Crossword Nation: 2018-12-25: SPANNING THE WORLD ON CHRISTMAS

Time: 11:51

Appropriately enough, Liz Gorski provided a travel-themed crossword for Christmas even though, as she notes in her introduction, she will not be traveling for the holidays. Although we’ve done well taking advantage of our time off work to see the world in vacation mood, in some ways staying home for Christmas is the dream. There are a fair number of cities appearing in the crossword, some of which I’m familiar with by name like MOMBASA, PERTH, and WINDSORor others that I’ve visited for work such as  JAKARTAand SINGAPORE. We also have a couple locations that I dream of visiting like ICELAND(OK, not a city) and SUCRE. Of course, there’s also MODESTO, which occupies a fond place in my heart because of the extremely fun group of ultimate players from there that would overlap with my Sacramento scene. They also seemed to consistently have great ultimate nicknames like Animal, Machete, and, of course, Tony Modesto. I miss the disastrous tournaments that I used to frequent with those folks and hope to see them at Masters someday.

In addition to the location theme, the circled letters also spell out “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” which actually helped me solved the puzzle since I wasn’t quite sure about places like SALERNO, LASCRUCES, and IPSWICH, even though I obviously should have been. 

Anyhow, it’s time for me to wrap up Crossword Nation for 2018 as my flight leaves for Lisbon. I am properly STEELEDfor another trans-Atlantic flight. See you all there!