It’s finally starting to feel like late fall just in time for Thanksgiving here in the US next week. I’m looking forward to being with family and friends and eating good food and being thankful for what we have. And to get a head start, let’s be thankful for this week’s puzzle and dig into it.
- Name: Our Lips Are Sealed, or Are They?
- Grid size: 15×15
- Entries: 76
- Difficulty: Very Hard (my solve time: 9:07)
“Our Lips are Sealed, or Are They?” is definitely an odd title, and doesn’t really help a lot with the solve – at least not for me because all I had in my mind was this song. It’s a quote theme dealing with secrets (hence “our lips are sealed”) and how hard they are to keep (“or are they?”). The speaker of the quote is in the first and last Across clues, and the quote itself is spread out over three entries:
- 21A: [Part 1 of the quote]: THREE MAY KEEP A
- 32A: [Part 2 of the quote]: SECRET IF TWO
- 41A: [END of the quote]: OF THEM ARE DEAD
- 1A: [With 57-Across, speaker of this puzzle’s quote]: BENJAMIN
- 57A: [See 1-Across]: FRANKLIN – Franklin gets this weeks quote, and he’s a good source so you may see him here more frequently.
When I opened the puzzle I was a tad taken aback by the amount of white space – more than usual often indicates a difficult solve. Then I realized it was a quote puzzle, and my estimate of the difficulty rose even more. However, while my solve time falls into the Very Hard range in my (somewhat arbitrary and a bit arcane) scoring system, it didn’t feel unpleasantly hard and I enjoyed the challenge. I also like this kind of puzzle for the variety and usually the quote is kind of funny. This quote is pretty well known, and comes from Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanack” which is the source of several of his best known quotes.
Canadian content:
- 9D: [“Calgary” drink of beer and tomato juice]: RED EYE – A Calgary Red Eye is made with lager beer and tomato juice. There are variations where Bloody Mary mix is added, or Clamato is used instead.
- 27A: [Hockey’s “the Kid”]: SID – Sidney Crosby was born in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia. He has played in the NHL since 2005 and has spent his entire career with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
- 33D: [Shania Twain album “The Woman ___”]: IN ME – Shania Twain was born Eilleen Regina Twain in Windsor, Ontario. “The Woman in Me” was released in 1995 and had her first Country Top 10 and No.1 hit single, “Any Man of Mine,” which also made the Billboard Top 40.
Other stuff:
- 5D: [Variation from the norm]: ABERRANCE – DEVIATION also has nine letters, in case you were wondering.
- 16A: [Isolate on Elba, say]: ENISLE – I ignored the tense and the specificity that Elba is an island, and confidently entered EXILED.
- 18A: [Prove false, as a rumour]: DISPEL – Another one where my first thought was wrong – entered DEBUNK initially.
- 20A: [Word with shopping of rec]: CENTRE – Almost counted this as Canadian content, since I entered it as CENTER.
- 43D: [Wash with solvent]: ELUTE – Whew, that’s a deep cut, unless you’re familiar with chromatography, I guess.
- 50A: [Nissan’s former name]: DATSUN – I knew this right off as one of the first cars I drove once I got my license was a Datsun B210. I learned to drive a manual transmission in that car which has served me well to this day.
Quote of the week:
“A republic, if you can keep it.”
– Benjamin Franklin (in response to Elizabeth Willing Powel’s question: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”)
Note: For anyone who follows me on Twitter, I have decided, for reasons, to abandon that sinking, rat infested, hellship set up shop on Bluesky. Come join me there!