Barry Bridger, of the Dull Men’s Club (UK), writes: “I’ve never been in an Uber taxi, never been to a car boot sale, and I’ve never watched any of the Pirates of the Caribbean films.” [A car boot sale, I am guessing, is like a flea market in England, with crap sold out of people’s car trunks.]
Megan David replied: “I’ve never watched Titanic. It seems almost disrespectful to.”
Gareth Duckett: Spoiler alert — it sinks.
Mark Ford: Just to bring you up to speed- £1.25 for steak, £2.20 for pineapple and ham, £1.65 for chicken. These are pie-rates of the Caribbean..
James Rawlinson then asked (of Barry Bridger): Have you ever kissed a man? And Bridger replied: Not intentionally.
In a separate post, Tom McMahon asks: Is sitting in the garden watching bats with a beer dull or just perfection?
Keith Dilworth replied: What beer are the bats drinking?
And Will Mee noted: There are way worse ways to spend a Friday evening. [But he didn’t specify, darn it.]
Rex Parker is back from his vacation, and not a moment too soon. His guest bloggers were nice, but no one cuts up a grid like the man.
The clue at 1A was “Bungee jumping might be seen on it.” The answer was BUCKET LIST. Here’s Rex:
I floundered around the NW corner of this one like a total incompetent, though, to be fair, some of the clues were dumb (who has bungee jumping on their BUCKET LIST!? Is bungee jumping still a thing? Feels like an “extreme sport” from the ’90s—I wanted the answer to be ESPN … something—”Hey, you wanna watch bungee-jumping?” “No.” “Cool, I’ll just turn on ESPN X-TREME.” “I said ‘no.’”) (I think I also just hate the term BUCKET LIST, the way it sounds, the very idea of it … just do the things you want to do, you don’t need some mythical list, which almost certainly is not an actual “list” anyway).
[And get off my lawn!!]
This Tiny Love Story from today’s NYT is so beautiful. It’s by Katrina Willis.
Julie stood at the funeral home entrance, hugging my cousins as if she’d known them forever. In the span of three years, I’d lost my beloved mother, my only sister, my uncle, my cousin, my husband of 25 years, and my job. My past was shattered, but my future was safe in my new love’s gentle hands. Julie brought me water as I stood beside my sister’s coffin. “I’ve got you,” she whispered. I expect her to leave after so much sadness, but she stays. She is tiny and steadfast and true, and her love is bigger than the sun.
In yesterday’s puzzle, at 16A, the clue was “___ Wood, portrayer of the Bond girl Plenty O’Toole in ‘Diamonds Are Forever.’” The answer was LANA. I had not heard of Lana Wood. Have you? She is the younger sister of the late Natalie Wood. She’s 78. Her parents came to the U.S. as child refugees from Russia. Her father’s family left Vladivostok after her grandfather, a chocolate-factory worker who joined the anti-Bolshevik civilian forces, was killed in a street fight in 1922. Don’t you hate when that happens?
Wood has been married six times and had one child, who died in 2017, and has three grandchildren. Get this — between marriages, she dated Dean Stockwell, Adam West, Eddie Fisher, Warren Beatty, Sean Connery, Alain Delon and Ryan O’Neal, as well as talent agent Guy McElwaine, producer Jerome Hellman and composer Leslie Bricusse. In some bios of her, the writer found it easier to list the people she hasn’t married or dated.
But, I ask you — what did all these men see in her?
Rex opined that it’s time for the NYTXW to move away from “Bond girls of yore,” noting there are many Lanas to choose from. Then he shared this poem by Frank O’Hara called “Lana Turner Has Collapsed.”
Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up
The theme of today’s puzzle was logical fallacies. Theme clues had statements about the puzzle that illustrated the various fallacies. For example, here’s the clue: Why was this chosen as today’s puzzle? Because it’s great! What makes it great? I mean, it was chosen for publication! And the answer was CIRCULAR REASONING.
This one was new to me: All crossword fans love this puzzle; anyone who doesn’t love this puzzle can’t be a *real* crossword fan! The answer was NO TRUE SCOTSMAN. And here’s an explanation:
Philosophy professor Bradley Dowden explains the fallacy as an “ad hoc rescue” of a refuted generalization attempt. [Wait. What?] The following is a simplified rendition of the fallacy:
Person A: “No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.”
Person B: “But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge.”
Person A: “But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.”
And did you know this one? What’s more, one of those friends won the lottery right after solving it — coincidence? I think not! The answer was POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC.
The fallacy is based on the assumption that one thing caused another because it happened before the other thing. For example, “the dog barked right before the power went out, so the dog’s bark must have caused the power to go out.”
Woof, woof.
My beautiful daughter Caitlin, who is a nurse who deals with this all the time, sent me the following:
See you tomorrow! Thanks for dropping in.
The Wellington Files 