When there’s a clue about whales, if the answer isn’t WHALE, I’m pretty much at sea. So the clue in yesterday’s puzzle had me beat: “Streamlined type of baleen whale.” Let me put it this way — the “streamlined” part was no help at all. Have you heard of RORQUAL? Sounds like a treatment for something. “Don’t take Rorqual if you are dizzy, vomiting, or prone to falling down stairs.”
Most rorquals feed by gulping in water, and then pushing it out through their baleen (bristle-like) plates with their tongue. They feed on crustaceans, such as krill, but also on various fish, such as herring and sardines. They often enjoy some schnapps after the herring, if the kids are asleep. Speaking of kids, a rorqual’s pregnancy will last 11 to 12 months, towards the end of which she will go around joking that she “feels like a whale,” a line that never gets old in the rorqual community.
On Hollywood Squares, George Gobel was once asked “Who is pregnant longer — your girlfriend or your elephant?” and he immediately shot back “Who told you about my elephant?”
The other odd bit of underwater life in the puzzle was a SEAL ADDER. Oh, wait. Never mind — it’s a SEA LADDER — feature of a boat that divers use. Sorry.
James Beard, whose culinary award was noted in the puzzle yesterday, has been dead since 1985. He was 81 when he died. He was a chef, writer, teacher, and pioneered TV cooking shows. Julia Child said: “Beard was the quintessential American cook. Well-educated and well-traveled, he was familiar with many cuisines but remained fundamentally American. He was a big man, over six feet tall, with a big belly, and huge hands. An endearing and always lively teacher, he loved people, loved his work, loved gossip, loved to eat, loved a good time.”
Beard’s renovated brownstone at 167 West 12th Street in Greenwich Village houses the James Beard Foundation, and is North America’s only historic culinary center. Here’s a shot of him.
Two pop icons were in the grid yesterday, Ringo STARR and (yes, yet again) Taylor Swift (not complaining). Ringo is 82 and has been married to his second wife, Barbara Bach, for 41 years. He has three children — all from his first wife, Mary Cox. Barbara is 75, but used to be younger.
And Swift was pulled in from left field to clue the simple word STAY, with “When said three times, 2012 Taylor Swift song.” It’s a catchy pop tune, with a symmetrical chorus: “Stay, stay, stay — I’ve been loving you for quite some time, time, time.” In her intro, she admits to her fans that she writes a lot of breakup songs: they make her feel better. “But sometimes people stay.”
Here’s a live performance of it for you teeny boppers: and get off my lawn!
According to The Writer’s Almanac, today’s the birthday of Emily Hahn, who wrote 54 books and over 200 New Yorker articles. She died at age 92 in 1997. The New Yorker called her “a forgotten American literary treasure.”
She was the first woman to earn a degree in Mining Engineering at U. Wisconsin. She chose that major when an advisor told her women don’t have the brains for it. But she left the field after a year, finding the work unsatisfying. Before turning 30, she was a tour guide in New Mexico, worked for the Red Cross in the Belgian Congo, lived with a tribe of Pygmies for two years, and crossed Africa on foot. She then lived in China for a time, had two daughters, and eventually settled back in NY.
At her funeral, her granddaughter Alfia gave the eulogy and said: “Chances are, your grandmother didn’t smoke cigars and let you hold wild role-playing parties in her apartment. Chances are she didn’t teach you Swahili obscenities. Chances are that when she took you to the zoo, she didn’t start whooping passionately at the top her lungs as you passed the gibbon cage. Sadly for you, your grandmother was not Emily Hahn.”
Today’s puzzle was very fresh with loads of nifty terms and very little “Crosswordese.” No OREOS, and no Mel OTT or Bobby ORR. First, the grid design is elegant. Look how symmetrical the design is, below. Here’s how Rex describes it:
“I really liked the shape of this grid, and the unexpected way it unfolded. It just has so much . . . let’s call it “flow.” It basically has all the symmetries (mirror symmetry along the axes and diagonals, plus rotational symmetry—not just 180-degree, but 90-degree as well). It’s essentially a cloverleaf, with four corner loops, so you can go spinning around the black squares in all different directions and then go shooting off down the road, and you never find yourself stuck in some dank corner with no one to come to your rescue.
Six down is WHATCHAMACALLIT — a terrific crossword word. And the puzzle has lots of neat sound effects: BLAT, WHAPS, and NEIGHS. Venerable women DORIS Day and SALLY Ride offset THE BACHELORETTE.
“Harry Belafonte’s catchword” is at 47D: DAY-O. How often do we run into Harry anymore? Born on March 1, 1927, he is still living (95!). His album Calypso (1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist. He’s been very active politically and was close with MLK. Jr. He’s in the Rock and Roll HOF, and won three Grammys, an Emmy and a Tony. Get this — his paternal grandfather was a Dutch Jew of Sephardic Jewish descent. Harry’s a Yid!
He was married to his first wife, Marguerite Byrd, from ’48 to ’57 and had two daughters with her. His second wife, Julie Robinson (of Jewish descent), and he were married for 47 years (!), and they had a boy and a girl. They divorced in ’08, and Harry is now married to photographer Pamela Frank. He has five grandchildren.
Belafonte was an active critic of the Iraq War, and a verbal battle flared up involving him and Colin Powell and Condi Rice. Here’s what he said:
“There is an old saying, in the days of slavery. There were those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master, do exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him. That gave you privilege. Colin Powell is committed to come into the house of the master, as long as he would serve the master, according to the master’s purpose. And when Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture. And you don’t hear much from those who live in the pasture.”
Powell called the remarks “unfortunate.” Rice was not as restrained. “I don’t need Harry Belafonte to tell me what it means to be Black,” she said.
Another comment Belafonte made calling George W. Bush a terrorist ignited a great deal of controversy. Hillary Clinton refused to acknowledge his presence at an awards ceremony that featured both of them.
I tried to find a shot of him in a yarmulke. No luck.
That’s it for today! Thanks for stopping by — see you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 