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Seasonal destination near Quebec City / SUN 6-13-21 / Alberta city named for an eagle-feather headdress / Space-scanning org. / Berliner pioneer in phonograph records / Conflicts of 1839-42 and 1856-60 / Two-player game invented in Toronto / Classical Icelandic literary work
Sunday, June 13, 2021
Constructor: Stephen McCarthy
Relative difficulty: E asyis H
Theme answers:
- WINTER ICE HOTEL (16D: Seasonal destination near Quebec City)
- MEDICINE HAT (4D: Alberta city named for an eagle-feather headdress)
- GORDIE HOWE (104A: Six-time winner of the N.H.L.'s Art Ross Trophy, born in Saskatchewan)
- TABLE HOCKEY (10D: Two-player game invented in Toronto)
- FREE HEALTH CARE (19D: Program introduced by the Trudeau government in 1984, colloquially)
- LESLIE HOPE (108A: "24" and "Suits" actress, born in Halifax)
Leslie Ann Hope (born May 6, 1965) is a Canadian actress and director, best known for her role as Teri Bauer on the Fox television series 24 and prosecutor Anita Gibbs on Suits. [entirety of the clue (except the "born in Halifax" part) taken from the first sentence of her wikipedia page ... nice (i.e. lazy)]
• • •
 |
| How in the *world* was this not a theme answer!? |
ARCHFOE is hilariously not a thing. What dark corner of what dark word list did that come from. It's "archenemy" or gtfo. I actually really like the middle of this grid (the part that doesn't involve the revealer, that is). That column of long Downs looks great, and all crossing the flashy QUINCEAÑERA! Sweet. Beyond that, it's PERLENGETEMOBOENS and AIGISLEELMUG and OPELHAHCOONETATRA as far as the eye can see. Well, not that far, but pretty far. Nothing much else to talk about. Don't really get why the clue on MAIN ST. was [Central route thru town] as opposed to [Central rte. through town]. I guess the former is shorter. Anyway, didn't pick up that "thru" was an abbr. signal, so was surprised to get an abbr. in the answer. But there's nothing technically wrong there. As you can see, I have nothing important left to talk about and am resorting to musings on the philosophy of crossword clues, just to fill space. So with that, I say adieu ('cause, you know ... Canada ... with the French and all...)
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. Peter Gordon's Kickstarter for "A-to-Z Crosswords 2021" is wrapping up today. These are daily easy 9x11 puzzles, each of which contains every letter of the alphabet at least once (pangrams!). Here are the specs:
Every day (including weekends) for 13 weeks you’ll get a 9×11 easy-to-medium crossword whose answer contains all 26 letters. They will be written by Peter Gordon and Frank Longo. The puzzles will be delivered to your email inbox in two forms: Across Lite, which can be solved on your computer, smartphone, or tablet; and pdf, which can be printed and solved on paper. All this for less than 11¢ a puzzle.Would make a nice little addition to your solving routine. Might be great for someone who's just getting into crosswords (or someone you want to encourage to get into crosswords). There are sample puzzles at the Kickstarter site if you're curious. Get in on the action here. Yes, now.
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118 comments:
Unlike @Rex, I think the maple leaf grid is very cool, as is the revealer.
A lot of unusual long answers, including [“24” and “Suits” actress, born in Halifax] LESLIE HOPE. But the only person I had ever heard of with that name was a legendary entertainer from London. His name was LESLIE HOPE but he called himself “Bob”.
I saw a Bob Hope USO show while stationed in Vietnam, ’65/’66. The show was a huge hit, with Ann-Margaret being a big attraction. As the war dragged on, support for the war waned as did Hope’s popularity with the troops.
I guess 5A isn't NODUH. Darn.
Why did I know MEDICINEHAT?? It's miraculous-adjacent that I knew anything.
But yay for that, ECHOLOCATE (and its near-anagram of chocolate!), TAUTOLOGY, and many more.
I know it probably wasn't intended that way, but FREEHEALTHCARE felt a little like a middle finger to us 'murkins.
This theme.
Until I hit the revealer (which I wanted at the end of the puzzle BTW) I thought "yeah, that's right: EH." (short "e" sound)
And then... the skies opened, the sun shone, and the angels sang as Athena and Minerva rode a sunbeam to my consciousness. And voilà! Enlightenment was mine!
Then we all walked into a bar and waited for @GILL to tell us a joke.
What a terrific, punny theme and revealer! But that's not even the best part - the fill was fresh, exciting and just plain wonderful with sharp, clever cluing. I knew things, I didn't know things, but every last thing was extremely gettable. Fun! Fun!Fun!
And wavelength? At first I thought I was a goner when I bumped up against Canada stuff (that turned out to be easily sussed out with fair crosses and such), but it wasn't long before even the unusual entries fell quickly.
PLUS, nice to see old friends EDDA and OPEL again.
I couldn't believe that this was a debut puzzle - not just a NYTXW debut! How impressive!
Oh, please please, Mr. McCarthy - do hurry back with more! I won't even hold your participation in Ultimate Frisbee against you.
I kid the @Z. But then, he already knows that. 😊
🧠🧠🧠
🎉🎉🎉🎉.5
What Rex said pretty much exactly. Working through the top, I noticed all the Canada stuff, looked at the title, and puffed my chest out thinking "A Canada theme: Nice!"
Then encountered MEHED IN CANADA and un-puffed. Kind of a slap in the face, the tired EH thing from about 40 years ago. Bob and Doug McKenzie, etc. But I guess as a theme it's okay, pretty meh.
But Rex TABLE HOCKEY is (or was, when I was a lad) a big thing. When I was in about grade 6, my best friend and I had a tournament... best of seven. We alternated, 2 games at home, 2 away, then home, away, home The stakes were a quarter per game, and I ended up winning game seven, to earn: 25 cents. I was on cloud nine, like winning the Stanley Cup! Until my Dad found out and made me return the quarter. Major bummer.
My GORDIE HOWE story: a friend from university was at an NHL game in the early 70's as a kid and arrived early for the practice, or something. As Gordie was skating off the ice my friend called "Gordie, Gordie, can I have your stick?" Gordie: "Fuck off, kid."
Another friend at the same university, her father was a NHL player in the 60's, and referred to Gordie as "Mr. Elbows". But Gordie was a superstar, and eventually got to play on a line with his two sons on the Houston Aeros, so good for him. Gordie died 5 years ago this week.
Totally concur with Rex about this slogfest. Any idea how many PPP clues in this one, because I lost count midway in the puzzle, and I'm just wondering if the all-time record was broken here. Rumor has it that the Devil has ordered copies fir recreational hour in Hell...
