The Wellington Files

The Jets are uncharacteristically decent this year. When I can’t get back to sleep I often resort to all-night sports-talk radio to bore me back to unconsciousness, and one of the hosts, Sal Licata, can be funny. He was recognizing the hesitancy of Jet fans to be hopeful, after decades of awfulness. He compared it to when you were dating, and it was one bad date after another, on and on and on, and then one girl seems a little okay, and you start wondering about her a bit, but you’ve had such a bad history, you’re afraid to hope for too much. He paused for about ten seconds, and then he screamed at us — LET THE LOVE IN!! OPEN YOUR HEARTS, JET FANS!! IT’S REAL — SHE’S THE ONE!

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Today’s Merriam-Webster Word of the Day is “nugatory,” which means “of little or no consequence.” And it brought me back over 50 years. William F. Buckley visited Brandeis and there was a good turnout for the event. You may recall he was famed for having (and using) an extraordinary vocabulary, and he didn’t hesitate to throw some big words at us during his presentation. In the Q&A that followed, most of the questions were on the politics of the day, but one student got a big laugh for asking him what “exiguous” means (a word he had used). Buckley smiled appreciatively. When the laughter ebbed, he leaned over and said into the mic: “nugatory.”

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Today’s puzzle was fun, and right up the alley of us introverts. The theme was “LEAVE ME OUT OF IT,” and there were a whole bunch of starred clues the answers to which only made sense if you removed the letters ME. For example, my favorite was 37A. The clue was “Grammy-winning Jones.” And the answer was MENORAH. Take away the ME and you get NORAH (Jones). (The word with the ME (menorah) was unclued.)

Similarly, at 10D, the clue was “Courier and Papyrus, for two.” These are fonts, so the answer was foMEnts, which is “fonts” once you remove the ME. To top it off, the last across clue/answer was “Award that sounds like two letters,” and it was EMMY, which, of course, is a phonetic ME.

The clue at 49A was “Shade” and the answer was TINT, which prompted this comment. (I think I discussed this once before, but I know I’ve already forgotten it.)

“A ‘tint’ results when you mix a pure color with white, a ‘shade’ when you mix with black, and a ‘tone’ when you mix with grey (equal amounts white and black). The NYTXW uses these terms interchangeably to the chagrin of the artistically nit-picky among us.”

Do you know FOMO? It’s “fear of missing out,” or, as the clue reads: “Anxiety about not being included.” It’s the other side of the coin from “leave me out of it,” one commenter noticed.

Here’s what LMS had to say on FOMO:

“On Monday I had to leave school unexpectedly because of a toothache that was staggering in its intensity. (Turns out I need a root canal.) Anyhoo… when I miss school, I don’t have FOMO but rather FOBFOFTITIAABF. Fear Of Being Found Out For The Imposter That I Am And Being Fired. Like my emergency sub plans are crappy or my bulletin board isn’t spiffy enough or the standards for all three classes that we’re required to have posted every day are not up to date.

“So Monday afternoon I get a call from one of the security guys who leaves the message ‘Call me please.’  Don’t do this to a worrier! What I actually heard was James Earl Jones’s voice telling me, You are about to be fired. Turns out it was just that one of my famous apples had a rotten spot, and ants were showing up. He just wanted me to know to bring more apples. Could you not have included this in your message??“

SERRA de Estrela made an appearance: the highest mountain range in Portugal.

A legend associated with the mountain is mentioned in Chapter 41 of Moby-Dick:“… the prodigies related in old times of the inland Strello mountain in Portugal (near whose top there was said to be a lake in which the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface)…”

Though the region has a very small local Jewish population, it has emerged as a center for kosher food with local producers launching kosher versions of their olive oil and wine, and with cheesemakers obtaining kosher certification for some products. And the Estrela Mountain Dog takes its name from this region. Hi Puppy!

Mount VESUVIUS popped in too, clued as the mountain that inspired the song “Funiculi, Funicula.”

Enough with the mountains already. I’m exhausted. Where’s the trail back down?

Kudos to Buck Showalter, NY Mets manager, who was named NL Manager of the Year yesterday — the first Met manager to win the award in their 60-year history.

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia means “fear of long words.” It’s a real thing that can lead to learning disorders and all the other stuff that any phobia can cause. It contains the root “sesquipedalian,” which means “long word.”

I’m going to start keeping a bag in my head for things that make life worth living. I’ll put that word in (along with Zoey’s face).

That word came up today in relation to the puzzle, which is all about unusual words that don’t mean what you might think they mean. In five places the clue has a crossed-out part (the meaning you might think the answer has), and then the true meaning. For example, for ARCTOPHILE, the crossed-out part is “Devotee of polar regions.” It certainly seems to mean that from “arcto.” But in fact it means “Lover of teddy bears.” Amazing, no? “Arctos” is Greek for bear.

It seems ridiculous to have a special word for a lover of teddy bears, doesn’t it? Now, strigiformesphilia, on the other hand, the love of owls, is a very important word.

Another good one from the puzzle is PANTOPHOBIA, which means “Fear of everything,” from “pan.” It doesn’t mean “Fear of trousers,” the crossed-out clue. (Ha!)

And MANDUCATES means “Chews” (like masticates); it doesn’t mean “Elaborates condescendingly to a female,” sort of along the lines of “mansplaining.”

This theme led the redoubtable LMS to come up with some other words that don’t mean what you might think they mean: A proctologist does not study “analogy.” Someone who opens bars and taverns is not in “puberty.” And the bajillion kids whose tears and screams ruin the annual picture on Santa’s lap do not suffer from “claustrophobia.”

