Welp.
I know I need the distraction so let’s just focus on the puzzle for a few minutes.
- Name: Stand up for Yourself
- Grid size: 15×15
- Entries: 72
- Difficulty: Easy (my solve time: 5:15)
A speedy solve this week, so I had little time to ponder the theme until I finished – the themers all are things that have “legs:”
- 25A: [Port of sherry, e.g.]: SWEET WINE – I am partial to dry wine, but I once toured a winery in Australia that specialized in port, and at the end of the tour there was a tasting and I can see why some folks like the stuff. When you taste wine, you swirl the liquid around the glass then observe how the wine runs down the side and separates into distinct rivulets, and these are called legs.
- 39A: [Place for place settings]: DINING ROOM TABLE – Dining room tables (all tables, I guess) have legs to hold them up.
- 49A: [Competition with batons]: RELAY RACE – A relay race consists of a running (or swimming or skating, I think) competition with the distance divided into equal lengths, run (or swam, or skated) by different competitors; these sub-distances are called legs.
- 68A: [Show staying power, or resemble a 1-, 25-, 39- and 49-Across, in a way]: HAVE LEGS – Something is said to have legs if it has the ability to endure, stay relevant, or continue to maintain interest.
When I first saw the grid, it seemed there was a lot of white space, which usually means a lot of longer entries that are harder to get. However, I jumped in and started mowing them down, and finished with a time in the top 4% of my solve times. No real snags, though on review I see a few entries that I’m sure I needed the crosses to get.
Canadian content:
- 12D: [Klein who wrote “This changes everything”]: NAOMI – Naomi Klein was born in Montreal, and has written at least 9 books. Looking at the titles, I may need to read some of them.
- 31A: [A or Jay]: ALER – The (ugh) Las Vegas A’s and Toronto Blue Jays are both American League teams, and thus their players are ALers.
- 45A: [BlackBerry rival]: TREO – The Palm Treo was one of the earliest multifunction personal digital assistants that was also a phone. BlackBerry is a Canadian provider of cell phones based in Waterloo, Ontario. Apparently they have really good security, because even though my work device is an iPhone, the email function runs through a BlackBerry app.
Other stuff:
- 3D: [Act as a negotiator]: INTERVENE – I initially entered INTERCEDE, but that didn’t work out.
- 58A: [Popular YouTube star]: CAT – I thought there was a YouTube influencer or vlogger or something who’s known as Cat. Thinking they might be Canadian, I spent several minutes searching YouTube for Cat, and it gradually dawned on me that it’s just that a cat is often the star of many YouTube videos.
Quote of the week:
“Racism is a refuge for the ignorant. It seeks to divide and to destroy. It is the enemy of freedom, and deserves to be met head-on and stamped out.”
– Pierre Berton