Money-Hungry

I have an update to my beanana bread saga, to those who have been patiently waiting since last week. As a refresher, I found a recipe online that lets you make banana “bread” using red lentils instead of flour. Very interesting. My first attempt was dry and bland, so I made some changes and tried it again last Sunday. I’m sad to say it also did not turn out, but this time it was too wet and also still bland. As such, I did not take a picture of it. In its place, I’ll share a picture of some very average-looking banana bread.

I think I’m going to shelf my beanana bread attempts for now. Know that if I return to it and get it working, you will hear about it. Anyway, this newsletter is supposed to be about crosswords! Enough about my weird baking attempts; it’s making me too hungry…

Discussion (and spoilers!) below the break.

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Money-Hungry by Brandon Cathcart

Discussion

This one was one of my favourites in a while! It’s not every week I come up with a theme that feels both clever and silly, and this one checked both boxes. Holy cow was it hard to decide how to spell PIEROGI though. I went with the Polish PIEROGI instead of the Americanized PEROGY, but referenced a PIEROGI as a singular item instead of the way Polish actually uses it, which is PIEROG for one and PIEROGI for several. There was no winning, I made my decisions and moved on lol.

Daft Punk is playing at my house, my house! It’s time for some dance punk.

Today’s Theme

We have four shaded entries in the grid, each with the clue [Money, slangily]. Interesting.

We also have 19-Across, [What must be slang for a lot of money, considering all the money in this puzzle can be part of one].

Solving for each of the [Money, slangily] entries, we get DOUGH, CABBAGE, CHEDDAR, and BACON, all food words that are also slang for money.

This means that 19-Across is something that incorporates all these elements (depending on which one you get) - a PIEROGI!

Behind the Clues

10A. Sommeliers say the darndest things, don’t they? [Bouquet of wine, e.g.] is an AROMA, as the bouquet is the smell of the wine. There’s probably a good word-origin meaning for this, perhaps it smells nice like a bouquet of flowers?

13A. ["Help! I've been ___!" (Plea by artwork that you have surrounded)] is FRAMED, in what some are calling the pun of the century. Get it?? Because when you have surrounded artwork, you’ve put it in a frame, so it would say… Ah, you get it.

35A. [Vandalized, in a breakfast-coded way] is EGGED. There is no form of vandalism that makes me want to sit down for a nice brunch more than a house that’s been egged. Maybe some specific spray painting, but I’ll be honest, I haven’t seen a spray-painted waffle in some time.

2D. No, they’re calling this the pun of the century, and unfortunately I didn’t come up with it. ["Stalk Market" currency in "Animal Crossing: New Horizons"] is TURNIP. Here’s a video on how it all works - I never got into it, but it’s quite the appealing way to get Animal Crossing-rich.

4D. This is for all you science heads out there. [Basic measurement?] is PH, a measurement of how basic (or acidic) something is. Basic doesn’t mean simple in this case! Though I guess it still does apply.

27D. [Head to a university's student body] is DEAN, and I included it here because I love an extended metaphor. Okay, so the DEAN is the head and the students are the body of a university. I guess the faculties are the arms. What are the legs?

I hope you enjoyed this puzzle!

Until next week,

Brandon

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