My favorite clue/answer today was at 32D: “Nail polish brand with the shade ‘I’m Not Really a Waitress.” (Answer OPI.) Here’s what it looks like:

Is that the best ever name for a nail polish color? I think it would make a better lipstick. LMS says: “If you squint, almost any entry in the grid is a contender for lipstick shade these days: UNWISE, OK GO, SPA DAY, START, IT’S ON ME, GOD YES, ICY HOT, ACID TRIP, GUAC.”

I’m not sure that last one works for me. The rest are “full speed ahead,” especially GOD YES. (BTW, the clue for GOD YES was “resounding agreement.”)

Another good clue/answer was right up there at 1 down: “Para alpine sport equipment.” “Para” as in Para Olympics — for athletes with a disability. The answer was SIT SKI, the ski equivalent of a wheelchair.

The puzzle was pretty short on names. There was Timothee Chalamet and Diane Rehm, the first of which I barely knew and the second (journalist/podcaster) not at all. Here’s the handsome Chalamet with his enviable mop of hair:

Rehm is a former public radio talk show host. She got into a bit of a pickle over an interview she conducted with Bernie Sanders. Here’s the discussion in wikipedia:

“On June 10, 2015, Rehm interviewed 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, and stated that Sanders had dual citizenship with Israel; this was not true. Sanders denied that he holds dual citizenship, but Rehm repeated her assertion as a fact. Sophia Tesfaye of Salon pointed out that Rehm apparently fell for an anti-Semitic canard and did not successfully fact-check her information. In The Times of Israel, Gedalyah Reback stated that the interview was controversial because Rehm seemed to have accused a Jewish U.S. presidential candidate of maintaining secret Israeli citizenship.

“Rehm apologized in a statement released later that day. ‘On today’s show I made a mistake. Rather than asking Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders whether he had dual U.S./Israeli citizenship, as I had read in a comment on Facebook, I stated it as fact. I want to apologize as well to all our listeners for having made an erroneous statement. I am sorry for the mistake. However, I am glad to play a role in putting this rumor to rest.’

Jewish Journalist Josh Marshall called her apology ‘a total crock.’ Jewish Law professor David Bernstein found it strange that both Rehm and her producer fell for what he felt was an obvious anti-Semitic hoax. He speculated that frequently-heard strange accusations about Jewish supporters of Israel may have played a role. Elizabeth Jepsen, NPR’s ombudsman, took issue with both Rehm’s interview and apology: ‘Far from putting anything to rest, Rehm has now taken a falsehood from the fringes of the Internet and moved it into the mainstream conversation.’”

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When Sanders was running for president in 2016, I heard an interviewer ask him if he felt capable of handling “the emergency phone call at 3 am.” Sanders replied: “I am usually up at that hour to go to the bathroom.”

Let’s end today with a special shout-out to friends Lizzie, Robert, and Susan, long-time citizens of Bernie-land. Hi guys!

Yesterday, 35 down was SOS, you know, the “send help” signal.  It prompted this comment:  “Not only is it a palindrome [reads the same backwards and forwards] it’s also an ambigram — being readable upside down as well as right side up. Handy when seeking help from that lone airplane flying over the deserted island.”

And this funny response:  “Your suggestion about SOS being handy because it reads the same upside down has a ring of plausibility to it. Before SOS was adopted, search pilots would often come back to base saying things like, ‘No sign of the lost boy. The only unusual thing I saw was a stick formation in the snow that spelled bLEH.’”

Raise your hand if you read yesterday’s post but were too lazy to click on the link to the Bangor video.  Seriously?  It’s three f**king minutes long.  Guaranteed to bring a smile.  Go back there and click!!  What the hell else are you going to do with your time?

Today’s puzzle was special for me — it contained both of my granddaughters, albeit misspelled.  LIANA at 44A was short an N, and ZOE at 62A was shy a Y.  Hi Girls!

The theme was cute:  OLD MACDONALD plus EIEIO, set the tone, and then it had three animals in long answers:  DON’T HAVE A COW; SHEEPSHEAD; and WHITEHORSE, with the appropriate animal sounds right underneath them:  MUU MUU, BABA, and NAE NAE.  Very nicely done!

Sheepshead was a little weird.  It was clued with “Game fish whose face resembles that of a herd animal.”  Here’s what they look like:  Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn is named after them.

Singer Gibson or Harry was the clue for DEBBIE.  The former was a teenage heart-throb of mine.  Can you blame me?

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The comedian Gallagher passed away this week.  He was 76.  You may recall him as the long-haired, mustachioed fellow in a cap or beret, who gleefully smashed watermelons on stage with a sledgehammer.  He called it the Sledge-O-Matic as a takeoff on the food-processing Veg-O-Matic.  As he explained, “If you want it to be in little pieces, why not just hit it with a hammer?”  

He played more than 100 concert dates a year for more than 30 years, obliterating more than 15,000 melons. He traveled with 15 footlockers of props, among them a “handgun” that fired plastic hands.

As a student at U. of South Florida (English major), he orchestrated a protest against cafeteria food. He parked a trailer with a dozen pigs by the cafeteria’s entrance and urged students to feed the pigs their leftover food. When officials told him that the food must be washed before being fed to the pigs, he said his point was made.

In ’03, when Gov. Gray Davis of CA was recalled, Gallagher was among the 135 people who sought to replace him.  His platform included a demand that that the state send big helicopters to lift vehicles from accident sites.  He finished 16th.

I have long believed in the curative powers of bad jokes, but I never thought I’d find the science to back it up.  Get this —  In 1987, UPI reported that researchers at Loma Linda University  studying laughter, took blood samples from 10 medical students while they watched Gallagher perform. Not only did they laugh uproariously; their white blood cells increased. The comedian, the scientists said, appeared to have boosted the subjects’ immune systems.

