Today is the birthday of Malcolm X, born in Omaha, NE, in 1925. X was not his actual last name, of course. I think it was Ten, no? (Actually, it was Little.) It’s also a big date in Oscar Wilde’s life: in 1897 on this date he was released from jail, having been sentenced to two years of hard labor for being gay. Upon his release, he immediately left England for France where he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, under the pseudonym C.3.3: his prison number. I guess he grew attached to it. He died alone and penniless in France three years later. He said, “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
There was an oddity in the puzzle today at 101A, and Rex put his finger on it for me. The clue was “What ‘Eat’ stands for in the mnemonic ‘Never Eat Soggy Waffles.’” The answer: EAST. Here’s Rex:
“Who is it, exactly, that needs a mnemonic for the basic cardinal directions? ROYGBIV, I get. My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos, LOL, not gonna remember that one, but I respect it. Every Good Boy Does Fine, sure. But ‘Never Eat Soggy Waffles?’ How hard is it to remember North South EAST and West. And if it is hard, why didn’t you just go with NEWS? Is the idea that ‘Never Eat Soggy Waffles’ puts the directions in clockwise order? 54 years old and never heard of anyone needing a mnemonic for the directions. Crazy.”
(BTW, the educated mom serving nachos is for the planets. I hadn’t known that one.)
But, guess what — a commenter replied:
“48 years old and cannot, CANNOT, get the directions in order without Never Eat Shredded Wheat (I am a Brit so No to soggy waffles and Yes to bizarre, unpleasant yet passively aggressively much consumed breakfast cereals). I have learned to live with this inadequacy of mine.”
And another comment explained:
I only know this because I was married to a former Boy Scout: It’s not about remembering *what* the compass direction are; it’s a matter of knowing *where* the compass directions are with relation to your current position. It’s so that when you are on foot or on a bike or whatever, you can determine which way you need to turn based on which way you are going. See, usually, when you rattle off the directions, you say “north, south, east, west,” but when you are navigating—yes, as Rex suggested in his write-up—you need to have the compass directions in clockwise order. Hence, “never eat shredded wheat,” so if I’m headed north, east is to my right, south is behind me, and west is to my left. It’s very handy.
Learned a new word at 89D: FONDANT. “Frosting alternative.” At first, I thought it might relate to frosting as something a woman does to her hair. But it’s cake frosting: “A thick paste made of sugar and water and often flavored or colored, used in the icing and decoration of cakes.” It’s like the topping on a black-and-white cookie: heavier than regular icing.
And here’s a frosted hair product Georgie recommends from his time spent as a woman down in Brazil. I don’t think he looked like that, though.
Did you know that POP OFF can mean “Perform very well, in modern slang?” News to me. It more generally means: “speak spontaneously and at length, typically angrily.” It inspired Rex to share this unusual song by the Idles called “Pop Pop Pop.”
Hold me to the bunsen burner
And let the waves
Crash in
This snippet is from the John McPhee story I referred to yesterday.
In college, I had written, as a “creative thesis,” a stillborn novel that was little more than an academic exercise. Whatever life it might have had expired as it was written. But of course, at the time, I did not assess it as such, and I sent it to several New York publishers, who rejected it seriatim—Random House, Charles Scribner’s Sons, Alfred A. Knopf. Dudley Johnson, one of my professors in the English department, competing with me in naïveté, suggested that I write to Alfred Knopf himself, asking for the readers’ reports. From them, said Johnson, I might glean thoughts that would serve me well in future efforts.
Alfred himself wrote back to me, saying that his company never released its readers’ reports, adding, gratuitously, this:
The readers’ reports in the case of your manuscript would not be very helpful, and I think might discourage you completely.
This was the letter that caused my mother to say, “Someone should go in there and k-nock his block off.”
Here’s McPhee.
This was fun. As you may know, the cookie of Crossworld is OREO because it’s 75% vowels. It appears so often, it’s a challenge to come up with an original way of clueing it. Here’s its clue from today: “Treats that Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith picked as runner-up to Doritos for ‘best snack in America.’” Well I googled those names with the word snack and watched a ten-minute video on the Bon Appetit site in which these two British food critics (Paul and Prue), compare about 15 American snacks. They hated Pop Tarts, Twinkies, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Simple Lay’s potato chips were spoken of well. But Oreos and Doritos (Cool Ranch) came out on top, with Doritos coming in first. Paul noticed that the American Snickers was inferior to ones he’s had in England. The chocolate wasn’t as good. One GS cookie was in the mix — thin mints. They liked them, but not as much as Oreos. This young lady is f*cking organized about it.
Let’s see what’s in the Owl Chatter mailbag today. Here’s a note from Evelyn Gurewitz in Montvale NJ.
Dear Owl Chatter, At 62D today, the clue “Nincompoop, more vulgarly” came out to be ASSHAT. I love it, of course, but I don’t recall hearing it when I was growing up in the 1990s. What gives?
Well, Ev. First of all, thanks for reaching out! And you are correct! As a popular alternative to asshole and similar terms, asshat only emerged in the early 2000s. The first entry in Urban Dictionary appears in 2002, defining the term as “One who has their head up their ass. Thus wearing their ass as a hat.” The term alludes to other expressions like “pull your head out of your own ass” or “your head is so far up your ass,” ways of saying a person is too self-absorbed or oblivious to their surroundings, hence “stupid.”
Hope that helps clarify the issue for you, Evy! Hope to hear from you again.
That wraps up this Sunday chatter. We’ll catch you next time around.
The Wellington Files 