This started out easy and got tougher down south (especially the SE corner), so easyish for me too.
No idea about LESLIE HOPE and I’ve seen most of 24 and some of Suits.
Clever and amusing, so I’m a lot more with @Frantic than with @Rex on this one. A fine debut, liked it a bunch!
Essentially, I liked all the answers I got and none of those I didn't, which was probably more than half of them.
As much as I admire our Canadian neighbors for living in a country that touches America while somehow remaining sane and exporting great comedians, I have to stop and think hard who the US president was in 1984 (impeached, had a something gate who knows), so there's no chance I could keep track of what Trudeau was doing back then.
Classic Icelandic Literary Work? Arch Foe instead of Arch Enemy? Words cried after go (Get Em). Is Em a word or a piece of a word? Sesh? Tatooine (oh please make Star Wars go away). A bit of this I could take, but not a whole Sunday.
Of course, it's probably just me, eh? Poor sport! Keep being normal and playing that game with the broom you guys. This is your day.
I did like Gordie Howe near Old Pros and RC Cola near Ukuleles. Somehow that paints a picture.
I guess by now most Americans have absorbed that Canadians stereotypically add EH to their sentences, but if you're unfamiliar with that particular joke you'd have no idea what the EH's mean, and the puzzle makes no attempt to contextualize it. And because the grid has a sort of maple leaf shape in it, the puzzle is titled... "Maple Leaf". Clever. This all fits together rather flimsily if you ask me.
And what are muchachos and a quinceañera party doing in a puzzle about Canada? Who brought the ukuleles? We need some homegrown talent:
♪ He was sitting in the lounge of the Empire Hotel
He was drinking for diversion, he was thinking for himself
A little money riding on the Maple Leafs
Along comes a lady in lacy sleeves
She says let me sit down
You know, drinkin' alone's a shame (It's a shame it's a crying shame)
Look at those jokers
Glued to that damn hockey game
Hey honey-you've got lots of cash
Bring us round a bottle
And we'll have some laughs
Gin's what I'm drinking
I was raised on robbery
I'm a pretty good cook
Sitting on my groceries
Come up to my kitchen
I'll show you my best recipe
I try and I try but I can't save a cent
I'm up after midnight, cooking
Trying to make my rent
I'm rough but I'm pleasin'
I was raised on robbery
We had a little money once
They were pushing through a four lane highway
Government gave us three thousand dollars
You should have seen it fly away
First he bought a '57 Biscayne
He put it in the ditch
He drunk up all the rest
That son of a bitch
His blood's bad whiskey
I was raised on robbery
You know you ain't bad looking
I like the way you hold your drinks
Come home with me, honey
I ain't asking for no full length mink
Hey, where you going
Don't go yet
Your glass ain't empty and we just met
You're mean when you're loaded!
I was raised on robbery ♪
As someone who lived in Montreal for almost 20 years, I can only concur with Rex's opinion of the city and this puzzle! The whole thing felt a bit meh...
It's funny how Rex got all worked up how the revealer looked bad, but he wrote it wrong. It's M"EH"DE, not MEHD.
It’s MEHDE IN CANADA, not MEHD. Doesn’t make it much better thought.
We had free health care (to some extent) by 1972. All that happened in 1984 was the passage of the Canada Health Act, a consolidation of an existing system. I find that an insulting and ridiculous error. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-care-system/reports-publications/health-care-system/canada.html#a3
Hah! First thing I thought of after finishing was all the people who complain that a puzzle is “too young” or “too old” or has “too much pop culture” or “not enough pop culture”. That is, people complaining that a puzzle is out of their normal range of thinking or knowledge. Here’s a puzzle that is out of our country! Hah!
No matter. The constructors / editors at the NYT are top notch, and the puzzles are almost always do-able for their day of the week. As was today’s. Even though I never heard of WINTER ICE HOTEL and LESLIE HOPE and had to dig hard to pull out MEDICINE Hat and TABLE HOCKEY.
This had a quirky, out-of-the-ordinary-vibe for a NYT puzzle, and that is a good thing. Please, editors, throw In offbeat puzzles occasionally, to keep us on our toes and tickle our interest. I liked the non-American feel, the quirky answers like ARCHFOE, BOBCUT, and WIG SHOPS. I even liked the grid art, a portrayal of a maple leaf that no matter how much I squinch my eyes I just can’t see – I don’t care! Give us quirky grid art. Go bonkers every once in a while.
There are also some terrific answers – TAUTOLOGY, QUINCEANERA, SLAPDASH, ECHOLOCATE, EARSHOT, and my heart broke into smiles at being reminded of Brother Iz.
This was a most refreshing solving experience. Thank you editors and thank you Stephen!
Took me forever to solve
Used to live where you had to go south to drive to Canada (Detroit) so I remember Gordie Howe's bday (3/31-also my brother's). Ran the Detroit Marathon in 2016, and it goes through Ontario. Still remember all the lovely folks waving as we crossed the bridge, calling "Welcome to Canada!" So I liked this. Great effort, and the maple leaf is neat.
...I may get Sunday night feeling later as returning to the office tomorrow after 15 months working from home.
Noble effort to honor Canada but just implodes on itself with blah themers and so much short nonsense resulting from the grid layout. Where is Joni or Richard Manuel or the Great One? We get TABLE HOCKEY and some unknown actress. Liked MEDICINE HAT. You can’t stack your revealer on top of QUINCEANERA and include UKULELES, MUCHACHO and RC COLA etc. There’s no maple leaf vibe here.
Had nemesis before ARCH FOE. Really like TAUTOLOGY x ECHOLOCATE.
Sunday sized grid full of no direction = not very enjoyable.
Hey, another Colin! People are going to get us confused!
Kudos to Stephen on his debut, and a Sunday NYT puzzle 1) with a maple leaf pattern and 2) without traditional symmetry either!
I'll give a pass on the "eh" thing if the puzzle was constructed by a Canadian. Which also means one had to find answers with "eh" embedded within, and of certain lengths - no easy feat. But I have to agree with Rex about "WINTERICEHOTEL": It's the Ice Hotel or Hotel de Glace. There were a couple of other eyebrow-raisers, but I did enjoy the nods to Star Wars (LEIA, TATOOINE).
And APIAN... I just found out that one of the guys I play lacrosse with is an apiarist. How cool is that? (Relevant tangent: Lacrosse is one of Canada's two national sports.)
Agree about what a great city Montreal is. My wife and I hope to explore more of Canada, more often, when the border opens up again.
