The puzzle today was by one of my favorite constructors: Natan Last. Readers with a young man’s memory may recall I did a bit on his “last” name a while ago. The more puzzles I do (I still consider myself a noob), the more I appreciate the ones that are fresh and wide-ranging. Here are three consecutive down clues/answers that hit us right away today at 2, 3, and 4 down. “Imbecile!” (YOU FOOL); Don (MOB BOSS); and Given name of the first Countess Mountbatten (EDWINA). How’s that for freshness and range?
And there were so many other good ones sprinkled around the grid. Rex’s favorite was “Pitches low and inside?” That’s a brilliant example of a type of clue called a “misdirect.” It has you thinking baseball, but the answer is SUBWAY ADS. (Get it?)
Distinguished guests to the grid include BAYARD RUSTIN (“Political activist who organized 1963’s March on Washington”), and Mercedes SOSA, icon of Argentine folk music. How classy is that? “Gertrude, for one” was the clue for DANE. It’s Hamlet’s mom!
For YOU FOOL! (see above), Rex had the impeccable taste to share a tune by the exquisite McGarrigle sisters with us. These are the same babes whose beautiful song “Heart Like A Wheel” was featured at Welly’s and Wilma’s wedding! Please sit back for a few minutes and enjoy both of these songs (the latter with Linda Ronstadt).
Some time after the wedding, I asked Wilma and Welly what led them to choose that song. It is, after all, a pretty sad song. They said they were touched by the refrain “It’s only love.” The wedding was in the woods in the Berkshires and was very beautiful. Many of our friends were in attendance. Lianna pushed Wilma up the aisle in her stroller. She was the most beautiful bride, and remains just as beautiful today if not more so, says Welly.
From tomorrow’s Met Diary:
Dear Diary:
I was on an uptown #1 train coming home from my job at a SoHo restaurant.
As I sat there with my backpack and big black headphones, a man sitting nearby took a jar of pickles out of a plastic shopping bag. He opened the jar, ate two or three pickles and then extended the jar to me.
“Pickle?” he said.
I thanked him but declined, gesturing to the meal in my own plastic bag I was bringing home from work.
He shrugged and continued to eat pickles and sip the juice.
ABOUT THE PICKLE FESTIVAL:
Rosendale International Pickle Festival is held once a year, on the 3rd Sunday of October. We host over 100 vendors who sell pickles, groceries, hot food, baked goods, crafts, fashion, jewelry, and more. There’s a home pickling contest and the Pickle Triathlon offers a pickle eating contest, pickle juice drinking and a pickle toss. Up to 5,000 people visit the Pickle Festival every year. All proceeds are donated back into the Rosendale community.
Ulster County Fairgrounds
249 Libertyville Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561
Here’s what the pickle eating contest looks like:
Back to the puzzle, at 22A the clue was “Midday assignation,” and the answer was NOONER. I knoo it but it was noo to several others. It lead commenter Greg to note:
“A NOONER is absolutely a thing. Probably goes back to when workmen would go home for lunch and have a quickie with the missus. Nowadays the word usually implies a lunchtime affair with a coworker or side piece.”
Side piece! Now, that’s new to me.
At 30A, the clue was “What shells can be filled with,” and the answer was CREW TEAMS.
It led commenter “I. Scull” to post this irate note:
CREW TEAM is redundant – the crew IS the team. You may use Crew. You may use Rowing Team. But not Crew Team. This error recurs in the New York Times puzzle, and there is no excuse for it. So there! [Hrrrrumph!]
But Anony Mouse disagreed. He says “Crew is a specific sport” so CREW TEAM is not redundant.
This pretty crew team is from South Jersey. Go get ’em girls!
Headline in The Onion: Scientists Let Defrosted Neanderthal Run Around Shrieking Before Refreezing Him
Neil Hancox of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) writes: I went to a well-known DIY store to buy some hinges. They didn’t have the right ones, which shocked me a little.
Here are a couple of the 39 comments it inspired:
Sandra Davies: So you became unhinged?
Bernard Shaw: I’ll never forget where I was when I heard this news.
Steve Craig: You should have got the left ones then, and just flipped them over.
Richard Hobson: Hope you find closure.
Tom Hamilton: Did they have candles? I need four.
Lori Smith: Fork handles.
Miguel Vanrail: You shouldn’t get so hung up on it mate.
I wasn’t going to use any more material from the DMC (UK) today, but I can’t resist this quickie:
Mark Timms posted (just a few hours ago): Bought some frozen roast potatoes and one looks like a chicken drumstick.
There’s only one comment so far. Nicholas Crosby: You certainly know how to live life to the full.
I’m going to close with a bit of personal history, unearthed by Natan Last’s puzzle. At 36D the clue was “Post-Trebek ‘Jeopardy!’ host,” and the answer was BIALIK. It’s Mayim BIALIK.
It’s a great name. Mayim is the Hebrew word for water. And Bialik (Chaim) was a well-known poet, considered a pioneer of modern Hebrew poetry. He died in 1934. The Flatbush Jewish Center in Brooklyn established a Hebrew/English day school in 1946, called The Bialik School. My dad was one of the founders, and the school office was named in his honor after he died. It was the first school I attended, from kindergarten through second grade. I have very little memory of it, but I recall seeing the sign with my dad’s name on it over the school office. The Bialik School closed around 1990.
Thanks for stopping in. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 