Devil Cross #68 by Evan Birnholz

Whip or nae-nae your way over to Evan’s site and solve “SQUARE DANCING” before reading on.

“Square Dancing”

Theme: Common phrases that end with dances

• 23A: NEWS REEL – Dance performed by an anchor?
• 25A: PROTEIN SHAKE – Dance performed by a nutritionist?
• 40A: COLBERT BUMP – Dance performed by the host of “The Late Show”?
• 44A: ROCK SLIDE – Dance performed by a climber?
• 63A: IPOD SHUFFLE – Dance performed by a portable music enthusiast?
• 83A: MINUTE WALTZ – Dance performed by a timekeeper?
• 103A: ISLAND HOP – Dance performed by a castaway?
• 106A: OLIVER TWIST – Dance performed by a famous Stone?
• 120A: AVOCADO SALSA – Dance performed by a guacamole lover?
• 125A: LOCK STEP – Dance performed by a safecracker?

This week’s Devil Cross is rated as “mild” on Evan’s site, and I’d have to agree — this is a breezy, fun solve that isn’t going to take long to crack. I’m hardly a speed solver, but I was done in under 15 minutes, and this was the first time I slowed down enough to register what the theme was:

You can see that I had already filled in several theme answers without really registering how they connected to their clues. I started the puzzle by filling in both parts of VERA WANG (118D/1D: Designer of the gowns in “Bride Wars”) and basically didn’t stop entering letters until I connected the two spots. So a very easy solve, which is fine — not every puzzle needs to be a brainbuster, and this is both well made and cleanly filled.

The theme is simple but cute. The base phrases are pretty lively, especially COLBERT BUMP (a term I wasn’t familiar with — it’s the rise in popularity that often followed an appearance on The Colbert Report). I think IPOD SHUFFLE and OLIVER TWIST are my favourites, but they’re all solid. One minor annoyance is that the WALTZ in MINUTE WALTZ already refers to a dance, while all the others have non-dance-related meanings in their base phrases. That feels a little inelegant. On the plus side, it does provide a Z for LIONIZE (54D: Treat like a king of the jungle — uh, scratch that last part about the jungle).

Random fill and clues that I enjoyed:

• OTHELLO (15D: The Bard’s board game?) – I always forget there’s a board game by this name. Never played it.
• USES (31A: “Startling Pigeons And 16 Other ___ For A Trombone” (title on a cover of The Onion’s Weekender)) – I misread this as “For A Tombstone”, and was so confused at first.
• CARAMEL (52D: Whatchamacallit ingredient) – We don’t have these in Canada. Are they any good?
• SPADES (79A: Heart beaters, often) – Bridge! Nicely devious.
• DIPLOMAS – 8D: Rice papers? – Also a nice one. I was stymied enough by it to change directions in the grid, and ended up circling back around at the end.
• NOAM (95A: “There’s a good reason why nobody studies history: it just teaches you too much” speaker Chomsky) – Great quote.
• RESCUE (107D: “Chip ‘n Dale ___ Rangers”) – Hey, I loved this show when I was a kid! Bet it doesn’t hold up.

I wanted JACK KIRBY or JOE SIMON for 93D: Cap creator instead of the correct HATMAKER, but the crosses didn’t work. And I’m not hip enough to know drug lingo, so I had SALIVA instead of cannabis SATIVA at 116A until it produced TWILS instead of TWITS for 102D: Foolish fellows. Also didn’t know SEPAL (62D: Calyx component), which I gather refers to flowers, or a couple of proper names (Jessi COLTER, Lennox LEWIS, Greg OLSEN). All easily solved from the crosses, so no big deal.

I think that’s about it. Light and breezy.

• Evan Birnholz