Inside the Globe's Weekender crossword: the 'Eh' theme, a Spooner clue and why the constructor removed the letter A

The puzzle that ran in The Globe and Mail's Sept. 26 Weekender is called That's Such a Cliché, and its starting point was a small piece of Canadiana: the sound "eh." Toronto constructor Carina da Rosa, whose cluing the column's author says never fails to delight, wanted an "eh"-based theme, and the path from that idea to the finished grid took several detours.

The first attempt looked at phrases that end in variations on the eh sound, such as yogurt parfait and anchors aweigh. The team wanted something goofier. Next they tried adding eh sounds to familiar phrases, which produced things like men are from marseille. Then they settled on TAKE OFF, EH as the revealer, and went looking for ways to remove an eh sound. There weren't enough examples with differently spelled eh sounds. Da Rosa's fix was to drop the letter that sounds like "eh" itself: the letter A.

The revealer sits at 115A, clued as a catchphrase for SCTV's Bob and Doug McKenzie that is also a phonetic hint to the starred clues. Among the theme entries the columnist singles out: 31A, DON'T ROCK THE BOT, for "Refrain from shaking R2-D2"; 46A, I'M ALL OUT OF IDES, for how an ancient Roman might turn down a mid-month appointment; 82A, MICKEY MOUSE ERS, for totally amateurish triage centres; and 100A, SORRY FOR THE WIT, for "Please excuse my clever quips." Each is a familiar phrase with one A removed.

The columnist also flags several non-theme favourites. At 27A, "Controversial butter tart additions" is RAISINS, and the columnist is firmly on that side of the debate. Many sources trace the first butter tart recipe to "Filling for Tarts," on page 88 of The Women's Auxiliary of the Royal Victoria Hospital Cookbook, printed in Barrie, Ont., in 1900. One of its four ingredients was currants, which are not raisins, though the anti-raisin camp isn't arguing for currants either. At 77A, PJS gets a fresh angle: "Matching Xmas duds for the fam, maybe," where the abbreviations hint at an abbreviated answer. At 18D, a "numbers game that sounds like two Mattel dolls" is KENKEN, which the Globe runs in its daily print paper. A Japanese math teacher invented it in 2004, and it resembles Sudoku with arithmetic operations. And at 58D, "It helps when doing sift work?" is SIEVE, a clue that rewards readers who don't misread it as shift work.

Da Rosa offered a note of her own. She says she comes to the puzzle with only love and no judgment of anyone's speech habits, and admits to the occasional "eh" at the end of a sentence, which her British husband enjoys pointing out. She also shared themers left on the cutting room floor from the earlier homophone-and-addition version: SLEEPING IN THE BUFFET, for getting some zzz's during an all-you-can-eat meal; VITAMIN BAE, for a lover who makes sure you get your riboflavin; and SHARPEI DRESSERS, for wardrobe specialists for wrinkly dogs.

The column also examines one clue from the Weekender Cryptic. For newcomers, it points to Fraser Simpson's article, How to solve The Globe's cryptic crossword, while noting that this clue uses a mechanism not seen in every cryptic and rarely more than once per puzzle. The columnist calls it a bit of a one-trick pony, but a good trick.

The clue is 20A: "Vacant-looking Lassie guide mentioned by Spooner (6-4)." The word "Spooner" signals a spoonerism, named for the Rev. William Archibald Spooner, known for verbal slips in which he swapped the first sounds or syllables of a phrase. Since "mentioned by Spooner" is part of the wordplay at the end, the definition is likely "vacant-looking." Here no synonyms are needed: the words are used directly. Swap the first sounds of "Lassie" and "guide" and you get the answer, GLASSY-EYED.

The column runs weekly, with the stated aim of introducing more Globe readers to how the crosswords work and celebrating the people who make them.