The Wellington Files

  • Uncle Fester

    Readers of Owl Chatter (both of you) can easily attest that I am an expert in [pause for dramatic effect] — absolutely nothing. But even I recall the dreadful days of Covid and the relief the vaccine brought to us all. Well, to those of us not dead. Was the vaccine not clearly what allowed us to close the door on those years? And yet the person named by RFK Jr. to head the task force on Covid vaccine safety described it as “the most failing medical product in the history of medical products.” [Well, what other history would it be? — the most failing medical product in the history of the NBA?] Anyway, anyone following the utter lunacy of Kennedy even remotely would not be surprised. The only reason I mention it is the name of the guy. He’s Retsef Levi. He’s a doctor, but not a doctor doctor. His degree is in Operations Research. And what caught my eye is his name, Retsef, which spelled backwards is “fester.”

    Actually, he’s an interesting guy. He’s Israeli and the Hebrew word “retsef” means secret, or hidden. His Ph.D. is from Cornell and he is the J. Spencer Standish Professor of Operations Management at MIT. He was an intelligence officer in the elite Israeli Intelligence Corps. And we love the ponytail, Doc!

    Ricky Gervais says he can’t see the message in Humpty Dumpty.

    Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
    Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
    All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
    Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

    He says: “All I get out of it is ‘Don’t sit on a wall if you’re an egg.’”

    Meanwhile my legal problems continue to mount. The store manager accused me of stealing Swiss cheese but there were holes in his case. He said I took the scotch tape too, but the charge wouldn’t stick. The art gallery said I didn’t pay for the prints, but I was framed. I was lucky the plumber’s complaint didn’t hold water, but the electrician is bringing charges. The optician sued me too, but I don’t see him winning. I’m worried most about the beef the butcher has with me. There’s a lot at stake, so I’m on the lam.

    My cousin went out with an optician but they broke up. He said whenever they were in bed together she kept going, “Is it better this way? Or this way? This way? Or this way? This way? Or this way?”

    Miriam Webster’s “Word of the Day” yesterday was apathy, but who cares? That’s what we call in the bad joke business “low-hanging fruit.” That really was the WOTD, btw.

    I haven’t seen Bobby Orr or Mel Ott in the puzzle lately, but they are frequent visitors. An Oreo pops in at least once a week. Yesterday, the clue for it was the best I’ve ever seen: “_____ cow (black bovine with a white belt around its middle).”

    It’s real and called a Belted Galloway. They are a Scottish breed and it generally takes up to six very strong men to dunk one in milk.

    Singer-songwriter Camila CABELLO was featured right at the top of the Friday puzzle at 8A. The clue referenced her 2022 hit album “Familia.” She’s another Cuban beauty like our Ana. What are they doing down there? What the hell is in those cigars?

    Camila is single. From Aug. 2022 to Feb. 2023 she dated Austin Kevitch, the founder of the Lox Club. Yes, it’s that kind of lox — the kind that pals around with whitefish. It’s a dating app founded in 2020 “for Jews with ridiculously high standards,” but it’s open to non-Jews too. Kevich says: “It’s like a deli: culturally Jewish, but anyone can enjoy it.” She’s dating some billionaire now.

    The clue at 56A was “Be ruthless,” for TAKE NO PRISONERS, but it was a pretty easy puzzle for a Friday, IMO.

    Did you know SAMUEL CHASE is the “Founding father who is the only Supreme Court justice to have ever been impeached?” Ignorant boor that I am, I put down Samuel Adams first. Duh.

    Also learned that a peacock’s “display” is an OSTENTATION. The term “male peacock” is redundant, because a peacock is a male peafowl. Female would be peahen. The more common term for when a peacock struts his stuff is a display. Ostentation can also be the term for a group of peacocks.

    O say did you know (28D) the national anthem of SPAIN has no official words?

    This poem by Wayne Miller, shared by poets.org yesterday, was inspired by his realization that the super in his apartment building, a woman, was like a god to the tenants, but one with her own emotional and psychological life. It’s called “Theological.”

    The super worked all day
    as a conductor on the subway
    and in the evenings as a dominatrix.
    She lived above me. I heard a mix
    of pain and pleasure—impossible
    to tell the difference in that studio full
    of my own silence. On the front stoop
    I ran into her clients, who drooped
    in exhausted gratitude.
    Once, I knocked.

                                  When she cracked
    the door I could see she’d been crying.
    Behind her, a TV blued
    the room; something was frying
    on the stove. I had a small concern.
    She told me, I’ll get to you in turn.

    In the puzzle today, for the clue “It’s formed in Pittsburgh,” the answer was OHIO RIVER.

    At 36A, for the clue “I’ve helped all I can,” the answer was MY JOB HERE IS DONE. Rex carped a bit over the phrase being more commonly “my work here is done.” And there’s some history to it. At some point, it turned from being used seriously to ironically. The Lone Ranger would often say something like it at the end of episodes. That’s when it probably became a catchphrase. And some feel it turned due to this scene in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles:

    Sheriff, you can’t go now. We need you.

    BART: My work here is done. I’m needed elsewhere now. I’m needed wherever outlaws rule the West, wherever innocent women and children are afraid to walk on the streets, wherever a man cannot live in simple dignity and wherever a people cry out for justice.

    TOWNSPEOPLE (in unison): BULLSHIT!!!

    BART: All right, ya caught me

    Here’s how The Simpsons handled it.

    I loved the cluing choice at 28A. There are so many options for cluing EDWIN, but constructor Ryan Judge went with “M.L.B. All-Star closer Díaz.” I was at Citi Field when he was called in from the bullpen once. It’s a kick.

    Break up the Gnats! The boys just took the series from the Mets in DC two games to one and the opening game from the Phils last night. What’s gotten into them? We’ll see first hand when we subway up to the Bronx on Wednesday to see them face Yankees.

    See you tomorrow! Thanks for popping in.

  • A Piece Of Red Ribbon

    If you’ve been pronouncing Kirsten Dunst’s name incorrectly, you’re not alone. She doesn’t care and doesn’t correct people. Still, you might as well get it right, right? I face the problem often myself (with my name: not hers), since I have an unusual name. I would go so far as to say my name is more often pronounced incorrectly than correctly. Sometimes I’ll correct the speaker, but often I don’t. If it’s Linda or a close friend or relative who gets it wrong, I’ll correct them. [That was a joke.] If it’s a stranger I have to make the calculation as to whether it’s worth the effort. Will I be dealing with them again? Will they feel bad? Intangibles related to the moment play a role too, e.g., my mood, and am I miffed?