The NYT obit finished with this:  He couldn’t help himself. On a sightseeing visit to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in 2003, he found a piece of watermelon in a fruit salad. He promptly smashed it on the head of a floor broker.

Rest in peace, Gallagher.  Thanks for the laughs.

As you know, I’m quite an expert on romance.  What’s my secret?  Well, for one thing, I read the Modern Love column in the Sunday NYT whenever I remember that I like it.  Last Sunday there was a story by a guy who was either kicked out by his wife or left his wife six times over their 32 years of marriage.  So you might not think he’s all that brilliant a source on the topic.  Here’s some of what he says:

“I have always thought of Deb wherever I am.  Whomever I am with.  Whenever I experience something good.  I want her to experience the same thing.  I can’t stand to watch a movie without her.  I’ll walk out after half an hour if I can’t turn to her in the dark and whisper, ‘Isn’t this great?’ I can’t ride my motorcycle into the Rocky Mountains.  I can’t enter a diner with worn pine floorboards and an antique, curve-glass pie case with slices of banana cream inside.  I can’t take a flight without wishing she were occupying the seat beside me.

“I think we have the wrong idea about marriage.  It’s not like running a business, where there are recordable credits and debits.  It’s more like learning, after a thousand hangovers, to stop drinking so much.  Or learning, after often being false, to be true just once, in the hope that you can continue to be true.  Or learning, after habitually hating yourself, to love yourself just once, in the hope that you can continue to love yourself.  And then learning, through loving yourself, to love someone else.

“I moved back in with Deb.  Soon enough now, I’ll be alone on the edge of sleep.  Just as I am alone on the edge of all things.  It’s how I am.  It may be how we all are.  And still in love.”  

Thank God for the nitpickers. The clue for OWLS today was: “Birds that can twist their heads almost 360 degrees,” and one fellow was aghast. He said owls can only twist their heads 270 degrees, which is 3/4 of 360, and he doesn’t think 3/4 is enough for “almost.” (Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a hoot. Or a whoo (whoom?).)

The answer at 69A was TLDR, an internet-speak initialism that stands for Too Long Didn’t Read. It was oddly clued with “Here’s a brief summary.”

Some nice combos include sound effects THUD and WHAP, along with TIME BOMBS and EXPLODES. Puzzles can be dangerous.

The musical guest in today’s puzzle is Joan JETT, of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Their biggest hit was “I Love Rock and Roll,” which was No. 1 on Billboard for seven weeks in 1982, and is Billboard’s #56 song of all time. She and the band were inducted into the R&R HOF in 2015. Joan got her first guitar when she was 13 and started taking lessons but quit because her instructor kept trying to teach her folk songs (the noive!). On 10/29/2014 Jett sang the National Anthem in NY at a Knicks-Bulls game. The Bulls won 104-80. She’s 64 now, kinehora, and performed in concert as recently as Sept. 2021. This shot is from 2010, when she was 52. Looks good!

For obvious reasons, the Oreo is the favorite cookie of Crossworld: The snack equivalent of Bobby ORR or Mel OTT. Vermont friend Susan (Hi S!), took me to task, albeit gently, for snubbing thin oreos the other day. She says she likes them and shared a neat video in which a young lady and a guy compete on the creation of a “Franken Oreo,” which combines 18 different Oreo flavors (!). The woman is detaching the cookie portion of each from the creme. She is then blending all the creme into a “franken creme,” combining (somehow) the cookie parts into franken cookies, and then rebuilding the parts into her Franken Oreo. The guy is just smashing them all together and mixing them into ice cream. Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k6vpI-2yao

I had no idea there are so many Oreo flavors. A food site, Delish, ranks 30 Oreo flavors. These include unusual ones such as Red Velvet, Gingerbread, Carrot Cake, and Apple Cider Donut. The winner, in their eyes, is the Double Stuf Oreo, which actually has less creme in it than the Mega Oreo or the Most Stuf Oreo. Their explanation of their choice is: “There is nothing better in this goddamn world.” Works for me. The runner up was Lemon Oreo.

My favorite use of that term was in Woody Allen’s Love and Death. The guy he is with points to someone and says: “There’s Berchikov, he’s the village idiot.” And Woody Allen says: “Yeah? And what are you — runner up?”

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BANGOR Maine appeared in Sunday’s puzzle. From Rex comments I learned that Bangorians are very sensitive about the pronunciation of their city. It’s pronounced Ban-gore, not Banger. They produced a very funny musical public service video on the matter. https://youtu.be/K_q9hAAIS-c

Wisdom from Carl: “Someone just honked to get me out of my parking spot faster. So now I have to sit here until both of us are dead.”

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New Yorker cartoonist George Booth died. He was 96. The magazine said goodbye in its 11/14 issue with a “Postscript” written by Emma Allen, the current cartoon editor. She writes: “In the days after 9/11, when a return to normal life felt unimaginably hard, Booth supplied the sole “cartoon” in the issue following the attacks: a drawing of Mrs. Ritterhouse [the cartoon avatar of Booth’s mother], her fiddle on the floor, her eyes closed in prayer, a cat nearby covering its face with its paws.”

On the recommedation of a friend, I started reading a Holocaust survivor’s memoir, Parallel Lines, by Peter Lantos. He said he generally stays away from that darkness, but found this book hard to put down. I got hooked on the first page. Lantos says this about the town in Hungary where he was born (Mako): “Searching the internet for ‘Mako’ yields a surprising result: 108,204 hits spread over 10,821 pages. But before one can get carried away with chauvinistic pride over the extraordinary popularity of one’s hometown, the truth soon hits: the name is not the sole property of a small town in Hungary. Other contestants vying for attention are the short-finned shark, Mako (Isurus Oxyrinchus); full and semi-rigid inflatable boats and rubber ducks bearing the trade name Mako, produced in Cape Town, South Africa; and Compair Mako, a manufacturer of breathing equipment in Texas.”

