Greetings everyone – I missed you all last week! Barb had a glitch with the puzzle and I was travelling, but we’re back this week in full swing. We’re almost halfway through a glorious October and postseason baseball is in full swing. The Orioles aren’t playing, but they finished the 2022 season above .500 and hopes are high for October baseball in 2023. While we watch other teams play and enjoy the cooler temperatures, let’s get to this week’s ClassiCanadian crossword.
- Name: Bank Deposits
- Grid size: 15×15
- Number of entries: 76
- Difficulty: Hard (my solve time: 11:15, but there were extenuating circumstances…)
Pressed for time and without my personal laptop, I had to solve this on the train to work on my work PC using a simple web-based solving tool. So my fat fingers were fatter than usual (e.g., tab doesn’t do what it does in Across Lite) and the puzzle threw a few curveballs at me as well. The theme was pretty straightforward: common phrases or titles that end in a word that’s a kind of (or can go into a) bank:
- 18A: [National survey output]: CENSUS DATA – And the decennial results usually go into a data bank.
- 23A: [Capote thriller about the Clutter family murders]: IN COLD BLOOD – I’ve never read this book, but it’s such a part of the culture that it was easy enough to get. Cold blood is what’s kept in blood banks.
- 39A: [Recalling only what one chooses to]: SELECTIVE MEMORY – I have a hunch I will choose to not remember my performance on this puzzle in the future; i.e. I’ll delete it from my memory bank.
- 52A: [Stress-calming diet choice]: COMFORT FOOD – It’s comforting to know that if you fall on hard times you can count on the generosity of a food bank.
- 61A: [Lets destiny decide, in a way]: FLIPS A COIN – I guess a coin bank is a thing, but I’m more familiar with it as a piggy bank.
An unusual and hopefully not representative solve for me. Started out fairly normal, getting the NW corner pretty quickly, but then I hit a few snags in various places. I had PIPE at 38A for too long, TEETER at 58A, and EMER at 59D (I swear some old landline phones had a EMERGENCY button on them). So that slowed me down. But the big problem was at 44A – I drew a complete blank on the phrase, and had OVO and then OVA in for 36D. And I was never going to know 41D, so those cost me a clean solve, not to mention several minutes. If I was solving on my regular platform, it probably would have been closer to 9 minutes; still in the hard range.
Canadian content:
- 35A: [Canadian coffee brand]: NABOB – While I’m pretty sure this coffee has been in previous puzzles, I drew a blank on it and needed all the crosses.
- 70A: [Hockey level between Novice and Pee-Wee]: ATOM – While I believe this is/was used in the US, I’m calling this Canadian content as I bet 90% or more Americans wouldn’t know this term.
Other stuff:
- 15A: [Feast translated as “young taro tops”]: LUAU – Well that’s definitely not what I expected.
- 31D: [Pitcher’s asset]: ARM – Had AIM in here for a while, and it never seemed right. Because it wasn’t.
- 38A: [Miss Scarlett might have used it in the Hall]: ROPE – I had a major crush on Miss Scarlett when I was a youngster; but I thought she would have used a PIPE
- 44A: [Verbally swipe]: DIG AT – I had the “steal” meaning of swipe in my mind and could not figure out how you could verbally steal something.
- 48D: [The “N” of N.B.]: NOTA – Thought this was Canadian content referring to New Brunswick.
- 50D: [Moderna vaccine alternative]: PFIZER – Got my third booster this week.
- 66A: [Old school copier, for short]: MIMEO – Sorry to say I’m old enough that this one came to me immediately. Remember the smell of freshly mimeographed pages?
Quote of the week:
“I wish that every day was Saturday and every month was October.”
– Charmaine J. Forde