    Kirsten is pronounced Keersten. She is the actress our Zoey will most resemble when she grows up. KD was born and raised in Jersey until her folks separated when she was eleven and she moved to LA with her mom. She’s 43 and has two kids with her husband, actor Jesse Plemons.

    Brandeis alum Tom Friedman has an excellent column in the NYT today on Ukraine. To stress how delusional the Trump admin is about Putin, he devotes a chunk of his space to quoting verbatim an answer special envoy Steve Witless gave to Tucker Carlson:

    “I liked him [Putin]. I thought he was straight up with me. In the second visit that I had, it got personal. President Putin had commissioned a beautiful portrait of President Trump from the leading Russian artist and actually gave it to me and asked me to take it home to President Trump, which I brought home and delivered to him. It’s been reported in the paper, but it was such a gracious moment. And [Putin] told me a story, Tucker, about how when the president was shot, he went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed for the president, not because he was the president of the United States or could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him and he was praying for his friend. I mean, can you imagine sitting there and listening to these kinds of conversations?

    “And I came home and delivered that message to our president and delivered the painting, and he was clearly touched by it. So this is the kind of connection that we’ve been able to re-establish through, by the way, a simple word called communication, which many people would say, you know, I shouldn’t have had, because Putin is a bad guy. I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy. That is a complicated situation, that war and all the ingredients that led up to it. You know, it’s never just one person, right?”

    Friedman continues: It gets worse . . .

    Ya think?

    He laments that the intelligence community and State Dept have been neutered and concludes eloquently:

    “Who will tell him the truth? No one.

    “No one but the wild earth of Ukraine. In the trenches in the Donbas, there is truth. In the 20,000 Ukrainian children that Kyiv says Putin has abducted, there is truth. In the roughly 1.4 million Russian and Ukrainian soldiers killed and wounded as a result of Putin’s fevered dreams of restoring Ukraine to Mother Russia, there is truth. In the Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian drones at the same time that Trump was laying out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska, there is truth.”

    It’s the 96th birthday of children’s poet X. J. Kennedy today. Kinehora! He’s from Dover, NJ, and went to Seton Hall for his undergrad degree, Columbia for his Masters, and spent six years at UMich failing to get a Ph.D. He was married to his wife Dorothy for 56 years, until her death in 2018, and has five kids and six grandkids. He lives in Peabody MA.

    This poem of his is called “What We Might Be, What We Are” and it was in The Writer’s Almanac.

    If you were a scoop of vanilla
    And I were the cone where you sat,
    If you were a slowly pitched baseball
    And I were the swing of a bat,

    If you were a shiny new fishhook
    And I were a bucket of worms,
    If we were a pin and a pincushion,
    We might be on intimate terms.

    If you were a plate of spaghetti
    And I were your piping-hot sauce,
    We’d not even need to write letters
    To put our affection across,

    But you’re just a piece of red ribbon
    In the beard of a Balinese goat
    And I’m a New Jersey mosquito.
    I guess we’ll stay slightly remote.

    And if you were a brand new pair of roller skates, and I were a brand new key?

    [That’s Melanie’s song, of course.]

    Whew. Just watched the Gnats take two out of three from the Mets. Any Gnat win is a nailbiter. Need to calm down now. The Gnats are way out of the pennant race and their manager has been fired. They play now solely out of pride and the love of the game.

    Sports fans who say baseball is boring — either they don’t care, or what the hell are they watching? Roger Angell wrote about the caring. Here he is, on the Fisk home run in the New Yorker of 11/9/75:

    “It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look—I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring—caring deeply and passionately, really caring—which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naïveté—the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball—seems a small price to pay for such a gift.”

    Thanks for dropping in.

  • Low-down Gamblers

    One man’s (Rex’s) ho-hum is another man’s (mine) neat puzzle. The constructor was Victor Schmitt. There were six shaded blocks in the puzzle, 3-squares x 3-squares, representing the six sides of a die. Within those blocks each letter O from your puzzle answers was a PIP — a dot on the die. So the six blocks became the six possible rolls of the die, although not in order. If you take a moment, you can see them, below. I thought it was impressive how Schmitt got the Os in the right places. And it was “clean” in the sense that there were no other Os outside of the squares anywhere in the grid. Still, Rex (and others) gave it a “So what?”

    The die representing a “six” had to have three consecutive Os twice. The answers supplying them were BOO OFFSTAGE and TOO OFTEN.

    At 69A, two of the needed Os were provided by COLON, clued with “Start of many emoticons.” I would have clued it with former pitcher Bartolo Colon, but no one ever does. BOO. He pitched for many teams but retired as a Met.

    Every few months Owl Chatter bumps into Linda Ronstadt for some reason and I am reminded how great she is. She just turned 79. Never married; raised two adopted daughters. To 120, Babe! Here she is weighing in on today’s dice theme. Turn it up!

    At 46D the clue was “Sameness” and the answer was PARITY. Commenter Mack was disappointed the clue wasn’t obstetrics-related. What? So I looked it up — it’s a service we provide here at Owl Chatter — information you haven’t the slightest interest in hearing about.

    In biology and medicine, gravida is the number of times a woman has been pregnant regardless of the outcome. And PARITY is the number of times the pregnancies reached “viable gestational age.” (Abortus is the number of pregnancies that did not make it to that age, regardless of the reason.)

    So, as the saying goes — learn something new and useless every day.

    Phil took on this assignment grudgingly for obvious reasons, but ended up having fun with it.

    Phil! Why is she looking at you in that tone of voice??

    From Frank Bruni’s “For the love of sentences” feature:

    In The Wall Street Journal, Jared Diamond recognized how differently Hal Steinbrenner approaches his stewardship of the Yankees from how his father, George, did: “The elder Steinbrenner ran the Yankees with all the patience of an Upper West Sider stuck behind a tourist in the whitefish line at Zabar’s.”

    Boy is it hard to stop smoking. My wife and I, we made a deal. We only smoke after sex. I’ve got the same pack since 1975. What bothers me is she’s up to three packs a day. (R. Dangerfield)

    I took a lie detector test. No I didn’t. (S. Wright)

    I have all the erasers from all the golf pencils in the world. (S. Wright)

    Steve Bower of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) asks: Why does eating cheese or spicy foods give you wierd dreams?

