Well, I hope you stocked up on Jack Daniel’s. Let’s just go straight to the puzzle.

• Name: Sum Time
• Grid size: 15×15
• Entries: 72
• Difficulty: Very Easy (my solve time: 5:42)

“Sum Time” is a punny title for a fun theme that I’m not sure I’ve seen before. The themers are all clued as several individual clues linked by adding them together:

• 17A: [Currently fashionable + lair + skin ink + charged particle] = INDENTATION – IN + DEN + TAT + ION – see? It’s clever and fun!
• 24A: [@ + Roman Numeral X + cha cha, e.g.] = ATTENDANCE – AT + TEN + DANCE.
• 34A: [Scam artist + mongrel + “R” of  Roy G. Biv] = CONCURRED – CON + CUR + RED. Minor nit in that a con is the scam or swindle itself, rather than the person perpetrating it.
• 51A: [Little rascal + atop + somewhat, casually] = IMPOVERISH – IMP + OVER + ISH.
• 59A: [Singer Grande’s perfume + English article + my mirror image + opposite of tac (and an apt word for this puzzle)] = ARITHEMETIC – ARI + THE + ME + TIC. This may be an alternate spelling of arithmetic.

I guess this is like a reverse rebus – you get multiple clues within one clue! It’s also kind of similar to a new puzzle I was introduced to this week – Bracket City. This was a pretty smooth solve, even though some of the parts of the themers didn’t come immediately – luckily once I had a few letters I could guess the whole word and see if it worked with the clue(s).

Canadian content:

• 11A: [Randy Bachman’s son]: TAL – Tal Bachman is the son of Randy and is himself a singer songwriter, born in Winnipeg.
• 23A: [___ Québécois party]: BLOC – “Le Bloc Québécois est un parti politique indépendantiste, implanté exclusivement au Québec. Sa présence à la Chambre des communes permet d’assurer la légitimité et la concordance entre la vision d’un peuple et celle de ses représentantes et représentants élus sur la scène fédérale.”
• 55A: [Oakville, Ontario college]: SHERIDAN – The Trafalgar Road campus of Sheridan College is located in Oakville; there are two other campuses located in Brampton and Mississauga.
• 60D: [Blended levy in Atl. Canada]: HST – In New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Prince Edward Island, the goods and services tax (GST) has been blended with the provincial sales tax and is called the harmonized sales tax (HST).
• 61D: [Product testing org.]: CSA – The Canada Standards Association (now known as CSA Group) is comprised of two organizations: Standards and Testing, Inspection, & Certification.

Other stuff:

• 28A: [$100 bills, slangily]: C SPOTS – I confidently entered “C NOTES” and was briefly baffled trying to get the crosses.
• 5D: [“12 hours to Live” actress Skye]: IONE – Nice to see her clued as an actress in something other than “Say Anything” but I’m still waiting to see “Home of the CAL FIRE Training Academy.”
• 25D: [Bath powders]: TALCS – I was thinking of the tub itself, and not the rest of the room, so I initially entered SALTS.
• 37D: [They understand mixed messages?]: DECODERS – A whole bunch of decoders work just south of here; just don’t try to make small talk by asking them about their work – it will be a short conversation.
• 43D: [Spiced Indian brew]: CHAI TEA – Department of Redundancy Department alert 😜

Quote of the week:
“The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”
– John Steinbeck

P.S.: I’ve already made a few updates to the Crossword Blog Glossary page – check it out and let me know in the comments how it works for you and if there are any more terms I should include.