Here’s the headline: Neighbor Caught With His Pants Down In Murder At Nudist Village.
It’s a dreadful story, but here’s the naked truth. Stephanie and Dan Menard, 73 and 79, respectively, went missing from their home last week along with their dog Cuddles. Redlands (CA) Police received a tip that foul play was involved and arrested a neighbor, Michael Sparks, 62, for murder. The Menards were living in a nudist community. Sparks was found hiding underneath his home.
The Menards have not been found. Police suspect their bodies are hidden somewhere on the Sparks property. The police are unable to provide a description of clothing the Menards were wearing, for obvious reasons, but have advised residents that, for identification purposes, Mr. Menard was suffering from a large boil on his tuchas.
Here’s Cuddles. Hope he’s okay.
The puzzle’s theme today was pretty sharp. The revealer was TWO PARTY SYSTEMS. And at four places, there was an answer that was a type of party, and within it, circled letters (in correct order) gave you a second type of party. Hence, the “two parties.” So, e.g., at 17A the clue was “Brand of kitchen storage containers.” The answer was TUPPERWARE, and the squares in which the letters T, E, and A appear were circled. So you have Tupperware parties and tea parties.
At 24A, the clue was “The second ‘S’ of U.S.S.R.” So the answer was SOCIALIST and the C, A, S, and T were circled. So you get the Socialist party and a cast party.
My favorite was at 50A. The clue was “When the skeletons in one’s closet might be brought out.” The answer was HALLOWEEN, and the letters H, E, and N were circled. So you get a Halloween party and a hen party. (Egs said he always wanted to crash a hen party but was too chicken.)
At 32D the clue for GYM was “Student-run class?” (Get it? It’s a class in which students run.)
The puzzle also gave us this: the clue at 46D: “You Belong With Me” singer. (It’s the song Taylor won the award for that Kanye wrecked by trampling on the presentation.) She gets the guy in it. He plays football too — how prescient — check it out. High drama.
Jo Powell shared a maths question from her daughter’s homework with the Dull Men’s Club (UK). (She also said it’s called “maths” where she is — not math.)
The question was “How many thirds are there in 12?” It split the club into two groups. The first one (which I joined at first, but see the point of both) said 36. If there are three thirds in one, there would be 36 in twelve. But a second reading emerged that gave the answer 3. To that group the 12 is irrelevant and the question is either a trick or poorly phrased. They maintain every number (and every thing) has three thirds, by definition. So since anything has three thirds 12 would have three thirds too.
Is your brain hurting yet? Steve Pratt added: I could make a case for infinity since each third consists of another three thirds, and so on.
This exchange was representative (there were over 350 comments in total).
David Povey said: What is a third of 12? (4) How many 4’s (a third of 12) are in 12? (3). The question is ambiguous as it does not state a third of what, just how many of them are in 12.
And Lee Bourke replied: It’s not ambiguous. A third is always referring to a third of 1 (a whole), which is 0.333…. 12 divided by a third is 36. It’s only if you don’t understand maths that you get a different answer.
So there.
I think I’ll go watch that Taylor Swift video again now.
See you tomorrow.
The Wellington Files 