    Ben Stoneman: It doesn’t.

    Avi Liveson: Appears to affect your spelling too.

    Daniel Faraday-Kiss: That isn’t a thing but if you leave a nicotine patch on over night you have some of the most vivid dreams you’ve ever had.

    Stuart George: I put my nicotine patches over my eyes. Didn’t affect my dreams, but helped me give up smoking. Couldn’t find my cigarettes.

    Nick Haynes: I wrote a song about this:

    Mark Timms: I used to eat Greek cheese but stopped because it was giving me hallouminations.

    Brian Greenhalgh: Halloumi is from Cyprus not Greece.

    Mark: I stand corrected, every day is a school day.

    Mark: I once had cheese before bed and had a dream I was eating a giant marshmallow, the next morning I could not find my pillow.

    Raymond Wimaway: Cheese creates a mild reaction similar to LSD. It varies by person and is so weak that the conscious mind wouldn’t be affected but the unconscious mind is more easily affected.

    Avi Liveson: Thus the concept of a limburger trip, or dropping cheddar.

    The girl of our dreams?

    This is from a poem that did not make it past the Owl Chatter guards:

    The mockingbird says, Hallelujah, coreopsis, I make the day
          bright, I wake the night-booming jasmine. I am
    the duodecimo of desperate love, the hocus-pocus passion
          flower of delirious retribution.

    Jeez Louise — give it a rest girl. Night-booming jasmine? Believe me, any night booming I do ain’t jasmine.

    The media are falling all over themselves following Trump’s zigzags on Ukraine. Is Owl Chatter the only outlet that realizes every position Trump takes just floats off into space the minute he blows it out of his ass?

    Oy. Enough. See you next time.

  • Cucumbers and Sour Cream

    This poem by Aaron Smith is from Poets.org.

    I’m Dating A Man Who’s Married

    to a man who’s dating a man who’s
    married to a woman. The husband

    of the man I’m dating knows he’s
    dating me and my boyfriend knows his

    husband is dating the man who’s
    married to the woman who does not

    know her husband is gay. The guy
    she’s married to—the boyfriend

    of my boyfriend’s husband—just told
    his mom he’s gay and she’s happy

    because she never liked his wife
    which is kind of funny but mostly

    sad and I feel sad that her husband
    who’s dating a man is also a man

    with a mother who has never liked her.
    I tell my boyfriend to tell his husband

    to tell his boyfriend that he needs
    to tell his wife sooner rather than later

    and I know he knows that but still it needs
    to be said. My boyfriend said his husband

    said his boyfriend plans to tell his wife
    Memorial Day weekend when his grown

    kids are home from college and everyone,
    I imagine, is eating potato salad by the pool.

    She works at a flower shop two towns
    over. I want to go there when she’s not

    there and buy her flowers, leave a note
    with her coworker at the counter:

                  You deserve happiness, Natalie.
                  You deserve love.

                 Love,

                 Your husband’s boyfriend’s
                 husband’s boyfriend.

    Several years ago I walked up Lexington Avenue from my office to a coffee place and ordered a small cup of coffee. I think it cost $3, so it was a bit of a splurge since the coffee from the street vendors was less than half that back then, albeit barely drinkable. (In defense of the street vendors, the $3 cup was almost always disappointing.) Anyway, as I attempted to hand the fellow cash to pay for it he said they don’t accept cash — I had to pay by card. What followed was a scene we might call “Senior can’t figure out how to use the damn card machine.” I tapped it and poked it all over but kept missing the teeny slot. Anyway, I finally got it.

    Suppose I had just left my office with an Abe (five dollar bill), and didn’t take my wallet with my cards? Could they still refuse my cash and accuse me of not paying? Could they call the cops on me?

    Let’s see how the situation plays out in the Dull Men’s Club (UK). Club member Richard Eaton (appropriately named because he had just “eaton”) posted the following:

    I had a meal in a nice restaurant the other evening. When I came to pay with cash, they insisted it was “card only.” Not wanting to make a scene, I paid by card and left. [The dull thing to do, of course.]

    I have since been doing some digging and from what I have read, the Great British Pound is legal tender, so technically cannot be refused within the UK? In other words if I owe the restaurant £33.65 for my meal and hand over that amount in cash, then technically they cannot say I haven’t paid as I have tendered to them the amount that I owe? 🤔

    The consensus that emerged held that the restaurant had the right to demand payment by card only, or in any fashion of its choosing.

    Steve Craig: A restaurant can refuse cash. Legal Tender doesn’t mean what most people think it does. Per The Bank Of England: “Legal tender has a narrow technical meaning which has no use in everyday life. It means that if you offer to fully pay off a debt to someone in legal tender, they can’t sue you for failing to repay.”

    Ian Taylor: Is there a legal definition of a debt? Could ordering and eating a meal be classed as a debt? I’ve often wondered this in my dull way.

    Steve: I think the “which has no use in every day life” covers it.

    Ian: If you have eaten the meal before payment it is a debt. Therefore refusal to accept legal tender leaves them in a precarious position unless it is clearly advertised as needing a payment method of their choice.

    Steve: I suggest you argue with the Bank Of England. I’ve just quoted them, that’s all.

    Ian: if you have eaten the meal. You are indebted to the restaurant. Legal tender can be used to pay a debt in full. It is not the same as a standard transaction.

    Steve:  I suggest you go do some more research on what kind of debt Legal Tender refers to. It refers to a court appointed debt, and the payment is to the court. Payment for a meal would not count.

    Spencer Brooks: How do you think a Court would view a restaurant that refused cash to settle a bill for a meal, then sued the customer to get a judgment that the customer can pay… in cash. Good use of a Court’s time? Reasonable behaviour? Or do you think the judge is going to be very unimpressed and most likely award costs against the restaurant…

    Steve: Spencer, I don’t think you are following the conversation.

    Diane Topping: What could they do if you left the cash on the table and walked out?

    Steve: Report a crime to the police. You may get prosecuted.

    Mark Goodge: the offence of making off without payment requires you to intend to avoid payment. Leaving sufficient cash clearly negates this intent.

    Steve:  It may negate that intent, but the crime would still be recorded and investigated. I said MAY get prosecuted, not WILL get prosecuted.

    Owl Chatter wonders: There must be special rules for redheads, no?

