Some inhabitants of Crossworld despise Will Shortz (who, BTW, wears Shortz shorts in the summer). I don’t have feelings about him either way, but one change he (or his staff) made to Robyn Weintraub’s puzzle yesterday was definitely bad IMO. The answer was ROBE, and the clue in the puzzle as it appeared was the boring “After-swim wear.” Robyn’s clue as submitted was “Burger or Frankfurter topping.” (Think Supreme Court.) So much better, amirite?

Here’s the non-feline Felix. As you can see, his topping is a robe.

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I wasn’t going to chatter about Bobby Knight in Owl Chatter since most everyone knows all the stories already. (He died last Wednesday at age 83.) But the (front-page) obit in the NYT by Bruce Weber had so many delicious little treats that, well, here we are.

He was unquestionably a lunatic. His biographer John Feinstein wrote: “If I had a dollar for every time someone told me a story about encountering Knight and finding him gracious and charming and funny, I would never have to work another day in my life. If I also had a dollar for every time I’ve been told a story about Knight being a bully or being rude and obnoxious, I’d be Bill Gates.”

On Knight’s use of colorful language, Feinstein wrote: “When Knight read Chapter 1 [of the biography], in which I described the locker-room scene in which he completely went off on Daryl Thomas, he couldn’t believe how much profanity there was in his rant. What he didn’t know was that I had removed about 80 percent of the f——— in the speech and had completely removed his repeated use of a word that rhymes with bunt.”

He was abusive towards refs, and one of his most famous scenes was when he threw a chair across the court. (It hit several fans on the other side, but no one was injured.) Part of this reflected his frustration with refs who didn’t know the game well enough to do their job.

“I don’t think there’s an official in the country who knows as much about basketball as I do,” Knight said in a Playboy interview in 1984 about his rough treatment of the referees. “Not even close. Or as much as any other coach knows. And when I’ve got a complaint, I want it listened to. I’ve seen an official not watch for traveling. I’ve seen him watch the flight of the ball instead of the shooter’s hand afterward — whether or not he gets hit. I think that basketball officiating is tough, but I don’t think there are very many officials who know how to watch logically from one to two to three to four to five in a given position on the floor. And when I see somebody violate the logical progression of what he should be looking for, then I’m going to let him know about it.”

Before attaining fame and numerous national championships as the head coach at Indiana for 29 years, he was head coach at West Point for six years. Mike Krzyzewski played for him there as a guard. (It’s pronounced sha-shef-ski, for reasons I never understood. What happens to all those letters before -ski? A “K” can be silent without an “n?”)

To his credit, Knight had a high regard for education and made generous donations to the schools he was a part of, particularly libraries. He was a voracious reader, especially of military history. At Indiana, Knight endowed two chairs, one in history and one in law. He also raised nearly $5 million for the Indiana library system by championing a library fund to support the library’s activities. The fund was ultimately named in his honor. He was well known for stressing the importance of academic achievement to his players, telling them to “focus on the book, not the ball.”

Ultimately, of course, his hot-headedness got the best of him.

Knight was married to his first wife, Nancy, for over 20 years. They had two sons, and were divorced in 1985. He then married Karen Vieth Edgar in 1988. Here she is smiling at the camera as she tries to choke him. Phil: Back away slowly. They are both very dangerous.

I’m guessing there’s not much chance of it, but, — try to rest in peace, Knight.

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In today’s puzzle, the clue at 41A was “Paradise of the Beat Generation,” and the answer was SAL. (The character Sal Paradise.) Turns out Rex (who is a literature prof) hates Kerouac, and he quoted Truman Capote who said “On the Road isn’t writing at all — it’s typing.” Ouch!

And tea73 noted: Eons ago we used to listen to books on CDs on long road trips and for one of them we thought “On the Road” would be good to listen to. We put in the first CD and listened to over half of it before we discovered that we had inadvertently put it on shuffle. Oops.

Oh, no! At 49A the puzzle answer was EVIL EYE. The clue was “It’s a bad look.” Yikes! That’s all we need. Kinahora! (For those of you unfamiliar with the Yiddish term kinahora, it’s a reference to the “evil eye,” designed to neutralize it. It’s often accompanied by spitting, or at least spitting sounds (ptoo, ptoo, ptoo). For me, the kinahora is enough.

Serious fans of The West Wing may recall a scene in which the president insanely says something like “The polls are looking good,” which would clearly tempt the Evil Eye to cause them to plummet immediately. So Toby and Josh forced him to conduct a serious kinehora ceremony right outside the Oval Office, complete with the spitting. Whew. Good catch, guys.

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At 48A, the clue was “Strip” and the answer: DENUDE. egsforbreakfast asked: Shouldn’t DENUDE mean to put on clothes? Hmmmmmm.

Close to DENUDE in the grid was that EVIL EYE and ASSESS.

At 28D, “Title woman in a Beatles song,” was SADIE, from, of course, Sexy Sadie. Do you know the story behind that song? The Beatles were departing from their visit to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India, and John heard that the Maharishi had made a sexual advance on Mia Farrow (who was studying with MMY at the time). He was very disillusioned and wrote the song dissing the Maharishi. It is considered one of the earliest examples of a “diss track.” “What have you done? You made a fool of everyone.” It was originally to be called “Maharishi,” but George convinced John to change the name.

George, Paul, and John’s wife at the time, Cynthia, did not believe the story. In 1992, Harrison gave a benefit concert for the Maharishi-associated Natural Law Party, and later apologized for the way the Maharishi had been treated by saying, “We were very young” and “It’s probably in the history books that Maharishi ‘tried to attack Mia Farrow’ – but it’s bullshit, total bullshit.” Cynthia Lennon wrote in 2006 that she “hated leaving on a note of discord and mistrust, when we had enjoyed so much kindness from the Maharishi.” Asked if he forgave the Beatles, the Maharishi replied, “I could never be upset with angels.” McCartney took his daughter, Stella, to visit the Maharishi in the Netherlands in 2007, which renewed their friendship.

Anyway, bottom line, since “Sexy Sadie” is the Maharishi, the puzzle clue “Title woman in a Beatles song” is wrong! Sadie is a man!

Now, I ask you, where else but in Owl Chatter can you get three full paragraphs of utter nonsense like that? Blathering on about nothing. I can’t get enough of it.

[That’s what I told the dentist once. He put some latex covering over my mouth and chin to isolate a tooth he was working on, and he asked me if I was okay with latex. I guess some people are allergic to it. “I can’t get enough of it!” I told him.]

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Can you make a yo-yo go up and down a few times before it gets all bollixed up with the string? I think I can. Maybe. The clue at 31A was “Yo-yos in a way,” and the answer was WALKS THE DOG. Take a look at this fellow, as I let myself out. See you tomorrow!

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