Switching It Up

I love switching it up. While I am a lover of comfort and routine first and foremost, I have a strong history of getting really into a hobby, sport, or other interest for a short period of time before deciding to move on. Perhaps it’s some combination of boredom, not wanting to do the hard stuff it takes to get truly good at things, or enjoying the process of learning a new thing. At least part of it is fuelled by my love of creating things - how can I be constrained to just one medium? Sure, I could get really good at playing piano, but then when will I find time to sew my own shirt? Or become a bicycle mechanic? Or get just good enough to beat my friends at disc golf?

Lucky for you, dear crossword solver, creating crosswords has continued to hold my interest. This week’s puzzle is a remake of an old puzzle I constructed before starting YEGwords. The concept was fun but the puzzle left much to be desired… So I spent entirely too long reworking it into something I felt good about publishing!

Discussion (and spoilers!) below the break.

Play

Switching It Up by Brandon Cathcart

Discussion

What a doozy of a theme! The theme clues were probably confusing, but hopefully it all clicked when you got the revealer, 2-Down. The original version of the puzzle didn’t highlight where the ITs were, bringing the difficulty up a notch - but given that much of the YEGwords audience is more casual solvers, I felt highlighting them would be a more comfortable touch.

And surprisingly, there were no musical references this week! Sometimes when I feel the grid is harder, I cut back on nicher references. We do get mention of sine waves, so I think it’s fitting that I put one here, covering the full range of human hearing.

Today’s Theme

We have six sets of shaded squares in this puzzle, which is always a good indicator that something is going on. Some clues have a double clue, separated by a slash.

Our revealer is 2-Down - [About to be punished... or what to swap in 6 places in this puzzle to get the secondary clues / A completely useless replacement]. The answer to “About to be punished” is IN FOR IT, which is also what to swap in our shaded squares. When each set of shaded squares is filled with IT, the first clues are answered; when we swap IN for IT, the second clues are answered.

[___ ain't broke... / ___ doubt...] IF IT / IF IN

[Innate abilities / Learns abilities] TRAITS / TRAINS

["Yo, this party is ___!" / "___-Manuel Miranda is here!"] LIT / LIN

And so on. I tried to make the clues tie together in some way, where possible :)

Behind the Clues

26A. [The C of SOHCAHTOA] is our first of two trigonometry references today. And you thought you’d never think about it after high school! SOHCAHTOA is of course, the mnemonic for remembering trig ratios. Sin is Opposite over Adjacent, and the C is Cos, which is Opposite over Hypotenuse. What do you mean you aren’t calculating trig ratios regularly? Wild.

27A. ["They don't think it be like it is but ___" / ___-Chinese (Asian fusion cuisine)]. This double clue has one of my favourite quotes as the first part. The second is INDO-Chinese cuisine (yum yum!), but the first is a quote that’s been around the internet since around 2010. “They don’t think it be like it is but IT DO” is up there with "Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?"

40A. In a bit of modern internet trivia, a [Type of "wife" who makes elaborate meals from scratch] is a TRADwife, short for traditional wife. Sure, you can have Cheerios for breakfast - let me harvest the oats from our garden and make you some (not kidding). Speaking of tradwives, I’ve got “Yesteryear” on my summer to-read list - if I like it, you might hear about it here.

4D. I have to talk about [Some surfers' destinations / Some waves]. It’s my favourite pairing of clues, something of a double misdirect. In this case, nothing is related to water - some (internet) surfers visit SITES, as in websites, and some waves are SINES, or sine waves. What fun wordplay! And our second trigonometry reference lol

18D. [Org. that investigated the famously unsolved D.B. Cooper skyjacking] is the FBI, and they have a great official FBI page on that exciting mystery. The answer to “What happened to D.B. Cooper?” is unfortunately probably "He died in the woods because he parachuted into the middle of nowhere in the dead of night,” but I hope he’s out there somewhere, reading this newsletter.

32D. I do put a little (or a lot) of myself into these crosswords, and this one is quite overt. [What I say when someone says "Brandon?" during attendance] is HERE, but the funnier and true clue I thought of later is [What I say when someone says "Brandon… uh, Cat-heart?" during attendance]. Because I don’t want to make them feel weird about it.

I hope you enjoyed this puzzle!

Until next week,

Brandon

Donation icon by smalllikeart on Flaticon