    My brother must have sensed I was a budding misanthrope because I remember a card he bought for me for some occasion when I was little. It had a small dark man on the front, and it said: People I hate. On the inside it said: You I like.

    This song by The Chills sends a similar moosage:

    I have no patience for anyone
    But I’ve lots of time for you.

    The song relates to the puzzle today via the “blanket” in the title. The theme revealer was clued with “Catchphrase of a classic MTV show.” The answer spanned the grid: WELCOME TO MY CRIB. And the theme answers contained items you’d find in a crib, but in non-crib contexts, viz., BLANKET POLICIES, RAILING AT, MONITOR LIZARD, and MOBILE APP.

    Monitor lizards have long necks, powerful tails and claws, and well-developed limbs. The Komodo Dragon is one. They can be as big as ten-feet long.

    Did you ever hear Richard Pryor on snakes? He says a snake will make you run into a tree. Then he yells SNAKE and turns and pretends he smacked into a tree.

    Commenter Gary says his “blanket policy” is “Yes, please.” He lives in New Mexico and had this lizard tale to share: We have lizards all over the place here in the southwest, and they’re very nice, but they’re not ten feet long so it’s a bit disappointing. We had to catch one at work last week who snuck in the back door and it was five minutes of excitement for my staff. They’re very fast … the lizards not my staff.

    Look, I understand there will be growth in pro sports. When I first started as a fan, each baseball league had only 8 teams. So that’s 16, in case you’re not a math major. Now there are 30, and I’m fine with that. The entire NHL had only six teams. Amazing! Let’s see – NY, BOS, TOR, MON, DET, and CHI. Giants like Gordie Howe and Bobby Hull roamed the ice. Now there are 32. And it’s weird to think of ice hockey in Dallas, Florida, and Utah.

    But I’m having trouble adapting to last year’s bloating of the Big Ten. It’s been more than ten for a while now and I’ve adapted to that. For one thing it was limited geographically to the midwest and northeast. But all hell broke loose last year. Here are the current Big Ten: Michigan, Ohio State, Nebraska, Northwestern, Minnesota, Purdue, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan State, Penn State, Maryland, Rutgers, Iowa, and Wisconsin. I’m okay with those fourteen. But the four new ones — Oregon, Washington, USC, and UCLA. What the hell is that about? Doesn’t sit right with me. Michican and Oregon is like mayo and corn flakes.

    Just wanted to get that off my chest.

    The season opens a week from Thursday (8/28), with a real big OSU-Texas matchup slated for Saturday, 8/30, at noon in Columbus. BTW, Sam explained the protocol for rooting when a conference team is playing outside the conference: You support all Big Ten teams, except for Ohio State. So, Hook ’em Horns!!

    At 33D, the clue was “Dance performed in Smetana’s ‘The Bartered Bride,’” and the answer was POLKA. Fair enough. But did you know, per Rex, Smetana is also the English-language name for the different types of sour cream traditionally prevalent in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, and Central Asia? It is a dairy product produced by souring heavy cream. It is similar to crème fraîche, but nowadays mainly sold with 9% to 42% milkfat content depending on the country.

    Commenter Diane shared: The discussion of Czech sour cream brought back a memory for me. My best friend’s mom, from what was then Czechoslovakia, once prepared a summer snack for us of cucumbers and sour cream. As a child I thought it was unappetizing but I wish I could relive that day now. 

    See you tomorrow Chatterheads — thanks for dropping in.

  • Rack-eteering

    Travel agents are hurrying to upgrade their Alaska vacations to include a blow job from Trump. You know, the Putin package. Did any of you think for even a second that Trump wouldn’t spend every moment kissing his ass and selling out Ukraine? Puh-leeeeze.

    I love the analysts who are relieved that it wasn’t worse. Right. He could have, like, given Putin Chicago or New Mexico. Sheesh.

    This Tiny Love Story by Anil Classen was in the NYT Styles section today.

    At 24, I took my father to dinner. As our food arrived, he mumbled, “Don’t tell anyone . . . it’s our secret.” He smiled conspiratorially, slicing into the red meat that, as a Hindu, he wasn’t allowed to eat. “I have to tell you something,” I said slowly. “I will never marry a woman.” Tears blurred my vision, my sexuality finally open. “You have only one life,” he replied. “You don’t owe anyone any explanations.” Later, while parting, he kissed my forehead the way he did when I was a child. Twenty-four years later, I still touch that spot when I feel lost.

    [The staff could not agree on whether this next section belongs in the Dirty Old Man Department (Childish Humor Division), or in Cooking and Furnishings.]

    Do you remember the spice rack Homer Simpson built?

    You can actually buy ones that duplicate it.

    By way of contrast, Jamie Steed of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) posted the following:

    I’m not one for posting spicy contents on social media but after discussing racks with the wife for over a week, we finally bit the bullet. Not the largest we’ve ever seen but they still take a good handful to fill. Thankfully, the wife also appreciates a decent rack when she sees one.

    He added that he’s still struggling to find the oregano.

    Ian Bradley: I’ve swapped all the herbs and spices around in ours. The wife hasn’t noticed yet, but the thyme is cumin.

    To which Ashley Gray replied: High chive.

    Roger Collier: You have a couple of jars too many of coriander.

    Paul Miller: Why have you got two Italian Style Herb Blend, and why are they on different shelves?

    Clare Lorraine Payne: Ok very nice but this is doin’ my head in….herbs and spices need to be separated and the jars need to be in alphabetical order….sorry I’ll get my coat.

    Jamie: yep, I completely get it. I’ll admit, I’m disappointed in myself for how they are arranged. However, as the wife is, how do you say? vertically challenged… it’s easier to have the ones we use the most at a height she can reach off the step ladder.

    Anne Warner: I’m not sure how I would arrange them, I think I’d have to have the same coloured bottles together, in alphabetical order, starting shortest to tallest.

    Clare: Anything would be better than a mish mash.

    Michael C: I have quite a lot from Morrisons which have the initial of the spice/herb on top of the lid. I was making baked figs with honey and cinnamon one time, picked up the wrong C and ended up using cayenne pepper. Was actually quite nice after the initial surprise.

    Julie Watkins shared her rack, noting the contents are in alphabetical order:

    To which Clare replied: Nicely done.

    We’ll let Heidi Jones have the last word: I wish for a rack like your wife’s. Please do tell where you got them from?

