Baseball season is in full swing and I’m off to my 2nd game of the season this afternoon. Several teams are off to a great start: Tampa is nuts, my Orioles are doing great, and the Blue Jays are nipping at their heels. Should be a fun summer. But this isn’t a baseball blog, so let’s see what Barb has in store for us this week.

• Name: The Error of Their Ways
• Grid size: 15×15
• Number of entries: 80
• Difficulty: Hard (my solve time: 9:13)

I suspected there would be “errors” in the themers and it was literally true – the themers are common phrases with one word “misspelled” to make it a synonym for an error, then clued punnily:

• 17A: [Gaffe made by men in their golden years?]: OLD BOYS FLUB – I guess the old boys club is having difficulties.
• 24A: [Motown great who sings “I Just Called to Say I Botched It”?]: STEVIE BLUNDER – And according to the musical morons at Championship Vinyl Stevie Wonder really did botch it.
• 40A: [Nickname of an accident prone Tarzan?]: KING OF THE BUNGLE – Is Tarzan the king of the jungle or is the lion?.
• 56A: [Accepting that one will screw up?]: READY TO FUMBLE – I don’t know about you but I’m ready to rumble.
• 66A: [Foul up when playing the Big Bad Wolf?]: HUFF AND MUFF – There are a variety of incarnations of the Big Bad Wolf but this is probably the one most folks think of who huffs and puffs.

I really liked this puzzle – a great theme and well executed. But an error and a few things I didn’t know cost me a clean solve and made this one quite hard. The SW corner was a mystery to me – PONG, NAT, OER? It took me a while to see the gimmick, so my solve was all over the place, getting mainly the (many) 3- and 4-letter entries and then working on the longer stuff. So it’s ironic that a 4-letter entry was my undoing.

Canadian content:

• 35D: [Grp. whose Roughriders fans wear watermelons on their heads]: CFL – I will have to take a close look at the fans in the stands the next Canadian Football League match I watch that involves the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
• 64A: [“… extra hold ___ in your hair oughta lock it” (Shania Twain lyric)]: GEL – That’s a long way to go for a 3-letter entry, but I learned some lyrics to a Shania Twain song I’ve known for years.
• 74A: [River of Kenora and Paris]: SEINE – I got it from the Paris reference but now I know that Kenora, ON exists and it used to be named Rat Portage.

Other stuff:

I have a few things to add but I’m running way late so will leave this for later – please check back and leave your own suggestions in the comments!

Quote of the week:

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny'”.
-Isaac Asimov