I interpreted the pun of “Mehde” in Canada as things from Canada that are “meh”. An apt description for Medicine Hat and table hockey, but Canada’s health care system is far from “meh”. My Canadian spouse’s reaction to this puzzle was “everyone likes to make fun of Canada”
Hi all - for the benefit of us casual bystanders, what is a PPP clue? I’ve noticed this term in the comments a number of times now.
Frantic Sloth said
"Why did I know MEDICINEHAT??"
If you're a Guess Who fan like me, maybe you know it from "Runnin Back to Saskatoon."
"Moose Jaw, Broadview, Moosomin too
Runnin' back to Saskatoon
Red Deer, Terrace, Hanna, Medicine Hat
Sing another prairie tune
Sing another prairie tune"
I’m happy for anyone who had fun solving this puzzle but for this Canadian, it was a groan-inducing, cliché-ridden mishmash! And I remain convinced that despite all stereotypes, we don’t actually go around saying EH all the time. I’m glad to congratulate the constructor on his debut and I wish him future puzzling success. And guess what, I was born on Vancouver Island, too! But I have to say: for me, this puzzle just didn’t land.
I actually wrote a diatribe last night but I’ve thought better of posting it as Rex covered a lot of the same points I did. I’ll just say that I think “Program introduced by the Trudeau government in 1984, colloquially”: FREE HEALTH CARE is misleading. We’ve had a national system of Medicare since the late 1960s and it was pioneered in the province of Saskatchewan by then-Premier, Tommy Douglas (Yay, Tommy!) There was a healthcare act passed in 1984, but it streamlined and systematized what was already in place. Nothing changed significantly for Canadians either at their doctors’ offices or at the hospital as a result of that 1984 legislation. And furthermore we never talk about FREE HEALTHCARE colloquially or otherwise – it’s Medicare. It's not a perfect system but I think it’s one of the strengths of this country, and it’s served me well and helped millions for more than 50 years. OK, climbing off soapbox and chopping it up for firewood.
Today I give you what is arguably the signature poem by WILLIAM BUTLER YEHTS – oh sorry, I mean of course – YEATS – born June 13, 1865.
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
QUOTER’S NOTE: It was terribly hard to pick only one poem by Yeats…so I didn’t! Here are four of his early works:
”The Lake Isle of Innisfree” read by Anthony Hopkins
”The Stolen Child” sung by Loreena McKennitt
”Down by the Salley Gardens” sung by Maura O’Connell with Karen Matheson
”When You Are Old” read by Colin Farrell
Click on all of these if you have time, but definitely click on the last two.
I know Canada is a wonderful place and that I should learn more about it. But not today.
As a substitute, I'm wrestling right now with the Sunday Cryptic. It appears to be one of the hardest I've ever come across and I have no idea if I'll be able to finish it.
Wtf with all the slang and unusual expressions: NATCH? SESH? HOLLA? Not to mention: OHSNAP, and GETEM.
At times, this felt more like a tribute to sloppy English than to fair Canada.
True, there were quite a few clever answers, such as: TABLEHOCKEY and WIGSHOPS, but the abundance of informal
and/or seldom used expressions seriously compromised this otherwise whimsical and worthy tribute, imho.
p.s. Did love the inclusion of the immortal gordiEHowe.
tc
I had a very tough solving experience, but for an unusual reason. My paper was not delivered yesterday and I had to solve from a very blurry printed copy. So I gave up early and began researching the PPP (especially the Canadian PPP) early on. This resulted in a fairly easy solve (many don't accept the method, though). So my reaction was that it was an easy puzzle to solve after the research, easier than usual. I think my Canadian mother-in-law, were she alive today, would have enjoyed it and sped right though it.
The depiction of a maple leaf in the grid requires a bit of imagination. Quite a bit if you ask me.
My reaction to those who complain about the puzzle? Time to loosen up.
I used to think of the great Gordie Howe as Mr. Elbows, as thats what you received from him in the hockey rink corners. Rarely has such a great player been in the penalty box so often. With the concussion consciousness of today's sports executive promoting necessary (in my opinion) rule changes in the major sports (perhaps too little in the NHL), I wonder how he would have made out were he active today.
Lots of binary answers (either you know it or you don’t) today, including MEDICINE HAT and WINTER ICE HOTEL - which made it very difficult to move out of the NW (after an awful PPP start at 1A). I then bumped into TATOOINE which was no fun at all, as of course I hate words that are just made up words, and things that are just made up things, and especially made up words that are made up things as well.
It’s probably a fine puzzle if you’re familiar with the Canadian trivia (and not put off by the EH stereotype) - the clue on FREE HEALTH CARE seems like a total misfire though.
Substitute “A” for “EH” and you end up with “Made in Canada”. I think that’s the intention but I didn’t love it since the other “EH”s didn’t follow that logic.
Thx Stephen; what a fun Sun. puz! :)
Easy/Med solve.
Top half and SW = very easy; lower quad = not so easy.
Umped a Little League game involving MEDICINE HAT, so that went right in, tipping me off to the EHs, which all soon got filled in. One of those times when the theme actually assisted in the solve, eh!
Wasn't 100% on the TATOOINE / LAC cross, as the lake, LAC St.-Jean was unknown to me, and could've just as easily been the first name, Luc. Didn't know TATOOINE, but the 'a' looked better than the 'u', so that was a semi-educated guess.
MEDICINE HAT ~ Blackie & The Rodeo Kings
@jae
A belated thank you for the BEQ Sun. puz (@Z was kind enough to email the pdf to me). First time in many years that I've done one dead-tree.
___
yd 0
Peace ~ Empathy ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Bah, my Sunday DNF, the crossing of TATOOINi and QUINCiANERA. I didn't have all that many write-overs today, though before I got the theme I had 37A as "not SO bad". It certainly took me a while to resign myself to 76A starting with MEH when crosses made it clear the end of the phrase was going to be CANADA. By the end, all was revealed and I thought this was fun.
bOoSTED at 22A gave me a bit of a challenge to overcome in the NW.
Stephen McCarthy, congratulations on your NYTimes debut, with a Sunday puzzle no less!
EARSHOT was brilliant. ARCHFOE not so much. NEMESIS is was I started with up there as a certain correct answer.
Caught on to the EH quickly but It was done well. Took me forever to finish though. Lots of time to fill in the smaller answers
@Barbara S. 8:20a - wonderful selections thank you. I would recommend a listen of Mike Scott’s An Appointment with Mr Yeats where he puts many of the great works like White Birds and Let the Earth Bear Witness to music. Sorry I don’t know how to post the link.
GORDIE HOWE played every game for a playoff hockey team at the age of 51. Ice hockey must be a pretty easy game, eh?