    The puzzle today was by Sam Ezersky. But we knew something was up right from the start because his first name was written in Pig Latin, “Amsay,” and the title was Ixnay That (nix that). Looks like you need to know Pig Latin to solve it. Fortunately, it is among my many useless skills.

    The theme answers ended wackily using Pig Latin. Translating a word into Pig Latin requires taking the final sound, moving it to the front, and adding “ay” at the end. So “nix” becomes ixnay: the “ix” is moved to the front, and the “ay” is added at the end: is that earclay?

    The problem was even though the theme answers were clever in their way they weren’t very funny. My favorite was at 93A where the clue was “‘Do I ‘really’ wanna start an online bidding war? Hmm …’”? And the answer was TO EBAY OR NOT TO EBAY? (“Be” in Pig Latin is EBAY, so it was a play on “to be or not to be.”) See what I mean? Clever but so what? (Sorry, Sam Ezersky, maybe I’m just a grumpy Gus today. Or EEYORE, who was at 94D (Long-eared pal of Pooh)).

    At 23D, a non-theme clue was “French city from which a soup gets its name,” and the answer, of course, was TOMATO. Just kidding — it was VICHY. It gave me the chance to share one of my favorite old New Yorker cartoons with Rex’s gang:

    Long table at which monks are sitting. At the head is a large cauldron, and the monk who is serving soup to the others says: “Forgive me brothers, for breaking the sacred vow of silence, but I, for one, am tired of vichyssoise.”

    [Quick quiz: try spelling that soup without looking it up.]

    The puzzle defeated me at one square. I confused aviary with apiary and didn’t know Michael Stipe of REM. Rats!

    There was some serious-ass obscurity in it, but the crosses bailed me out. So, it was okay that I didn’t know that the “Minnesota county whose seat is St. Paul” is RAMSEY, or that the “Emperor who founded the Mughal Empire” was BABUR. I thought it was Murray.

    I know a few gods and goddesses (mostly from puzzles) but it was new to me that a Greek goddess of the night is NYX.

    At 86D, “Progressive inits. in the U.S. Congress,” was AOC. Hey, girl — lookin’ good!

    Here she is very pretty in wire rims and then at a family dinner with her grandpa.

    At 74D, the clue was “Vodka-and-lime cocktail,” and the answer was GIMLET (which is pronounced with a hard G). Rex went on for quite a while explaining that the clue is wrong. A gimlet is a gin drink, not vodka. The only alcohol I drink is beer, so I don’t have a dog in that hunt. But this song, below, ends with a great lyric, and Dinah Washington does a helluva job with it.

    Well, I got high last night
    And I took my man to his wife’s front door
    I said I got juiced last night
    And I took my man to his wife’s front door
    Oh, but she was a .45 packing mama
    And I ain’t gonna try that no more

    Adrian Bull of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) posted this picture and then wrote: My bird identification app seems to disagree with itself…

    I’m glad this is Owl Chatter and not Raven Chatter. Wouldn’t know what to make of it.

    See you tomorrow!

  • More Tift

    This poem by X. J. Kennedy is called “Mixed-Up School.”

    We have a crazy mixed-up school.
    Our teacher Mrs. Cheetah
    Makes us talk backwards. Nicer cat
    You wouldn’t want to meet a.

    To start the day we eat our lunch,
    Then do some heavy dome-work.
    The boys’ and girls’ rooms go to us,
    The hamster marks our homework.

    At recess time we race inside
    To don our diving goggles,
    Play pin-the-donkey-on-the-tail,
    Ball-foot or ap-for-bobbles.

    Old Cheetah with a chunk of chalk
    Writes right across two blackboards,
    And when she says, “Go home!” we walk
    The whole way barefoot backwards.

    If, like me, that little taste of Tift Merritt yesterday left you eager for more, read on. Her full name is Catherine Tift Merritt, and she was born in Houston and raised in Raleigh, NC. A southern Belle, for sure. She’s 50 now and has a daughter.

    Her sound has been described as “sonic short stories and poignant performances,” and she was compared to artists like Joni Mitchell and Emmylou Harris. The New Yorker praised her, and The Wall Street Journal described her as “in the tradition of Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Leonard Cohen.” Take another look and listen. Am I the only one she reminds of a McGarrigle sister? It’s such an honest rendition — there’s no distance between her and the song.

    Two items from The Onion:

    RFK Jr. Mandates All Americans Drink Mysterious Glowing Liquid

    Arizona High Schools To Teach Spanish Entirely In English

    The puzzle today didn’t screw around. Oh yeah? You hear of any of these?

    24A: “Évariste ___, 19th-century French math prodigy for whom a differential theory is named.” Answer GALOIS. [Judy?]

    Anony Mouse adds the following: While almost every mathematician would know the name Evariste Galois, I venture that only a small fraction would know that a differential theory is named for him. His brilliant innovations are considered part of algebra — no derivatives in sight.

    EG was a political activist and died at the crazy age of 20 from gunshot wounds incurred in a duel.

    9D: “Barack Obama’s final secretary of defense (2015-17).” ASH CARTER.

    26D: “Tony-winning actress who provided the singing voice for the Disney princesses Jasmine and Mulan.” SRSLY? The answer is LEA SALONGA. Actually, she’s a pretty big star aside from the Disney roles.

    Lea is 54 now, Filipino, and has been married to her businessman husband Robert for 20 years. They are fully supportive of their child who has transitioned from female Nicole to male Nic. Good-looking kid.

    The constructor also expected us know what the marine creature called “by-the-wind sailor” looks like. Four letters: BLOB.

    Did you know the “Largest of the Dodecanese Islands” is RHODES? Here’s egs on this one: “I had no idea which was the largest of the Dodecanese Islands. It’s not like I’m a f*cking RHODES scholar.”

    Ladies — ever hear of a BLOW DRY BAR? The clue was “Beauty lounge, of a sort.” News to me, but it’s definitely a thing.

    Oooooh, let’s take a peak inside. Don’t mind us, girls!

    Good night, Chatterheads! See you tomorrow!

  • Tift

    Made it back to Jersey in one piece. The trip was good! Our evening activities came in at two out of three. Two very good movies at the Savoy in Montpelier. First, a documentary on Jeff Buckley. Beautifully done. Ladies — he’s handsome beyond all normal bounds. A mensch too. You’ll get to know his mom a little, and his early and later girlfriends — both nice. I heard his version of LC’s Hallelujah and know it’s very well-respected, but otherwise am not very familiar with his music. His one big album is Grace. Sounds like he toured too much and professional pressures kept him from centering his life. Look at that shayna punim. Could you plotz?

