Happy (belated) Canada Day! I probably should have mentioned it last week, but better late than never. And apologies for a delayed posting of the blog for those early solvers – I’ve been having internet issues all day so had to wait until they were resolved to get this post up. Luckily it was a quick solve and I’ll try for a quick write-up.
- Name: This Side Up
- Grid size: 15×15
- Number of entries: 78
- Difficulty: Very easy (my solve time: 5:11)
From the title I had a clue that the theme would involve the vertical entries, and I was correct, though I didn’t figure it out until well after I had finished solving. The theme/gimmick is that the long vertical entries have circled letters. When the circled letters are read from bottom to top they spell a food that is often served as a side dish – “this side up:”
- 3D: [Airtight pots or tense situations]: ⓅRESSⓊRE CⓄOKERⓈ – Not sure if a pressure cooker is the best thing to make soup in but if that’s all you got…
- 7D: [Root canal prep person]: ⒹENTⒶⓁ ⒶSSIⓈTANT – If I was getting prepared for a root canal the last thing on my mind would be salad.
- 9D: [Tennis champ and wife of Andre Agassi]: ⓈTⒺFFⒾ GⓇAⒻ – I bet Steffi Graf didn’t eat a lot of fries while she was winning her 22 Grand Slam titles.
- 11D: [Failure’s fate sealer, metaphorically]: NAⒾⓁ ⒾN TⒽE ⒸOFFIN – Having chili for too many meals will definitely be the nail in the coffin of your diet.
- 30D: [Seat in the sand]: BⒺACH ⒸHAⒾⓇ – If you have a beach chair, your seat will stay out of the sand, and the sand will stay out of your rice.
I kind of flew through this one – it was 2 1/2 minutes faster than my average time (currently 7:41 all time) and the 4th fastest time for me ever. It was kind of a blur, which is why I missed the theme/gimmick until after the solve, but I’m pretty sure I solved generally NW to SW, then W to E. I might have got a PR if there wasn’t a near-killer natick* at 8D/16A that I had to run the alphabet for. Luckily I didn’t have any other errors, and the letter comes early in the alphabet, so yay!
*If you don’t know what a natick is, read the sidebar to this blog, where the term was apparently coined.
Canadian content
- 1D: [Fort ___(Alberta oil city, casually)]: MAC – Somehow I knew it was MAC right away, but thought it was Mackenzie, not McMurray.
- 22D: [7,124 sq. km. Ontario zone]: GTA – I need to start tracking how often the abbreviation for the Greater Toronto Area shows up in puzzles, as well as all the different clues used for it. This is definitely a new one for me.
- 23A: [La Biche or La Hache]: LAC – Although I could not tell you where they were located (and would have guessed Quebec), I knew these were lakes, and now know that they are in Alberta and British Columbia, respectively.
- 45A: [Pop duo Tegan and ____]: SARA – I’ve enjoyed the music of this group from Calgary, Alberta for a while but somehow I missed that they are identical twin sisters.
Other stuff:
- 8D: [Yesterday: It..]: IERI – Oof. While I took some rudimentary Italian classes for several trips I took there 20 years ago, not sure I ever got to the relative day references and certainly don’t remember them if I did.
- 16A: [Line to the World Trade Center]: E TRAIN – Totally flummoxed me, partly figuring that maybe Toronto has a World Trade Center (several American cities do, including Baltimore) so maybe that is one of the tram lines that ran to it? And I had to work some Google-fu to figure out it was the New York City subway E line that you can take from Penn Staton to the World Trade Center.
- 26D: [“The ____ Baltimore” (Play set in a lobby)]: HOT L – While I never saw the play, I do vaguely recall seeing the television show, which only aired for one season when I was “ahem” years old. It is notable as the first failure for Norman Lear after a streak of hit series including All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Maude, Good Times, and The Jeffersons. I’m sure the fact that it was set in Baltimore had nothing to do with that.
- 49A: [Junky’s need]: FIX – Along with 35D and 66A there’s kind of dark subtheme going on here…
Advice of the week:
When starting work in a new office, do not schedule a web meeting before you have got your access to the office internet completely worked out and tested successfully.