Rubber ducks! I’m in.

The Saturday puzzle was lambasted by the gang as too easy. I don’t know about that — it gave me enough of a ride.

Some of the cluing was clever. How about: “”It resurfaces after 20 minutes?” Since a period in a hockey game is 20 minutes long, the answer was ZAMBONI — the big lumbering machine that “resurfaces” the ice. One commenter imagined a slow highway chase scene led by a Zamboni with all the cars behind it slipping off the side of the road.

“One growing up in a cave?” was STALAGMITE. A discussion arose on how best to remember the difference between a stalagmite and a stalactite. My favorite is that the G in stalaGmite says it grows up from the Ground, while the C is stalaCtite says it grows down from the Ceiling. If the two meet they form a “column.” If it’s by Maureen Dowd it’s an Op-Ed column.

“November 13, e.g.,” was the clue for IDES. Did you think it’s the 15th, because March 15 (we all know) is the famous “Ides of March?” Well, the “ides” fall on the 15th only in March, May, July, and October. For all other months, the ides fall on the 13th. Also, if you are wondering whether it’s correct to say “the ides fall,” or “the ides falls,” they are both right. (Whew.)

Did you know there is an OREO THIN? “Certain cookie spinoff.” They are billed as “crispy,” but I don’t really see the need for them. They look like there’s no cream inside, but there is a small amount.

In the grid they show up near DIPPIN’ DOTS: “Ice Cream of the Future.” I’ve only seen them at ballgames and I’ve never tried them.

Speaking of snacks, did you know that most of the Snickers bars in the U.S. are produced in WACO TEXAS? That’s what 20A posits. It’s also where Dr. Pepper comes from. BTW, what medical school did Dr. Pepper go to? Musta been U. of Minnesoda, no?

God, this is a boring post. I’m writing it and even I’m bored. Time to zhuzh things up a bit. How about 25A?: “Grammy winning actress Carrere” is TIA. Yikes! Fellas — don’t google her swimsuit pix — you’ll have a stroke!

“Hernandez of Team USA gymnastics” is LAURIE.

And “Hollywood’s Ryan” is, of course, MEG, famous for the funniest ever scene in the movies in When Harry Met Sally. The older woman at the end of that scene was Rob Reiner’s mother. Here’s Meg before whatever happened happened.

One of the jobs of a constructor is to come up with a fresh clue for a word that has appeared a zillion times before. This clue was good: “Peter or Paul, but not Mary,” for TSAR. When you’re talking about a guy from the old days in Russia it’s “tsar.” When you’re using it in a current meaning (Energy Czar, Drug Czar), it’s “czar.” At least that’s the convention in Crossworld.

“Rabbi, is there a proper blessing for the Tsar?”

“Yes. May the Lord bless and keep the Tsar — far away from us!”

The big Sunday puzzle announced itself with a bad pun — Sweet! The clue for 1 across was “Sell, as bicycles?,” and the answer was PEDDLE. Ouch. But everyone’s favorite was at 13A: “What might prompt a run for congress?” The answer was LIBIDO, with “congress” given it’s sexual meaning. (It was wrongly capitalized (IMO) in the print version.)

The theme was pretty clever with BUMPER CROPS and FRANKENFOOD as dual “revealers.” At six locations in the grid, across and down answers contained letters that formed two foods when they “bumped” into each other and took a turn. So, e.g., when MEETs intersected BELONg, MELON and BEET were formed.

The puzzle was a “pangram,” i.e., the grid contained all 26 letters of the alphabet. The Q came from AQUANET, that horrible sticky hair spray that someone noted is still sold at CVS. The clue says it first appeared in the 1950’s. The Z came from ZANIEST, and the J came from the 1993 song: HEY MR DJ, by Zhane, pronounced jah-nay. And the X came from AXE HEAD, clued as “It might be stuck on the chopping block.”

The only tuchas sighting was in ASTRO, clued as “Prefix with biology.” But the Rex commenter who had been keeping up the tuchas watch (He said he’s putting an end to it), said: “If I were still doing the daily ASS-derivative tally, REARUP presents some interesting possibilities.”

I am predicting the Jets will not lose today — you can count on it!

It reminds me of the time Jet coach Bruce Coslet “guaranteed” a Jet win on the upcoming Sunday. When, of course, they lost, he was hit over the head with his guarantee by the press. And he replied: “What do expect me to say: We’re gonna lose?”

D-Day in D-town. Special shout-outs to Barb, Bob, Dan, David, Ellen, Jeff, Justine, Mary, Nancy, and Sandee for schlepping down or up to Doylestown, PA, for a nice mini-reunion yesterday. Linda and I had a good time!

(FYI: Spellcheck insisted on the “c” and the second “p” in schlepping.)

When I drove my kids around when they were little, I noticed that the back seat to them was like the Cone of Silence in Get Smart. They thought they could say anything and not be heard. Almost 30 years ago (Ouch!), I was driving Caity and her friend Claire somewhere (Hi Chris!), and one of them started saying something like “Did you hear where Sally let Billy put his hand?,” and I said, “Hello? I’m here! I can hear you! I don’t want to know where Billy’s hand went.”

Anyway, that was the famous Moose-In-A-Hat ride. With Billy’s hand off the table, so to speak, the following conversation took place:

Claire: “Do you know Sarah from school?”

Caity: “I know who she is, but we don’t play together.”

Claire: “Well, I hate Sarah.”

