Linda!! Don’t take any more calls from Brad!!

According to a story in the NYT, authorities in Spain announced the arrest of five people for swindling two women out of $350,000 by posing as Brad Pitt online. They contacted the women via an online fan page and posed as Pitt. The women believed they were corresponding directly with Pitt and grew so close that they believed they had a romantic relationship with him. A publicist for Mr. Pitt said he was unaware of the case. He also said Pitt’s frequent references to “my Spanish babes” were not related to these particular women. [Alright, I made the last sentence up.]

---

Hello Kitty is universally popular, so it’s a frequent guest to the puzzle.

Today, the clue was “Prominent feature of Hello Kitty” and the answer was HAIR BOW. I didn’t have the image in front of me, and had HAIR, so I thought of hair ball first. Anyway, as legend has it, Will Shortz once rejected a puzzle with HELLO KITTY in it because he had never heard of it and didn’t think people would know it. And then he read about it in an in-flight magazine immediately thereafter, and now it’s everywhere, all over the grid.

---

T.S. Eliot was born on this date in 1888 in St. Louis. I was today years old when I learned those letters stood for Thomas Stearns. Eliot’s first marriage was to Vivienne Haigh-Wood and it was not a good one.

She was often ill and sent away for cures. She eventually died in a mental institution. Eliot wrote of it: “To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land.” Ouch.

He married again at the age of 68. Esme Valerie Fletcher was only 30. He had no children from either marriage.

---

The theme of the puzzle today was the football play, the DOUBLE REVERSE. In each theme answer two sets of letters (helpfully, in shaded squares) had to be switched (reversed) to fit the answer. So, e.g., for the clue at 35A: “Three-time nominee for Best Director (1994, 2009, 2019),” the answer should be TARANTINO. But you need to “reverse” two pairs of letters and write TARNATION into the grid.

On the football play, the “double reverse,” commenter Joe B states:

It is VERY rare to see a DOUBLE REVERSE in football. Most of the time it is a plain reverse that the announcers, fans, everyone in attendance calls and shouts, “DOUBLE REVERSE” which is wrong.

A wide receiver goes in motion, say, from the bottom of the screen to the top, the ball is snapped. QB hands it off to him and the receiver continues running to the top. That is an END AROUND. If the receiver flips it backwards to someone now running down, that is a REVERSE. If, and this rarely, rarely happens, that ball carrier hands it back to someone now running up — the same direction as the initial ball carrier — that is finally your DOUBLE REVERSE. Very, very rarely seen as it requires an amazing amount of precision and has the opportunity to completely go wrong in many ways.

YUP, we concur. This is one of the few players to have pulled it off successfully last year:

---

At 15D the clue for HIRED was great. It was “Like some goons.” Commenter Nico shared this neat Simpsons clip with us:

Did you know the “final circuit in a track race” is not the last lap? It’s the BELL LAP. And this one was nasty — three letter word ending in AT for “Something found near a trap.” It’s not rat. It’s LAT — referring to muscles: Trap is short for trapezius, which is near your lat. At least it’s near mine. (Linda took this shot of me from the back.)

---

Cathy Reed Weber, of the Dull Men’s Club (UK), after using a butter knife to force something open, asked: Are there actual rules for using a butter knife as a tool, outside of the kitchen? My husband claims there are, but he won’t enhance my knowledge due to it being a “fraternal secret.”

Here are some of the (103) dull comments:

We can’t tell you either. (The Brotherhood of the butter knife.)

No tool box is complete without one.

[My comment] I hope it was a dull knife.

[My comment (another one)] I had an excellent butter knife once but it melted.

A railway station and underground station were once flooded by armed police because a man rushed into a nearby restaurant and stole a butter knife from a table….. there must have been 50 or 60 armed police trying to track him down….

The only legal knife allowed to be carried in the UK is a folding but not locking penknife with a blade no bigger than 3″(75mm). Which makes the old fashioned boy scout knife and the classic “Stanley” knife illegal. There is an exception for the Scottish ceremonial Sgian-dubh worn as part of national dress along with similar ceremonial weapons. But people must be in full regalia to be allowed. Just carrying it would be illegal. 

My late husband had every tool imaginable in his out building but I still found knives with the tops bent over. I never could find my kitchen scissors and was amazed how many I found in the garden shed when I cleared it out.

I encourage the use of a sharp knife for household projects. That way, when you slip and cut your hand you will be reminded to find the proper tool in the future. [Ouch — you’re no fun!]

---

See you tomorrow!