Greetings after a busy week for me, though you wouldn’t have known it from reading the blog since I just posted last week’s entry. Sorry about that – I’ll be sure to check that this week’s posts on time. The September weather I’ve been waiting for is finally here – mild, dry and sunny as I sit on my deck writing this. That puts me in a good mood to go with my elation that the Orioles will be in the playoffs! Hopefully this week’s puzzle will keep us all in a good mood; let’s go see.
- Name: Just Doing My Thing
- Size: 15×15
- Entries: 70
- Difficulty: Medium (my solve time: 7:03)
Like last week, the title wasn’t any help to me in the solve; I didn’t even really think about it after reading it. Maybe I should have, as a few of them gave me trouble. The themers are words or phrases describing someone who is doing something; the revealer “That’s how I roll” ties them together in that the “thing” they are all doing is “rolling” something:
- 15A: [Mexican cook, at times]: TORTILLA MAKER – In order to make tortillas you often need to use a rolling pin to flatten out the dough. Or you could use a press.
- 23A: [Participant in a game similar to bocce]: LAWN BOWLER – In lawn bowling players (bowlers) roll the ball towards a target (a small white ball). Points are awarded to the player who can locate their ball as near as they can to the white ball. Sounds kind of like curling to me. It is similar to bocce, but there are differences.
- 35A: [Gambler at a casino table]: CRAPS PLAYER – Though it’s been explained to me many times and I’ve actually played it once or twice, I still don’t fully understand craps. But I do know that it involves rolling dice.
- 47A: [Circus clown pedaler]: UNICYCLIST – A clown on a unicycle is definitely on a roll(ing thing). Somewhere in my basement is a unicycle that was given to me as a birthday present many years ago. I never learned to ride it and have always regretted that. Maybe I’ll try it again someday…
- 56A; [Comment made by a 15-, 23-, 35 and 47 Across, perhaps?]: THATS HOW I ROLL – The revealer.
I never really felt like I was “getting” this one, though there weren’t any major snags and my time was not too bad (about the 56th percentile). It’s kind of an unusual grid layout, with the triple-stacked black squares in the corners and a lot of longer fill (though there are a good number of 3 and 4 letter entries). The themers gave me more trouble than usual, mainly because I had no idea what the theme was, but also because I had a few wrong entries in the crosses, making it difficult to see the phrases as they were filled in. e.g., I had NSEC (a common crossword answer) – abbreviation for nanosecond) in 36D and thought nothing of it.
Canadian content:
- 1D: [Peter who portrayed Poirot]: USTINOV – This may be reaching, but British actor Peter Ustinov received 5 honorary degrees from universities in Canada.
- 4D: [___ Lee of old game shows]: RUTA – I think Ms. Lee may have made an appearance in previous puzzles, but I wasn’t sure so she contributed to my delay in getting 15A. Born in Montreal, Ruta Lee appeared in a number of game shows, including Hollywood Squares, What’s My Line?, and Match Game, and as Alex Trebek’s co-host on High Rollers.
- 9DA: [Where a phone scammer claims to be calling from, often: Abbr.]: CRA – The Canada Revenue Agency makes another appearance in the puzzle.
- 46D: [BTO’s “Let ___”]: IT RIDE – I have this crossword to thank for learning that Bachman-Turner Overdrive was a Canadian band from Winnipeg.
- 58D: [Justin, to Pierre]: SON – If you type in “Justin Pierre” into Google (which I did not until I’d solved and was working on this entry) it autofills “Trudeau” so they’re pretty well known.
Other stuff:
- 2D: [Off and on]: SPORADIC – Every other synonym – occasional, intermittent, periodic, alternate, you name it – went through my head except this one.
- 8D: [Lunar vehicle]: LEM – I’m pretty sure I’ve commented here that Lunar Excursion Module was the original name for the Lunar Module, or LM.
- 19A: [A pop]: EACH – A nice change – usually A POP is clued as “Each”.
- 29A: [Apt. dining feature, in ads]: EIK – I don’t recall seeing this abbreviation for “eat-in kitchen” when I was apartment hunting many years ago, but it scans. I had initially entered AEK, as I definitely remember seeing the ads for apartments with “all-electric kitchens”, not that that was something I was looking for.
- 34D: [Northern Chinese city]: YENAN – This is a really deep cut and I needed all the crosses to get it. It’s a prefecture-level city with an area of 37,031.3 sq km (14,297.9 sq mi) and a population of 2.25 million, so it’s more akin to a county or township as used in North America.
- 46A: [Romanian coin]: LEU – I put LEK in here certain it was a unit of currency – I was right, it’s just Albanian.
Quote of the week:
“The key to winning baseball games is pitching, fundamentals, and three run homers.”
– Earl Weaver