I'm So Bad With Names

Ah, pop culture. While one might assume it means keeping up with the Cokes and Pepsis of the world (note to self: future clue/theme idea?), what it really means is listening to the radio once in a while, watching the occasional movie, and staying glued to the never-ending updates streaming from our little pocket computers. I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here - to excel at crosswords, you often need to have a menagerie of cultural references, events, and people tucked away, ready to pull out at a moment’s notice (How many characters from Game of Thrones can I name despite never having seen the show? How many athletes can I name based on how frequently they appear in word puzzles?)

This week’s crossword asks you to pull a few of these people out of the depths of your brain - but maybe in a different way than normal. This is YEGwords, after all.

Discussion (and spoilers!) below the break.

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I’m So Bad With Names by Brandon Cathcart

Discussion

I’d been toying with a celebrity-based theme for a while, and it went through a few iterations before finally feeling good. Celebrity names that sound like phrases turned into Celebrity names that are objects turned into Celebrity names that could be read as a phrase. I’m really happy with where it landed, though it took some work - you’d be surprised how few names are comprised solely of English words.

Here’s the referenced Aminé song. Even if the rapping isn’t your thing, you have to admit the beat is super fun.

Today’s Theme

The three longest across clues are the themers, and each is phrased as someone forgetting a famous actor/actress, albeit in an odd way. They are misremembering the names as full sentences, which is apt considering each of their names can be read as a phrase.

"My favourite actor who also raps? What's that guy's name... Gonna Fabricate Metal Objects Via Hot Or Cold Forging? No... Oh right, it's ___" is WILL SMITH, of course.

"My favourite actress? What's her name, she's been in so many movies... Made Additional Sketches Of Bill Hader's Titular Character? Something like that... Wait! It's ___" is DREW BARRYMORE.

"My my other favourite actor? I can picture him... Versatile, Mid-Length Socks But Made Of Towel Material? It's on the tip of my tongue... Oh! ___!" is the great TERRY CREWS.

Behind the Clues

13A. Talk about “pop” culture! ["Might as well go for ___ / Nobody hurts and nobody cries" (A line from a Canadian "pop" song?)] is A SODA, from the song “Go For Soda” by Kim Mitchell. Absolute bop.

27A. I worried that the answer to [Like a line, in contrast to a square, shortly] might not make sense to people. The answer is ONED, but parsed as two pieces: ONE-D, as in one-dimensional. I thought about making it about shallow characters, but decided to keep it basic since it reads a bit strange.

37A. [Notable hero's namesake] is BAT, as in Batman. Was Batman bitten by a bat, like Spiderman? I don’t think so, but I don’t read many comics. Certainly in the Batverse™ there is a Batman who was bitten by a radioactive bat and has real wings and such. That’s yours for free, DC.

2D. [Mathematician with an often mispronounced name] is one that I said wrongly to myself many many times in university. EULER feels like it should be pronounced like Ferris Bueller (Euler? Euler? Euler?) but it’s actually pronounced like hometown hockey heroes Oiler. Save that one for your next party.

4D. Any Arthur fans in the house? [It's got a long arm, they say] is LAW, as in “the long arm of the law.” I couldn’t find a YouTube video of it, but there’s a scene that has stuck with me since I was a kid, where someone on Arthur imagines the long arm(s) of the law as literal long arms chasing them around because they did something bad. Great show.

36D. ["SO, I'm sure you're all wondering why I called this meeting"] is my favourite thing to inject into a few seconds of group silence.

I hope you enjoyed this puzzle!

Until next Friday,

Brandon