#TrendingToday

These last few weeks have been busy - and as someone who values not being busy but constantly makes himself busy, I have no one to blame but myself. However, it prompts me to ask myself, are the reasons I’m busy bringing me joy? And the answer is yes! I love making these puzzles for you, writing minis for Taproot, and juggling the rest of my hot mess of a calendar. Coffee with a friend this week reminded me of the joys of creating together, how hard that can be, and also how rewarding. So, amid this reflection, thank you for giving me an audience and a reason to keep enjoying the fun of making.

This week’s crossword was inspired by an article I saw a few weeks ago, exclaiming that the #hashtag is dying (because of algorithms, corporate greed, etc), and that made me sad - it puts sorting content into the hands of the people, and that’s a really powerful part of keeping the internet human. This is my homage to the hashtag.

Discussion (and spoilers!) below the break.

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#TrendingToday by Brandon Cathcart

Discussion

Congratulations, you just did YEGwords’ widest puzzle (and second-largest puzzle) to date. A whopping 19×9 beast, with 50% more squares than usual. But I needed to fit WOMANCRUSHWEDNESDAY in there, so I signed up for a bit more work and you get a bit more puzzle to enjoy.

Here’s David “Crofty” Croft with some of his iconic commentary (might need to click through to YouTube).

Today’s Theme

Nice simple theme today - we highlight three influential hashtags related to days of the week. If you’re an internet kid, you might have seen #womancrushwednesday, #throwbackthursday, and/or #fridaysforfuture (Greta Thunberg’s movement) trending before. Notable mentions that didn’t make the cut are #mancrushmonday and #takeapennyleaveapennybutactuallyonlytakeapennytuesdays (too long and also not real).

Behind the Clues

1A. I saw an opportunity to reference Canadian icons The Arrogant Worms, and by golly I took it. One of my favourite bands as a kid (and my first concert), “I Ran Away” is a classic, with the line “I said I tore my ACL and I ran away”. Funny and incredible musicians - a potent combination.

19A. Ah, the ol’ misdirect. Newsletter purveyors may know that I’m a pinball fan, but there’s another pin-ball in town - bowling! Just another example of how all sports names are made up. So [Locales for a sport I would call pin-ball], of course, are LANES.

47A. Welcome to Brandon’s very simple cryptic crossword clue corner! Maybe you clued in right away, and if so, nice one! If not, we’ve got a bit of wordplay trickery here. [If you think this answer is TOOL, you've got it all backwards!] indicates you’ve got TOOL backwards, which is LOOT!

4D. This is a dumb clue but I love it. [Actor who is sometimes still but always Stiller (and probably stillest sometimes)] is BEN, aka Ben Stiller, aka Zoolander, aka director/producer of Severence (which still blows my mind).

23D. I always like using crosswords to highlight things I like, and this is one of them. [Help grow, or a great Porter Robinson album] is NURTURE, an album that stuck with me so much over the years I bought it on vinyl. Why do so many artists make their best music in the most depressive times of their lives? At least we get great music out of it.

37D. Another music clue that means nothing if you don’t get it! At least I made the ones around it gettable lol. Let’s break down [What Dave Grohl fights, apparently]. Dave Grohl is the ex-drummer of Nirvana who went on to form the Foo Fighters, one of the heavyweights of modern rock. So one could say that Dave Grohl purportedly fights FOO.

I hope you enjoyed this puzzle!

Until next Friday,

Brandon