The scourge of anti-Semitism is insidious and can infect even the unlikeliest of places. Like Owl Chatter!
In yesterday’s puzzle, the clue at 28A was “Honnold who was the first to free-solo climb El Capitan,” and the answer was ALEX. If you saw the film Free Solo you know the incredible story.
Anyway, so on Rex’s blog, I posted the following comment: In the Jewish version of Free Solo, it’s not free, but we can get you a pretty good deal.
And commenter Germanicus came back with: Enough of the anti-Semitic tropes, already. They are not funny but mean spirited.
Ouch! Moi?
And, speaking of not funny, my post for the Dull Men’s Club (UK) yesterday on the five-sided state flag of Ohio, elicited a comment that has me puzzled. Here’s the flag again:
So Rayne Passmore said: That object has seven sides.
And Alistair Easthope said: Surely just two sides and five edges.
Passmore replied: those edges have a depth, so they are sides… it’s a heptahedron.
What the f*ck are they talking about? The only way I get up to seven is by counting the inner blue sides/edges. So I asked Passmore: Are you counting the inner (blue) sides to get up to seven?
His terse response was “No.”
So I asked: Then how do we reach seven? Front and back?
[The more I think about it, he has to be counting front and back.]
I hope this gets resolved. I’ve got enough keeping me up nights. I’ll keep checking every ten minutes for the rest of my life and let you know what happens.
Is Rhode Island big enough to hold them? With Taylor’s tour in Europe complete, she hung out with Travis, Owl Chatter photographer Phil, and friends (including Bradley Cooper) in the tiny state over the weekend. Phil managed to take a few shots of TS before falling down a flight of stairs, drunk (him, not her). Nice work Philly! Maybe get some ice on those bumps?
Today’s puzzle was a crafty nod to Scrabble fans. The revealer was TRIPLE WORD SCORE, clued as “Coveted Scrabble space,” but it also worked as musical score, because the theme answers were all hit songs where the title was a “tripled” word: FUN FUN FUN (Beach Boys); GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS (Motley Crue); MONEY MONEY MONEY (Abba); and BYE BYE BYE (N Sync). Also, re Scrabble, all 26 letters appeared in the grid. That’s called a pangram.
Olympic gold medalist ALY Raisman popped into the puzzle today. Easy for her, since she’s retired. She’s from Needham MA, and is Jewish. You got a problem with any of that? Hey, don’t look at me in that tone of voice.
Aly is short for Alexandra. She’s 30 years old and 5′ 2″ tall. In 2018 she shared the Arthur Ashe Courage Award for speaking out against sexual abuse along with other victims. Before retiring she did things like this.
A recent post in the Dull Men’s Club (UK) was by a woman wondering what the proper number of swipes is when applying a stick deodorant. Most folks answered 3 or 4, and there were a bunch of “it depends” (on a variety of factors). But my favorite response was: Whatever you do, don’t follow the instructions that say “Remove cap. Push up bottom.”
Some crazy baseball history was made today by the Blue Jays and the Red Sox. It started way back on June 26 when the teams were facing each other. Danny Jansen was at bat for the Jays with a one-strike count when the rains came and the game was suspended. It was scheduled to resume today, which it did. But Jansen was traded last month, so he couldn’t finish the game for Toronto. (A pinch hitter finished Jansen’s at-bat for him and got credit for it.) But get this — the team he was traded to was Boston — so he finished the game with Boston, going 1 for 4, and thus became the first player ever to play for both teams in the same game. Toronto won 4-1.
Here are both of them. Or both of him. D’oh — you know what I mean.
We end on a sad note today. The wooden grandstand, locker rooms, press box and dugout of the Jay Littleton Ball Park, a baseball field in Ontario, CA, were destroyed in a fire. It was featured in the movie about women’s baseball, A League of Their Own, and in The Babe. It was “an old-school, 1937, all-wood grandstand.” They don’t make ’em like that anymore, and they’re gorgeous.
You can see the stands and dugout in this eggs-zerpt from the film.
Good catch! See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 