The Wellington Files

  • Ici Commence La Mer

    A special Owl Chatter tip of the cap to 72-year-old Pamela Hemphill of Boise Idaho, the former so-called “MAGA Granny.” Pamela served time in prison for a misdemeanor conviction for her activities in the Jan. 6 insurrection, but rejected Trump’s pardon. Her eyes have been opened to Trump’s perfidy and she says accepting the pardon would be an insult to the Capitol police and help support Trump’s false narrative. Brava, Pamela!

    Linda and I went to our local (Chatham, NJ) library yesterday. I had some copies to make of some documents. The library’s copier is very good and the cost is 15 cents per page. Staples charges 30 cents a page plus tax. Ouch. And another local copy place charges 20 cents plus tax.

    It’s a new machine at the library with a new payment system. It used to be you fed money into the machine, made your copies and received any change that was due you. Under the new system, you make your copies and then go up to the front desk to pay for them.

    We made 39 copies. At the front desk I told the woman I wanted to pay for 41 copies. It came to $6.15 and I had exact change. On the way back to the car:

    Linda: Why did you say 41 copies when we only made 39?

    Avi: Because last week I made two copies and forgot to pay for them.

    Linda: That’s very ethical of you.

    Avi: For 30 cents I can be ethical.

    Linda: How much has to be at stake for you to abandon all of your moral principles?

    Avi: A dollar.

    I wrote a letter to the Times today!! Just sent it in. It was on Michelle Goldberg’s Op-Ed on the Broadway show “John Proctor Is the Villain.” It’s set in a high school in a small town in Georgia during the height of the #MeToo movement. She said she cried the first time she saw it. She went to see it a second time with a friend and when it was over her friend was in tears as was a woman in the row in front of them. Two other women were sobbing outside the theater.

    This is the letter I wrote to the NYT:

    To the editor:

    Michelle Goldberg’s article on the play “John Proctor Is the Villain” notes that it’s remarkable for so many audience members to find themselves openly sobbing during and after the performance.   As a long-time fan of the NY Jets, however, I can assure you it’s a very common reaction.

    This poem is called “We Dreamed You” and it’s by Keisha-Gaye Anderson.

    I see her face
    when my lids surrender
    to the limits

    of this battered body
    and it makes the cane ash sting
    less in my throat.

    She has fat brown cheeks
    red satin ribbons
    floating on fluffy plaits.

    She hums, traaa-la-la-la-la,
    so sweet
    like a sugar in a plum.

    She skips along a carpet
    of flamboyant petals,
    red like the rose apple she nibbles
    on an already full belly.

    Laughter like a bird song
    no thick memory
    whatsoever of who sent her
    into this future
    finally free.

    In yesterday’s puzzle, the clue at 55D sent Crossworld into a tizzy. Here it is: “‘Divine medicine,’ per the Greek physician Paracelsus.” The answer was BEER, but that’s not relevant to the problem. Do you see it? It turns out Paracelsus was not Greek — he was Swiss. A bunch of folks took it as a sad comment on the declining editorial standards of the NYT. Srsly?

    Also yesterday at 14A the clue was “Girl in Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit.’” The answer, of course, was ALICE. Rex’s guest blogger Malaika confessed to never having heard of either the band or the song. What’s with kids today? And get off my lawn! Here’s what such a person looks like (showing off her “mehndi” from a wedding she attended).

    Grace Slick is 85 today. I had forgotten (or never knew) that JA performed at Woodstock. They weren’t included in the movie because their performance wasn’t so great. They were postponed to early in the morning and they and the crowd were a little off. But, I don’t know, this version of White Rabbit seems good to me. I’d have put it in the movie.

    One of the comments yesterday took GS to task for supporting experiments on human prisoners once, instead of on animals. But I couldn’t find anything to support that on Wikipedia or elsewhere on the interweb. She has come out in support of 9/11 victims and the LGBTQ community. So I’m going to give her a pass unless I learn more.

    Grace Slick is not a stage name. Her name at birth was Grace Barnett Wing and her first husband’s name was Jerry Slick. Later in life she stated she did not realize she was considered very sexy back in the day, something most of the men in the country had no trouble noting. She said she would have slept with a lot more men had she known. She did reveal that she had a one-night stand with Jim Morrison (yes, that one). And she was struck by how sweet and gentle he was: very different from his dark on-stage persona.

    Here are three pics: Grace young, Grace later, and Grace’s only child, her daughter China Kantner.

    At 15A today, the clue was “Like 2027 and 2029, but not 2025.” Got it? Think numbers, not years. The answer is PRIME. Those are both prime numbers.

    Anony Mouse noted: There are thought to be infinitely many primes that are only 2 apart, like 2027 and 2029. These are called twin primes, and the twin primes conjecture that there are indeed infinitely many of them is the most famous unsolved math problem, as it is unproven despite being known about for thousands of years.

    Kitshef added: The largest pair of primes that are only 2 apart so far discovered have over 300,000 digits.

    OK, enough of that. My brain hurts.

