Figurative Fashion

August is truly festival time here in The Festival City. The Edmonton Folk Music Festival is happening this weekend (sold out!), the Edmonton Fringe Festival runs August 14 - 24, and you can bet your bottom dollar (or top dollar, for that matter) that I’m taking in and volunteering at both. Fill me with folky music vibes and varying degrees of amateur and professional theatre, please.

Folk Fest, Fringe Fest, it’s an F-heavy email - so why not add a few more? This week’s puzzle adds another FF to enjoy this August :)

Discussion (and spoilers!) below the break.

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Figurative Fashion by Brandon Cathcart

Discussion

I’m not exactly sure where this theme came from, but it’s a fun little group. If you didn’t know Ria Mae before now, you may have heard her songs as good ol’ CanCon radio hits. I love modern songs that pull from late-70's/80’s synth sounds, so man was I obsessed with this song for a while.

Today’s Theme

The theme answers are all “figurative fashion”, aka things that you can wear metaphorically. These included a THINKING CAP, PLOT ARMOUR, BOSSY PANTS, and ROSE GLASSES. I couldn’t fit “rose-coloured glasses,” but hopefully it still hit.

Behind the Clues

21A. Woah, big man, breaking crossword rules again, who does he think he is? Sure, you shouldn’t reuse words/answers in the same puzzle, but I thought it was a fun moment. [Philosopher’s 4-Across] takes words of affirmation “I AM” and flips it to “AM I”. Because, you know, philosophers are always doing that kind of thing.

30A. I don't know if this was a staple of everyone’s household or just mine, but the [Snowy character in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964 TVspecial)] is the YETI and you can see it in the clip below. We watched this every Christmas, such a classic. I love the animation.

37A. If I had a dime every time I used EASES IN or EASE IN or EASED IN in a crossword, I’d have a few dimes, and I should probably stop. I didn’t realize until too late lol. Goal: Don’t use that phrase in any crosswords for a while.

3D. [Tell you about it? It'll take a bit...] was met with “I don’t get it” during testing, so you’re in company if it didn’t click. If you did, this is probably you. If you replace the “it” the clues talks about with “a DRILL”, it reads “Tell you about a drill? A drill will take a bit…” as in a drill bit. Tricky, tricky wordplay!

18D. I love that I was alive to experience the early days of YouTube, before it became whatever algorithmic/AI hellscape it’s turning into now, so it’s hard for me not to jog your memory (or teach you something new) about that era. [Zonday of early YouTube's "Chocolate Rain" (or, for the younger crowd, nickname of T-Swift)] is TAY, and the original video is still up, just as iconic as ever. **I move away from the mic to breathe in

33D. This is a good example of writing a clue for people who don’t know the reference, something I often try to do. Though [The Crystal of Truth in Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal, for one] references either rendition of the fantastic movie/TV show, you can probably intuit that the Crystal of Truth is a GEM.

I hope you enjoyed this puzzle!

Until next Friday,

Brandon