Well that was a week. Turns out my furnace problems of last week were the least of my worries (knock wood). Not to go into the gory details but I expect I will be changing jobs soon. I had kind of been planning on it for the past year or so, but certain events make it more likely to be sooner rather than later. One positive is that I’ll likely have more time to solve, blog about, and hopefully start constructing crosswords. So stay tuned and join me in this weeks solve.
- Name: Opposites Attract
- Grid size: 15×15
- Entries: 74
- Difficulty: Medium Easy (my solve time: 6:56)
Barb provided two versions of this puzzle, one with circles and one without. I did the one without, but just knowing that some letters would have been circled helped me see the theme, so I don’t know if I would have got it without that clue. But I definitely would have got it with the circles. I haven’t looked at the circled version so let’s see if I get them right below. The themers are random unrelated phrases, clued straight, where there are two words within the phrase that have opposite meanings:
- 17A: [Wheat farmer’s yield]: GRAⒾⓃ ⓄⓊⓉPUT – I don’t think I’ve used this term before*, but this seems to me to be an example of “green paint” – an awkward paired adjective/noun entry that is unremarkable, or contrived to make it work in the puzzle. It’s often used negatively to indicate an awkward entry in a puzzle. In this case the entry serves the theme well, so I’ll let it pass. “Are you in or are you out, Rob?“
- 23A: [Basis of a crossword for churchgoers]: RELIGIOⓊⓈ ⓉⒽⒺⓂE – Many religions take an us versus them stance on other religions, or the nonreligious.
- 36A: [Be relieved when guests announce they’re leaving]: WELⒸⓄⓂⒺ ⒼⓄODBYES – I almost circled all the letters in WELCOME/GOODBYE but that seemed excessive so I took a hard look at it again. “Easy come, easy go,” I guess.
- 47A: [Was a Toronto Star marketing rep]: SⓄⓁⒹ ⓃⒺⓌSPAPERS – This themer gave me the most trouble, mainly because I had a few crosses wrong (e.g., OCTETS vs. OCTADS at 31D). “Everything old is new again.” Also Canadian content.
- 55A: [Prepares rainbow pasta]: DⓎⒺⓈ ⓃⓄODLES – I love this clue/entry – I’d never heard of rainbow pasta before but now I have to make it – we have a large variety of different pastas on hand and it will be fun to see how they look dyed. And to make the dish you actually have to dye noodles so while the phrase initially seems absurd, it is a real thing. Yes or no? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Let’s see how I did compared to the grid with circles Barb provided:
Looks like I got it. I really liked this puzzle, though as I noted I don’t know if I would have got the theme without a hint. Even if I didn’t get the theme it was a nice lightly-challenging solve. I’ll have to take a look at my grading formula, however – if a difference of 28 seconds from last week is the difference between Medium Hard and Medium Easy, no wonder I have so few solves graded as Medium (31 out of 347, compared to 51 Medium Easy and 52 Medium Hard). Although maybe it’s nice that the rating leans either toward Easy or Hard, so maybe I’ll just keep it as is. In any event, it was a pretty smooth solve, except for the wrong entry at 31D mentioned above, and then the near-nuclear natick* at 23D/30A (see below).
Canadian content:
- 42A: [Bubbly bar]: AERO – Although I have a distinct memory of buying and eating one of these delectable candies as a child, they are not regularly sold in the US. I initially had EERO in here due to the wrong entry at 31D, and EERO appears frequently in crosswords.
- 47A: [Was a Toronto Star marketing rep]: SOLD NEWSPAPERS – The Toronto Star is a daily broadsheet newspaper. I may need to add it to my news feed, as I’m afraid I’m only getting one perspective from some other papers.
- 56D: [B.C.’s int’l airport]: YVR – Vancouver International Airport‘s ICAO code is YVR.
- 60D: [Red Chamber member: Abbr.]: SEN – The upper house of the Canadian Parliament is the Senate, often referred to as the Red Chamber.
- 61A: [Canadian steakhouse with “the”]: KEG – I think there are still some of these steakhouses in the US – yep, there are 8, mainly in the Southwest, though there is one outside of Seattle that I am pretty sure I dined at over 20 years ago.
- 65A: [“Armageddon” band from Vancouver]: PRISM – This video from 1979 gives me flashbacks to my youth. When I was in junior high school one of my friends was in a band that went through several names, one of which was “Prism.” I sketched a logo for them that would have got me in copyright trouble with Pink Floyd if they’d gone pro.
Other stuff:
- 3D: [“___ note to follow sew”]: LA A – While “Sew – a needle pulling thread” is correct, I believe la follows so (or sol?) in a musical scale.
- 23D: [Log birling contest]: ROLEO – While I had heard of a roleo before, I had no idea what birling was, which I know as logrolling.
- 30A: [Small tropical dog]: ALCO – Oof – never heard of this (apparently extinct) dog, so this was the last entry to fall as I guessed correctly at the cross with 23D. I would have done better with the clue “Former manufacturer of railroad and marine diesel engines.”
- 31D: [Groups of four duets]: OCTADS – As mentioned, I initially had OCTETS in here. IMHO it would have been better to clue this as “Groups of four dyads.”
- 43A: [Source of caprino cheese]: EWE – Apparently caprino cheese is made from goat milk, but I guess “nanny” wouldn’t fit here 😉
- 44D: [D.C. daily, for short]: WAPO – Though I didn’t grow up in The District, I was close enough that I considered the Washington Post my hometown newspaper. How the mighty have fallen.
Quote of the week:
“Should government even be run like a business, let alone by businesspeople? No more than business should be run like a government, by civil servants. Each in its own place, thank you. Governments experience all kinds of pressures that cannot be imagined in many enterprises, especially the entrepreneurial kind… Consider that business has a convenient bottom line called “profit,” which can readily be measured. But many activities are in the public sector precisely because their intricate results are difficult to measure. Running government like a business has been tried again and again, only to fail again and again.”
– Henry Mintzberg, in The Harvard Biusiness Review”
*I have an idea to create a blog entry that defines various terms I use in my posts. I could link to that post or specific definitions when I use them. Let me know in the comments below if you think that would be useful, and if there are any terms I should include in such a glossary.
Initially I had DYEDDOUGHS for the rainbow pasta clue. I imagine you would need to add the colouring when making fresh pasta, but perhaps you could colour them somehow post-boil if using a store bought dried variety?
The recipe I linked to above (https://www.tablespoon.com/recipes/rainbow-pasta/d7cb2f45-dea6-43e7-893f-6708e2dc10ec) says to cook the pasta first, then place portions in plastic bags and add different colored food coloring to each bag and shake it up to dye the cooked pasta.
I must have missed the link in the text. Thanks! Learn something new every day!
Me too @Trilby! That’s a great thing about solving crosswords 🙂