Hardly an Owl Chatter post goes by without my referring to Rex Parker’s blog on the NYTXW, or the commenters to it. It enriched my view of crossword puzzles. Made me see them more like short stories than only wordplay. You get to know Rex a little through it. He’s an English prof at SUNY Binghamton, married to Penelope, a New Zealander, and they have a daughter who is in the production end of theater. Yesterday he shared a beautiful message Penelope crafted on the passing of her Aunt Sandy. I hope you can click your way to get to it via this link. Below the link are the two of them, back in 1975.

https://sandy983.blogspot.com/2026/03/2026-march-14-sandra.html

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Yesterday’s puzzle was for people who love Latin, i.e., LATIN LOVERS. That was the revealer, and the theme answers were familiar Latin phrases: AD INFINITUM, SUI GENERIS, QUIDPROQUO, and POSTMORTEM.

AD INFINITUM: A commercial that seems to go on forever

Our neighbor brought over a large container of home-made Chinese food and refused to take a penny for it. He was Chop SUEY GENEROUS.

Danny Federici on the accordion. He passed away in 2008 when he was only 58. There’s a short tribute to him at the end of the video. He was an original member of the E Street Band, up there with Clarence now.

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The answer at 54D was QUILT, boringly clued with “Warm bed covering.” It led me to channel my inner Carl Z and come up with the following:

My wife complains that I hog the comforter at night: a blanket accusation! She says my excuses are all cover stories. I went to the rabbi for advice. He said it’s a question of QUILT or innocence. Not every marriage is a bed of roses. He’s going to sleep on it and get back to me.

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Here’s what I did today with this collection of answers: DUNST (“Actress Kirsten”), RUB (“Spice mixture”), ONION BAGEL (“Deli order that may lead to pungent breath”), LSDTAB (“Dose dropped for a trip”), and ACAI (“Smoothie fruit”).

Are you keeping track of what I owe you for the hallucinogens?

LSDTAB

Dyslexic spy:

ACAI agent

Fair maiden: What hast thee DUNST with the spices I put together?
(Wife gestures towards a bowl on the counter.)
Ay, there’s the RUB.

Commandment for someone who hates ONION BAGELs:

Honor thy poppy and thy sesame.

General bagel commandments:

Thou shalt only toast thy bagel using thy toaster’s bagel setting.

Thou shalt not place lox on thy cinnamon-raisin bagel, for it is an abomination unto me.

I can’t remember the rest. About 25 years ago Vermont Susan and I came up with “The Ten Commandments of Bagels,” and I sent it in to the New Yorker. I should hear back pretty soon, no?

Here’s Kirsten, full guns blazing.

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Most of us who do the Spelling Bee (daily and/or Sundays) have a personal list of words we fervently believe should be accepted but are rejected over and over and over again. Two of mine are “aroar” and “halvah.” And it’s especially annoying when words that are far less common (and which we miss) are accepted, e.g., nanotube, recently. (Argggggh.) SRSLY.

[In case you don’t know, you are given seven letters in a Bee, one of which is central. In the daily Bee, you must come up with words with a minimum of four letters using only those letters. The central letter must be used. On Sundays, the minimum is five. The words are to be in “common usage,” as defined by the Bee gods, arbitrarily, to put it mildly.]

I showed the Bee to Lianna once and she came up with “NO.” I explained that the words had to be at least five letters long, and she said “Noooooooooo.”

In comments to Rex’s post yesterday, after Bob M complained that RIATA and ANNUITANT were not accepted by the Bee, Anony Mouse wrote:

Went to a funeral not long ago where, per the deceased’s wishes, the only reading was her compiled list of Spelling Bee grievances. Hysterical. Best funeral ever.

[OC Note: I think my “best funeral ever” was Neal Grossman’s, alav hashalom. What a mensch. I’ll share my observations on it here someday. I spoke about it in class, but only once or twice because I invariably embarrass myself by choking up towards the end.]

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Have you noticed gas prices inching up a bit? Wait’ll that moron goes after Cuba — you think cigars are expensive now? I’m stocking up, and I don’t even smoke them.

Yeah, I’d worry too if I were you, babe.

On gas, I was in Macy’s yesterday, buying Linda some perfume as a birthday surprise. I asked the woman what a half-ounce bottle of a nice scent I picked out costs and she said $85. I said “$85!! What the hell is in it — gasoline?” On the way home, I pulled into a station. The attendant asked me if I wanted to fill up. I said, “No, just give me $100 worth.”

This is a popular station near us, for some reason.

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Don’t tell the owls, but we picked up a rotisserie chicken at Costco recently and I tore a lot of it apart today to make chicken salad. I use grapes, per Vermont Susan, and walnuts, celery, mayo, of course, some salt, and curry powder. We’re going to let them all get to know each other overnight and have it for lunch tomorrow.

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Grab your partners, Chatterheads, and turn up the old record player. Here’s a nice tune Son Volt shared with us containing that QUILT that was in the puzzle just yesterday.

I’ve got the sun to see your blue eyes; and tonight you’re in my arms.

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Who’s better than the Irish? We spent a week there two years ago and had a blast. The entire country is devoted to nothing other than music and Guinness. (Burp!) In Killarney we stayed in a little inn across from the Killarney Brewery, the only place, our guide said, where you can have a Killarney Blond and not have the wife get upset. (I did, and she didn’t.)

I gave my law class a midterm on St. Patrick’s Day one year. It just worked out that way. And I told them that after my last exam ended my first year in law school, I was talking with my friend Robert. He said he didn’t feel as great as he thought he would. I said, how do you mean? And he said, “You walk out of that room, and if there’s not a parade going on, it’s a letdown.” Very true. “But here it is St. Patrick’s Day,” I told my class. “And when our test ends, there will be a parade going on!”

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See you tomorrow! Thanks for popping in.

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