    The second film was Sorry, Baby, starring and directed by Eva Victor. Very strong — very good. Some funny parts and her bestie is good too. It’s about how a grad student who gets her first job (as an English prof) responds to the shock of sexual abuse. She’s an extremely compelling and fresh character. The neighbor Gavin is Lucas Hedges — the nephew from the wrenching Manchester By The Sea. Here’s Eva.

    Phil must have been rambling on about himself during the shoot. Here’s a better one.

    We separated our three days among Montpelier, Waterbury, and Hurly-Burly Burlington. I already discussed the excellent Thai lunch in M-pelier. We had a great lunch in B’ton too, at a little place called The Rogue Rabbit. Two great sammies — pastrami and roasted eggplant. Wonderful bread. Terrific feel to the place — a pleasure just to sit there and enjoy the scene.

    Sip O’ Sunshine is a very well-respected craft beer, and it’s brewed by Lawson’s just a few miles up the road from our inn in Waitsfield. We paid them a short visit and I picked up a 12-pack of their pilsner. You would expect it to be very fresh, of course, but this was ridiculous. They were canned on 8/13 and I had them in my hands on 8/14. (Burp!)

    From Lawson’s we went to a huge community party at the American Flatbread (Pizza) headquarters — also not far from our inn in Waitsfield. It was their 40th anniversary and they invited everyone over for free slices and a band was playing, etc. Long lines, but a fun time.

    From there we drove over to the Valley Players Theater for the 18th annual “Tenfest.” It seemed like a great idea — ten local (well, Vermont) playwrights each put on a ten-minute play. Sounded like fun and we liked the idea of supporting the local theater (and there was nothing else to do). It was kind of fun, but we were a little tired, so we only stayed for the first half. The first playlet was my favorite, called Cubs Win! Three women were chatting at the funeral of a guy they knew, who was a great Cubs fan. Turns out he was quite a womanizer and had been having affairs with all three and promised each major things (like a trip to Paris, or I’ll leave my wife) if the Cubs won the World Series. Of course, they (at last) did win that year but (luckily?) he died right after the final out. (Literally, a final out.)

    Here’s a clue from today’s puzzle that threw me for a loop. The clue was “Rock alternative,” and the answer had five letters. I’ll give it to you after this photo of Tift Merritt, whom I never heard of under my rock. Check out this tune of hers too.

    So the clue was “Rock alternative.” Answer: PAPER (Get it?)

    It was a great puzzle, IMO. Another favorite of mine was a grid spanner (15 letters long). The clue was “‘Let me handle this,’” and the answer was I’LL DO THE TALKING.

    Many of us were thrown by “Younger Simpson sister,” six letters. I wrote MAGGIE in right away, a gimme. Lisa and Maggie. But the crosses kept fighting it. So I started thinking of Marge’s two sisters, but I couldn’t remember their names (Thelma? Selma?). Turns out they are Patty and Selma — neither is six letters. It was ASHLEE. Jessica Simpson’s younger sis. Of course!

    And here’s Maggie. What was I thinking?

    How about this one at 7D? The clue was “‘u r freaking hilarious!’” So I thought ROFL (rolling on floor laughing) or LMAO (laughing my ass off), but the answer was five letters long. Turned out to be LMFAO. What? In the NYT? Is F what it usually is? Or is it “fat?”

    See you tomorrow!

  • Rockin’ Robins

    Our favorite commenter on Rex’s blog, egs (short for egsforbreakfast) got me scared yesterday referring to himself as having cancer. I should have known better. He was playing with the puzzle theme: TOUCANS — phrases that had “can” in them twice. Egs’s note said: This will be short as I’m having a cancer scan. I should have listened to the Canadian canards about eating Cancun pecans I guess.

    Barbara S. dazzled us with a different sort of note. I’m going to share it, in its entirety. It has nothing I can see that relates to the puzzle (altho it’s about birds and toucans are birds). She just had a story she wanted to tell, and (correctly) felt the (mostly) friendly lunatics who read Rex’s blog on the puzzle would enjoy it.

    Over the past few weeks, my husband and I have been godparents to a family of robins who have been nesting on our front porch. They built the nest in the early spring and we got quite excited about our new tenants, but then they abandoned their construction and disappeared. I guess they found a nesting site they liked better for their first brood of the season. But then, around 10 July, they came back and started reinforcing the nest. Woo-hoo, we’re going to get some avian action, after all! The mom laid four eggs but, sadly, according to one of our eagle-eyed neighbors, one was stolen by a crow. (I like crows for their astonishing intelligence, but it’s no wonder they call them in groups “a murder.”)

    Mom-robin was the soul of patience as she sat incubating those eggs. Our neighbors are having their driveway, front walkway and back patio replaced, and she had to carry out her vigil through the sounds of jackhammers and stonecutting saws – what a cacophony! I found it interesting that although she mostly sat there quite motionless, she did feel free to fly off for brief forays, presumably to eat. (It was during one of these absences, of course, that the crow struck.)

    Then, one day, we noticed both parents sitting on the edge of the nest and looking down into it. Hah – that could mean only one thing: baby birds have hatched! Then began the non-stop feeding ritual, in which both parents seemed to participate equally. They flew in and out of our porch at Mach-speed. If you happened to be out there near the flight-path, your hair could practically get singed.

    The little birds grew until first beaks and then bodies were visible over the sides of the nest. We were surprised that there was no chirping in the early days of feeding – it seems it takes a few days for the babies to find their voice. Hatchlings are really not an attractive sight and their open beaks seem to be the same size as the rest of them. But how quickly they passed through that stage and turned into little speckled buddhas sitting stolidly in a row, waiting for their next meal.

    And then one early morning before I was up, one of them fell out of the nest. Code yellow! Red alert! Battle stations! The dear little thing was unhurt and my husband popped it back in, after first determining that this action wouldn’t jeopardize the viability of the family. Apparently, robins don’t have a particularly good sense of smell so aren’t able to detect human interference. And, indeed, feeding went on in the normal fashion after that. Then, the next day, the little blighter fell out again, but this time, when my husband went to retrieve it, it flew a short distance. It flew! Good grief, how can that be? A mere two weeks ago, it was an egg!

