Today’s puzzle by Joe Deeney is an amazing feat of construction, IMO. (Not to be confused with feet of construction, below.)
Each corner had a “stack” of four ten-letter answers. And each stack had another crossing ten-letter answer that met in the center. Twenty ten-letter answers all perfectly interlaced in a spiral design. Bravo.
At 38A, for “Common component of ranch dressing?” I first thought of mayonnaise, which is impossible to spell. It’s ten letters. But it was a trick question. The answer was STETSON HAT. (Get it? — what you’d be dressed in on a ranch.)
Another cute one was at 22A: “Private agreement?” (The cute ones tip their hand with a question mark at the end.) This answer was YES SIR. It’s a private in the army, of course.
You ladies may know what TEA DRESSES are, but I didn’t. The clue was “Garden party outfits often with floral patterns.”
Phil! Where did you drag that poor girl? Is that Ukraine? You couldn’t find a garden somewhere? Are we going to get calls about this?
The puzzle included a shout-out to LGBTQ activist CECE McDonald, whom I had never heard of under my rock. Cece is 35, from Chicago, and is a trans woman. In June of 2011 Cece and some friends were assaulted outside a bar in Minneapolis. Cece’s face was slashed by a broken glass and required stitches. She took a pair of scissors out of her purse and stabbed one of the men and killed him. Fearing a 20-year sentence, she pled guilty to second-degree manslaughter taking a three-and-a-half-year sentence.
According to the Bay Area Reporter, her conviction “sparked outrage, and was viewed by many as an act of transphobia and racism against a woman who defended herself.” Although a woman, McDonald was housed in two men’s prisons. An online petition “led to the state department of corrections administering the full regimen of hormones she needed.” Her story received international attention and she was released after serving a year and a half.
Articles in Ebony and Rolling Stone were written about her and a documentary was produced, Free Cece.
This poem is by Billy Collins and is from today’s Writer’s Almanac.
Osprey
Oh, large brown, thickly feathered creature
with a distinctive white head,
you, perched on the top branch
of a tree near the lake shore,
as soon as I guide this boat back to the dock
and walk up the grassy path to the house,
before I unzip my windbreaker
and lift the binoculars from around my neck,
before I wash the gasoline from my hands,
before I tell anyone I’m back,
and before I hang the ignition key on its nail,
or pour myself a drink—
I’m thinking a vodka soda with lemon—
I will look you up in my
illustrated guide to North American birds
and I promise I will learn what you are called.
Ed Sylvester, of the Dull Men’s Club (UK), posted this lovely note about his dad, with appropriate documentation, below.
My Dad was the epitome of a Dull Man. He was on a mission to make the world a better place – writing letters to corporations highlighting their shortcomings.
Just going through his stuff we’ve found this perfect example of dullness. The background is that he bought a pair of trousers from M&S, and discovered that the zip was shorter than he was used to – thus making the act of going for a wee a tiny bit more inconvenient.
He wrote to them in early 2015, and received a suitably dull response confirming this was a ‘one off design fault’. You can see his delight in his notations on the letter ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes!’
Emboldened by his victory, he then went back to the M&S store and discovered they were still selling the ‘faulty’ trousers. He wrote to M&S and demanded they take them off sale. They replied in June 2015 apologising and promising to look into it.
Someone in his friendship group was also clearly traumatised by the issue, and it even made the news in the Daily Telegraph later that year.
If there were no Dull Men holding these companies to account, we’d all be wearing trousers with zips too short. He’s not with us any more, but I hope his legacy lives on through other Dull Men.
“This might come after the check” was a neat clue for MATE. But “Singer Dua” was pretty lame for LIPA. Did you know she is part British and part Albanian? Dua means love in Albanian. She was one of 186 signers of an open letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the killing of civilians. Israeli music duo Ness & Stilla released the single “Harbu Darbu,” which called for Lipa’s death.
This song, Levitating, was a massive hit for Dua a few years ago. Very sexy, but does she seem to be mailing it in at all? She took some grief a while ago for lackluster stage performances. I’d concede she’s not as electric as Jagger, whom we posted performing Start Me Up two days ago. But who is?
Okay. I’m going to levitate my fat tuchas out of here now. Thanks for stopping by.
The Wellington Files 