Defenders of the Bi-niverse

I recently had the opportunity to try making hot sauce. Of course, I could have done that at any previous point in my life - but when your hot sauce aficionado friend, who is growing 3 (4?) types of hot peppers on his balcony, asks you to come over and make hot sauce, you have to say yes. And say yes I did.

After some scheming, I decided on some untraditional flavours for my concoction. Inspired by a recent Chick’n and Waffles breakfast my partner and I made, I yearned for a hot sauce with a breakfast-first attitude. Fresno peppers made the base, but the main flavours/sweeteners I opted for were blueberries and maple syrup. After tear-gassing ourselves by sauteing the hot peppers and fighting our way back into the kitchen, the final result was a surprisingly delicious, sweet hot sauce concoction (yet unnamed, let me know if you have any fun ideas!).

This week’s puzzle is, like my adventures with hot sauce, me taking an idea and putting a unique twist on it. Look at that, the story became relevant! Hopefully the crossword turned out as good as the hot sauce…

Discussion (and spoilers!) below the break.

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Defenders of the Bi-niverse by Brandon Cathcart

Discussion

Boy, was it hard to follow up Chris’ stellar puzzle last week! However, I had to take a stab at doing a pride-adjacent puzzle in June, so here we are. Unfortunately, I realized as I was preparing this post that the main revealer, THEYROS, should have been THEYROES for “correct” pluralization, so we have a big glaring error for any astute spellers out there. I think there are two reasons this mistake made it past two test solvers and me:

1. I had the word THEYROS in my notes app for so long that it became correct to me

2. THEYROES looks really dumb for some reason. My brain slows down trying to parse it.

Hopefully, everyone agrees to overlook this mistake in favour of an otherwise fun rhomp. Musically this week, we only had one reference! Are we sure it was me who made this puzzle? It must have been, given that the reference was to S Club 7 (Millennials, this one was for you!).

Today’s Theme

Today’s puzzle has three italicized clues and a revealer clue, the last of the acrosses. Each italicized clue describes a fictional character - She-Ra, Hercules, and Black Panther. However, our revealer, 41-Across, reads:

[People with extraordinary, superhuman abilities... and now gender-neutral pronouns, like the answers to the italicized clues]

Usually this would be HEROES, but replacing gendered pronouns with non-gendered ones, we get THEYROS. We can do this across all the theme answers to get THEY-RA, THEIRCURLES, and BLACK PANTHEIR.

Behind the Clues

14A. I’m still very new to the Ghibli-verse, having only watched a few. “Princess Mononoke” was my first, I believe, and what a first it was! But [Titular wood spirit of a Studio Ghibli movie] is TOTORO, of “My Neighbour Totoro,” my second Ghibli film and one I truly enjoyed for kind of being about nothing - just a whimsical snapshot into some kids living their lives. 10/10.

20A. [What one might buy with a shoestring budget?] was a self-chuckler for sure. I may just be an uncle, but I have been known to make a dad joke or two. Obviously, with a budget for shoestrings, you would buy a LACE. Get it? Get it??

27A. There’s nothing tricky to explain about [Extra hockey periods, briefly]. Those are overtimes, or OTS. The reason I mentioned it here is that I wanted to gloat that after coming in last in my regular-season hockey pool, I’m currently first in my playoff hockey pool. So I’m kind of a big deal now. Anyway…

2D. You might think I was goofing with [”I have ___ it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane!”: Samuel L. Jackson] but Sammy J really did say this line in the PG-13 edit of “Snakes on a Plane.” So don’t you question whether I fact-check this monkey-fighting crossword ever again.

17D. IOU is one of those crossword words that comes up relatively often, so it’s a fun challenge to try to use original wording or a new cluing angle for it. I can confidently say I have never seen anyone clue it as ["u r o'd by me"], so chalk one up for the good guys (me).

32D/34D. Part of the fun of constructing crosswords is moments of serendipity like this. I had filled out the grid, but hadn’t realized AHOY and AFT were right next to each other until I started cluing them. What a fun opportunity the crossword/sea gods have given us! Of course I had to clue them [Sailor’s greeting] and [Sailor’s rear].

I hope you enjoyed this puzzle!

Until next week,

Brandon

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