That was just stupidly easy. Other than a little fiasco with asparagus SPrig, then SPrAy, before finally SPEAR, I just FLITted through this. Shame because I really, really liked the fill. Just needed to toughen up the cluing a bit.
Wherever M&A is, he must be really struggling with his Moo-COW easiest clue nomination today … there must be 30 candidates.
I didn’t realize how much I know about Canada. I could not have answered many of the clues without the benefit of the crosses but with some nudging from them I answered almost the entire puzzle.
I call that a fun, challenging puzzle.
Let's go I-LAN-DERS
Let's stop I-LHA-N ers
@BarbaraS. Your posts are too long and I wind up skipping over yours and others as a result. So off topic too. Please revise.
OK you ARCHFOE haters.
M-W lists ARCHFOE as a word. First usage 1595. They give the following as a recent usage: On Monday, U.S. District Judge William Alsup slapped restrictions on ride-hailing giant Uber’s driverless car research in a trade secrets civil lawsuit filed by archfoe Waymo, Google’s autonomous car project.
— Russ Mitchell, latimes.com, 16 May 2017
So the problem with ARCHFOE is it is less common than archenemy. Well hooray for comic books but so what. Archenemy may use more letters and sound more melodious. ARCHFOE is shorter with nice bam-bam effect and more akin to rival than enemy. And since is rarer it has a fresher feel and comes across as a little more folksy. So middle finger to all who judge the worthiness of crossword answers by comparing google hits, how common it sounds to your ear, or thinks the usual expression is always to be preferred. A truism or a tautology? Bah. Of course it was clued as in a comic book but I don't care. Blame Will.
Was the pun MEHDE (made) IN CANADA? I think thats pretty pretty good.
But I always want to spell ukes UKeLELES. And I had Katy chanting asIF for way too long. Oh you idiot, it said letters.
Surprised (or not) that Rex didn’t comment on the presence of a blatant antisemite in today’s puzzle ("it’s all about the Benjamins"; "dual loyalty"; proposing legislation equating boycotting Israel to boycotting Nazis; identified as "the most important member of the new Congress" by David Duke). The deafening silence says all one needs to know about Rex Parker.
Was expecting a rant about NRA. Maybe Rex is maturing. Yay. Canada Day is July 1st so only a few weeks away so sorta timely. Not sure why anyone would include the Anti-Semite ILHAN Omar in the grid on purpose but maybe it was unavoidable. There are obviously many ways to clue Omar but I can’t think of any other ILHANs. It’s all good anyway. Like NRA, she is famous no matter how heinous and therefore deserving of inclusion. Anyway, nice one hoser.
Nick D: I wondered the same thing. I googled and eventually found this: "PPP - Pop Culture, Product Names, and other Proper Nouns."
PPP is proper nouns, etc. My quick and probably inaccurate count is 53 out of 138, which is high.
I've never been in MEDICINE HAT, but I've been in Calgary so I knew it after a few letters, from having seen it many times on a map of Alberta. That helped.
TATOOINE, on the other hand, required every single cross. As mentioned, one has to know the exact spelling of QUINCEANERA. LAC St. Jean is 100+ miles north of Quebec, and it is very big, but not a place Americans visit very much.
Leo
Hey All !
Maple Leaf, you say? Sure, why not? If I squint and tilt my head while spinning around on one foot with my glasses halfway down my nose, I can see it! 😂😋
Neat concept, EHs in answers that are Canadian things/people. I'm in the camp of "MEHDE" being just a skosh too much. Funny as it is, it just looks odd.
One-letter DNF, Argh!, at QUINCEiNERA. Not noticing ECHOLOCiTE wasn't really a thing. End of puz antsiness again. Dang. Actually surprised that was my only wrongness.
Gonna build a Summer ICE HOTEL as it's going to be in the 100-teens here this week. Yikes. Stay cool, y'all.
Four F's, eh. (Sorey) 🤣
RooMonster
DarrinV
I got the theme and some of the themers, but it was a long slog to victory today. A win is a win, as they say, tautologically. Lots of learning and teaching of logic and a six week total immersion in French at Laval University in Quebec City helped along the way.
I'm the first to wake up here as a rule. I came downstairs this morning to see a gift and card on the kitchen table with "Dad" written on it. Must be Father's Day, methinks, ergo early in the solve was convinced that all of these themers were in honor of me.
I was thus rather proud to get "Tiddlywinks" as the two-player game, off of nothing but the "T" in TWAS. Seemed like the sort of thing a Dad would want to get the kids to play. (TABLE HOCKEY being more of a peer-to-peer game idea, being fun).
And the relatable bone-headed optimism of 16D: I pictured frigid January, when the furnace is shot: "This'll actually be a lot of fun. We'll wear our hats and mittens to bed. Just like that WINTER ICE HOTEL they have over in Canada!" It all made wonderful sense. Even @Rex would be hard pressed to find fault today.
The gig was up when I got to MEHDE IN CANADA. What the heck? A quick side-trip to Google: Father's Day is next Sunday.
That must make today SANTANA's grand-daughter's QUINCEANERA. So it actually does make sense after all.
@Son Volt (9:31)
Is this the link you meant? The Yeats material starts about 5:30.
The Waterboys' Tribute to W.B. Yeats
Rex,
You tone deaf, no taste, lecturers at a second rate school in a third rate town.
You have the gall to,use eternal when describing a city but it doesn’t refer to Rome, the eternal city?wow. Just..wow.
Smalltowndoc,
Nancy Pelosi can’t bring herself to call out the raging antisemites in her own caucus, you think one of her acolytes will? Not a chance. If you want to raise Rex’s hackles tell him men are men and women are women. They can’t change their gender just because they , ahem, identify as something other than their biological sex.
Ah, another Sunday. Would someone please remind me where Rex has had his own crosswords published?
@Nancy 8:21 – I thought this was one of the best cryptics ever. I do have a couple of answers that took me a huge amount of time to figure out why they were right (29A, 5D). Often cryptics fall back on anagrams over and over – lazy cluing. The variety and deviousness of the clues today I really appreciate.
No @Rube, you revise. (Or perhaps your monicker is a clue that you couldn't be as dim-witted as you sound.) Anyone skipping @Barbara S is cheating themself. Feel free, but save your "advice".
The puzzle, lotsa good, lotsa bad. Gordie Howe good. Stuffed into a section with loewe,leia,otis,blige,and siri...bad. And natch getem holla hah sat...yuck.
By the way a Gordie Howe triple :Score a goal,an assist, and win a fight.
