Welcome to October everyone, probably my favourite month of the year. And an early Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! In good news I did not go to a Wild Card game this week – but I will be going to the first game of the American League Division Series on Saturday 😀. I have my tickets but don’t know when the game will be – they won’t set the time until the Wild Card series is over, and there is an additional complication. Breaking news: the game will start at 1:00 pm EDT. Now that that’s set, let’s turn our attention to this week’s puzzle (though my attention is divided, since as I write this I’m following the wild card game to see who the Orioles will be playing).

• Name: Act Now!
• Size: 15×15
• Entries: 74
• Difficulty: Hard (my solve time: 9:29)

The title was of no help to me and I needed all the help I could get. After the solve and getting the revealer, I can see how “Act Now!” is related, but it wasn’t apparent before or during the solve. In any event, the theme is that the letters “DO” or “DIE” are included in the themers, which are all clued straight:

• 18A: [Plant-derived fuel]: BIODIESEL – Biodiesel has some promise in reducing emissions of greenhouse gasses, but it comes with some problems.
• 20A: [Of feudal times]: MEDIEVAL – The medieval era spaned from around 476 to 1450 CE.
• 28A: [Jim Morrison’s group]: THE DOORS – “Light my fire” indeed. Bonus: this answer has “do or” contained in it as well. 👍
• 37A: [Long stretch]: DOGS AGE – I’ve never really understood why a dog’s age is idiomatic for a long time. And after a short search I still don’t know, but apparently it’s an Americanism from the 1830s.
• 40A: [Prinze or Mercury]: FREDDIE – A couple of fine artists, taken from us too young.
• 46A: [Guy Lafleur, for most of his hockey career]: CANADIEN – Guy Lafleur played for the Canadiens for the first 14 years of his career, with a season with the Rangers, and two with the Nordiques after that.
• 57A: [Collapse in flames]: BURN DOWN – An interesting story behind this “burn it down” meme.
• 61A: [Fits nicely with]: DOVETAILS –  To dovetail something comes from woodworking, where interlocking fan-shaped pieces are used to hold a wood joint together. Notches, called pins and tails are carved in each piece of wood so that they fit together securely. I’ll have to check this place out next time I’m in Chicago.

Started off on the wrong foot by confidently entering “a dear” at 1A; I never really settled into this one and had several problem areas. There seemed to be a lot of entries with initials or abbreviations in them, some fairly obscure (to me). I completed filling the grid with 7:29 on the clock, but got the dreaded “The grid is now completely filled” pop-up, and spent the next two minutes finding my error. It was 38D which I have never heard of before (except as noted below in Other stuff). I had GRN (green) in for 51A and on review caught that “Seagee” probably wasn’t a real word. Other problems were “ski slope” at 10D, forgetting my high school French at 36A, putting “stern” in 52A, and trying for too long to make “nib” work at 64A.

Canadian content:

• 34A: [Kovalchuk of the NHL]: ILYA – Yes he’s Russian, but hey – he played for the Canadiens for a season!
• 46A: [Guy Lafleur, for most of his hockey career]: CANADIEN – And the Habs make yet another appearance!

Other stuff:

• 43A: [UFO-seeking group]: SETI – Technically the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute is looking for signs of extraterrestrial life, not necessarily their means of conveyance. In any event, UFO as a term is out – it’s now Unexplained Anomalous Phenomena.
• 52A: [To the aft, to the Admiral]: AREAR – Oof, this hurts this mariner’s ears. Never have used that term; astern is far more commonly used.
• 11D: [Level]: RASE – I guess this is an alternate spelling of raze, but that wasn’t what hung me up on this one – it was having in mind the “even” sense of level, rather than the “tear down” sense of the word.
• 29D: [Knife part you should hold on to]: HAFT – I got this one, but not before thinking of two other blade-related terms: You heft the sword with the haft and put it in the scabbard up to the hilt.
• 38D: [Vessel with an elevator for unloading barges]: SEABEE – Ok – this mariner has never heard of this type of vessel. I did find this secondary definition, but you have to wade through literally thousands of hits referring to the Seabees of the US Navy. Fun fact: I know the words to the (first verse) of the Seabees service song and sang it at my retirement (not from the Seabees – long story).

Quote of the week:
“There are two possible outcomes: If the result confirms the hypothesis, then you’ve made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you’ve made a discovery.”
-Enrico Fermi