you a little anxious, don’t worry – there’s no rush to complete this. It’s a quip puzzle, so no set of themers, just parts of the quip that explain the puzzle title:
- 15A: [PART 1 of a quip relating to the puzzle title]: I USED TO
- 21A: [PART 2 of the quip]: CRASTINATE
- 35A: [PART 3 of the quip]: BUT I
- 48A: [PART 4 of the quip]: GOT SO GOOD I
- 57A: [END of the quip]: WENT PRO
This one was tougher than I expected. Unlike some solvers, I like quip or quotation puzzles – a nice break from wordplay or themers with a common connection. But I never really got on this one’s wavelength – for one, the 2nd part of the quip is a non-word so it was hard to see until I got the rest of the quip. But there were a few other entires that seemed harder than usual to me – obscure or maybe a bit more obliquely clued than usual. Or perhaps my first coffee of the day hadn’t kicked in yet…
Canadian content:
- 8D: [___ bar (treat named for a B.C. city]: NANAIMO – This treat shows up in the puzzle periodically – I’ll have to make them sometime to eat while I solve.
- 12D: [East of Québec?]: EST – The pun-indicating question mark gave this one away.
- 20A: [Peterborough’s prov.]: ONT – I didn’t know where Peterborough was, but I had the middle letter so easy to guess. At one time the town was known as Canada’s canoe-building capital, and today is the home of the Canadian Canoe Museum. Nearby is the interesting lift lock on the Trent-Severn Waterway.
- 51A: [Peterborough’s university]: TRENT – Well, I learned a lot about Peterborough from this puzzle! Trent University looks quite lovely. And with Peterborough on the brain, it is the inspiration for this week’s quote (though I don’t know if the quote is referring to Peterborough, Ont.).
Other stuff:
- 1D: [School skipper]: TRUANT – One might think this referred to the principal or dean of a school, and one would be misled…
- 3D: [“As above,” in footnotes]: IDEM – I never remember what all the different Latin footnote abbreviations mean but I should really learn. Idem means a reference from the same source, but different location, and ibid means from exactly the same place.
- 4D: [“-aholic” ones]: ADDICTS – “I’m like a chocoholic, but for booze.”
- 13A: [Well-worn, as a path]: TRODDEN – this was one of the entries that kind of inexplicably gave me trouble. My mind kept thinking “trod upon,” or just stuck on “well-trod.”
- 32A: [Irish cable knit sweater]: ARAN – Despite having visited the Cliffs of Moher a few years ago (from which you can see the Aran Islands), and my wife recently bought a couple of Aran sweaters, for the life of me I could not remember this.
- 32D [Dumb as ___ of hammers]: A BAG – I have “dumb as a box of hammers” stuck in my head from this song, so this threw me for a while.
- 40A: [Painter’s deg.]: BFA – I always give the painter a Masters when they’ve only earned a Bachelors or vice versa.
Quote of the week:
“Well, ‘ he says, ‘if you’re dead, Peterborough is as good a place as any.”
― Hilary Mantel