Hi! Welcome to Owl Chatter Post #800. The only word for it is ridiculous. Fittingly, the puzzle defeated me today — literally with an Oy. It happened all the way down at 95D where the clue was “Fundamental building block of DNA.” The only building block I know is “lego,” so I had no chance. The answer was ADENINE, and I needed all of the crosses. The problem was the third letter: E. It was the last letter of 104A: “Hawaiian song of farewell.” I heard of it! It was ALOHA OE. And that was the E I needed! But if you’ve heard the song, it’s pronounced Aloha Oy, so I put in a Y and got ADYNINE, which, of course, looked fine to me. D’oh! I took solace in the fact that Rex also blew it there, although he went with Aloha Oi. (I guess mine was the Yiddish version.) Wanna hear it?
That’s Tia Carrere, Hawaiian-born actress/model/singer of Filipino descent. She’s 58 and has had a pretty successful movie/TV career. If you missed her as the hot juror in Jury Duty, here she is. Hey! Don’t look at me in that tone of voice, Carrere!
Hi TC — thanks for popping by to help us celebrate #800.
Best wishes to Hailee Steinfeld and Buffalo QB Josh Allen who tied the knot yesterday. We recently saw Hailee dripping in blood in Sinners. Her dad’s Jewish but her mom isn’t and she hasn’t picked sides. Josh is Methodist. They did not opt for a Jewish wedding, but we’re sure no one went hungry. Here’s the shot Phil got for us of the bride (before he passed out).
How ’bout those Gnats yesterday? They scored 10 runs in the first inning against ‘Zona. They had nine on the board before a single out was recorded. Nobody homered. CJ Abrams was hit by a pitch twice in the inning: once on each foot. The look on his face after the second one was classic Jack Benny.
Great clue at 81D: “Accessory in a Jane Fonda workout video.” LEG WARMER. Remember those?
If you were wondering whether they can be sexy, our Dirty Old Man department came up with this.
There were two good animal clues: At 1D: “Unlikely fliers, in a saying.” PIGS
And at 118D: “Desirable formation for ducks.” ROW
38D was good too: “Loss of the ability to read.” You’ve heard of dyslexia. This is ALEXIA. New to me.
At 101D, “Center of mass?” was the clue for CHURCH. Get it? It reminded Son Volt of this song by The Waterboys:
Back in my Statistics class at Brandeis, we were assigned the task of figuring out the chances of there being two of us in our class of 30 with the same birthday. I think none of us could figure it out and I was surprised when the answer turned out to be 70%. That is, there was a 7 in 10 chance that a pair of us shared a birthday. “Let’s try it,” of the students said and Prof. Schwalberg, said Okay. So we went up the rows announcing our birthdays and we hit a match at around the 16th person. “There you go,” Schwalberg said.
That story comes up today for two reasons. First, today is the birthday of two of the most beloved members of Rex’s commentariat: egs and Nancy. Also, this Saturday the memorial service for Prof. Schwalberg will be held at Brandeis. He passed away last year.
Here’s a story I may have told before. In class one day, Schwalberg needed the name of a beautiful woman to use in an example, for some reason. It was 1970 so he reached for Sophia Loren. But he called her “Sophie” Loren. A kid in the back yelled out: “Sophie?” And Schwalberg said: “Well, to her friends.” Over 40 years later we were in touch again and in his very first email to me, he asked if I remembered his Sophie Loren line. He was so proud of it.
Hi Sophie.
There’s a bit of a follow-up. There was an article in the New Yorker by John McPhee on how each generation has its own icons: its own heroes and villains. I mentioned it and wrote to Schwalberg, “for example, if I had to use a beautiful woman in class for an example, I wouldn’t be able to use Sophia Loren; I’d probably use Taylor Swift.” And he wrote back: “Who’s Taylor Swift?”
See you next time, Chatterheads.
The Wellington Files 