Those three delicious As in MALALA make her a natural as a puzzle answer, but who’d be crazy enough to center a puzzle around her full name: MALALA YOUSEFZAI? Robert Corridan would — today’s constructor. And on a Monday, no less. The clue was “Youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize winner,” and she was used for her “lala.” The theme was LA LA LAND, and the theme answers all sported lalas: RURAL ALABAMA, LA LAKERS, and VANILLA LATTE, along with Malala. The clue for RURAL ALABAMA was fun: “Setting for ‘My Cousin Vinny.’”
It inspired Rex to share an oldie with us, which happens to be the only single I ever bought when I was young. “La La Means I Love You,” by the Delphonics. I don’t associate it with any school girls I had a crush on — I just loved the song.
Listen to me!! La la la la la la la la la means I love you. Oh, you’ll have to understand now. La la la la la la la la la means I love you. Come on and take my hand.
Shakespeare!
Was there a not so subtle anti-South theme in the grid? In addition to RURAL ALABAMA, GWBUSH (a Texan) made an appearance, along with “Dummies” as the clue for IDIOTS. (I would have preferred “doofuses.”) Also, for the clue “What ‘muffin top’ and ‘spare tire’ are euphemisms for,” the answer was FLAB. Ouch! — that last one hits a little close to home. F*ck you Corridan! I don’t need to be fat-shamed in my daily puzzle!
This poem by Ted Kooser is called “Screech Owl.” I snared it off of his website.
All night each reedy whinny
from a bird no bigger than a heart
flies out of a tall black pine
and, in a breath, is taken away
by the stars. Yet, with small hope
from the center of darkness,
it calls out again and again.
That’s a picture of jellyfish that have washed up on Ayr beach in England, posted for the Dull Men’s Club (UK) by Andrew Torchy Appleby. I don’t know if “Torchy” is his middle name, or if he is an arsonist. He stated that he is 62, and has a son who is 32, who pokes them with a stick. He also said, they populate the beach “as far as the eye can see.”
Thomas McChristie shared: Happens around the same time every year… Jelly fish in the waters in the summer are a good thing, they eat plankton and help purify our waters. Between September and October they die off and you’ll find them washed up on our shores. They’re known as barrel jellyfish or to local fishermen as the blob.
Jen Jo says: JELLYFISH HAVE A NERVOUS SYSTEM. Sorry for shouting. Don’t care about poking them with a stick, but I care that people know they have nervous systems, so they can feel right down to the ends of their tentacles. If they didn’t, how would they know prey was caught in them?
[Apparently, it would be okay to poke these, since they are dead, so a little poke would be the least of their problems.]
Dave Fritzler, no doubt a comedian, asked where the peanut butter fish were.
Hey, here’s one!
You know those disgusting grey bin things at the airport you put your shoes, keys, phone, change, wallet, etc. into before going through that X-ray machine? Well, first of all, a study in 2018 showed that those bins carry more cold germs than airport toilets. Second, they were the subject of a front page article in the NYT today even though, clearly, it’s a story of such nonsense it’s far more appropriate for Owl Chatter.
It turns out people have started arranging their crap in the bins in an aesthetically pleasing manner and then photographing it and posting it on TikTok and other such sites. TSA is okay with it, as long as it doesn’t cause delays. Some folks wait to photograph their bins until after they’ve been zapped. The Times article cited this short video.
And here’s a nice one.
The puzzle today contained a P TRAP (letter-shaped plumbing piece), and IAMB (poetic foot). Here’s egs:
How do you catch a Pterodactyl? With a PTRAP!
After breaking several toes tripping over a volume of his sonnets, Shakespeare reportedly said “IAMB suffering from a poetic foot.”
Commenter Les S. More shared two stories today that were behind little doors the puzzle opened up for him. At 14A, the clue was “One assigned female at birth and identifying as such,” for CISWOMAN. And at 56A, the clue was “Fruit that’s a citrus, not a hybrid of a pomegranate and melon,” for POMELO. Here’s the post:
Reminds me of the days when I still worked downtown and took the train home and when I transferred from train to bus there was a person who was quite obviously in the process of gender transformation. There was always an empty seat beside her and she looked so sad. People would stand rather than sit by her. They were uncomfortable in her presence. I’d take the empty seat. We would chat about trivial stuff; the weather, that sort of lightweight stuff. Not her gender, not her decision to change (she probably got enough of that shit), not the fact that people were standing and holding onto straps, afraid to get near her, shunning her. She was very brave. I can’t forget her.
On a lighter note: POMELOs. On a trip to China in 2002, one of our travelling companions got a tip on how to access the old, unreconstructed part of the Great Wall and after a harrowing crossing of a high weir-like structure approximately 2 feet wide and 25 to 30 feet above a small river (my wife and I are both very nervous about being in high places but, at least, should we fall, she, unlike me, is a swimmer), we found ourselves hiking along this fantastic structure. We had a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and some bread and cheese and the six of us stopped for lunch at a suitably scenic point where we were approached by a young woman (Kiwi or Aussie, I can’t remember and I’m shit with accents) with what looked like a bunch of grapefruits in a backpack. She peeled a few, distributed them, and when I said they didn’t really taste like grapefruit, she said they were, in fact, POMELOs, grapefruit ancestors. Perfect picnic.
Think I’ll pop downstairs for a snack. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 