No End in Sight

Happy Friday! We’re trying an earlier email send this week, 7 a.m. instead of 9 a.m. The coffee-break solvers can still do it on their break, but now you can join me over breakfast if that’s your thing.

I was reflecting on the phrase “no end in sight”, and how it’s often used in a negative context - yet it could just as well be a positive thing. Maybe you’re 5 episodes into your new favourite TV series with 7 seasons, or you made a big batch of delicious cookies that will last you ages! I hope you have, or find, a nice reason to say “no end in sight” in your life.

This week I’m bringing you a trickier crossword. Not harder per se, just a little more… mischievous. We’re putting the “word” back into “wordplay”, and also putting the “play” in there, so I guess we’re just using the word exactly as it was intended.

Um, Actually…

That’s right - like any good publication, sometimes we make mistakes - and last week was our first and last mistake (lol). In Issue No. 008, I mistakenly called a MICROACRE one-thousandth of an acre (about 4 square metres) when it would actually be one-millionth of an acre (about 40 square centimetres). Anyone who filled in "MILLIACRE" for the published clue is technically correct and entitled to a full refund.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming - discussion (and spoilers!) below the break!

Play

Discussion

If you haven’t seen Minute Cryptic before, get ready for your new dopamine fix. Cryptic crosswords (loved by The BEEB watchers across the pond) are another level of word game, admittedly one I haven’t mustered up the courage (or time) to delve into yet. But I do love a quick Minute Cryptic video, and I tried to channel a bit of that cryptic wordplay energy in this puzzle.

Today’s Theme

Today was a tricky (but hopefully instructive) theme for anyone not used to Sunday-style wordplay. The correct answers to our four italicized theme clues should be DEFENDER, BOOKENDED, BARTENDER, and LAVENDER, but they don’t fit! However, the title of the crossword is “No End In Sight”, letting us know that we should take out the word “end” to get DEFER, BOOKED, BARTER, and LAVER. All real words too, fun!

Tricky Clues

12A. Hozier’s “Too Sweet” was playing on CBC Radio 2 for a while, good song. The chorus goes “I think I'll take my whiskey NEAT / My coffee black and my bed at three”, which is the opposite of my anthem “I think I’ll take my whiskey as part of a cocktail / My coffee decaf with so much milk it’s barely coffee and my bed at 10-ish”.

16A. [Secondary accounts, informally] are ALTS, used by smurfing gamers and political figures alike. The Gen Z among us might think of a “finsta”, but I’m just a tad too Millennial to put that in. Shout out to the Gen Zers in my life that keep me young.

30A. Ah, the LONE wolf - the typically pack animal breaking away from the group - beloved by sigma males and memelords across the internet.

3D. I don’t think we’ve discussed using square brackets yet - expect it in a future issue. They can indicate a non-verbal response, an onomatopoeia, or similar atypical phrasings. In this case, we’re looking for the sound a dog would make when the mailman comes, ARF.

10D. I thought [The ol’ ball and chain, but make it fashion?] was a fun fusing of bad boomer humour and modern lingo. To even things out a bit, here is some good boomer humour from Pickles, one of my favourite newspaper-era comics.

24D. This clue isn’t tricky, it’s just silly and I wanted to enjoy it for another moment here. I couldn’t find any pictures of people wearing a shirt as pants and didn’t want to use AI, so you’ll just have to imagine it yourself.

I hope you enjoyed this puzzle!

Until next Friday,

Brandon