In the puzzle today, at 56A the clue was “Toward that place, quaintly,” and the answer was THITHER. I posted the following on Rex’s blog:
Have you seen my zither?
Thither.
Right, my zither. Have you seen it?
Thither.
Yes. Do you know where it is? My zither.
Thither.
(Continue in this vain until tired.)
[Low-hanging fruit, I know, but someone had to do it.]
The puzzle was brilliant, IMO. The idea was “you can’t see the forest for the trees.” First, the grid used the black squares to form the picture of a tree, see below. Then in six places an answer was short one letter that was represented by a tree. And the shortened word was separately the name of a tree! So, e.g., where the answer was ELMO, you filled in only ELM and it was followed by a square with a little tree in it. For the answer RASH, you left the R out and got an ASH tree, and so on, six times. And the six “missing letters,” in order, spelled FOREST. Wow.
Amazingly, this was the debut puzzle of the brother duo, Ilan and Shimon Kolkowitz, one a doctor and the other some type of scientist.
Many years ago I won a bet with a then-brother-in-law who was certain the expression was “can’t see the forest ‘from’ the trees.” Idiot.
Impossible not to include this song at this point.
At 34D the “start of a children’s book series” was ARNIE the Doughnut. An anthropomorphic chocolate-frosted sprinkle doughnut named Arnie? OK, I’ll bite.
I harbor no ill will towards Gnats pitcher Jorge Lopez. In fact, I wish him and his family nothing but the best. His wife Karla and he have a son Mikael who suffers from a rare condition known as Familial Mediterranean fever and is waiting for a small intestines transplant. But meanwhile Jorge’s not doing himself any favors.
Back on 5/29/24, playing for the Mets, on his way to the dugout after being ejected from the game, he threw his glove into the stands and untucked his shirt (gasp!). He then called the Mets “the worst team in all of fucking MLB” and they released him.
The Gnats, who of late actually come closer to that description than those Mets did, picked him up in January for $3 million. He’s made 8 appearances so far and has not hit stride. ERA of 10.57. And last night after hitting Pirate Brian Reynolds with a pitch, he threw one that appeared headed towards Andrew McCutchen’s noggin. He was ejected and faces a 3-game suspension.
C’mon buddy, pull it together. Jorge was an all star back in 2022. He’s 32 now — can still crank out a few good years.
Here’s Gnats’ catcher Keibert Ruiz telling Lopez to calm down and keep his shirt tucked in before the benches cleared last night.
Gnats lost 6-1. D’oh! Lost again today, 1-0. Ever get that queasy feeling?
Things almost got out of hand on Rex’s blog today. First there was this snippy comment:
Two answers that annoyed me, as a person who actually knows things instead of having accumulated lists of crossword answers in the back of my brain. The muse of Memory is Mnemosyne: Not MNEME. And the LOTUS, in general, is a water lily, not a tree. Harumph.
Kitshef replied: Mnemosyne was a goddess, rather than a muse. She was the mother of the nine Olympian muses. Mneme was one of the three muses according to Varro. (There are different numbers of muses, and with different names, according to different authors.)
And yes, there is a LOTUS that is a flowering aquatic plant, but also a lotus tree, again from Greek mythology. The lotus-eaters from the Odyssey were eating lotus trees.
Whatsername added the following, for good measure:
My knowledge of trees is very basic, but where I grew up in mid-Missouri, there were LOTUS TREES in our front yard. They were tall and slender with rough bark and exquisite smelling white blossoms which were always covered with bees. I’ve no idea what the scientific name for them is but that’s what they were commonly called.
Finally, ChrisS blew me away with this:
The Lotus tree, native to the Mediterranean area, is not one I was familiar with. I do know of lotus-eaters from Greek myth but did not know they were eating this tree. The Lotus tree is related to the Jujube tree, the fruit of which were an ingredient in the olden days candy Jujubes.
Jujubes! Wow. That takes me back.
Armas — you have these growing up in Cuba? Not too good for your teeth.
Can’t top candy and Ana de for a send-off. See you tomorrow. Thanks for popping by.
The Wellington Files 