Happy Birthday, E. L. Doctorow! Dead since 2015, but so what? The E is for Edgar: His dad was a big Poe fan. Later in life, Doctorow asked his mom: “Do you realize that you and Dad named me after a paranoid, drug-addicted alcoholic with necrophiliac tendencies?” His aging mother replied, “Edgar, that’s not funny.”
This poem, from today’s Writer’s Almanac, is by Barbara Crooker and is called “Monopoly 1955.”
We start by fanning out the money, colored
like Necco wafers: pink, yellow, mint, gold.
From the first roll of the dice, differences widen:
the royal blues of Boardwalk and Park Place
look down their noses at the grapey immigrants
from Baltic and Mediterranean Avenues.
My grandparents coming from Italy in steerage
measured their gold in olive oil, not bank notes
and deeds. The man in the top hat and tuxedo
always holds the good cards. The rest of us
hope we can pay the Electric Company.
We know there is no such thing as Free Parking,
and Bank Errors are never in our favor.
In the background, Johnny Mathis croons
Chances Are from the cracked vinyl radio.
We played for hours, in those years
before television, on the Formica table,
while my mother coaxed a chicken,
cooking all day on the back burner, to multiply
itself into many meals. The fat rose to the surface,
a roiling ocean of molten gold.
Here’s a photo of Rex Parker (not his real name) whose blog partly inspired Owl Chatter, though it’s limited in scope to the daily NYTXW and whatever doors it opens. He’s an English prof in Binghamton.
That shirt he’s wearing is significant. In Crossworld, a Natick refers to being caught between two clues (across + down) that you simply don’t know, so there’s no way to work out a solution. Check mate. Rex came up with the term, as he explains: “A long time ago, I was solving a puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the ‘N’—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK … is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun (“I had a NATICK in the SW corner…”) or verb (“I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!”)
[FYI, Natick is ten miles west of Boston, next to Wellesley.]
And here are Rex’s beloved cats, Ida (white) and Alfie.
For fun, I looked him up on Rate My Professors, to see what his students are saying about him. Here are a couple:
There was no reason to go to class because he just rambled nonsense. I learned nothing. Avoid this class at all costs.
I would say this is the worst class I’ve taken for the English requirement. Professor rambles and has zero empathy for anyone. Additionally, a serious ego problem. He really enjoys having more knowledge than his students. Avoid class at all costs.
Ouch! But then there was this:
FAVORITE PROFESSOR. I loved this class. So much. Quite a bit of reading, but it all ties together so well that I did not mind at all! Professor is also HILARIOUS and the only way I was ever going to wake up at 8am would be for laughs, so that was great! He’s accessible outside of class too.
I check my reviews from time to time. My favorite of all time was: Prof. Liveson thinks he is very smart and funny, but really he is just a fat jerk.
The puzzle today played with the expression DRAW CONCLUSIONS. Three theme answers used “draw” in the sense of art (drawing), and “conclusion” in the sense of end word. So we had CHARACTER “SKETCH,” CONTACT “TRACE,” and GOLDEN “DOODLE.” This adorable tune by The Bats, is called “No Trace.” Let’s play hide and seek!!
Samantha Wood wrote this Tiny Love Story today. I think she puts her finger on what us grandfolks should be shooting for.
Every Sunday, at 2 p.m. sharp, static sizzles from the beat-up, 10-year-old flip phone my grandpa won’t give up. Updates on his life in Oklahoma, my father’s health, my sister’s wedding plans, the old woman down the road whose dog digs up his yard. His lazy vowels loop together like cursive. He never says the words. But he’s stopped calling my girlfriend of five years my “friend.” He asks how I’m doing, sends old family photos by mail so I have a piece of them with me in Massachusetts. “You’ll always have a home here,” he says. “Remember that.”
One of our favorites dropped in on the grid today, Amy POEHLER. She’s 53 (ouch) and is dating a former deputy editor of the NYT, Joel Lovell.
I’m crying foul on 61A. I’m supposed to know “South Korea’s second-largest city” on a Monday? Second largest? It’s BUSAN. Easy Ed took the opportunity to give us a little lesson on it:
For those of us who served in Korea in the days of yore, the answer was PUSAN, not BUSAN. The difference is in the anglicization of a relatively soft consonant in the Korean language that falls somewhere between an English “P” or “B” depending on various regional accents and the acuity of the listener’s ear. There are similar but more stressed or aspirated consonants in this family that are more frequently represented as “P.”
OK — thanks, Easy Ed!
Up for another “lesson?” At 43A yesterday, the clue was “Characters from Homer and Herodotus,” and the answer was ETAS, the Greek letter that appears in both names. OK, fair enough. But Michael Kavanaugh picked the following nit:
While the capital eta does look like the letter H, neither name would begin with an eta when written in Greek. Well maybe Herodotus, but definitely not Homer. The h sound at the start of a word in Greek is created by a rough breathing, indicated by a c-shaped accent above the starting vowel. (A backwards-c-shaped accent would mean no h sound.)
[God, I feel so ignorant. — Thanks, Mike!]
One word yesterday that caught some attention was URNING. Nothing to do with “yearning.” The clue was “Storing, as some ashes.” You know, like to store in an urn — urning. Not convinced? Gary commented: My stepfather is currently URNING in a cardboard box in my storage unit waiting for us to travel to Istanbul. I’m planning on URNING in a plastic bag inside a cardboard box inside a dumpster.
At 110D yesterday, “Vet’s concern” was PTSD. It led to this exchange. Anony Mous wrote: Anyone else bothered by 110 Down? Alas, we have enough PTSD in our society. Don’t need to see it in our crossword puzzles.
But dgd countered: About PTSD
Not in the least bothered by it being in the puzzle
It is a disease caused by trauma
PTSD is part of the human condition, and has existed since human beings existed (there is strong evidence that many other animals suffer from it).
It is not some moral failing
It can be difficult to treat and sometimes hard to identify. That is why the more public awareness the better. PTSD in the puzzle is a positive thing.
If you notice (mostly) men unusually happy today, slapping one another on the back, high-fiving, etc., you are witnessing the joy we Jets fans feel at the end of the season. It’s the moment at which the torturer finally relents. It ended with a convincing if meaningless win over the fish (Miami) 32-20, which luckily only cost us one spot in draft positions. Amazingly, six teams finished worse than us.
See you next year, girls!
And we’ll see you tomorrow, Chatterheads!
The Wellington Files 