Caity: “Why?”

Claire: “For one thing, she thinks everything is funny. She even thinks a moose in a hat is funny.”

Now, where in the world did that come from? In any case, there was a long pause before Caity’s reply, and I was a little nervous because I knew it would reveal something about Caity’s character. Would she pile on and say something like, “Yeah, what an idiot, I hate Sarah too.” Or would she come to Sarah’s defense in some way?

The seconds ticked off. Finally, Caity took her stand: “But a moose in a hat is funny,” she said.

I was so proud of her. The whole time she was thinking about it, she was assessing the comedic value of a moose in a hat. Picturing the different possibilities — what sort of hat? how would it be worn? Of course a moose in a hat is funny. If a moose in a hat isn’t funny, then what the hell is, I ask you? Maybe Caity could be convinced about Sarah, but the case wasn’t made quite yet.

That became the standard for humor in our family. Sam would come back from a Will Ferrell movie and I’d ask him if it was funny. And he’d say, “Well, it was no moose in a hat.”

Moostletoe!

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A wonderful puzzle today by two top-of-the-line constructors: Brooke Husic and Erik Agard.

Let’s start with SMOKEY EYE, “Blended style of facial makeup.” Mask wearing has highlighted lovely eyes, or, in my case, bleary baggy eyes. One morning the bags under my eyes were so big, the airlines would have charged me for them if I were flying. But here’s a pair of nice smokey eyes.

There was an extremely sharp clue, which I didn’t appreciate until Rex explained it to me. The clue was “Noun phrase that’s present perfect indicative?” So I immediately dismissed it as some impossible grammar thing, right? But the answer was WISHLIST. And a wish list “indicates perfect presents” (gifts) — get it? It sailed right by me.

ELMO made an appearance, and so did the lovely Jena MALONE.

There were two neat birds. First, an AUK (“Puffin, for one”).

Then an owl (!) in the clue “Owl’s sound,” which many took to be HOOT, but it turned out to be WHOO (or is it WHOOM?)

That’s my dearest friend Welly on the left, 58 years old, kinehora, and his lovely bride Wilma on the right. (He fell for her sexy purple feet, he tells me. Who wouldn’t?) And their son, Worthington, is in the center. He’s got his mom’s eyes, doesn’t he? Worthy is out in Michigan now, so they are empty nesters. (Special shout out to Jenny, their very special friend (and creator).)

27 down was a little weird: “Adherent to the Five K’s.” Huh? It turns out the answer was SIKH, and a Rex commenter explained: “In Sikhism, the Five Ks (Punjabi: ਪੰਜ ਕਕਾਰ Pañj Kakār) are five items that Guru Gobind Singh Ji, in 1699, commanded Khalsa Sikhs to wear at all times. They are: kesh (unshorn hair and beard since the Sikh decided to keep it), kangha (a comb for the kesh, usually wooden), kara (a bracelet, usually made of iron or steel), kachera (an undergarment), and kirpan (a small curved sword of any size, shape or metal).”

At festivals, children often took off with a kangha or kara and played “hide and Sikh.” (No they didn’t. I made that up. If they did, though, here’s what a kara looks like.)

If you’re not worried about having a big GUT (60D), you can wolf down your SUB (49D), with a PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon) (61D). A few years ago I learned (via puzzles) the difference between an “initialism” (like PBR) and an acronym. Both take the first letters of something, but an initialism just spells those letters, while an acronym turns them into a new word. So FBI is an initialism (Federal Bureau of Investigation), while NATO is an acronym (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), which you pronounce NATO instead of spelling out N, A, T, O.

3 down was a wonderful clue/answer: “Dance section of a NOLA dance band parade.” The answer was SECOND LINE, which was new to me. It’s a New Orleans thing and is pretty well-known. Here’s what the city’s PR people say:

“A brass band blares. A hand-decorated parasol twirls. A ragtag group behind the band waves handkerchiefs to the beat of the drum, while a grand marshal in a snazzy suit and jaunty hat leads the way – out-dancing, out buck-jumping them all as he waves his feathered fan. Lucky you. You’ve just stumbled across a New Orleans ‘second line.’ Everyone is welcome to join in and many do. This is the ‘joie de vivre’ everyone talks about in New Orleans. This feeling of pure happiness that swells up in your chest [especially if you’ve just eaten Pakistani food and are having trouble finding a rest room].

“Second lining has been called ‘the quintessential New Orleans art form – a jazz funeral without a body.’ Historically, the African-American community began second lines as neighborhood celebrations. The neighborhood organizations offered social aid to freed slaves, such as loans and insurance, and used the second-lines as a form of advertising. Second lines were also used to honor members who died in their community, which launched the idea of second lines at funerals.

“There are two parts to a second line. The first line is made up of the grand marshal or parade leader, the band, and whoever is being honored. In a jazz funeral, the family and the hearse are part of the first line. In a wedding, the bride, groom and wedding party take a position up front. The strutting revelers who fall in behind are referred to as the second line. “

Sign me up!

Good night everyone.

Yesterday’s puzzle had a neat theme. Take 17A: “1987 thriller featuring the same characters as TV’s ‘Californication’?” The answer was FATAL ATTRACTION. And “same characters” meant it used the same “letters.” So I thought Fatal Attraction must be an anagram of Californication — that you rearrange the letters of the first to get the second. But it’s not. E.g., there’s only one T in Californication and 4 T’s in Fatal Attraction. It turns out what’s involved is called a “letterbox.” In a letterbox, all of the letters in the first word (the “source word”) must be used in the second word (the “answer word”), but they can be used more than once. And all of the letters in the answer word must be found in the source word.

