Today’s NYT puzzle (Friday 10/7) starts with a joke by Demetri Martin.  “How fast does a zebra have to run before it looks gray?”  (The answer was ZEBRA.)  I noted in a post on the Rex Parker blog that Demetri Martin is a comic with a very dry wit, like Steven Wright, who once said – “I have no fear of heights, but I am afraid of widths.”  It prompted another person to share this incredible Wright line: “I put instant coffee in a microwave oven.  I went back in time.”

Speaking of time travel, several answers in the puzzle, in combination, brought me back 50 years to when I was a pimply, gawking, teenage boy:  I SAW IT (17A).  CLEAVAGE (6A).  OMG! (25A)

The clue “They come with strings attached,” was for APRONS.  It reminded me of the sign in the music store window:  “Violin for sale:  Only $25.  No strings attached.”

But the highlight of the puzzle was its featuring a three-word “stack” for KETANJI BROWN JACKSON.  Right smack dab in the center on the week she made her appearance on the bench.  That J, with the Z from zebra, made me wonder if today’s puzzle might be a “pangram.”  A pangram is when the grid contains at least one of all 26 letters of the alphabet.  But it was missing Q and X.

For those of you who think the NYT is stodgy, last Sunday’s puzzle had ASSHAT as an answer, right up there at 1 across.  The clue was “total jerk.”  And today one clue was “Jerkwad,” with the answer TOOL.

When I first joined the faculty at Hunter, the Chair of our department was Marjorie and we always got along because she enjoyed a good laugh.  Sadly, she passed away a few years ago.  But I recall one email from her that got me to laugh out loud, reading it alone at home in my bedroom, which was rare.  She wrote me that a student was formally appealing a grade and asked me to set up a meeting with her (the student) to try to resolve it.  I am the Chair of our department’s grade appeal committee.  She forwarded the student’s complaint to me, and it was incredible.  It went on for page after page after page.  It was Tolstoyan.  I wrote back to Marjorie: “Is it me, or does the student seem a bit wordy?”  And Marjorie replied with just three words: “Wear a hat.”  I took it to mean, the shit’s going to fly, and I loved it.

***********

One thing I love about puzzles is that they play with words.  Words are malleable in a good constructor’s hands.  I like to think I tried to show my kids (and show my grandkids) that words can be toys.  You can twist them around like little action figures and it’s fun, it’s funny.  Lianna and I were trying to make up jokes once in the car on the way to school.  And we came up with one that I love – what do you call it when French fries start falling from the sky? – Precipitatoes!

Here’s an example from a puzzle I just completed by Erik Agard (New Yorker, online 10/5).  The clue was “How much longer?” and the answer was long – 14 letters.  I first thought of “Are we there yet?”  But that’s only 13 letters and the crossing letters I had were not consistent with that.  It turned out to be something I could make no sense out of – the answer for “How much longer?” was – THE WAYS IN WHICH. 

Huh?  WTF? 

It made no sense to me until I had what some call an aha moment.  Agard’s clue is playing with the word “how.”  A “much longer” way to say “how” something is done, is to explain “the ways in which” something is done.  Get it?  So how (much longer) is “the ways in which.” Brilliant, it seems to me.  Still confused?  Now you know how my students feel. 

The clue for eleven down today was “Animal that the Aztecs called ayotochtli, or ‘turtle-rabbit,’” and the answer (of course) was ARMADILLO.  Did you know there is a baseball team in Texas, the Amarillo Dillas, with an armadillo as its mascot?  God bless America.