A neat follow-up from yesterday. Here’s a post from Tom T: After all the discussion yesterday around the extremely unlikely “double albatross” in golf (a hole in one on a par 5), professional golfer Shane Lowry scored a very rare albatross (a 2 on a par 5) yesterday afternoon at the PGA tournament in La Jolla, CA. Life imitating x-words!
It wasn’t a “double” albatross, but even a single one is rare enough.
(Phil — don’t you dare bother Jessica again!! But can you get a nice shot of Taylor for us, preparatory to the big Chiefs game today?)
Perfect! Thanks, Buddy!
The Poem of the Day today from the Poetry Foundation is by Maryanne Corbett and is called “Finding the Lego.”
You find it when you’re tearing up your life,
trying to make some sense of the old messes,
moving dressers, peering under beds.
Almost lost in cat hair and in cobwebs,
in dust you vaguely know was once your skin,
it shows up, isolated, fragmentary.
A tidy little solid. Tractable.
Knobbed to be fitted in a lock-step pattern
with others. Plastic: red or blue or yellow.
Out of the dark, undamaged, there it is,
as bright and primary colored and foursquare
as the family with two parents and two children
who moved in twenty years ago in a dream.
It makes no allowances, concedes no failures,
admits no knowledge of a little girl
who glared through tears, rubbing her slapped cheek.
Rigidity is its essential trait.
Likely as not, you leave it where it was.
The puzzle today was brilliant, IMO, by constructor Nathan Hasegawa, who said he spent two years on it. I believe it. It’s a depiction of the game Whac-A-Mole. There are five special squares spaced evenly apart. In four of them you need to fill in the word “hole” to solve the clue, e.g., for “Approach something with gusto,” you’d fill in GO W[HOLE] HOG, with all 4 letters of “hole” squished into one square (it’s called a rebus). And in the fifth, the rebus is MOLE. And shaded squares spelling MALLET form a mallet hitting the mole.
Rex was mildly impressed with the construction, but 29D set him off. The clue was “Put on a pedestal, say” and the answer was HEROIZE. Here’s Rex on it:
The grid seemed mostly clean and tolerable, except for HEROIZE: What the hell is that? LIONIZE, IDOLIZE, these are … words. HEROIZE just hurts. Lyin’ Eyes, yes; Hungry Eyes, yes; HEROIZE, no. Is that when you put an undercoat on your hero so he doesn’t rust? Or polish your hero with wax? It’s like the “N” in HEROINE just fell over and didn’t get back up again.
He also had unkind words for 119A: ”Fifth-century pope dubbed ‘the Great’” (ST. LEO) — ugh, this guy. Patron saint of crosswordese. He comes in LEOI form as well. He is best known for … looking wasted, apparently:
Today’s Tiny Love Story, by Amy McHugh is called “365 Dips.”.
On a Cape Cod beach last January, I braced for my daily cold water plunge. “Can I join you?” asked a stranger. I hesitated. But her red hair and wide smile reminded me of my younger self. “Sure,” I said. Ashley is 29. I’m 47. For seven minutes in frigid water, we shared our stories: her chronic illness and career change; my failed marriage and struggles raising a child with cancer. Every day since our first encounter, we’ve met to immerse ourselves in the ocean. We bond in a daily baptism. I now can’t imagine braving water, or life, without her.
Now, there’s a sub-clause (“or life”) that’s carrying a lot of weight.
They look like twins, no? The caption says the water temp was 50.
Last night’s game in Detroit was between our Pistons, 5-39, and the Washington Wizards, who were an almost-as-bad 7-37. A Piston win would have meant a two-game winning streak. And we went into the 4th quarter down by only 2. But the dam didn’t hold and we lost 118-104. D’oh! The good news is Cade’s back. He played almost 35 min, scored 20 pts, and had 12 assists.
Here he is with a defender. Hey, where’d everybody else go?
It’s opening day for my Spring semester tomorrow. Can’t wait! Only my tax class meets though. The law class starts Weds. I’ll be throwing out the ceremonial first piece of chalk at 5:30 — it’s an evening class.
Good night everybody! Thanks for popping in!
The Wellington Files 