It was a good, tough puzzle today, as it should be on Saturday. It defeated me at two points, but so what? How tough? The first two words in the NE were CROMULENT and OUROBOROS. Ouch — amirite? I’ll get back to them later.
One of the words that did me in was NOCKED. The clue was “Ready to fly, as an arrow.” A nock is the notch at the back of an arrow that lets you fit it against the bowstring (see below). It’s also the verb meaning to fit the arrow against the string. It led me to post the following on Rex’s site:
I’m not knocking NOCKED (8D), I just never heard of it and it knocked me for a loop, especially since it crossed that serpentine thing that was also foreign to me (OUROBOROS).
NOCK NOCK
Who’s there?
No, not that kind of knock!
OK, go away then.
My g’son Leon, who is six, works knock knock jokes like this:
Leon: Knock knock
Me: Who’s there?
Leon: Who’s there?
Me: Hey, that’s my line! but we’re already roaring by then.
Regarding NOCK’s connocktion to bows and arrows:
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Archery
Archery who?
Archery tree produced a ton of cherries this year.
(Needs work.)
Are you familiar with CROMULENT and its origin story? The writers on The Simpsons were challenged to make up two new words. So they had an episode that started off with a film about the founder of the town, Jedidiah Springfield. At the end he says: “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.” In the back of the room one teacher says to another that she hadn’t heard the word “embiggens” before moving to Springfield, and the other says “It’s a perfectly cromulent word.” And cromulent has entered the lexicon.
Rex noted that cromulent “is as familiar to me as the air I breathe (the first decade of ‘The Simpsons’ being as close to a Holy Book as I have).” Amen to that, RP. I could happily live my life restricted to lines from The Simpsons and The Honeymooners.
BTW, Springfield was chosen as the town for the Simpsons because there are so many of them. Matt Groening wanted everyone to think it was “their” Springfield. But he eventually admitted the “real” Springfield is the one in Oregon. And “giveaways” are the fact that many of the characters, e.g., Flanders, are named after streets in Portland OR.
Our Phil was able to reproduce this iconic family pose, careful to include the little mouse-hole but unable to get all of Marge’s hair into the shot — he’s the best, but he’s not a miracle-worker. Good work getting the cat to sit still, Philly!
The clue for OUROBOROS was “Serpentine symbol of rebirth, from the Greek for ‘tail-devouring.’” Here’s where I often post a photo, but I don’t like snakes and it’s too creepy.
The second word I missed was COPYPASTA. I know, seriously, right? WTF? The clue was “Block of text duplicated and reposted online, in internet slang,” and that’s exactly what it means. It’s a block of text you highlight and copy, but instead of pasting into a document, you paste it online and it spreads. A related term is “creepy pasta” which is a scary story spread around the internet. (I’m not kidding.)
A surreal example of copypasta (from Wikipedia) is “A drive into deep left field by Castellanos,” a phrase spoken by Thom Brennaman, a play-by-play announcer for the Cincinnati Reds, during a baseball game against Kansas City on August 19, 2020. Brennaman was replaced in the middle of the broadcast for a microphone gaffe in which he described an unnamed location as “one of the fag capitals of the world.” [Yikes!] While he apologized to listeners on the air, Reds outfielder Nick Castellanos hit a home run, which caused Brennaman to interrupt himself to deliver a home run call, describing the hit as a “drive into deep left field” before continuing with his apology. The surreal nature of the apology gave it notoriety in baseball internet culture, and has led to the phrase’s use as a copypasta.
The actual quote was: “I pride myself and think of myself as a man of faith, as there’s a drive into deep left field by Castellanos, it will be a home run. And so that’ll make it a 4-0 ballgame.” He’s on the Phils now, Castellanos, and he’s a dangerous hitter.
If Seinfeld had (or was) the “show about nothing,” the Japanese have applied that concept to candy. One of Japan’s major candy companies, Kanro, produced a flavorless candy with no taste. On purpose. Its name was Flavorless (?) Candy. The “?” was part of the name. It was developed for people who wanted to moisten mouths that had gone dry from all-day mask wearing but without a sugar rush. But it remained popular even when mask-wearing declined. It was a conversation topic and was described as a marble in your mouth that slowly melts and disappears.
It has moved the Japanese to Zenlike reflection on what the “taste of nothingness” is like, if anything. One likened it to “ice that is not cold.”
“I asked myself: Why do you pay for this product?” said Ms. Kinoshita, who runs a vegetable pancake restaurant in Hiroshima. “The answer is maybe to put myself into a state of ‘nothingness.’”
Candies generally have a short life in Japan and the tasteless candy is no longer on the market. As reported in the NYT, at a convenience store in Tokyo the other day, there were lots of candy flavors to choose from, including apple, mixed fruit, peach and soda. But there was one overarching similarity: They all tasted like something.
Is Owl Chatter the blog about nothing? — Nonsense! See you tomorrow.
The Wellington Files 