My favorite Canadian, Joni Mitchell. Thanks @Joe.
Washington Nationals (NATS) were formerly the Montreal Expos. Ukuleles were introduced in Canadian schools in the 1960's to improve musical literacy by J.C. Doane; "Ukulele in the Classroom" program still exists in Canada.
I had no problem espying the Maple Leaf.
Icehotel 365 in Swedish Lapland is open year round.
@Nancy (8:21 AM)
I'm with you on the cryptic; what a workout! Still got some blanks so more work to do today. Good luck to you! :)
___
np g -8
Peace ~ Empathy ~ Kindness to all 🕊
@Nancy – I found the cryptic pretty easy to get through, but there's one entry that was completely new to me. The clue is pretty straightforward, but I still had to check the answer because two letters could have been switched. That was my only hold-up.
TJS
It’s hockey. Not baseball. It’s a Gordon Howe hat trick.
You must love Montréal because they serve the finest French whines.
First appearance of ARCHFOE - 1595 according to MW
As is typical of me, I completely missed the maple leaf grid art. But I see it now if I squint. Another level of clever IMHO.
Are table HOCKEY and air HOCKEY the same thing?
Aaah! Thank you, @J-Dip 223am for classing up the joint with Joni.
Also had "nemesis" before ARCHFOE (Hi, @Son Volt!) which I've not heard before (it's ARCHenemy all the way), but wondered if maybe that's common in Canada or the UK?
@Joe Welling 813am Thanks for the help, but nope. I do like The Guess Who, but not enough to remember the song. Can you hum a few bars? 😉
On a final note, I'm a little saddened that our Canadian friends found this puzzle insulting. Stereotypes can have that effect, obviously, but I always pictured these good-natured people laughing along, at themselves. Enough is enough is too much, though I guess. It's sort of like having a name that invites the same old tired joke and hearing it ad nauseam whenever you're introduced to someone. 😕
As far as the FREEHEALTHCARE error...I got nuthin'. The constructor is Canadian, so you'd think he'd know. Then again, I assume that the editors are American and when it comes to just thinking about something fascist and socialist like FREE HEALTH CARE, our heads explode.
*** P.S.A.***
Do not feed the trolls.
This one MEHD me go meh…
I liked this one a lot - the cleverly-EH-containing theme answers, which apart from MEDICINE,HAT and GORDIE HOWE I needed to figure out from crosses; the fun of TAUTOLOGY, SLAPDASH, QUINCANERA, MUCHACHO, ARCHFOE OR WORSE; the maple leaf in the grid.
In the "It's not Yeats, but..." vein, I knew MEDICINE HAT from the poem "In Kamloops" from the kid's poetry book Alligator Pie by Dennis Lee:
In Kamloops
I'll eat your boots.
In the Gatineaus
I'll eat your toes.
In Napanee
I'll eat your knee.
In Winnipeg
I'll eat your leg.
In Charlottetown
I'll eat your gown.
In Crysler's Farm
I'll eat your arm.
In Aklavik
I'll eat your neck.
In Red Deer
I'll eat your ear.
In Trois Rivieres
I'll eat your hair.
In Kitimat
I'll eat your hat.
And I'll eat your nose
And I'll eat your toes
In Medicine Hat and Moose Jaw.
As a Canadian, I loved it. We generally don't take ourselves too seriously so for me, it was fun to have a puzzle where I didn't have to know a bunch of US-specific stuff to really enjoy it. Lighten up, eh?
well, the USofA has ACA/Obamacare so the Canadians can have Whatever/FREE HEALTH CARE, can't they? I mean, do only Right Wingnut 'Mericans have the right to insult legislation?
OY. An okay puzzle with a silly concept and several top-notch answers destroyed by PPP and dreck like "sesh" (sorry, decades in the music biz, just no.), "holla" (what?), "NHLer" (who says this outside of crossword universe?), and "natch" (what decade we in there?).
Hand up for NEMESIS because, you know, "archfoe" is just not a thing anywhere except maybe in foot injuries.
"Free Healthcare" is also just not a thing anywhere on Earth. Most industrialized countries have a form of Universal Health Care and all of those are paid for through taxes with supplemental insurance available for more coverage. Just like our Medicare, PAID FOR through taxes. This is why we're entitled to it here in the US. Same with Social Security. It's ours, so we're entitled to it. "Free Healthcare" is an idea brought to us by the some folks who insist "Entitlement" is a thing for lazy people who don't want to work.
I dunno, I saw the maple leaf right away so presumed the puzzle would be about our neighbors to the north. Didn't get the "eh joke" until the revealer; I think even Mike Meyers grew out of that one about 25 years ago.
You’re right about the kids in the hall. It doesn’t get more Canadian. The name comes from Show of Shows. Hart Pomeranz and Lorne Michaels should have found there way in there as well. Need I mention John Candy and SCTV? Really enjoyed this Sunday
@Anon, 10:56. You are correct, sir. I blanked on "hat trick". Happens frequently when you pass 60.
Indeed and yet look who is calling @Rube a Rube. Channeling Rickles, What a hockey puck
Two things:
Peter Jennings lost his first gig as First Newsreader, largely on his instance on speaking Canadian. shed-u-ul, leftenant, pr-oh-cess, and the like.
"After three rocky years at the anchor desk, Jennings quit to become a foreign correspondent." the wiki
I do like the Mike Holmes early home show episodes, largely for the pro-oh-cess he avows, as well as, apparently, the stronger building codes in Ontario (I think that's where most of the episodes are based). Current ones are just more faux reality teeVee. oddly, to me anyway, other home show 'experts' have chided him for over-engineering and making 'real' contractors look like crooks. gee, as if 'real' contractors weren't already universally reviled?
@Rube (9:45)
We're both doing what we do: I'm posting and you're skipping my posts, and all's right with the world.
@TJS (10:44)
Thanks.
@Barbara, ignore rube's message; your snippets—and more—of the best in literature are a highlight of my day. Yeats (and Matthew Arnold) are two of my favorite poets (and having said that, others have immediately come to mind so maybe revise that thought), and "The Second Coming" is simply soul-wrenching. This may seem like trivializing a masterpiece but I would pay really good money for a t-shirt that screen-printed the entire text in a "widening gyre" about the body.
I did NOT get the joke about Canadiens and "eh" until I read Rex, and I can't really see the Maple Leaf, so, as usual, the elegance of the theme was lost on me. Maybe my brain is too fried with the intricacies of the various forms of DNA analysis and how to read and understand the results. I was studying into the wee hours the workings of mtDNA only to realize that, since my paternal grandmother only had sons, my mtDNA was going to tell me nothing about my paternal great grandmother (and beyond). Okay, Rube, yup I'm off topic. Sue me.
