Greetings all! Can’t believe that October is nearly over and that I’ve been doing this blog for nearly a month. How time flies! I was on a call today where one of the participants said that during the pandemic she felt like she was losing months, but now it seems like years. On that happy note, let’s take a look at this week’s puzzle.

Title: What Was Lost is Found
Grid size: 15×15
Number of entries: 76
Difficulty: Medium Easy (my time: 8:29, (but a minute of that was finding a typo))

“What Was Lost is Found” is the title of this week’s puzzle: the themers are common phrases clued as puns, but with the last letter omitted; the omitted letters spell FOUND:

• 17A [Pasture-raised honey bug?]: GRASS FED BEE – F was omitted
• 23A [Advice to a kiteflyer?]: GO FOR THE GUST – O was dropped off; might also have been clued “Advice for a sailor?”.
• 35A [“Are those guys wearing WIGS??”]: WHATS ON THE MEN – U was elided.
• 46A [Joint action in a boardgame spin-off for potheads?]: MONOPOLY TOKE – N was eliminated.
• 55A [Accommodation at a pig farm]: ROOM AND BOAR – D was removed.

This is one of my favo(u)rite puzzles ever from Barb – I found the solve smooth but pleasantly challenging, with clever cluing and lots of fresh fill and Canadian content. And the theme/gimmick was enjoyable and well-executed, without sacrificing the quality of the rest of the grid – regular solvers know that is difficult to pull off. After starting as usual in the NW (confidently and incorrectly putting YONGE in 1A 🙄] I worked generally N to S, finishing by correcting 36D from TRES to TROP and then spending a minute finding out I had fat-fingered an E to start 20A.

Canadian content:

• 1D [A main street of Toronto]: BLOOR – I vaguely remember this street from one of my few trips to TO.
• 9D [“Juin au Août”]: ETE – My 1.5 years of high school French allowed me to know that June through August is summer (été) in Quebec.
• 15A [“The Friendly Giant” rooster]: RUSTY – I am not familiar with this Canadian-American children’s show that aired on the CBC from 1958-1985.
• 22A [Can-___ (some dirt bikes)]: AMS – According to Wikipedia: “Can-Am was a motorcycle production division of BRP, Bombardier Recreational Products, a Canadian corporation, between 1971 and 1987. Since 2006 Bombardier has produced all-terrain vehicles under the Can-Am Off-Road brand.”
• 34A [The Leafs on a scoreboard)]: TOR – The Toronto Maple Leafs.
• 36D [It’s too much for a Frenchman]: TROP – My 1.5 years of high school French was not enough to tell me the difference between “very” and “too much,” apparently…
• 41A [Bay St. share trader, pre-2002]: TSE – I didn’t realize the Toronto Stock Exchange changed names in 2002; they’re now TSX.
• 45D [Snowmobile trademark now used generically]: SKI DOO – While I initially considered this Canadian content because snowmobiles are used a lot in Canada, I didn’t know that, like Can-Ams, Ski-Doos are also manufactured by BRP.
• 51A [Orange campaign sign letters]: NDP – The first image that came up when I googled “Canada NDP” is actually an orange sign with white letters, but the Canadian New Democratic Party also has other signs with orange letters. Now that I re-read this I see that “orange” in the clue could have been referring to either the sign or the letters…
• 54A [___ Who? (nickname of Canada’s 16th P.M.)]: JOE – Charles Joseph Clark served as the 16th prime minister of Canada from June 4, 1979, to March 3, 1980 – less than a year!
• 55D [Mounties, for short]: RCS – I’ve always referred to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as the RCMP, but didn’t know the abbreviation was even further abbreviated.

Other stuff:

• 5D [Fit with new footwear]: RESHOD – The ambiguous tense of “fit” in the clue had me put in RESHOE for a while.
• 27D [Tuesday’s Norse namesake]: TYR – Fun fact: The ICGV Tyr is the flagship of the Icelandic Coast Guard, whose current Chief of Operations was my college roommate (and lifelong friend).
• 39D [Haw mate]: HEM – I apparently watched too much country comedy TV in the 70’s, because I had HEE in here for a long time.
• 43D [“Game of Thrones” prostitute]: ROS – I’ve never watched (nor had the desire to watch) GOT so I needed all the crosses to get this one.
• 44A [Some U.S. Army NCOs]: MSGTS – I’ve often seen Staff Sergeants (SSGTS) in puzzles before, but not Master Sergeants.
• 50A [“____ saw Elba”]: ERE I – I’ve always been a fan of palindromes, and Napoleon’s lament “Able was I ere I saw Elba” is one of my favorites, along with the Panama Canal one.
• 61A [Melodic wrap-up]: OUTRO – I had “coda” or “refrain” or “bridge” in my head for a while until getting several crosses and all of a sudden my days of working on video production in high school and college came to me where we would play the opposite of “intro music” over the closing credits.

Tip of the week: If you’re trying to diet, buy Halloween candy that the trick-or-treaters will like but that you don’t.