This “Tiny Love Story” from today’s NYT is by David Shock.
My wife died in 1991. Her best friend and I grew close in mourning. That blossomed into love. But was it a good match? And so soon, just months later? After a Chinese dinner, we opened our fortune cookies. Hers: “He likes to flirt, but toward you his intentions are honorable.” Mine: “You or a close friend will be married within a year.” Married 32 years now, she struggles with cognition, and has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. On a trip before that diagnosis, I stopped alone at a Thai diner. My fortune: “Embrace the change that is coming.” Love abides.
Here’s a shot Phil took of the two of them outside of Yankee Stadium. (Well, very very very far outside.)
With the Russian army taking an approach in Ukraine akin to feeding paper (i.e., its own men), into a shredder, it’s no surprise that Russia is running out of soldiers. So a front page piece in the NYT today revealed that it’s encouraging women to join up. Of course, on March 8th Putin said: “The most important thing for every woman, no matter what profession she has chosen and what heights she has reached, is the family.” But upon being informed that all the men are dead, he said “Fu*k that sh*t. Sign ’em up.”
Recruiting officers are circulating through Russian prisons offering women inmates a pardon and $2,000 a month — 10 times the national minimum wage — in return for serving in frontline roles for a year, no military experience required. Hmmmmmm. There’s a catch there somewhere — sounds like too good a deal.
Can you find the lady in this platoon?
Ouch. That has to hurt — Phil! Help her up! That’s Sunisa “Suni” LEE. She was chosen for the puzzle today over Ang, Robert E., and Spike. Good choice! Her last name at birth was Phabsomphou, which is a smidge less crossword friendly than LEE.
Suni was the 2020 Olympic all-around champion, and the 2019 world championship silver medalist on the floor. She was a member of the teams that won gold at the 2019 World Championships and silver at the 2020 Summer Olympics. In 2021, she was named Female Athlete of the Year by Sports Illustrated. Lee is the first Hmong-American Olympian, and the first woman of Asian descent and first Asian-American woman to win the Olympic all-around title. After Suni’s spectacular wins, her team adopted the motto “A giant walks Hmong us.” [No it didn’t.]
Suni is not related to the gymnasts Ginger Lee or Hungra Lee. Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee once said “Kansas is so flat you can stand on a chair and watch your dog leave you for three days.”
Crossworld bids a sad goodbye to Nancy Schuster, crossword solver, constructor, and editor, who passed away at age 90 in Newburgh, NY on April 26. Nancy “burst onto the scene” in 1978 when she won the first ever American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford CT, and walked off with a whopping $125 in prize money. (The grand prize this year is $7,500.) She said the hardest clue was in puzzle #3 (of 5) and was “Greek festival maidens with baskets on their heads.” The answer, of course, is CANEPHORI.
Nancy was born in the Bronx and went to the Bronx High School of Science (Hi Joe!), and then earned a BS degree in chemistry at Adelphi. The editor of the PTA rag at her son’s elementary school asked her to write XW puzzles to jazz up the publication. She was quickly hooked and jokingly said “my house never got cleaned, my dinners never got made, my children were filthy, and my husband was furious.”
She graduated to more serious publications and was one of three candidates to replace Eugene T. Maleska in 1993 as the XW editor of The Times. But she believed Will Shortz was more deserving of the job because he could dedicate himself more completely to it than she could have. For most of the past 30 years — until her 90th birthday last year — Mrs. Schuster tested and proofread The Times’s crosswords for Will Shortz. [BTW, that’s Shortz in the white shirt behind Nancy, below.]
Nancy had 12 puzzles published in the NYT and recalled in particular one that was rejected by Margaret Farrar, the first NYT editor. The theme was the “kissing bug,” or mononucleosis. “She definitely did not approve of that,” Nancy recalled. “She was horrified!” [As a measure of how times (and The Times) have changed, today’s puzzle contains two “feminine hygiene product” clues for TAMPON and PAD, and, separately, BRA and TEAT.]
Nancy is survived by her daughter and son and four grandchildren. Irwin Schuster, a songwriter and music publisher whom she married in 1955, died in 1984. She left instructions for her burial to be carried out six down and twelve across.
Rest in peace, Nance. Crossworld is richer for your good work.
And we will let that shayna punim send us off tonight. So joyous! See you tomorrow.
The Wellington Files 