The heat goes on… it’s too hot for me to spend any time out on my deck – the most time I’ve been spending there is to water my plants and try to keep them alive. We may get a bit of a break this weekend, but I’m already longing for the pre fall days of September. We’ve got a cool puzzle this week so let’s stick our toes in and see how we like it.
- Name: The X Factor
- Size: 15×15
- Entries: 74
- Difficulty: Medium Hard (my solve time: 7:27)
With a title like “The X Factor” you just knew the letter X had some key role to play in the theme. I figured every themer would have the letter X in it. Well, it was almost the exact opposite – the themers are common phrases in which one word is normally spelled with an X but it’s been replaced by another word that has a phoneme that sounds like X, then clued punnily to describe the phrase with the non-X word:
- 17A: [Promise from a push pin borrower?]: TACKS RETURN – If I loan someone a tack I guess asking them to complete my tax return is a disproportionate exchange.
- 27A: [Breakfast buns served with deadbolts?]: BAGELS AND LOCKS – I much prefer something other than hardware for breakfast, say bagels and lox.
- 42A: [Less aggressive religious offshoots?]: THE FAIRER SECTS – Maybe they’re less aggressive because they have more members of the fairer sex?
- 57A: [Where screwballs and nutjobs are on display?]: WACKS MUSEUM – I’d much rather go to a wax museum such as this unique and famous one here in Baltimore. This is the only themer I got right off the bat; I figured it likely ended in “museum,” then got the leading “W” and filled the rest in immediately.
Oddly this solve seemed easier than last week, but it took me longer. There are 12 more entries than last week, but I think they were generally easier – I don’t recall any real head scratchers. Pretty straightforward top-to-bottom solve, especially since the theme was apparent from the get-go.
Canadian content:
- 1D: [Brent of “Corner Gas”]: BUTT – With a name like that I just knew he had to be a comedian, but he’s also a best selling author. Brent Butt was born in Tisdale, Saskatchewan.
- 14A: [PM Trudeau’s west coast alma mater]: UBC – In addition to the University of British Columbia where he acquired his Bachelor of Education degree, Justin Trudeau also attended Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf and McGill University in Montréal.
- 16A: [Horton or Allen]: TIM – Tim Horton was born in Cochrane, ON. Tim Allen was born in Denver, CO.
- 61A: [Kamloops, BC campus]: TRU – Thompson Rivers University is aptly named, as it is located at the confluence of the Thompson and North Thompson rivers in Kamloops.
Other stuff:
- 5D: [Middle of 29-Down]: OUR – The distress signal SOS doesn’t actually stand for anything – it is just very easy to remember, and more importantly to send in Morse Code: · · · ‒ ‒ ‒ · · · .
- 19A: [Part of “somnolence”]: MNO – For some reason I knew the answer was some string of letters in the word “somnolence” and my eye alit upon the alphabetic run MNO and that was it.
- 37D: [Pirate Day utterance]: ARR – Arr, ya scurvy scalawag! Mark it on your calendar, matey – International Talk Like a Pirate Day is September 19th and inspires this week’s quote.
- 56A: [“Up, up and away” airline]: TWA – For some reason I thought it was United but I couldn’t make UAL fit as I already had the A from 28D, and briefly tried to think of a 2-letter abbreviation for “United.”
- 59A: [Roy, in a mnemonic]: RED – I use this one a lot – the best way to remember the order of the colours in a rainbow: Roy G. Biv – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. So I guess just the R in Roy is red.
Quote of the week:
“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”
– Mark Twain, “Life on the Mississippi”
A little personal indulgence here – I learned this week of the passing of a classmate, shipmate on my first ship, and a fellow descendant of French-Canadian stock. George was smart, strong, fun-loving, and intelligent. His subtle smile and easy laugh made our first ship tour together a blast – there are stories of port calls in the UK, Scotland, Canada, Norway, Iceland, and Greenland that I’ll never forget and he figures prominently in them. Fair winds, George.