Neighbourhood Puzzle - Ottawa (Puzzle #019)

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A coworker has described her hobby as being, itself, 'hobbies' - that her hobby is trying out new things, giving different crafts a shot, seeing if she's any good at this or that activity. Honestly, props to her, that seems like a great outlook on things. This summer, then, I tried to follow that approach - and it just so turns out that, a few streets from the Corso Italia LRT station, is the Ottawa Glassblowing Co-op!

My father and I ended up being the only ones there (possibly because, with summers already getting hotter, a 1200-degree glass oven pushes past the reasonable), so we had a super cool experience getting to pepper our 'guide' with questions! (Our actual involvement in the glass 'blowing' (now done through a foot pedal) was pretty minimal, given we had zero safety training, but still, it was fascinating to see.)

Canadian Wordsearch (Puzzle #018)

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One of the defining moments of my 'courtship' of my wife was when I convinced myself that it was time that I give blood - but that, a bit reticent to have a needle jabbed up my elbow, figured I wanted to get reassurance from someone who had gone through it. Of all my friends, she was the one I was most confident had given blood. My confidence was well grounded: her visit count was already into double-digits. It's become something of a date... albeit one that I'll attend with more than a bit of reluctance, and one that she'll anticipate, chirping that 'It's in you to give!'.

Neighbourhood Puzzle - Ottawa (Puzzle #017)

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Sometime over the last year, something clicked in my brain, and I've become quite enamored with birds. There'd always been something there, some joy sparked whenever I saw a woodpecker or a cardinal land in the tree by my apartment window, but my knowledge of birds was pretty limited to the everyday ones. Now, though, I've gotten hooked onto the Merlin app, and have found so much joy in spotting birds that had been existing just outside my field of awareness: northern flickers (a chubby little woodpecker that eats on the ground) and eastern kingbirds (white-bellied chirpers, who have made a nest right on my path to work!). It makes games of Wingspan that much more exciting!

I fully recognize that Canada geese remain a menace, though.

The Big 158 (Puzzle #016)

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Happy Canada Day!

Canadian Wordsearch (Puzzle #015)

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One clue that unfortunately didn't make it through was for 23-Across, ORC, where I'd hoped to have something along the lines of 'Horde member, perhaps, in World of Warcraft': for the uninitiated, players in World of Warcraft are divided between the Alliance, led by humans, and the Horde, led by orcs. An ORC, therefore, would be a member of the Horde. As much as it would have amused me to pay tribute to my teenage years, I didn't think it would be fair to both pin the answer to a video game (as popular as WoW has been) while also hiding the capital letter of H by making Horde the first word.

That said, the Lord of the Rings - even if I only saw the movies well into my twenties - are another very solid franchise, and so I don't regret the final clue.

This puzzle is also the base of the Centre's guide for making a crossword puzzle - if you've ever been curious about trying your hand at constructing crosswords, you now have a step-by-step guide! (Of course, we recommend completing this puzzle first - the guide is nothing but spoilers!)