I loved EXHOLOCATE, probably because I got it with almost no crosses; yay me! I'd love to stay in a WINTER ICE HOTEL, and when I got QUINCIENERA, I almost floated away with pride. Yes, I'm easily entertained.
So put me in the happy dance camp.
@Barbara S. -- I love your posts, and you have such a good eye for interesting, high-quality writing/content. What a brilliant and enriching addition that has been to Rexylvania. Please continue doing you.
I wonder. Was this puzzle sheduled when it looked like the Maple Leafs were destined to power walk their way to the Stanley Cup, only to be tossed out by that French Team in Mon-Real?
As to the maple tree itself:
"The Canadian maple syrup industry accounts for approximately 75% of the world's maple syrup production, with 91% of the Canadian production originating from Quebec"
here: https://www.agr.gc.ca/eng/canadas-agriculture-sectors/horticulture/horticulture-sector-reports/statistical-overview-of-the-canadian-maple-industry-2019/?id=1604326674902
So, the Canadian maple leaf is almost 100% French. Sacre bleu!!
As a Canadian I didn't find it insulting, just tedious. The problem with stereotypes is with the author, who seems to have skipped over everything between Victoria and Stockholm except the "I am Joe" ad. I have never met anyone who talks like the McKenzie brothers. I presumed this was an affirmative action puzzle because of the Gay Choir mention. No one thinks of Trudeau giving us public health -Tommy Douglas. I don't blame Mr Shortz. It might have gotten a pass if it was printed near July 1 - as they say in Reddit, "an effort was made".
We were SOOOOO not on this puzzle's wavelength. Just abhorred ever second of solving it. So much crosswordese, and the themers were big ol' nothing burgers.
@kitshef 10:38 - I had similar thoughts about the cryptic's cluing - creative, misleading, and yet completely fair. There was more than one entry where I thought that I had the answer by pattern recognition but that it didn't fit the clue, until....wa-a-a-it a minute...and the meaning snapped into focus.
@David me not the other, Thank you for adding a little sanity to the blog today.
I tried many times to explain the meaning of entitlement to an elderly aunt who kept insisting on Facebook that Social Security isn't an entitlement because she worked for it. Eventually she unfriended me.
@Barbara, Thanks for today's poem. "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold..." Joan Didion channeled that poem to describe America in the '60s in "Slouching Towards Bethlehem."
@Barbara S. Thank you so much for the Yeats selections today. They make a Sunday worthwhile.
Was deflehted as i realized we weren't doing rebuses when i could not get archenemy to fit. Still had my fastest Sunday solve, but it did not put a smile on my fehce.
I think the grid looks more like Goatse ASCII art than a maple leaf.
Don't google it. You get it or you don't want to.
@Carola 11:35am: I can't believe I've never heard of that poem, considering I grew up in Kamloops.
As for neat place names, Medicine Hat and Moose Jaw are good ones, but driving across the prairies I always looked forward to the sign for Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump.
Re: Gordie Howe Hat Trick. Surprisingly, Gordie himself only had two of them in his insanely long career. The leader in career GHHTs it Rick Tocchet, with 18.
Hand up for hoping for @Barbara S. to continue her posts for as long as I'm reading this blog (or as long as she wishes to do so). @Rube ... there is nothing wrong with skipping posts, and I get that Barbara's posts are often long, but if you have the time on your hands and feel like giving her another chance, just pick a week at random and read them all. Maybe nothing changes, and you still don't like them and go back to skipping them. Maybe not.
I expressed the NRA outrage for you, Rex.
I predicted that Rex would look with disdain on all the EHs. "Sore-ee," but as a theme idea, I too found it MEH (and agree with Rex about the contrived MEHDE IN CANADA), but constructors here might disagree, to the extent that coming up with those answers of E followed by H and getting the maple leaf as well had to have taken some doing.
For me it was a pretty quick solve, aided by the fact that the theme was easy to see. But there are some nice answers in there, like TAUTOLOGY and QUINCEANERA and TATOOINE (which I didn't know) and SATAY. Not a lot of dreck, and many of those answers just felt smart. Go GET 'EM, Stephen McCarthy!
@Nancy, @bocamp, anyone else doing the cryptic:
Yeah, that was a tricky cryptic by Mr. Silvestri. I finished it, but I'm still scratching my head over 5D. I have a suspicion that it was really suboptimal cluing, and that's even granting plenty of license for the fact that this is after all a cryptic. I thought 14D was devilish: how many people know this? Quite a bit was fiendish in fact: honorable mentions go to 7D and 9A. Maybe 17D as well. 24D was pretty damned cute.
td pg -3 (some of it groan-worthy) yd pg -3 grr
@Son Volt
Email me and I'll send you my Embedding Cheat Sheet.
Myths that need correcting
1. Health care is never free. Take a look at my tax bill if you need proof.
2. All the heavy lifting on universal health care was done long before Trudeau(pere) arrived on the scene, but Junior is doing a pretty good job of finding all kinds of other stuff to give away free. It's in the genes.
3. Everyone knows Canada is covered with ice all the time. That ice hotel is very popular in summer too.
4. Maple Leafs??? Go Habs-- nuff said.
@Bubbabbythebay:
I assume you speak either as a Canadian or one who's almost such.
Clear up a confusion, common I expect in the lower-48 for those with only a tenuous grasp of all things Canadian: is it true that Provincial governments have the balance of power vis-a-vis Ottawa (see, I even know the Capitol city!), IOW what we here call States' Rights, and does that mean retirement and health care support differs from province to province, based on each provincial government's leanings?
Too bad about your Leafs. How many years since they last lifted the Cup? :)
@TTrimble 3:00 - About the cryptic...5D was a stumbling block for me, too, but eventually it did make sense; I think the clue is okay. About 14D - that was one of the few I got just from reading the clue: it's one of my favorite words (of its kind).
No Doug and Bob McKenzie cameo, eh?
The UKULELE was my first instrument; play it when visiting the granddaughters. Still have trouble remembering the 2nd 'u', tho. LOL
@Carola (1:23 PM)
"There was more than one entry where I thought that I had the answer by pattern recognition but that it didn't fit the clue, until....wa-a-a-it a minute...and the meaning snapped into focus."
Exactly my experience! Still have a few to grok, tho. 🤞
@kitshef (2:40 PM)
Sage and friendly advice for @Rube.
@TTrimble (3:00 PM)
Got all but the SW corner (wip). Still lots of mental weightlifting left to grasp the full spirit of all the clues, tho.
