Swing Sets

We’ve had snow on the ground here for nearly a week – haven’t seen that in probably 5 years. Maybe a white Christmas is in the cards? At the moment, the weather service doesn’t think so, but we’ll see… In any event, I’m not ready for the holidays so will be scrambling the next few days to shop, clean, cook, and plan for visits to family and friends. The next two puzzles are the final ones – this is the antepenultimate puzzle – so let’s jump in and get to it.

• Name: Swing Sets
• Grid size: 15×15
• Entries: 74
• Difficulty: Easy (my solve time: 5:57)

I thought “Swing Sets” might refer to tennis, or perhaps opposite meanings of words in a single entry. It does have to do with words: the themers are all phrases that contain the words “to” and “fro”, which means to move back and forth in a continuous alternating motion, just like a swing – hence the themers are all “swing sets:”

• 16A: [Romancer’s thorny gift]: BOUQUET OF ROSES – At first I thought this was a punny clue since “thorny gift” seems like an oxymoron. But it didn’t have the question mark, and it straightforwardly describes the answer, so there you go.
• 28A: [Window display spot]: STORE FRONT – This is the time of year when department stores used to have elaborate displays in the store fronts – maybe they still do. I guess there aren’t that many department stores around these days, and I’m not impressed with Amazon’s store front.
• 36A: [Crammed full]: OUT OF ROOM – I wanted this to be one word like stuffed or overloaded. If I’d sussed the gimmick, it might have helped.
• 46A: [Disallow contact with]: CUT OFF FROM – I got cut off pretty quickly, but thought the last word would be something like access or ties. The central square created by 30-, 37-, and 38-Down and 36-, 42-, and 46-Across was the main sticking point in my solve, so took a while to get it.
• 60A: [Canadian comedy/documentary about climate change]: HOW TO BOIL A FROG – I haven’t seen this film, but I’m a big fan of documentaries, especially when they use comedy to tell the story, and climate change is a big concern. Kind of alarming that this movie came out in 2010 and if anything we seem to be moving backwards in addressing the issue, at least down here.
• 68A: [How a pendulum moves, and two words found in 16-, 28-, 36-, 46- and 60-Across]: TO AND FRO – The revealer. I wish I had started solving in the SE on this one – I may have shaved a minute off my solve time.

Whew – nice to have a fairly easy solve after a few weeks of harder fare. Not that I don’t like a challenge, but the competitor in me does care a little bit about my average solve time. It has a fairly open grid with lots of longer entries, as well as five themers and a revealer so I expected it to be harder. I did have the central(ish) square snag I mentioned above, but I worked around it and the crosses eventually fell into place.

Canadian content:

• 4D: [Hat for Bob & Doug MacKenzie]: TOQUE – I loved SCTV, and “The Great White North” was one of my favorite segments on the show. I already knew this sort of hat as a toque, as that’s how my father referred to them having grown up in New England and being of French Canadian descent.
• 13D: [Activist Viola featured on the ten dollar bill]: DESMOND – Viola Desmond was a civil and women’s rights activist and businesswoman of Black Nova Scotian descent. She became the first Canadian-born woman to appear alone on a Canadian bank note, the $10 bill, in 2018.
• 21A: [“The Cremation of Sam ___” (Robert Service poem)]: MCGEE – Robert Service was born in England, and as a young man he sailed to western Canada to become a cowboy in the Yukon Wilderness. He worked on a ranch and as a bank teller in the years after the Gold Rush. His experiences informed his writing. “The Cremation of Sam McGee” tells a somewhat macabre story about prospectors in the Yukon. Robert Service gets this week’s quote.
• 21D: [McGill University city: Abbr.]: MTL – I had MTR as the abbreviation for Montreal in here for way too long, which added to my troubles figuring out 32A.
• 24A: [CBC’s “Laugh Out Loud host Hassan]: ALI – Ali Hassan was born in Fredericton and is the host of the CBC show “Laugh Out Loud” which showcases Canadian comedians.
• 34D: [Saint Lawrence and Mexico, for two]: GULFS – The Gulf of Saint Lawrence is where the St. Lawrence River empties into the Atlantic Ocean.
• 59D: [Prov. with North America’s largest mall]: ALTA – There is some disagreement about the largest mall in North America, and it probably boils down to how you measure the area or number of shops and attractions. But I’ll go with the West Edmonton Mall as being the largest.
• 60A: [Canadian comedy/documentary about climate change]: HOW TO BOIL A FROG – The film premiered in September 2010 on Canadian television, followed by screenings at various film festivals in Canada and the U.S.

Other stuff:

• 9D: [Alternative to Connections, Spelling Bee, Strands, and others]: WORDLE – I’ve never really gotten into Wordle, but I know lots of folks who have. My spouse does the Spelling Bee religiously every day, and we usually solve Connections together. I primarily focus on crosswords, doing the NYT puzzle daily and about a dozen others I subscribe to that come nearly daily, weekly and roughly monthly.
• 32A: [Stops obsessing over]: LETS GO OF – I had trouble, having “gets over” or “releases” in my head. At one point I had _ETSGOO_ and entered GETS GOOD, but that didn’t work with 21D either way I spelled it. Crosses to the rescue, eventually.
• 40D: [Offbeat art with an avid fan base]: CULT HIT – The first thing that came to mind was outsider art, or art brut – which would have fit but for six of the seven crosses. The amazing American Visionary Art Museum is a jewel of Baltimore – definitely visit if you are in town.
• 48D: [Spare tire material]: FLAB – I read this clue too literally and racked my brain for a four-letter word for rubber.

Quote of the week:
“Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out – it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.”
– Robert Service