Greetings all. I hope you weren’t affected by the remnants of Debby that came through late last week. We got a day of overcast with intermittent rain, but otherwise not too bad. I’m hoping for good weather the next few days as I head out on my road trip to Port Huron. Which I need to pack for so let’s get straight to this week’s puzzle.
- Name: One Plus One
- Size: 15×15
- Entries: 78
- Difficulty: Easy (my solve time: 6:00)
“One Plus One” made me think of two things, and that’s pretty much what we got – the themer clues are two related words, and the answer is a common two-word phrase where the first word defines the clue words and the second indicates two of something:
- 17A: [STRENGTH; MIGHT]: POWER COUPLE – Strength and might are forms of power; a power couple is a prominent pair of people who are in positions of power in industry, entertainment, government, etc.
- 26A: [ANIMATED; ENERGETIC]: DYNAMIC DUO – Animated and energetic are ways to describe the traits of dynamic people. A dynamic duo is two people who work really well together. I’ve always associated it with “Batman” but the origin of the term goes back to at least 1910. Its usage really increased in the 1960’s when the “Batman” TV show first aired.
- 40A: [GRISLY; GORY]: GRUESOME TWOSOME – Things that are grisly or gory are generally gruesome. So was my initially entering “terrible twosome.” Gruesome twosome has an interesting usage history. The top Google result is a 1967 movie that looks awful. Looking at the Google ngram of the phrases usage shows a spike centered on 1945. As best as I can tell it’s because of a pair of Tuskegee Airmen pilots, Capt. Wendall Pruitt and Lt. Col. Lee Archer, who downed a total of nine enemy aircraft on October 12, 1944, earning them the nickname.
- 49A: [POUCH; SAC]: POCKET PAIR – A pouch and a sac are types of pockets. In poker, a pocket pair refers to two cards that a player has in the hole (i.e., that only they can see) that are of the same rank (e.g., two aces or jacks). Though I used to play quite a bit of poker, this was the hardest revealer for me to get and I had to refresh my memory what the phrase meant.
- 63A: [FEAT; DAREDEVILRY]: STUNT DOUBLE – Stunts are feats of daredevilry, which I had to look up to make sure it was a real word. A stunt double is an actor skilled in performing dangerous acts (stunts) who stands in for the main actor during dangerous scenes.
This solve felt harder than it actually was – I started off in fits and starts, having so skip over a few entries that I stumbled on in the N half of the puzzle. I figured out the theme almost immediately, and that helped a lot with the solve. I think this is a great theme and well executed; I like when there are more than 4 themers in the grid and love that grid-spanning themer.
Canadian content:
- 19A: [Bruins #4]: ORR – Bobby Orr was born in Parry Sound, Ontario and played the first 10 of his 12 professional seasons for the Bruins.
- 69A: [Certain freight trains]: CNS – The Canadian National Railway is Canada’s largest railway with about 20,000 miles of track.
- 65D: [Canada’s fourth largest sch.]: UBC – For as beautiful as the campus of the University of British Columbia is, you would think it would be the largest.
Other stuff:
I’m a day late getting this posted so please drop any thoughts on interesting entries or clues in the comments below.
Quote of the week:
“August is deep yellow sun, perfect tomatoes, just enough boredom, darkness at nighttime again, and this edge of melancholy that sounds like baseball on a neighbor’s TV.”
– Carolyn Hax