___
pg -1
Peace ~ Empathy ~ Kindness to all 🕊
I'm Canadian, and I've never said "eh" in my life. In fact, no one I know says it. In fact--not meaning to generalise--the only people who say it are the uneducated and ignorant simpletons. For that reason, I find this puzzle somewhat offensive.
Y’all talk about the Cryptic by Richard Silvestri. I have a subscription to the NYT Crossword but I can’t access it. There is no option for this on my IPAD app only the crossword and the mini. If I google NY Times Cryptic Crossword it brings me to a page where one Caitlin Lovinger discusses the cryptic puzzle but not the puzzle itself. If someone could provide a link to the puzzle it would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
@Joe 2:23am
Greetings from the other end of the day...
Love that! Was singing along with you
@Gareth
If you can access this, scroll down and you'll find the cryptic on the lower left.
Gosh ray, my dad is an M.D. He says eh all the time. But, hey, I don’t mean to generalize, but people who’ve never heard an educated Canadian say eh, are not paying attention. They’re probably stupid too. But, I do hate to generalize.
@Gareth
Check under Variety.
@6:10
Gee. Aren't Canadians the friendliest people in the Western Hemisphere? That's what they say here in the lower-48. I suppose we could check with Alaskans; they're nearly Canadian, eh?
"Can you hum a few bars? 😉"
@Frantic Sloth: Maybe I misremember, but I think it went something like, "Been solving crossword puzzles. Been learnin' 'bout words. . . .and phrases!"
It took THREE of us forever to solve [sigh]...
I know it is getting late, but I wanted to add some comments about Canadians. I have no Canadian roots. My wife was born and raised near Stamford, CT. Her father was born near Ottawa, Ontario in 1908. His father died in Ottawa in 1918. You can guess what Canadians were dying from in 1918. By the time my wife's father was 18, his mother died following a long illness which consumed what was left of the family's financial resources. He then moved to Stamford, CT where an older sister worked as a nurse. We have many Canadian family stories, and yes, her surviving cousin does say "eh".
I liked this more than Yeats. But my favorite kinds of poetry are haiku and limericks. I’m not kidding. To each their own!
Anonymous@3:38 Health is a provincial responsibility. That said, the feds actually have the hammer because they provide a lot of the funding. When Canada originally went into universal health care, and even in subsequent revisions to the funding model, the Canada Health Act set minimum standards and principles that provinces agreed to as a condition of receiving funding. These included points like portability (we retain coverage if we move from one province to another), universality (every citizen is covered), no opting out,and public administration.
Retirement pensions and social security are a federal responsibility (ex Quebeec), but long term care is totally in the provicial purview.
No boohoos forthe Leafs. Montreal Canadiens' fan all the way
Posting late because we spent all day at the ocean over in Maine and couldn't get at the puzzle any sooner, but was delighted when I finally did. Lots of fun clues, lots of clever answers, knew almost all the Canada stuff instantly.LESLIEHOPE was a WOE but that's more pop culture that I never know.
I was excited to chime in, because I'm probably the only person on this blog that has ACTUALLY STAYED IN THE (WINTER)ICEHOTEL !!. It is indeed made of ice and the bar is made of ice and it is adorned with internal ice sculptures. The beds are not made of ice, they put a platform and suitable materials on top and give you a very good sleeping bag and the temperature is somewhere in the 20's (F). This was a minimal challenge as we used to sleep on an unheated enclosed porch in NH that was colder, but with nowhere near the panache. The stay was a gift from our sons and a reminder of what wonderful parents we must be to receive such a cool present. We've also attended Winter Carnival in Quebec City, which encourages dangerously excessive drinking, but since we were there, we felt compelled to follow local customs.
Have been to Montreal many times including Expo '67. It never fails to delight.I have even sung in Parliament with my college group and appeared on CTY. Also, Oh Canada is a much better national anthem.
I thought this puzzle captured the wonderful ability of Canadians, or at least the ones I know, to laugh at themselves. I wish more people in this country were in possession of this talent, it would certainly help. There is still the French/English situation in Quevec, of course. The Quebec license plates say "Je me souviens", which a friend translates as "I bear a grudge.
Merci beaucoup for all the fun, SMC. See Me Cheering.
To accompany the closing credits of today's comments thread, we present:
Knuckles O'Toole playing Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag".
•••••
An EH Enterprises Production 2021.
To the Cryptic solvers: This is the toughest time I've ever had with a NYT Cryptic. A hint from @Teedmn helped me get 16A; she also confirmed that what I had for 7D, 18D, and 10A was correct -- but I'm still struggling in the SW. I can't get 22A, 26A and 28A even though I have the 1st letter of each. In addition I don't have 14D and 21D. I have 3 crosses for 15D and know what the first 3 letters must be.
I'm stopping for now. Tomorrow I may quit.
There was a maple leaf?
@Nancy
Despite @Joe Dipinto's comment of 10:50AM, this probably was harder than usual, and you have my sympathy. 14D strikes me as somewhat specialized (not everyone will recognize the answer). All the SW acrosses you mention, and 15D and 21D, are tricky, tricky, tricky. Don't feel at all bad.
My last was 7D; the cluing seemed pretty convoluted. And I wasn't satisfied by my understanding of 5D, although @kitshef clued me in privately with some dictionary citations.
@Mods
Probably my comment of 7:14PM could be removed, as the comment which gave rise to it no longer seems to be there. I leave it to your discretion; sorry for the noise.
NHL in a themer clue and NHLER as an answer? I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen...
@a. non
Rejoining our discussion.
You or who I thought was you, mentioned libel. Or libelous. You did not reply about what was libelous in Rex's comment.
Next ad hominem:You kept repeating it's ad hominem as if it were therefore ignorant or invalid. Thus I thought you were saying it was an fallacious ad hominem argument. That Rex was making an ad hominem argument. There was no position of Musk's that was being discussed. There wasn't. Rex mentioned the tax news and said he found Musk repuisive.. Therefore no fallacy.
If you were saying it was just a statement which was created to be only about Musk, so what? Rex freely gives opinions about people and groups sometimes without justifying them. It is usually not difficult to guess why, and people on either side chime in. You gave some good arguments in support of Musk the next day. I also enjoyed your birding comments. But that first day you seemed slightly obsessed with getting folks to agree it was ad hominem for no particular purpose that I could see. I was hoping if you had any doubt you might want to check the meaning and tell me why you felt it was so important. I freely admit it is not anything I have specialty knowledge about. I had other interests in reason and philosophy. So don't go too greek or latin on me.
