How prescient was the puzzle today? I just watched the Spain women win the Soccer World Cup, one-love. One-nil? One-zero? Whatever. And the puzzle had ESPANA at 128A and CUP BEARER at 37D! Crossworld, meet real world.
Spain’s amazing Olga Carmona scored the game’s only goal (no relation to Carmona Burana). Owl Chatter photographer Phil caught up with her in the locker room after the game.
Okay, now get out of there, buddy — let the girls get dressed. Phil! Now! Who do you think you are, Trump at a beauty pageant?
Yesterday’s puzzle, at 40D, was a shout out to the Swifties among us. The clue was “Supposed subject of Taylor Swift’s ‘Dear John,’” and the answer was MAYER, for John Mayer an older man she dated and was hurt by when she was 19 and he was 32. It was painful and she was unable to perform the song for years, until reintroducing it on her current tour. What happened was — well, why not let her tell us about it?
Whew – we just need a moment to collect ourselves. Jeez Louise! I better use one of those end-of-section lines.
Who could possibly forget Darryl Strawberry? He had the sweetest lefty swing you would ever see — uncoiling his long arms and sending towering home runs over the right-field fence — 335 by the time he was finished, and exactly 1,000 RBI. Here he is with his wife Tracy.
There was a nice piece on him in the NYT this week. Owl Chatter is taking the occasion to induct him into our own eclectic Hall of Fame. Welcome, Straw! — sure, bring the wife — get in here, Trace.
Darryl led the Mets to the World Championship in 1986 and he owned New York, lock, stock, and barrel of the bat. And then, before you knew it, he was felled by a cocaine addiction and out of baseball, at first for a while, and then, after stints with the Yankees and Dodgers, forever. Today he and Tracy run a foundation that helps addicts. Tracy is an ordained minister with a doctorate in Theology, and is also a recovering addict.
Darryl credits God with his recovery, but he doesn’t try to save or convert anyone — he says most of his friends are Jewish. Kinahora! He and Tracy have nine children between them — yikes! — and he spends 200 days a year visiting churches, schools, hospitals, and prisons. He has special feelings for his prison visits and makes extraordinary connections with prisoners, sometimes getting involved personally in parole applications and the like.
He’s 61 now and I bet he can still park one in the seats. Maybe we’ll see him do just that on September 9th — he’s coming to Old Timer’s Day at Yankee Stadium. Until then, let’s remember the young Darryl — you won’t see a sweeter swing. The late Vin Scully is behind the mic.
Take a look at Puzzle 4 from the tournament yesterday, below: I want to point out some brilliant features of it. It was the hardest of the five puzzles. First, in each of those separate balloons, the letters HE had to be squeezed into a single square twice. That made them “helium” balloons. E.g., 6 across “Be told about” is HEAR OF, but the letters HE share a square so the answer can fit into five squares.
Next, in the main grid, some of the clues referred to the answers in the balloons, but you had to notice that there was a musical note in each of them which you had to convert into the higher note. WTF?? As it says on top “We’re scaling up.” So, e.g., the crossing clues lead you to fill in TINA TURNER as the answer for 49A, but only when you change the TI to LA, does it become LANA TURNER, which answers the clue. Wow.
I had never heard of Kevin G. Der, the constructor, but others at my table did. They gave us 40 minutes to work on it so I was able to fill in all the squares with what I thought were correct answers, but this was the one I got one wrong on — I don’t know which.
Hey, is that FAYE Dunaway in yesterday’s grid, clued as Bonnie from Bonnie and Clyde? It was 1967 and she was on top of the world. Come on in, girl! She’s 82 now. Did you know she earned a BFA at Boston University? She got a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Bonnie, and again for Chinatown, but it was her work in Network that finally got her the award.
Her personal life has been a whirlwind. She dated Lenny Bruce for a year, back in 1962, and then had several intense years with Marcello Mastroianni, while he was married. She wanted them to marry, but he couldn’t bear to hurt his wife so they split. Mastroianni later said he never got over his relationship with Dunaway. “She was the woman I loved the most,” he said. “I’ll always be sorry to have lost her. I was whole with her for the first time in my life.”
She married Peter Wolf, the lead singer of the J. Geils Band, but it didn’t last, and then she married British photographer Terry O’Neill and they have an adopted son, her only child. She credited O’Neill with being “the one person responsible for helping me grow up to womanhood and a healthy sense of myself.” But they divorced too, after which she hooked up with, among others, author Frederick Forsyth. That’s just part of the list, the more famous part – it might be easier if I listed the men she was not involved with.
Here’s what it looks like to be on top of the world.
Make yourself comfortable, Faye — let me get you a cold Zaydie and some Oreos. We are big fans here at Owl Chatter. It’s so good to see you.
I’m gonna hang with Olga, Taylor, the Strawberries, and Faye for awhile. Hope to see you again tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 