Thrice as Nice

Welcome to November, everyone – while October is my favourite month (and it went by way too quickly!) November takes a close second, so it gets this months quote.
“There was no joy in TO, the mighty Blue Jays had struck out.” 🙁 I really wanted the Jays to win, but man, what an amazing series it was! I’ve heard that interest in baseball, especially in Canada, is way up and that this was the most-watched World Series in decades. Probably because it was actually a “World” series, though I’m not sure two North American nations competing really is truly representative of the rest of the planet. However, there are players on the teams from around the world, and next year we get the World Baseball Classic again, so there’s some moves in that direction. I just wish there were more MLB teams from other countries. Well, now that a few hours of my evenings are freed up, I can spend more time on crosswords – let’s dive into this one.

• Name: Thrice as Nice
• Grid size: 15×15
• Entries: 72
• Difficulty: Medium  Hard (my solve time: 7:49)

Back to using Across Lite again and my solve time is back toward normal as well. I knew there would be three of something in the themers, and I wasn’t wrong, I just didn’t catch that the rhyming title “Thrice as Nice” kind of played into the theme as well. The themers are three-word phrases where each word rhymes with the others, clued punnily:

• 17A: [Brief girl movie?]: QUICK CHICK FLICK – I think “chick flick” is falling out of use, or at least I hope so because it seems dismissive. “RomCom” may be better, but [Formal event in a movie with a “meet cute?”]: ROM COM PROM isn’t a grid-spanner.
• 27A: [Roly-poly curmudgeon’s hunched posture?]: PLUMP GRUMPS LUMP – A minor quibble: I wish “humped” was used in the clue in place of “hunched” so we had a hint to use another word in the answer. I had HUMP in there until I completed the solve and thought “that’s an alternate spelling of Ucluelet I’ve never seen.” But maybe that was Barb’s intention…
• 44A: [Hefty sentry’s yell?]: STOUT SCOUTS SHOUT – Pretty straightforward.
• 55A: [Inebriated striped stinker’s feistiness?]: DRUNK SKUNK SPUNK – Or: [Inebriated striped stinker’s aggressive anti-establishment music genre?]: DRUNK SKUNKS PUNK.

A pretty smooth solve, but with two snags that probably cost me a minute. First, as I mentioned regarding 27A above, I had an H at 10D/27A, and for a while a Y at 10D/25A. There were some other complications in the NE that hung me up a while, see “Other stuff” below. Second, I am not as up on my Toni Morrison and Shakespeare as I ought to be, so I wasn’t sure which vowel ended 52D, or if I had 63A correct – I thought it was A MESS at first. I think this was a pretty tightly constructed puzzle and am always impressed when all the themers are grid-spanners. It occured to me that the last three letters of each word in the themers could be stand-alone entries themselves: ICK, UMP, OUT, UNK. It would have been a neat trick if those could have been worked into the grid somehow.

Canadian content:

• 5D: [Pt. of CRA]: AGCY – The Canada Revenue Agency “administers tax, benefits, and related programs for the Government of Canada and for most provinces and territories.”
• 7D: [To be discussed, and a panel segment on “The National”]: AT ISSUE – “The National” is the CBCs flagship nightly news program. “At Issue” is a segment of the show where several journalists discuss the week’s hottest political issues.
• 8D: [___ Saint-Jean, Québec]: LAC – Lac Saint-Jean was originally named Pikuakami (meaning “shallow lake”) by the Montagnais (Ilnu) who inhabited the territory. The lake is located in the Laurentian Highlands of south-central Québec.
• 10D: [Coastal town 300 km from Victoria, BC]: UCLUELET – I have been to Ucluelet half a dozen times, but don’t think I’ve ever learned to spell it correctly even though it’s spelled pretty much as it’s pronounced: U-CLUE-LET.
• 20A: [Former Blue Jays shortstop José]: REYES – José Reyes, born in the Dominican Republic, played for the Blue Jays from 2013-2015.
• 28D: [Halifax’s 103-year old gopher tortoise]: GUS – Gus is a resident of the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History, and has been there since 1942.
• 43A: [TSX purchase]: SHR – You can purchase a share of stock on the Toronto Stock Exchange, though you’d normally buy more than one.
• 47D: [Trudeau Jr.’s predecessor]: HARPER – Stephen Harper was Prime Minister from 2006 to 2015, when he was succeeded by Justin Trudeau, Jr.
• 57D: [Canada’s fourth largest sch.]: UBC – The University of British Columbia is located in Vancouver, and houses the wonderful Museum of Anthropology, which I try to visit every time I’m in the area.

Other stuff:

• 37A: [Hydrocarbon used in plastics]: OCTENE – Not taking chemistry in high school, and disliking it so much I made sure I didn’t fail it in college so I wouldn’t have to take it again, I only am familiar with octane.
• 40D: [Part of a CRT]: SCR – This one threw me for a bit. I couldn’t get any abbreviation of the words in cathode ray tube to work with the crosses. When I figured out it was an abbreviation for screen I realized the importance of the “a” in the clue: rather than part of CRT (i.e., part of the abbreviation itself) it was referring to part of *a* CRT, which includes a screen, among other things.
• 48A: [Boat wood decay]: DRY ROT – I always thought it odd that a boat that sat in water got dry rot, but it turns out it’s called that because rotted wood looks crumbly and dry. It still requires water for the rot to occur.
• 52D: [1973 Toni Morrison title]: SULA – “Sula” tells the story of two girls’ friendship and coming of age in a black community in Ohio.

Quote of the week:
“I have come to regard November as the older, harder man’s October. I appreciate the early darkness and cooler temperatures.”
– Henry Rollins