Mazel Tov to the Super Bowl winners! Nice job guys! I’ll be honest, it didn’t look too good at halftime!
Owl Chatter was able to get into the winning locker room right after the game for this exclusive celebration footage. It’s a little wild!
Hi CRAIG Ferguson! Welcome to the puzzle and owl chatter! I’m not too familiar with your work, but this quote of yours is spot on:
“Alcohol ruined me financially and morally, broke my heart and the hearts of too many others. Even though it did this to me and it almost killed me and I haven’t touched a drop of it in seventeen years, sometimes I wonder if I could get away with drinking some now. I totally subscribe to the notion that alcoholism is a mental illness because thinking like that is clearly insane.”
Craig is Scottish, born in Glasgow on May 17, 1962. He was the host of The Late Late Show on CBS from ’05 to ’14.
If the army ever needs to form a brigade of nitpickers, Crossworld is at the ready. The clue at 21D was “Sounds during a dental exam,” and the answer was AHS. So an anonymous commenter carped: I’ve never had a dentist ask me to say “ah.” Doctors do it all the time to check for swelling or discoloration in your mouth and throat. But dentists don’t need “ahs” to determine if there’s a problem with teeth or gums.
But my favorite nit picked today was on the clue at 27D: “Alternative to a Ho Ho.” The answer was TWINKIE. Commenter Son Volt conceded that a Twinkie is “technically” an alternative, but it’s not chocolate. So Yodels are a more fitting alternative. Duly noted.
Here are some Ho Hos.
If you saw the film Europa, Europa, which came out in the U.S. in 1991 and won the Golden Globe for best foreign-language film, you know the story of Solomon “Solly” Perel, who died on Feb. 2, at age 97. I remember seeing it, but only vaguely. Perel himself attended the film’s premiere in Lodz, Poland.
Many Jews hid their Jewish identity to escape the Nazis, but Perel was unique in that he actually went so far as to join the Hitler Youth. He fled the Nazis with his brother from Lodz, Poland, and then fled from an orphanage in what is now Belarus. When he was captured in an open field near Minsk, he told the Germans he was an ethnic German and they believed him. He was welcomed into their unit and later sent to join the Hitler Youth. He recounted being relieved to discover the showers were in separate stalls so no one would notice he was circumcised. He said he wasn’t suspected because it was impossible to think a Jewish boy could penetrate so deeply into Nazi society.
He received a holiday pass for Christmas in 1943 and took a train back to Lodz in his Nazi uniform and walked the streets of the ghetto searching without success for his parents and sister. He saw men rolling carts piled with Jewish corpses. He never saw his parents or sister again, but his two brothers survived the war, and he was reunited with them.
Eerily, the Nazi indoctrination had a deep effect on him. “My mental faculties were so befogged that no ray of reality could penetrate. I felt just like one of them.” Towards the war’s end, his unit was captured by the Americans and he ended his charade. He eventually emigrated to Palestine and fought in the Israeli war of independence and settled in Israel, where he managed a zipper factory in civilian life. He gave lectures about his experiences, stressing the dangers of racism.
Perel died in his home near Tel Aviv, survived by a son and three grandchildren. Another son died in 2019. Perel said he never fully purged the Nazi identity that he adopted. “I love him [his Nazi self] because he saved my life.”
We’re honored to welcome Sir Elton John, in the grid today at 65A, with a clue that notes his AIDS charity work. I remember when his first album was released. We were at Brandeis. It feels like yesterday.
Here he is, performing his beautiful paean to Marilyn Monroe.
Here’s a poem by Kooser to send us on our way today. It’s from Winter Morning Walks.
Just as a dancer, turning and turning,
may fill the dusty light with the soft swirl
of her flying skirts, our weeping willow—-
now old and broken, creaking in the breeze—-
turns slowly, slowly in the winter sun,
sweeping the rusty roof of the barn
with the pale blue lacework of her shadow.
Thanks for stopping in. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 