From The Onion, for our Society department:
Alarmed Taylor Swift Watches As Travis Kelce Prints Out Buffalo Wild Wings Catering Menu
LEAWOOD, KS—Her eyes widening at the sight of the piece of paper moving inch by inch out of the machine, an alarmed Taylor Swift reportedly looked on Tuesday as her fiancé, Travis Kelce, printed out the Buffalo Wild Wings catering menu. “Babe, what’s that?” said the 35-year-old billionaire recording artist, taking a step closer to where the Kansas City Chiefs tight end sat in front of his laptop, and nearly dropping a mug after she noticed he was zoomed in on a picture of pretzel knots. “So, is this for your bachelor party? Because I thought we already agreed we were using that French chef for the wedding. ‘Chicken dipper?’ I don’t even know what that is. Yes, Travis, I’m sure they have salads too, but I don’t why you’re telling me that.”
[Ease up, Babe. We’ll have Phil and Ana talk to him.]
Do you know anyone named Vanessa? Caity had a close friend growing up by that name. She accompanied Caity to the dentist once (for fun, I guess) and when I brought her back, I told Vanessa’s mom that he filled a small cavity in Vanessa’s mouth. She was aghast and I had to convince her that I was kidding, which wasn’t easy since it’s hard to see what’s funny about it. Vanessa’s dad was Italian and a little scary. We were having dinner out with them once and the mom reminded the dad that he had to pick up a small table they ordered. The dad said, “I’m not sure it will fit in the trunk” and I almost said “Just push the bodies to the side.” Glad I didn’t.
Anyway, at 63A today, the clue was “Woman’s name invented by Jonathan Swift,” and the answer was VANESSA. After extensive research (you know, a minute or two online), I was able to add that it’s from the Greek root for butterfly. The young woman subbing for Rex on his XW blog today went off on a tangent, noting that on the puzzles she constructs she tries to clue women without reference to a man, i.e., in their own right. Here’s what she said:
“I have heard people comment that the NYT puzzle will rarely clue an entry that is a woman’s name by simply mentioning a real, famous woman. (Alternatives would include using a noun (like ‘dawn’ as a noun rather than a person), using wordplay (‘Name that anagrams to xyz’), or describing the woman via her relationship to a man.) This is not a trend that has stood out to me while broadly solving (which is not to say it does or doesn’t exist, just that I haven’t noticed!), but I did notice it with this clue, and it’s feedback that I think about when I write my own puzzles.”
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I suggested the clue today could have been “Woman’s name associated with butterflies.”
Anony Mouse commented that I would be the only one who’d get it right, and I replied: “I’d probably forget.”
And then Commenter Anoa Bob wrote: “Per xwordinfo.com, VANESSA has appeared in the NYTXW 31 times over the years. It has been clued as a specific woman 19 times. In its first appearance, Sun Feb 7, 1943, it was clued ‘Butterfly genus.’” [So there.]
Here’s a pretty VANESSA. How pretty? Well, she divorced that clown on the left and hangs with Tiger Woods now.
Hey, did you know this? Trump Jr. proposed to her with a $100,000 ring ($161,000 in 2024 dollars) that he received as a gift from a jeweler in exchange for proposing to her in front of paparazzi outside of the jeweler’s store at the Short Hills mall in New Jersey! Not a bad deal. How’s that for romantic?
Their daughter Kai is a knockout too. Careful with those hands, Grandpa. You’re in enough hot water already with that Epstein business.
I like anagrams. Did you know the lyric from The Doors’ song L.A. Woman “Mr. Mojo Risin’” is an anagram of “Jim Morrison?” (Morrison only told the band about it after the song was recorded. Blew them away.) Anyway, in today’s theme answers, the constructor takes the name of a language and anagrams it into a word in that language. E.g., CROATIAN anagrams to RAINCOAT. (Also FLEMISH to HIMSELF, and LATVIAN to VALIANT.)
Egs, who never fails to impress, wrote: “I once knew a VALIANT LATVIAN who was FLEMISH HIMSELF but wore a CROATIAN RAINCOAT, so this puzzle really brought back some great memories.”
There was a bit of a hoo-hah over whether Flemish is actually a language or merely a dialect. I added my two cents with: “I hope no one phlips me the phinger over this, but I’m phlegmatic over whether Flemish is a language for these purposes. Seems close enough for crosswords.”
From The Onion sports pages:
Self-Conscious Sumo Wrestler Wears T-Shirt Into Ring
This poem by Martín Espada is today’s poem of the day from The Poetry Foundation. It rings a faint bell for me, so I might have shared it before. But so what? It’s called “The Monster in the Lake.”
A city boy, I always wanted to go fishing. The DiFilippo brothers brought me
to a secret lake where we cast our lines into the dark, the barbed lures
spinning. I snagged a monster in the lake. I fought the monster and my reel
jammed. One of the DiFilippo brothers said: That’s not a fish. We waded
into the water and dragged a rusty box spring onshore, festooned with
the lures of failed fishermen. We plucked them off the coils and dragged it
back. Whenever we went fishing, we would have more treasures to collect.
Late that night, I felt the monster swimming beneath my feet. I walked
down to the basement and saw my father hunched over a table in his white
T-shirt and boxers. He flinched as if I’d caught him whispering on the phone
to a woman who was not my mother. What are you doing? I asked. I saw
the pages of a Spanish dictionary and a legal pad where he had copied down
the meaning of the words in longhand. I’m learning Spanish, he confessed.
My father the rabble-rouser with the bullhorn, my father the Puerto Rican
who spoke for other Puerto Ricans in the papers, my father who left his island
at age eleven and kissed the runway when he flew home at age thirty-eight,
my father who had the Spanish slapped from his mouth like a dangling
cigarette by teachers and coaches in the city where I grew up, could feel
his Puerto Rican tongue shriveling, coated with gravel, drained of words.
I left him in the basement, riddled with the hooks no one else could see.
It has happened more than once that a baseball fan became torn between watching a key at-bat and rushing off to the bathroom to take care of business. Such a fan will appreciate Classic Auto Group Park in Eastlake OH, just 18 miles from Progressive Field (where the Guardians (nee Indians) play). The High-A Lake County Captains (the “Caps”) play in Classic Park. And in Classic Park you can watch a game from Toilet Row:
Only in America!
See you tomorrow Chatterheads! Thanks for popping by.
The Wellington Files 