Another brilliant puzzle in the NYT today. It’s by Dan Caprera, who must be a science fiction buff. The theme is TRACTOR BEAMS. These are energy rays that suck up objects — like cows, cars, and people. They were popularized in Star Trek. Like when someone was “beamed up” it was via a tractor beam. So in the puzzle there are three spacecraft answers (FLYING SAUCER, MOTHERSHIP, and SPACECRAFT), and each one is sucking something up into itself. E.g., the S in “flying saucer” is part of the down word SCOW, so it’s like the “cow” is being lifted up into the Saucer.
LMS posted this today:
“I recently was able to (finally) connect with a particularly tough kid – we had butted heads several times – when he knocked on my door during my planning to ask if he could do some work in my room. Oh. Hell. Yes. All the plans I had had for that hour went out the window so that I could finesse some kind of détente with this guy who had thrown an apple at my shins. I don’t know how it came up, but we ended up talking about UFOs. I said if one landed right outside, I’d be the first to go up to it and knock on the door. Helloooooo? Got some kind of Close Encounters ramp you can lower for me? Hello? Anyone home? You come in peace, right? Josh said no way – he’d be running out the back door. So this [puzzle] theme makes me happy. Josh and I are good now, and he sits and works for me during class.”
But commenter Masked&Anonymous said he wouldn’t be so quick to knock on that UFO’s door. He’d need to know: “Are there dead bodies ringing around it, especially half-eaten ones? Are there any of those giant death ray cannons protruding from its hull? Does it have a big MAGA sticker splatzed on its hull? Has the surrounding vegetation died from radiation or somesuch? Is there real tense soundtrack music playing? Are there giant robots on patrol?”
Makes sense. He’s just being cautious. I like the “tense soundtrack” factor.
The clue for 7D was “most urbane,” and the answer was SUAVEST. Several folks thought that word was a little clunky, although “most suave” doesn’t flow either. Here’s LMS again, from whom I’m stealing material today UNABASHEDLY, which was the answer at 24D (“without shame”):
“I can’t put my finger on it, but adding an EST to SUAVE feels weird, maybe because suaver feels weird? But so does most suave. I’m probably overthinking it because yesterday between classes (when I’m besieged by kids stopping to get an apple), I was explaining to a new guy that the Granny Smiths were sourer than the Pink Ladys. Then I kept saying sourer and making other kids try to say it. The good sports would try and fail; the budding little purist snobs would argue that it wasn’t a word. I tried to tell them that it’s a word if a native speaker says it and that I had said it and that the dictionary isn’t the be-all and end-all of what gets to be a word and that language is really playwithable so there. . . But they’re like everyone else who’s drunk the Prescriptive Kool-Aid. Ah me.”
For the record, owl-chatter strongly concurs that language is “playwithable.” Amen to that, Teach.
“Performer who may step on some toes,” was BALLET DANCER. But one person tried to fill in BAD LAP DANCER first. Ha!
Here’s a shot I took at our department’s Christmas party last year. That’s a brilliant economist blowing Owl Chatter a kiss on the right. Hi Dr. Mayfield!
It’s the birthday of the great humorist S.J. Perelman today, who was born in Brooklyn in 1904, and lived to be 75. He was the only child of Joseph and Sophie Perelman, who moved from one failed business to another until they found themselves raising chickens on a farm and running a dry goods store in Providence, RI. He went to Brown University and was the editor of their humor magazine, but dropped out and moved to NYC to write. His brilliance was manifested mostly in short pieces in The New Yorker in the 30s and 40s. His writing about himself was typically self-deprecating, e.g., he wrote: “before they made S.J. Perelman, they broke the mold.”
Here’s a sample of some dialogue:
MRS. BESSEMER: Yes, sir?
PUDOVKIN: If this is chicken consommé, so is Lake Louise. And you can tell the manager I said so.
MRS. BESSEMER: But you’re the manager, Mr. Pudovkin.
PUDOVKIN (to the others): Well, I’ve heard all the excuses, but that’s a new one.
If that sounds a little like Groucho to you, you’re on target. He co-wrote scripts for Horse Feathers and Monkey Business. He won an Oscar for co-writing the screenplay for Around the World in Eighty Days. He worked with Ogden Nash on the book for a musical, One Touch of Venus, that ran on Broadway for over 500 performances.
In 1929, when he was 25, Perelman married 18-year-old Laura West, the sister of the writer Nathanael West, and they remained married until her death in 1970. But it was not a good marriage. He had many affairs. Their son Adam tumbled into a life of crime, sadly: robberies and attempted rape. I was surprised to learn Perelman and Groucho were on very bad terms. Late in his life, Perelman did not want to be identified as a writer of Marx Brothers material, and Groucho once said “I hated the son of a bitch, and he had a head as big as my desk.”
Here’s a shot of that head.
When I sent birthday greetings via text to our friend Cindy, I was delighted to learn she had some stuff to tell Owl-Chatter about Mariah Carey. Mariah’s mom Pat was a member of Cindy’s church in Manhattan. At one point Cindy’s hubby Neal (alav hashalom), a song-writer, met with Pat at her houseboat at the 76th Street Pier to sing some of his songs. He said Pat told him that her daughter (i.e., Mariah) just signed a contract with a major record label, and she played some of the songs for him. Neal told Cindy he didn’t like them and she has a terrible voice. (Cindy added that Neal didn’t like Madonna’s voice either.) Ha! Go figure.
See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 