Pay Attention!

Happy Friday! As the weather fluctuates between summer and early winter in typical fall fashion. I’ve been reading up a storm - there are several I could talk about, but I really enjoyed Little Yellow House: Finding Community in a Changing Neighbourhood. It’s a collection of stories by local author Carissa Halton that take place right in Edmonton, along the “rough area” of Alberta Avenue. It’s funny at times, informative at others, but never ceases to be engaging.

There are (as of the time of writing) only a few tickets left for the next Crossword Construction 101 workshop! And if constructing isn’t your thing or you can’t make it, good news - I cooked up a fresh crossword for you to solve.

Discussion (and spoilers!) below the break.

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Pay Attention! by Brandon Cathcart

Discussion

This week I was planning to run a different puzzle; however, it didn’t pass the test solve. Once in a while, my faithful test solver helps sift out the “this made sense in my head but not on paper” and “I don’t feel strongly about this puzzle but let’s see what someone else thinks” puzzles that need to go back to the workshop. So, that one is being reworked (no spoilers, it’ll come soon) and Pay Attention! rightfully took its place.

It’s HAIM time! I love Women in Music Pt. III, and as such it’s hard to choose a favourite song from the album. Let’s go with the saxophone-laden bop Summer Girl for some summer vibes on a gloomy autumn day.

Today’s Theme

The revealer for today’s theme is 22-Across, ["Everyone look at what I'm doing!", or phonetically, something true about this puzzle's grid]. We also see several groups of shaded squares in the grid - probably related.

Solving 22-Across gives ALL EYES ON ME, or phonetically, you could say ALL I’s ON ME. Every letter “I” in the grid can be found on top of the letters “ME.” The shaded squares can be helpful in understanding the theme, and if you get the revealer, may help fill in a few squares you weren’t sure of!

The title is also the name of the amazing and haunting Bo Burnham song that I’m certain I’ve highlighted before.

Behind the Clues

14A. Boo Spotify, but I’m not a streaming hater overall. It’s hard to deny the convenience, so how do you do it more ethically? You find a service that pays artists better! The best I’ve seen for supporting artists is Qobuz, but [Spotify alternative that pays artists more] in this case is the one I use, TIDAL. Once owned by Jay-Z, he still technically has a minority share in it but it’s still good and stuff.

25A. Highly topical and prone to aging within a month, ["You Can ___ Everything" (Much-hyped Nathan Fielder documentary)] is something I needed to put in because I can’t wait to see it. I might wait, considering its 3 hour length, but everything I’ve heard about it leads to “you have to see it, it’s wild.” So…

27A. Speaking of streaming, the world of video streaming sometimes makes me forget about the [Thing that gets shown during "Survivor" or "The Amazing Race"], which is a TV AD. Sports people have to put up with them too, as I was reminded watching Canada’s World Cup run in the summer.

5D. Just like flammable and inflammable, ["Regardless" or "Irregardless"] is a fun set of words that feel like they should contradict each other but actually mean the same thing. Which in this case, is ANYWAYS. Anyways…

20D. [Some paintings by an M.C.] wasn’t supposed to be super hard, but a fun wording to make it sound like maybe I mean paintings by an emcee, or rapper. But no, it’s the classic surreal paintings of M.C. Escher, which you would call ESCHERS.

30D. I assume you also grew up reading the French words alongside the English ones on all food products, shampoo, etc? If so, you’d know that [What French bees make] is MIEL, French for honey. If there’s a mention of another language in the clue or words in another language, expect the answer to be in that language.

I hope you enjoyed this puzzle!

Until next week,

Brandon

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