The Long and the Short of It

On the road for work this week and a little pressed for time so let’s get right at this week’s puzzle.

• Title: The Long and the Short of It
• Grid size: 15×15
• Number of entries: 74
• Difficulty: Hard (my solve time: 9:14)

A bit of a challenge for me this week and I don’t think it’s just because I solved it at 5 am while sipping my first (awful, motel room) coffee of the day. At least this week I got the theme pretty quickly – the themers are sensical but punnily-clued two-word phrases where the first three letters of the first word are the second word: 

• 18A: [Transit vehicle for commerce workers?]: BUSINESS BUS – While I eventually got the theme, it wasn’t until much later in the solve so I had to come back and fill in this one as the last themer I got. There were some tough crosses: 5D I had as LEK, I had a typo in 7D, I didn’t know 9D, and had MPS for 10D.
• 24A: [Where lawyers meet for drinks?]: BARRISTER BAR – No real trouble with this, but another that I came back to later once I knew the theme and figured it ended in BAR.
• 38A: [Term for one’s aristocratic sweetie?]: HONOURABLE HON – Not surprisingly I initially misspelled the first word as honorable. 🙄 But I got HON right off the bat – it’s often seen in puzzles as a term of endearment, and then of course there the iconic “Baltimore Hon.”
• 51A: [Automated Twitter poster derived from plants?]: BOTANICAL BOT – Seeing “plants” in the clue I first thought the three letter word was BIO, but it’s a prefix rather than a word, so I focussed on the “automated Twitter poster” part of the clue. Any Twitter user is familiar with “bots:” the accounts that automatically post tweets, often for nefarious purposes (but also sometimes for good or fun).
• 60A: [Member of the prison symphony?]: CONCERTO CON – I think this is the themer where I figured out the gimmick. While I didn’t get it right off, I didn’t have a lot of trouble with the crosses so saw “concerto” pretty quickly and “CON” matched nicely with “prison” so that it clicked.

This was a fun theme and gimmick and a satisfyingly challenging solve. I started in NW as usual, then quickly worked down the middle leaving many blanks that I went back and cleaned up later. Several entries stumped me (specifics below), but they were mostly crossed with things I knew or could figure out. I did have to make a guess at 34D/43A (though it was obvious when I looked at 34D) and “ran the vowels” for 56D/68A.

Canadian content

• 1D: [Soon to be a mom: Var.]: IN LABOR – I’m flagging this a Canadian content due the the “Var.” in the clue, which indicates that the common spelling is “in labour” which gave me a little chuckle.
• 9D: [Ending with Dunkar- (cookies)]: OOS – I had no idea on this one so figured it was something unique to Canada. Well, kind of – these cookies were initially available in the US when they came out in the 90’s but were discontinued there in 2012. So Americans who wanted them were encouraged to “smuggle” them from Canada.
• 10D: [Ones at the top of The Hill?: Abbr.]: PMS – I figured that this was the abbreviation for Members of Parliament, but apparently “The Hill” isn’t Parliament Hill but the bluff overlooking the Ottawa River that the residence of the Prime Minister is located upon.
• 11D: [Team nickname derived from Canada’s French settlers]: HABS – According to the NHL “the nickname “Habs” is short for Les Habitants, which refers to the French settlers and inhabitants of the land along the St. Lawrence Gulf and River in Quebec beginning in the 17th century.” So I guess my multi-great-grandfather Louis Tétreau was a Hab. Huh.
• 23A: [Van.’s Robson and Hal.’s Robie]: STS – At first I thought this referred to people – maybe the names of the mayors of Vancouver and Halifax? Then I thought that these were saints somehow associated with those cities. Then quickly remembered, having visited both of those cities many times, that they were streets.
• 55A: [Enjoy B.C.’s Sun Peaks Resort]: SKI – While Whistler is the B.C. ski resort I’m most familiar with, with a name like “Sun Peaks” it was easy to guess that skiing is what is enjoyed there.
• 56D: [Canadian e-Reader brand]: KOBO – I thought it was KOBI but that didn’t work with 68A (see below). I shall remember that “kobo” is an anagram of “book” from now on.
• 57D: [The “I” of NAIT or SAIT]: INST – Not recognizing these abbreviations I assumed they were Canadian and I was right: they are the Northern and Southern Alberta Institutes of Technology.
• 68A: [Alberta NDP leader Rachel]: NOTLEY – I wouldn’t know the political leaders of many US states, much less those of Canadian provinces, so relied on the crosses for this one. Luckily all but 56D were relatively easy, and the 2nd letter had to be a vowel. I had “Nutley” in at first, but didn’t get the “Congratulations!” pop-up. “Natley,” “Netley,” and “Nitley” seemed 65A , so Notley it was.

Other stuff:

• 5D: [Romanian coin]: LEU – I could’ve sworn there’s a coin called a lek – and there is – it’s just that’s it’s Albanian.
• 25D: [Bucket: Fr]: SEAU – I learned something here and nice to see this clued as something other than the tragic American football player, not that his story isn’t important or that he shouldn’t be remembered, but variety in puzzle clues is good.
• 32A: [First letters?]: RST – Initially a head scratcher but the punny clue indicated that R, S, and T are definitely letters in the word first.
• 39D: [Genesis virgin?]: NOOB – Took me a while to get the clue for this one: A “newbie” or noob is a term used by gamers; Genesis is a brand of video game console.
• 43A: [____ ghanouj]: BABA – Of course I know baba ghanouj, but being used to the spelling “ganoush” I skimmed over the clue and it didn’t register as something I knew. Hence my mild trouble with the 34D cross.
• 54D: [Machu Picchu builder: INCAN – Had Mayans in here at first; need to remember the difference.

Advice for the week:

When traveling and renting a car, either be very sure that there will be cars available when you arrive or make alternate transportation plans.