    The second chick departed soon after that, leaving one lonely hold-out in the nest. We understand that, for a time, the parents feed the fledglings on the ground, and were a bit afraid that in their zeal to find the departees, they might forget about the remaining nester. Early this morning, my husband looked out and that last chick was perched on the edge of the nest, looking around, and presumably closely considering its next move. A little later a parent arrived with food and found that chick…gone! Poof, vanished, out into the big wide world.

    So, sniff, my husband and I are empty-nesters. We’ve been utterly riveted at all stages of the family’s development, and can’t wait to see if the nest will be used again.

    It elicited many “thank you for sharings” and this comment from long-time commentariat member Nancy: Barbara S. — Your wonderfully evocative comment makes me feel once again an emotion that I, a lifelong New Yorker, have too often experienced on this blog: Nature envy. You see, I have to walk to my Nature in Central Park. Nature doesn’t come to me. And it certainly doesn’t hang around for weeks and months at a time, revealing itself slowly in fascinating stages and progressions.

    Tippi Hedren and Melanie Griffith are both beautiful women. TH is 95, kinehora, living in New Ulm MN, and MG, her daughter, just turned 68 a few days ago. She (Mel) was married to Antonio Banderas for close to 20 years. And Melanie is mom to another knockout, Dakota Johnson. But Antonio is not Dakota’s dad — Don Johnson is. Mel was married to him twice, 13 years apart. Mel did have a child with Antonio — Stella. Time to throw some faces at you. Tippi, Mel, and Antonio with Stella.

    This all comes up because it was Hitchcock’s birthday this week. Like most moviegoers I was a fan. But when I learned how abusive he was to Tippi Hedren, well, he can go fuck himself in his grave. He played in the same playground as Harvey Weinstein. Hedren rebuffed him but he abused her terribly for years, treating her like a possession, and obsessing over her. Is it so hard to appreciate beauty, cherish and protect it? Shouldn’t that be the natural response?

    ********

    Will report on our excellent VT getaway next time. Thanks for popping in, Chatterheads!

  • Bamboo Stilts

    Broadcasting today from the wonderful Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier VT. How wonderful? Well, the information lady just helped me print out a puzzle for Linda off of my phone. Left to my own device, literally, — not a chance. It’s not air conditioned, but it’s one of those old buildings that don’t seem to get too hot and there’s a fan. That’s important because it’s going to hit 90 today, even up here in Vermont.

    We stopped at Walmart first to get a box of tissues ($1.84). The Waitsfield Inn didn’t supply one. Also got some authentic VT maple syrup: gifts for Caity and Sam, and get this — the Walmart up here sells beer. A fresh 12-pack of Long Trail Ale was going for just $15-something. Unheard of. (Burp!)

    Self-served ourselves some gas on Route 2 (not too badly priced up here), and by the time we found a non-permit, non-metered parking spot, it was ten and the library was open.

    Our plan today is to chill at the library till lunch at a very interesting looking Thai place. Then take a shady walk if we can find one. We’re catching a documentary film about Jeff Buckley at 5:45 at an artsy movie house in town, so we’ll either have dinner before it or after it, depending on our appetites. Not sure where yet.

    I just reread the above and notice that it’s quite dull. I may be spending too much time with the Dull Men’s Club (UK). That’s going to happen. Love those guys (and gals).

    Our one stop on the way up here was fantastic: The incredible Ying Quartet performing at Music Mountain in Connecticut on Sunday. Easily one of the best quartets we’ve ever heard, not that I’m a good judge. There are three Yings (Janet (second violin), Philip (viola), and David (cello)) plus Robin Scott, first violin. Four Yings formed the quartet way back in 1988. Scott has been with them for ten years.

    We had seats way up front (Row B) and could see and feel the intensity as well as hear it. Music Mountain recognizes that the classical music audience is made up 99% by seniors. So there is no senior discount. In fact, there’s a discount for listeners under 40 (and I think if you’re under 18 it’s free). But, there’s also a 50% discount for teachers. How great is that? So we splurged on the seats up front. (Lawn seating, btw, is normally $30, but is free for teachers.)

    They played two of the most popular quartets out there (Dvorak’s American and Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, and two lesser known works. How they could still move their arms after the Schubert for a wildly demanded encore (Gershwin) was amazing. Well, as wild as a room full of octogenarians can get.

    From the sublime to the ridiculous. For those of you who did not share in our glee at the confirmation of Pete Hegseth, you’ve got to admit he’s been an endless source of nonsense and delight. Historian Heather Cox Richardson shared this latest in her newsletter a few days ago:

    Last Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted a video in which Christian nationalist pastors express their opposition to the idea of women voting. “I would like to see this nation being a Christian nation, and I would like this world to be a Christian world,” said Christian nationalist Doug Wilson. In his repost of the video, Hegseth wrote “All of Christ for All of Life.”

    Voting rights for women??? Why, the next thing you know, men will want ’em!

    Monday’s puzzle theme was revealed at 64A “Cocktail party staple:” CHEESE BOARD. So the theme answers were, e.g., “Independence Day banger” for (FIRE) CRACKER. And a (TRAFFIC) JAM supplied the jam. Did you know the little Lego people are called MINI FIGS? That’s how we got figs on the board. And ALISON BRIE was the cheese (“Recipient of two Golden Globe Best Actress nominations for Netflix’s ‘GLOW’”). She’s not looking cheesy here:

    This poem was written by Li Bai and translated from Chinese by Ezra Pound. It’s called “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter.”

    While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
    I played about the front gate, pulling flowers
    You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
    You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
    And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
    Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

    At fourteen I married My Lord you.
    I never laughed, being bashful.
    Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
    Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

    At fifteen I stopped scowling,
    I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
    Forever and forever, and forever.
    Why should I climb the lookout?

    At sixteen you departed,
    You went into far Ku-to-Yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
    And you have been gone five months.
    The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
    You dragged your feet when you went out.
    By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
    Too deep to clear them away!
    The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
    The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
    Over the grass in the West garden,
    They hurt me.
    I grow older,
    If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
    Please let me know beforehand,
    And I will come out to meet you,
                                    As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

    It’s the afternoon now, and OMG lunch was fantastic. Wilaiwan’s Kitchen is a window opening onto the street where you place your order and pay (cards only). There was a line of people waiting the entire time we were there. They only offer three options: noodle dishes in different spicy broths with chicken, beef, or pork. $12 each. They are open from 11 to 2, or until sold out. The menu changes weekly. Two tables outside and a few inside. Most folks order take out. We were lucky to get one of the outside tables. Generous portions; absolutely delicious.