This happened five times in the puzzle, the longest one being: “Stranger Things” (source word); SINGIN IN THE RAIN (answer word).

MIRIAM, from the Old Testament, made an appearance, clued as “Prophetess in the Torah.” Of course, I remember almost nothing from my time in Hebrew school. She was the older sister of Moses and Aaron, and observed the infant Moses being placed in the Nile.

Just as Mo later led the men out of Egypt, Miriam is said to have led the women out. She’s a popular figure among some Jewish feminists. During the Passover Seder, some place a cup of water for her next to Elijah’s cup of wine. I don’t know why she doesn’t also get wine. Maybe she’s driving? (Actually, there may be some Biblical association of her with water. Don’t rely on me for Bible stuff.)

39D was “Its moves include the Shirley Temple and Shim Sham steps,” and the answer was TAP DANCE. One commenter said he wrongly put LAP DANCE in at first. Hard to imagine a Shirley Temple lap dance.

Todays’ puzzle was roundly condemned as too easy and too boring by the commentariat. One even took it to task for not having any noteworthy asses in it. I had to chime in at that point. I posted a note conceding that it might not be noteworthy, but there was a hidden tuchas in LASSO right up there at 1 down. I also noted that the answer TATAS clanged around in my head a little but that’s slang for a different body part. (TATAS was boringly clued with “Farewells.”)

Just yesterday, Linda and I asked Lianna what she was learning (7th grade) in Science and she said The Periodic Table. Well, get this! 32 down today was MENDELEEV, the dude who came up with it! Or should I say the dude who “concocted” it, because CONCOCT was right next to him at 26 down (“Cook up”).

Mendeleev was the youngest of 17 siblings, although 3 died soon after birth. However, the exact number of Mendeleev’s siblings differs among sources and is still a matter of some historical dispute, so it’s probably best not to bring it up at Thanksgiving. Why ask for trouble?

In 1863, there were 56 known elements with a new element being discovered at a rate of roughly one per year. As Mendeleev attempted to classify the elements according to their chemical properties, he noticed patterns that led him to postulate his periodic table; he claimed to have envisioned it in a dream: “I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary.” His work successfully predicted the discovery of several elements.

A very popular Russian story credits Mendeleev with setting the 40% standard strength of vodka. In fact, the 40% standard was already introduced by the Russian government in 1843, when Mendeleev was nine years old. He never wrote anything about vodka. (Burp!)

Although married, in 1876 he became obsessed with Anna Ivanova Popova. (Who wouldn’t?) In 1881 he proposed to her and threatened suicide if she refused. (That never worked for me.) His divorce was finalized one month after he married Popova. Even after the divorce, Mendeleev was technically a bigamist; the Russian Orthodox Church required at least seven years before lawful remarriage. (Ouch!) The controversy contributed to his failure to be admitted to the Russian Academy of Sciences. It’s sort of like banning Pete Rose from the Baseball Hall of Fame, except maybe not exactly.

Sticking with science just a bit longer, the dodecagon was used twice in Tuesday’s puzzle, once for its EDGES and once for its ANGLES. It has 12 of each. (The ceiling of The Vera Cruz church in Segovia, Spain is a dodecagon.)

Some folks confused them with dodecahedrons. (Idiots!) The latter has twelve faces: think of a die with 12 sides instead of 6.

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Good friend Bob sent me a note about yesterday’s (Banana Bread) post saying he enjoyed it, but confessing (his word) to not liking bananas or anything made with bananas! Wow! I’ve known Bob since college but that fact about him eluded me. I don’t think I know anyone else who dislikes bananas, but that may be the sort of thing that doesn’t pop out so easily. When you’re getting to know someone, after you ask whether they have any brothers or sisters, you don’t usually follow up with “And what are your feelings about bananas?”

In any event, Bob — you can substitute canned pumpkin for the mashed bananas in yesterday’s recipe, especially this time of the year.

Boo!

The Banana Bread, A True Story

Years ago, when Sam was a sophomore at Michigan, I was in my kitchen one day, in the produce department. That’s where we keep the fruits and vegetables that don’t need refrigeration. You know, potatoes, onions, etc., . . . and bananas. And I noticed that the bananas, which just a day earlier had seemed fine, had turned against me overnight. They weren’t so bad that I had to throw them out. They were in that middle zone, where they could still be used to make banana bread. And there were enough of them that I would have to make two banana breads.

Just then, a wave of sorrow ran over me, because Sam, who loves my banana bread, had just been visiting from Michigan. I could have given him one of the breads to take back with him. And then “Boing!,” the light bulb went on over my head — I could mail him one!

So I ran down to the basement where we keep our boxes for recycling to find a good box to send it in. Alas, there was nothing. They were all either way too big or way too small. So I trudged back upstairs, defeated, figuring that God just didn’t want Sam to have a banana bread.

At that point, I heard the crunch of tires on our driveway — it was my lovely bride Linda returning from a shopping trip to Costco. Pretending to be a good husband, I went outside to help her unload. One of the items she purchased was a box of Fiber Bars, 48. They were new to us, so I asked her what the story was. She said they were giving out free samples and they tasted okay so she thought they might be a good healthy snack. I said, fine, and went to put them on a pantry shelf.

And then it hit me. I grabbed the box of fiber bars, tore it open, and dumped all of the bars out onto the table. “What are you doing?,” Linda asked. I told her I had to bake several banana breads and wanted to send one out to Sam and the fiber bar box was the perfect size to send it in.

So God did want Sam to have one after all!