Now since then you have said my original comment was ironic or dripping with irony. I fail to see how. Maybe you should check that word too.
And I don't think you should waste the moderators' time with our 2 fools (see recent puzzle clue) discussion. I do not understand the combination of humor, cleverness, silliness, or vengeance that could drive a person to act in such a way. You have shown you have interesting info on many things. But you persist in petty grievances and political and philosophical judgements based on religiosity or maybe one faith's particular beliefs. You have carried that on to the point that a sizable minority consider you a troll. I think a sizable minority might consider me an idiot. Still I try to amuse or least add to the joy I find here. Inform folks too. My political views are at times widely unpopular here. I state them anyway when relevant but do not take every opportunity. I do not try to irritate particular people with them. And I try to be careful how I state things to them. I try to know who can take joke and who can't. Who will understand teasing remarks and who won't.
I mean who doesn't enjoy stinging Z once in a while. He stole one my lines recently w/o credit. I let it go. I didn't have a copyright on it. If I irritate someone with my comments I am glad to compliment them the next time I really do enjoy or am informed by what they say.
You don't have to do it my way. Find your own. I joined here cause there are people here who are creative, can write, have stories, songs, humor, jokes, knowledge, experience. And not so many that it is too big or unmanageable. And I love getting crosswords done without cheats. And there is more to crosswords than I ever imagined. I do not want to drive anyone away. I hope you don't either.
Shell.
rex "said he found Musk revulsive".
That is ad hominem. He's attacking the man.
When Rex says its revulsive for millionaires not to pay taxes on their wealth, he's making an argument. It's not very good and he doesnt really believe it, but it's an argument.
When he says Musk is repulsive he's not arguing. He's name-calling.
Sop what you ask? Well, name calling is rude. It doesnt davance abn idea. It's just invective. Of course he's entitl;ed to fell ythat way about someone. He's even entitled to say it. But acknowledge how very nbankrupt such an utterance is.
As for Rex not believing that wealth should be taxed. well, Rex avails himself of precisely the same tax strategies as Mr. Musk. Rex is a participant in the NY state retirement program. And has been for over a decade. He has generated much wealth, as yet, all untaxed. Once those gains are realized, he will pay taxes. Just as once Mr. Musk realized his gains, he will pay taxes. This doesn't even tough the fact that Rex's home is also a source of untaxed wealth. (No property taxes aren't the issue. The issue is the capital appreciation of the house from the time Rex bought it to its market value today.) Given the timing of his purchase, Rex has had that asset appreciate tremendously. He has paid n tax on that "wealth" that has been generated. That he owns. He will, once again, when he sells the asset. Just as Mr. Musk will pay taxes when his asset yields actual dollars.
I think you are living in a fairy tale world. Eventually all taxes get paid. There might be a tax waiver some day. There might be changes in tax laws. There might be losses to claim which can balance out some losses. And those are just some of the legal ways. Then there is lobbying for loopholes as well. I am somewhat sure there are a myriad of ways that I have no idea of or no interest in learning. Then he might be a crook like Trump. But maybe he's an honest man. By the way re:Rex
Last I knew I could sell one house in my lifetime that lived in for 5 years and not pay any capital gains. Have I missed a deadline? How rich do I need to be to delay paying taxes until I die?
But all the tax stuff is beside the point.
But now going back to what Rex actually said I find you are totally mistaken. Rex called his tax rate repulsively criminally low. The criminally is where you got the libel. But criminally can also mean disgustingly as in a criminally wasted talent. No libel. He also calls him the repulsive (no revulsive anywhere) I used my money to get into space guy. Repulsive because he had enough money to get into space or because that was what he used his money for is not clear. But it had nothing to do with the wealth tax argument. Your interpretation is unjustified. Even if his wealth from a "covid windfall" was taxed he would still have enough money for space. It was either the money or his choices for the money. You do not know. Rex might even find himself repulsive if he were that rich. I do not know Musk's position. It never came up. You made the argument he wasn't repulsive. Good for you. Going into space maybe no more meritorious than building the pyramids or a 100 story high 100 mile roller coaster. Being called repulsive for being so rich is something I am not sure Musk would even be insulted by. It's barely a 2 on the insult meter.
Somebody on the blog has heard of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. Amazing. They deserve a much wider audience.
As some one who has visited and worked in Canada this puzzle should be seen as an insult. I also wan to gripe that I get the NY Times is a liberal paper but can the constructors stop with the clues for AOC, Omar Ilan and the Obamas. We get it they are your socialist hero’s but not everyone who does the crossword lives in New York or California.
I love reading all the comments. Everyone is smarter than me, wittier than me and wiser than me. Rex and his posse always make me smile. Thank you crossword elite.
This puzzle has the perfect revealer: it starts with MEH.
I mean, is that it? A bunch of Canadian things with EH in the middle? Oh but wait: all of a sudden we're transported SOUTH of the border for QUINCEANERA. Then we lurch back up north. I'm getting dizzy.
Then there's the title. Sorry, but I guess my visual imagination is not that good. I just don't see it. To me it looks like somebody smiling and sticking their tongue out.
The whole thing fails. Even the fill is not SOHOT. Canada is so much better than this. Double-bogey.
sigh...was this from Greece?
Lady Di
PRIOR NHLER
BYTURNS, OLD HOCKEY PROS
were MEHDINCANADA, OH wow!
They'd USE SLAP SHOTs past FOES
into the NET like GORDIEHOWE.
--- OTIS LOEWE
No one mentioned 53 down, "Part of L.C.D." Isn't the correct answer 'LIQUID' not (as shown) LEAST? Least Crystal Display? Eh?
Wikipedia says table hockey is "not to be confused with air hockey."
I can remember playing a hockey version of paper football, where each player's index finger and pinky formed a goal on the table, and a penny was the puck. I may have invented that one myself.
LCD = Least Common Denominator?
- Least Cool Dude
Was it only in the Vancouver Sun that this JUNE 13, 2021 puzzle was the weekend puzzle on October 22, 2023? None of the syndi people indicate that they're commenting more than two years later than everyone else. This is the second time this year that this has happened.
I was very impressed by the maple leaf in the grid. The three lobes seem obvious, and unlike most other maples, the bottom of the lobes meet in a curve instead of in a point, which is accurately pictured here. Not only that, but there are serrations along the outer lobes, but straight edges along the middle lobe, also an accurate depiction. I'm not SURE I'd have realized it was a maple leaf just from the grid, but the title said it was. And there it was, botanically correct.
No, it was the same day in the Seattle Times. I store them in my trunk and solve them months later.
Came to the end of the comments for this validation.
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