Oh, it’s already a good day today! Rex, who makes no secret of being a cat lover, posted these beautiful pix of his duo on his site today:
I miss our cats, Hank and Sophie. Still have Zoey’s Emily, who is beautiful.
As regular readers of Owl Chatter will recall, the Monday puzzle is too easy for some of us. Rex solves it using only the down clues, and others of us struggle to come up with creative ideas for ramping up the challenge. Here’s an exchange I had yesterday with commenter Joseph Michael:
JM: Since someone stole my eye patches and my blindfold is at the dry cleaners again, I had to do my Monday solve the old fashioned way with a grocery bag over my head. I used to use Jewel bags for this but decided to try a Trader Joe’s bag instead because 1) it’s larger, and 2) it’s easier to breathe inside of. I’m grateful for the challenge this added to the solve, but I should have looked at the bag more carefully before putting it on. Now I have to figure out how to get this pumpkin butter out of my hair.
Me (Liveprof): JM – Glopulene Propanol is an excellent pumpkin butter remover. It’s available at most sex shops for just about $5,000 an ounce. No need to rush, though. If you can get your head into an airtight container, the PB should last for up to two weeks. If you have a walk-in freezer, that would be better — it would buy you six months.
JM: Liveprof, thanks for the tips. I’ll keep the Glopulene Propanol in mind if this ever happens again. For now, I just took a shower and that seemed to do the trick, except that the Trader Joe’s bag is ruined. There must be an easier difficult way to do Monday crosswords.
At 41D today, the answer was EPITAPH, about which I posted the following comment on Rex’s blog:
“Steve Post, my favorite radio personality (WNYC) who died in 2014 said he planned to have his tombstone say ‘He didn’t wanna,’ because whenever his wife said there was some event for them to attend, his reply was always a whiny ‘I don’t wanna.’
“And he invited his listeners to send in their planned epitaphs. He said he would read them over the air. I wrote the following to him: For many years, I was planning for my stone to say ‘Struggled with his weight his whole life,’ but more recently I’ve switched to ‘Suffered from rectal itching.’ He saved it to read last, laughed when he read it, and murmured ‘I can relate to that.’
“It’s my one claim to fame in seven decades of living. And it’s enough.”
After way-too-long a hiatus, Owl Chatter’s favorite commenter, LMS, returned this week, and in rare and wonderful form, to no surprise. This is from her post today:
I haven’t been to many cemeteries, but do people still have EPITAPHS on their tombstones? I would want something funny on mine, maybe acknowledging my JESTERery. I resurrected my yogurt-in-the-mayonnaise-jar prank yesterday, and the response was electric. Kids gagged. Questioned me.
Kid: You’re eating mayonnaise?
Me: Yeah. I forgot my lunch, and I’m starving.
Kid: But out of the jar?
Me: [takes a huge spoonful] Sure. Why not? Want some?
Kid: [gags]
A couple of students came to my door during transition to ask if it was true, that I was eating mayonnaise straight from the jar. Ariyana tried to grab the jar to throw it away. Ms. Smith, I’m worried about you. Hah. I privately told Cyrus the truth, and he was delighted. So in front of other students, I gave him a spoon, and he took a bite. More gagging. I’ve refilled the jar, so Cyrus and I are gonna have us some more fun today.
46A was ESCAPEE. It led LMS to share the following:
On ESCAPEE, I have little posters with sentences like
Nia Vardalos is full of envy.
Don Knotts’ teeth were full of decay.
Quentin Tarantino is a cutie.
Irene Cara’s driveway is icy.
Steven Karl Pifer is an ESCAPEE.
When a student finally sees it, they’re like, Oh. Ms. Smith, you cringey.
Two, Four, Six, Eight . . . What number comes next? There was a whole page in the NYT science section today devoted to “integer sequences.” A famous one that has even appeared in XW puzzles is Fibonacci’s. It’s 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc. Starting with the third number, each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers.
This is the “eban” sequence, which is pretty neat: 2, 4, 6, 30, 32, 34, 36, 40, etc. I bet even our Owl Chatter mathematician can’t see why the next one is 42. [Judy — stumped?]
It’s an ordered list of all numbers that lack the letter “e” in them when written out. (Eban — The “e” is “banned.”) You may note that all of the numbers are even — that’s because every odd number has an e. onE, thrEE, fivE, sEvEn, ninE, and so on. But not every even number makes the list — e.g., eight, ten, and all the teens, have e’s.
If you are a sequences freak, you will be pleased to learn that there is an Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS) that contains 362,765 of these (and counting). Neil Sloane, a mathematician (duh), of Highland Park NJ, is the founder, and it’s celebrating its 50th anniversary, thus the NYT story. When it started, there were “only” 2,372 entries.
It’s run by about 170 international volunteer editors who “wrangle” 50 or more submissions a day. It’s seeking funding to hire a full-time manager.
Sloane showcases his favorite “fun” sequences on Numberphile, an educational math YouTube channel. They include this one: 1, 4, 8, 48, 88, 488, etc. Give up? It’s a sequence counting the “holes” in numbers. An 8 has two “holes” in it, one on top and one on the bottom. A 4 has just one. So in 4 there is one “hole,” in 8 there are two “holes,” in 48 there are 3 “holes,” 88 has 4, 488 has five, and so on. Insane, right?
One of Sloane’s current faves is the Sisyphean sequence. Here’s how it starts: 1, 3, 6, 3, 8, 4, 2, 1, etc. What’s next? Give up? Well, the deal is, if the number is even, divide by two, if it’s odd, add the smallest prime number not yet added. So the next number would be 8 (1 + 7), then 4, then 2, then 1, then 12 (1 + 11).
Some numbers appear more than once, as you can see. But does every number appear at least once? Sloane says they don’t know, but there was a massive struggle over “36.” The sequence was carried out to a billion terms but there was still no 36. Sloane said this was “really worrying.” If 36 were missing it would be like a flaw in the universe. Thank God, it was eventually discovered to pop up as the 77,534,485,877th term. Whew.
When Sloane’s not in pursuit of important issues like that, he’s working on his book: “The Joy of Seqs.” (not kidding)
Stunning actress Lupita Nyong’o was in the puzzle today.
Lupita is Kenyan-Mexican and lives in Brooklyn. She’s 40 years old and not married. She won an Oscar in 2014 for Best Supporting Actress for her work in 12 Years a Slave. In April of 2014 she was named People magazine’s “Most Beautiful Woman,” and in November was named Glamour’s “Woman of the Year.” She has appeared on the cover of Vogue numerous times, as well as on the covers of leading magazines such as Vanity Fair and Elle.
In November 2017, she appeared on the cover of Grazia UK magazine, but expressed her disappointment with them for altering her hair to fit European standards of what hair should look like. Photographer An Le later apologized, saying it was “an incredibly monumental mistake.” [Owl Chatter photographer Phil was aghast at the chutzpah.] They’re lucky she didn’t sue their white asses.
In October 2017—in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal and the MeToo movement—Nyong’o wrote an op-ed for The NYT divulging that Weinstein had sexually harassed her on two occasions when she was a student at Yale. She vowed never to work with him and turned down an offer to star in Southpaw, a Weinstein film. Nyong’o’s op-ed was part of a collection of stories by The Times and The New Yorker that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
See you tomorrow folks.
The Wellington Files 