Even though I essentially had Monday and Tuesday off (US Independence Day – and a belated happy Canada Day everyone!) I still was too busy to get to the puzzle much earlier – though I did get a lot of yard work done in between thunderstorms. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend and got to celebrate appropriately (and safely). Onto this week’s puzzle…

• Title: Climate Change
• Grid size: 15×15
• Number of entries: 74
• Difficulty: Easy (my solve time: 5:32)

I didn’t think much about the title as I was solving, and the theme pretty much revealed itself to me during the solve. Each themer is common phrase that in its original form includes a type of weather; a different type of weather phenomenon is substituted and the new phrase is clued punnily.

• 17A: [Stretched out atop an Atlantic fishing boat?]: BASKING IN THE FOG – This is a phrase I’m less familiar with; I assume the original is “basking in the sun.” You are definitely not going to get a tan basking in the Atlantic fog – very thick.
• 24A: [Prince song about plum-coloured ice pellets falling from the sky?]: PURPLE HAIL – Purple Rain is a classic Prince song. I’d stay inside (and check what I was drinking) if I saw it starting to hail purple pellets.
• 34A: [Solar rocks dropping from above]: SUN STONES – At first I though the original phrase was “moon stones” but that doesn’t work since “moon” isn’t a weather phenomenon. So I’ll go with “sun shower.”
• 51A: [Hanging janglers activated by precipitation?]: RAIN CHIMES – Well guess what – rain chimes are a thing! But wind chimes are much more common.
• 57A: [Roma dehydrated in a hurricane?]: WIND DRIED TOMATO – I like sun dried tomatoes, and pretty sure wind dried tomatoes would be a poor substitute.

A lightly challenging theme-ful grid with a couple of nice grid-spanning themers and solid vertical 7-letter stacks in all four corners. No real problems, even the weird stuff (52D, 64A) was crossed with fairly easy to get fill.

Canadian content:

• 52D: [Lake setting of a 1987 Accord]: MEECH – Well this one is new to me – the Meech Lake Accord is a part of history I was unaware of and even after reading the Wikipedia entry on it I still don’t completely understand what it was about.
• 62A: [Figure on a T4 slip]: INCOME – I’m thinking the T4 form is similar to or the same as the US W2 form.

That’s all I could find – even the hockey reference was for an American team. Please feel free to enlighten me in the comments below if I missed anything.

Other stuff:

• 15A: [“The Sopranos” henchman]: PAULIE – As a bit of a “Sopranos” fan (I’m rewatching it for about the 4th time) I knew this one right off.
• 20A: [John in Britain?]: ELTON – Nice twist to use this clue, which is usually used for LOO, as a punny one for Mr. John.
• 64A: [Frankenstein’s aide: Var.]: YGOR – Ok, yeah, sure. I’ve been to Ybor City, in Tampa so the pronunciation scans for “Igor.”

Quote of the week:

“Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.”
– Mark Twain (allegedly)