Well, here we are at the last puzzle of 2025 and the last weekly puzzle Barb will be doing for subscribers. I understand she will still be doing puzzles for a publication so keep your eyes out for that. I hope she will be able to share one or two of her puzzles with me so I can blog about them, but nothing is set in stone yet. I know this website and these blog entries will stay up (fingers crossed) so the history will be preserved. It’s been fun these past 4+ years to solve Barb’s puzzles and write this blog (almost) every week, and I’ll miss the bit of structure and regularity it gave me each week as we went through tumultuous times (and are still going through them…). Thanks to all of you who have subscribed and solved Barb’s puzzles, who have read these blog entries, and who have commented with additional information. Appropriately, I was in Victoria yesterday – I’m visiting family on the Olympic Peninsula and decided to take a day trip on the Black Ball ferry from Port Angeles. I had a pleasant day of museum visiting, lunch, and some craft brew tasting before taking the ferry back late afternoon. Now it’s time to get ready to celebrate the end of 2025 and usher in 2026 – let’s get into this final puzzle 😢.

Name: Sad Endings
Grid size: 15×15
Entries: 74
Difficulty: Medium (my solve time: 7:03)

Not surprisingly the theme of this final weekly puzzle is “Sad Endings.” Each of the themers is a common phrase, with the last word spelled as a homophone of the word that’s normally there, that new spelling being a word associated with sadness, the new phrase clued punnily:

• 16A: [Complaint with waterless eyes?]: DRY WHINE – If I was around someone who was complaining without crying, I’d want at least a glass of dry wine, to help me cope with their dry whine.
• 22A: [Reaction to a sad stage play?]: THEATRE TEARS – While attending a sad play, one might shed some theatre tears while sitting in one of the theatre tiers.
• 38A: [Greeting at an Irish wake?]: TOP O THE MOURNING – For a funeral service before noon, one might hear “Top o’the mourning to you this morning.”
• 50A: [Persistent whimper?]: STUBBORN MEWL – My cats voice stubborn mewls starting about two hours before their mealtimes, but I remain a stubborn mule about not feeding them early.
• 65A: [Wail heard near a lightbulb at night?]: MOTH BAWL – Luckily I don’t think moths can make any noises, at least not that humans can hear, because we’d have to deploy moth balls, to combat the moth’s bawl.

This was a fairly smooth solve for me with my solve time being just a few seconds faster than my overall average time. No real snags, though it took a little while to break in, and I didn’t get  many of the entries early in the grid on the first pass. Having an idea what the theme was helped get the gimmick, which was helpful in the solve.

Canadian content:

• 23D: [Like a Nanaimo bar]: RICH – I was hoping to see Nanaimo bars on the dessert menu after I ate a meal in Victoria yesterday.
• 27A: [Suzuki and Cronenberg, for two]: DAVIDS – David Suzuki was born in Vancouver and helped launch and host CBC Radio’s “Quirks and Quarks.” In 1979, he began hosting CBC TV’s “The Nature of Things.” David Cronenberg was born in Toronto and directed many films, including “The Fly” and “eXistenZ.”
• 30D: [Mid-ranking RCMP]: SSGT – A staff sergeant in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is a senior non-commissioned officer responsible for managing daily operations, supervising personnel (including uniform officers), and coordinating police services. They oversee investigations, develop operational plans, implement policies, and ensure compliance with legislation.
• 34A: [Fed. spy org.]: CSIS – The Canadian Security Intelligence Service “investigates activities suspected of constituting threats to the security of Canada and to report on these to the Government of Canada.”
• 39D: [Central Alberta college town]: OLDS – Olds, Alberta is home to the Olds College of Agriculture and Technology.
• 45A: [US cousin of the TSX]: NASDAQ – I never knew the name of the tech-heavy stock market actually was an acronym for the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations. The Toronto Stock Exchange is its more clearly-named Canadian counterpart.
• 63D: [Raptors org.]: NBA – The Toronto Raptors play in the National Basketball League.

Other stuff:

• 7D: [Deuce follower in tennis]: AD OUT – I’ve never understood the scoring in tennis and could only remember AD IN.
• 20A: [Sport name meaning “gentle way”]: JUDO – I guess it’s named that because the approach is to make moves in the most efficient way, using the weight and movement of your opponent rather than primarily your own brute force.
• 31D: [Memo abbr.]: ATTN – It was either IN RE or ATTN, so I guessed right
• 36D: [Deep grief]: SORROW – With this being located in one of the longest down spots near the middle of the grid, I guess this could almost be a themer, though it’s clued straight.

Quote of the week:
“Ends are not bad things, they just mean that something else is about to begin. And there are many things that don’t really end, anyway, they just begin again in a new way. Ends are not bad and many ends aren’t really an ending; some things are never-ending.”
–C. JoyBell C.