Hi all.
“Same Differences” is this week’s puzzle title and we have a bunch of answers that, while clued as different things, turn out to be redundantly redundant.
16a [Terrific apartment overseer?] – EXCELLENT SUPER
22a [Shoe bottom without a mate?] – SINGLE SOLE
35a [Short-lived Ramadan ritual?] – QUICK FAST
49a [Spinning toy on the uppermost shelf?] – HIGHEST TOP
56a [More stylin’ beverage bag?] – GROOVIER COOLER. I’ve always wondered why “cool” is still cool but “groovy” stopped being groovy.
Canadian content:a
7a [Its slogan is “Canada in one city”] – OTTAWA. Of course in Canada the slogan needs a French version which is “Le Canada dans une ville.” According to Google Translate* that means “Canada in a city.” It you can read both English and French many Canadian signs are redundantly redundant.
5d [Body off Nfld.] – ATL. Cape Spear, Nfld. Is the easternmost point of North America and of course on the Atlantic Ocean. I was there once. About 3,000 km from Ireland, and over 5,000 km from my home in Victoria, BC. Canada is BIG. Try to fit that in one city.
9d [Eight word of “O Canada”] – TRUE. True is true for the English version. “Front” is the eighth word of the French version of Canada. One version is not a translation of the other, so no redundancy if you sing both.
28d [Schmucks, to the McKenzie brothers] – HOSERS. To those too young to remember, SCTV was a show similar to Saturday Night Live. CBC asked them to add two more minutes of Canadian content, which the show thought was weird since it was made in Canada with Canadian stars and crew. “What do you want, hosers talking about beer, eh?” And Bob and Doug McKenzie were born.
32d [_____ Crisis (Mohawk/S.Q. standoff, 1990)] – OKA, Quebec, where it occurred. S.Q. is Sûreté du Québec, the Quebec provincial police. SQ is only two letters so you don’t have to remember it in crosswords.
52d [Sarnia’s great lake] – HURON
58d [Certain freight trains] – CNS. CN – Canadian National
Other stuff
21d [Seinfeld’s “et cetera”, in part] – YADAS. Yada, yada, yada is redundant, redundant, redundant.
Tip of the week
Always eat your vegetables. If you have tips, questions or criticisms, leave them in the comments.
*I don’t really need Google Translate to read French
Favourite new word: odium. I wasn’t sure what the first letter was, but an O seemed logical, as odium sounds suspiciously similar to odious, and Odra could very well be Polish for Oder. Another successful guess!
As always, the theme was very amusing.