    Bill Jeffs of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) shared the following with the membership: Slot booked for local recycling centre tomorrow. Wife is excited as I haven’t taken her anywhere other than the supermarket for ages!

    Dee Smith: Perhaps a romantic meal to follow?

    Matt Matterson: Easy now, Smith.

    Graham Walker: Who is being recycled?

    Bill: Now you’ve put ideas in my head, I was only planning to get rid of an old armchair and few other bits ‘n’ bobs.

    Rich Smith: Hang on Bill, I thought you meant you were just taking her there — why are you throwing out a chair and bits and bobs. Can you itemise what you are intending on throwing away? This is unacceptable and you will regret it. 

    Rich Smith: What’s the special occasion to warrant that Bill? Is it her birthday? It’s a bit extravagant isn’t it and what if other wives see your post? They are all going to be on their full husbands case now and expect the same luxury

    Bumper sticker on car in VT. (I told Caity I’d get her one):

    HONK IF YOU SEE A KID FALL OUT

    Today’s puzzle was by Erik Agard, a master craftsman, and I can’t recall Rex ever raving as profusely as he does over it: the freshness of the clues and answers, the craft of the construction (two “stacks” of three nine-letters answers each). The revealer was TOUCANS and the three theme answers each had CAN in them twice: MEXICAN AMERICAN, CANDY CANE, and CAN’T HOLD A CANDLE. For a long time NYT XWs routinely contained white men, and Black women just didn’t exist. Today, there are four Black women, including ANITA HILL (clued as a law professor), and no white men.

    At 18D “Online publication of Vox Media,” was THE CUT. It’s an online pub that’s part of New York Magazine. In 2015, it published a New York Magazine cover feature by Noreen Malone that included interviews with 35 women who had accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault. The cover image and photo portfolio by Amanda Demme included portraits of all the women seated and an empty chair to symbolize those unable to come forward. An excerpt from E. Jean Carroll’s book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal ran in 2019 on THE CUT and on the cover of New York‘s print magazine, in which she first shared her story of being sexually assaulted by then-President You-Know-Whom.

    Whew. Time to go. To be continued.

  • Lollapuzzoola 2025

    Getting lost on the way to the puzzle-solving tournament was not a good omen. I forgot or never knew that the #2 subway line peeled off and headed east after 96th Street. So when I got off at 116th, I was way east of where I had to be. And where was that? Riverside Church way on the Westside at 119th. At Lollapuzzoola 2025, the second biggest crossword tournament in the U.S. It was going to be my third appearance. Or so I thought.

    I had close to an hour so I started walking west, but Morningside Heights is not heights for no reason. (Please don’t not forgive my double negatives.) So after a few blocks there was a massive set of steps heading up to the heavens. I started the trudge, but it was hot, and I’m suffering from my summer allergies, so I thought better of it after a few flights. I gave up.

    The options were to really give up and just head home — that would teach the Universe a lesson! Or take a cab, if I could find one. I found one but it passed right by me. Arggggh. F*ck you Universe! But the second one stopped and I climbed in. I still had about 25 minutes, plus I knew it really didn’t start at the crack of ten. The driver did his best to get me there, but we were stopped several blocks short by a parade. (I forget what the parade was for.) The cop told him he’d have to go all the way down to 96th to cross. (We were on 120th and that’s where I needed to be.) I told the driver I’d walk the rest of the way and paid him $12 for a $9.40 fare. It was about 9:45.

    Remember The Graduate? The last scene? Dustin Hoffman had to get to Katherine Ross’s wedding so he could stop it and run off with her. He’s driving like mad, but runs out of gas. D’oh! So he ditches the car and starts running. That was me, except I was walking. With about seven minutes to go, I burst into Riverside Church, banged on the chapel windows and started shouting Elaine! Elaine! Hundreds of puzzle solvers turned around to see what was happening. Time stopped. Elaine’s dad called me a son of a bitch. Finally, Katherine Ross screamed Ben!

    And Lollapuzzoola 2025 was on. Never in doubt.

    I’m pretty sure I did worse than my previous two times. I came in #144 out of 173 in my category. (There are three categories: local (normal people); express (geniuses); and pairs (couples working together).) Still — I finished in the top 100%!

    The first puzzle eased us into things and I completed it with time to spare and no errors. Yay me. You got points for correct answers and a bonus for a perfect grid. You could ask for help (an answer) 8 times during the day by cashing in a google ticket but each time you did it cost you 25 points. You also got a point for each second you finished before the allotted time.

    The second was a notch tougher. I was still able to finish early but made three errors. Not too shabby.

    The third one bloodied me. There was a trick to it. It was called “Balloon Animals” and some of the answers expanded with repeated letters, but I couldn’t get a handle on it. So I ended up using all the time and making a whole bunch of errors.

    For lunch, I found a nice bench on Riverside Drive and relaxed by doing crossword puzzles on my phone. No I didn’t!! Are you nuts? I enjoyed a fine tuna sandwich I brought from home. The tournament provided pizza and drinks for $15 but I opted out. I’m glad I did — there was some mess at the distribution point.

    We were warned that the fourth puzzle would be the hardest. Yup. No question. I took all 40 minutes and only figured out part of the trick. And for the first time ever I cashed in two google tickets. It helped. I managed to fill in much of the grid, but it was rife with errors. One of the organizers had constructed the puzzle. It was brilliant. The theme was revealed in the final across answer which was CALL BULL. (Like saying “bullshit.”) And throughout the grid whenever the letters RED appeared in a word, something happened, and the answer was the opposite of what the clue asked for. SRSLY, right? They sent us copies of all the puzzles. I’m going to try that one again at my leisure. I just have to find my leisure suit.

    You might think I was depleted after those bludgeonings, but I had my best showing in the fifth puzzle. A perfect grid, finished early! Nice to end on an up note.

    I’m ending here so I can get ready for our big summer vacation. A concert today at 3 at Music Mountain in CT, followed by four nights in Waitsfield VT. Can’t wait. Broadcasting may be spotty, but I’ll do my best.

    Thanks for popping in Chatterheads!