I baked the banana breads. They turned out fine. I let them cool, then wrapped one up and placed it in the fiber bar box. It was a perfect fit. I addressed it to Sam and ran down to the Post Office. “How much would it cost to send this to Michigan?,” I asked the woman. She punched things into her machine and said, “We can get it there by tomorrow afternoon for $32.65.” I looked at her and said, “It’s a banana bread. He could buy five of them out there for that much money. Is there a less expensive option?” She said, “Well, it can go Parcel Post for just $3.85. It will take 2 or 3 days to get there.” Perfect! I paid for the postage and ran back home to send Sam an email. I told him what I had done and to expect the package in 2 to 3 days. Then I sat back and spent the rest of the day enjoying the thought that I was good dad.

Two days later, I called Sam up. He told me it hadn’t come. No problem — the woman said 2 to 3 days, so he should be on the lookout tomorrow. I told him to check where the packages came, not just the smaller mail. He assured me he was on top of it. He had stopped by the mailroom and introduced himself and explained the situation. They were nice guys and they were all on the lookout for the banana bread. Excellent! It would surely come the next day. I wasn’t at all worried.

I called him the next day.

“Dad, it hasn’t come,” he told me.
“But it’s the third day,” I said. “The woman said 2 to 3 days, and this is the third day.”
“I know, but it hasn’t come.”
“But this is the third day.”
“I know but it hasn’t come.”
“Okay, well, it will definitely come tomorrow.”
“Yes, definitely.”
“I’m not worried.”
“Of course not. Neither am I.”

I was expecting him to call me the next day when it came. He didn’t call, but I figured he probably had classes, maybe even a test, and other college stuff to do. I was sure it came, and he was planning to call me later. But he didn’t call me later, so I called him.

He didn’t even say hello. He just picked up the phone and said “It still hasn’t come, Dad.”

I said, “Damn that woman at the Post Office!! I’ll strangle her!! She said 2 to 3 days!! 2 to 3 days, and this is the 4th day!! No wonder the country is going to shit — they can’t even deliver a goddamn banana bread!! It may not be fresh when it gets there.”

“I guess it’ll come tomorrow,” Sam said.
“Yes,” I said, “Let’s hope it’s still fresh enough to enjoy.”

I couldn’t sleep that night worried about the banana bread. Big bags formed under my eyes which were glazed from lack of sleep. I started chain smoking. I cancelled my classes the next day, and just sat at home waiting to hear from Sam. I decided not to call him that day, no matter what. If it came, he’ll call me. I’ll just tough it out. But the call never came and I faced another sleepless night. It would be Day 6 when the sun rose, and still no banana bread.

I stared blankly into space for hours. Finally, I picked up the phone and called Sam again. “Has it come yet?” I could barely talk at this point, from the stress and the cigarettes, and the lack of sleep. “I don’t know what to tell you, Dad — it still hasn’t come.” I was beside myself with grief and rage.

“Really? Are you absolutely sure?,” I asked him.

And then he said. “Yes, I’m sure. The only thing I’ve gotten all week was this box of fiber bars Mom must have sent me. They look so awful I didn’t even open them.”

I slumped down to the floor, tears streaming down my face. “That’s the banana bread, Sam!! Open the damn thing!”

Well, the good news is it was still fresh enough to enjoy. He shared it with his buddies — They all said it was delicious!

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Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

Combine:

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup corn meal
1/2 tsp salt
2 and 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar

Combine separately:

2 eggs
2 large (or 3 small) mashed bananas
1/3 cup oil or butter
1/4 cup milk

Shmush it all together

Optional:

Stir in 1 cup blueberries (frozen or fresh) — strongly recommended
Or raisins, chopped walnuts, mini chocolate chips

(Add more milk if the batter is too thick.)

Pour it all into an oiled loaf pan.

Bake for 52 or 53 minutes.
Test with an official Dusty Baker toothpick.

Let cool.
Mail to Sam.

A Jewish sports figure and an Israeli sports figure are in the news this week.  Last year’s World Series hero Max Fried is a finalist for this year’s NL Cy Young award.  And Israeli marathon runner Lonah Chemtai Salpeter finished second in the NYC Marathon among the women.  Her time of 2:23:30 was only seven seconds behind the winner, Kenya’s Sharon Lokedi.  She finished nine seconds ahead of the reigning world champ, Ethiopia’s Gotytom Gebreslase.  Any of these names would strike terror in the heart of a crossword solver, but I don’t think they are well-known enough to make it into a grid.  Well, maybe on a Saturday or in some non-NYT bone-crusher.  (Ai Weiwei made it in though, as discussed below. Any of you heard of him?)

Here’s a shot of Lonah.  You may notice that she doesn’t look Jewish.  She was born in Kenya (you know, like Obama), and came to Israel in ’09 as the nanny for the Kenyan ambassador.  She married her running coach Dan Salpeter in ’14. They have a son Roy (8).  After being rebuffed by the government repeatedly (idiots!), she became an Israeli citizen in ’16.  Among her many accomplishments, she won the 2020 Tokyo Marathon, breaking the world record for the course.  

Today’s puzzle had a theme of “eye openers,” i.e., four long answers started with homonyms of “eye.” I, CLAUDIUS; AYE CAPTAIN; AY CARAMBA; and “Award-winning Chinese artist/activist” AI WEIWEI.

It was that last one that opened the tiny door for me. I hadn’t heard of WEIWEI, but I should have. As an activist he has been critical of China’s human rights abuses for decades and was arrested and detained for 81 days in 2011. He uses his art to comment on social and political issues. He was allowed to leave China in 2015 and lives in Portugal now. He is 65.

He lived in the U.S. from ’81 to ’93 and befriended poet Allen Ginsberg, who later visited Weiwei in China and met his father, Ai Qing, also a noted poet. While in the U.S. he became fascinated by blackjack in the Atlantic City casinos, and is still regarded in gambling circles as a top-tier professional blackjack player.

Weiwei’s “Sunflower Seeds” was first exhibited in the Tate Modern gallery in London for half a year starting in October, 2010. The work consisted of one hundred million individually hand-crafted porcelain sunflower seeds which filled the gallery’s 1,000 square meter Turbine Hall to a depth of ten centimeters. The entire artwork weighed 150 tons. Each seed went through a 30-step procedure, hand painted and fired at 1,300 degrees. This process required more than 1,600 workers over a span of two and a half years.

The millions of individually created seeds spread across such a wide space are meant to symbolize the vastness of China, and its uniform and precise order. An individual seed is instantly lost among the millions, symbolizing the conformity and censorship of the Chinese Communist Party. The combination of all the seeds represent that together, the people of China can stand up and overthrow the Party. For a time, the gallery allowed visitors to interact with the installation. In the photo, below, the visitors are engaging with the seeds.

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Got my second booster shot yesterday. Not too bad. I was able to go in to teach my classes today. Big tax test coming up next Tuesday. Judgment Day.

One of the clues in yesterday’s puzzle was “Unlike Pi.” (It printed the Pi sign (π).) And since Pi is an irrational number, the answer was RATIONAL. As we all remember from third grade, Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. It works out to 3.14159, give or take. It is an irrational number, meaning that it cannot be expressed exactly as a fraction (a ratio of two integers), although 22/7 is commonly used for it. (A more accurate approximation in fraction form is 245850922/78256679.) Because of this, its decimal representation never ends (i.e., it goes on forever), nor does it enter a permanently repeating pattern. OK, back to English.

“Piphilology” is the practice of memorizing large numbers of digits of π, and world records are kept by Guinness. The record for memorizing digits of π is 70,000 digits, recited in India by Rajveer Meena in 9 hours and 27 minutes on 3/21/2015. In 2006, Akira Haraguchi, a retired Japanese engineer, claimed to have recited 100,000 decimal places, but the claim was not verified by Guinness. To be honest, I’m pretty full of myself just for remembering 3.14159. (F**king nailed it!)

One common technique (“common?” really?), is to memorize a story or poem in which the word-lengths represent the digits of π: The first word has three letters, the second word has one, the third has four, the fourth has one, the fifth has five, and so on. An early example of such a mnemonic for pi, originally devised by English scientist James Jeans, is “How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.” When a poem is used, it is sometimes referred to as a “piem.”

A few authors have used the digits of π to establish a new form of “constrained writing,” where the word lengths are required to represent the digits of π. The “Cadaeic Cadenza,” a short story by Mike Keith, contains the first 3835 digits of π in this manner. Even more amazing, the full-length book “Not a Wake,” also by Mike Keith, contains 10,000 words, each representing one digit of π. That book is a collection of poetry, short stories, a play, a movie script, crossword puzzles and other surprises.

Since Pi begins 3.14, the date March 14 (3/14) is called Pi Day by some. A recent puzzle had the clue “What comes before the Ides of March?” Since the Ides of March falls on March 15, the answer it was looking for was PI DAY.

If your head hasn’t exploded yet, how about this? — Albert Einstein’s birthday is March 14th (1879).

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Today’s puzzle had a clue “Extra amount for a waiter,” and the answer was TIP. It led to a discussion of tipping “philosophies” among the commentariat, too boring even for this blog. But I couldn’t let this comment go: “Another plus when I started bartending was that our TIP income was tax free. We just paid taxes on our hourly wages. That changed when they started to tax the estimated TIP income based on the total $ amount of sales.”

But tipping was always includable in gross income (i.e, not tax-free). It’s just that there used to be no reporting mechanism alerting the IRS to it, so waitpeople never reported it. As my old tax prof used to say (Dean Bernard Wolfman, alav hashalom), the Code provision on gross income was written by Gertrude Stein: “Income is income is income.” Even if you find money on the street you are supposed to report it, if you want to file an honest return.

Did someone mention waiters? Here’s a joke told to me years ago by my dear friend Roy (Hi Roy and Pam!). It’s so wonderfully ridiculous, it’s always been a favorite of mine.

This guy is dining by himself in a nice restaurant and just when he’s ready to order, the waiter appears and takes his order. His drink arrives promptly, and just when he’s ready for his salad, it arrives as well, as does his soup shortly thereafter. He’s impressed by the service, even more so when he dropped his soup spoon and, within seconds, his waiter arrived with another spoon.

He says to the waiter, “I must tell you, I’m very impressed with the service here. How in the world did you get that soup spoon to me so quickly?” And the waiter explained that the restaurant owners commissioned a study by an efficiency consultant to see how they could improve their service. And one of the things the study discovered was that the most frequently dropped utensil was the soup spoon. So every waiter keeps an extra one in his jacket pocket.

“That’s brilliant,” the customer says. “I’m very impressed.”

A short while later, he noticed that the waiter had a white string hanging down from his fly. At first he thought it was just random, but then he noticed that every waiter had one.

“Excuse me,” he asked. “I notice that you and all the waiters have a string hanging down from your fly. What’s that about?”

“Oh yes,” the waiter explained. “That was another suggestion of the efficiency people. They found that time was lost when we went to the bathroom to relieve ourselves. Since we touched our penises to take them out of our pants, we had to wash our hands which took time. So, now, we each have this string tied to it — so we just pull on the string to take it out, never touch ourselves, and we don’t have to wash our hands.”

“Brilliant!,” the customer said. “Very impressive.”

But after thinking about it for a bit, he called the waiter back over. “I just have one more question,” he said. “When you’re done, how do you get it back into your pants?”

And the waiter said, “I don’t know about the other fellows, but I usually use my spoon.”