    You ever been to (or seen on TV) a “walk-off” ballgame? This is when a run is scored that ends the game right then and there, so the home team “walks off” the field. What usually happens is the home team dugout empties out and the batter who got the walk-off hit is mobbed by his teammates, doused with Gatorade, etc. It’s a joyous scene.

    Last night, Reno was trailing Albuquerque going into the bottom of the ninth. Reno loaded the bases and the batter drove a double to deep right-center. That’s when things went a little crazy. The runner from third scored. No problem. But as the runner from second rounded third he was confronted by jubilant teammates bolting out of the dugout, and he tripped over one on his way home. D’oh! The umpire called him out on account of interference (by his own teammate)! So the game was only tied, right?

    Well, even though the runner was called out, the ball was still in play. The call did not trigger a “dead ball.” And the centerfielder, thinking the game was over, threw the ball into the stands! When a fielder throws the ball into the stands, every runner is awarded the base he is heading towards plus one more. Since the runner who had been on first was between second and third when the throw was made, he was awarded home and thus became the winning run!!

    Let’s finish up overseas today: France. This lovely note and photo were posted by Martin Phillips of the Dull Men’s Club (UK).

    “The Sea Starts Here. Don’t throw anything in”

    The other day whilst strolling through inland Libourne (SW France) on a hot and humid day, I noticed a simple yet profound message on a manhole cover which instantly transported me to the sea! Maybe not literally, but for a moment, and in my mind, I was there. Then a few paces later as I tried to cross the busy road, I was back to reality.

    See you tomorrow!

  • Twisters

    Here are two headlines. The first is from The Onion:

    Christian Pornographer Refuses To Film Sex Tape For Gay Couple

    The next is from Reuters, their chutzpah division. It’s funnier than the first.

    Trump’s Justice Department examining pardons issued by Biden

    You won’t see Hitler in a NYTXW. Even if clued with something like “Monster of historic proportions.” But it wasn’t always that way: he last appeared on 10/12/1984. It was at 13D and the clue was “Schicklgruber, allegedly.” That was his original name, he changed it to Hitler.

    Today, Rex reminded us that exactly 80 years ago, on June 3, 1945, Hitler appeared in the puzzle with the clue: “Man with glowing future.” He had died two months before and the clue is referring to his future (eternity) in hell.

    I’m not sure what other monsters are banned. There is a petition going around Crossworld to ban Harry Potter references because of Rowling’s anti-trans activities. I can’t see that going anywhere.

    Yuck, let’s switch to OREOS quickly. There are dunkers, of course, and there are twisters. A twister separates the two cookie parts by twisting them apart. Some twisters seek to have the creme separate equally onto the two cookies. And that’s what the clue at 71D yesterday was referring to: “It’s nearly impossible to split their creme equally, per M.I.T.”

    The answer was OREOS, but Rex did not like the clue, to put it mildly. Here’s his take on it: “Per M.I.T.”?? What the hell does that mean? What an incredibly stupid and meaningless and awkwardly worded way to clue OREOS. “Nearly impossible”? Is it impossible or isn’t it? I’m gonna say that if you get down to the atomic level, it’s absolutely impossible, but What The Hell Are We Even Talking About Here? Who is trying to split the “creme” (ugly word)? You don’t split the creme. You twist OREOS apart, OK, but inevitably the creme goes mostly one way, and that’s how it is and who cares? M.I.T.?

    Yes, in fact, MIT does care. In April of 2022, MIT engineers conducted research on Oreo twisting. https://meche.mit.edu/news-media/mit-scientists-twist-apart-more-1000-oreos-search-perfect-method

    Upon separating over 1,000 Oreos, they discovered that 80% of the time the creme stays on one half. Their theory is that the creme bonds more strongly to the half it’s applied to first, because it spends more time on that half.

    A Dutch team conducted research as well, using Dutch Oreos. They found the creme was split pretty evenly between the two halves in most cases. Crystal Owens, who led the MIT team, believes the results were different because the cookies are produced differently in the two countries. She plans to move on to study ice cream sandwiches and Nutter Butter cookies next. (Not kidding.)

    Here’s Crystal, followed by, well, you’ll see.

    Hey, the Boss was in yesterday’s puzzle. Way up at 4D, the clue was “Bruce Springsteen, to his fans.” (THE BOSS)

    This cover of this song is by Everything But The Girl. Bruce released the song in 1987 and EBTG covered it in ’92.

    Alan Seaton of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) shared this with the membership: So fancied a tangerine tonight. Peeled it in one go. Is it a bear, is it a dog, or is it just orange peel?!!

    Jill Clark: It’s a bear.

    Phil Adams: It’s Donald Trump.

    Darren Steele: It’s the United Kingdom.

    Avi Liveson: You should glue it back together and offer it to someone.

    John David Salt: Looks to me like a rhino on its hind legs wearing a catcher’s mitt. I find this interesting, because I did not know that rhinos played baseball.

    Avi Liveson: There is a minor league baseball team in Texarkana (Texas) called the Texarkana Rhinos.

    If that’s not a sign that it’s time to go, I don’t know what is. See you next time!

  • The Prettiest Girl in Church

    Hi! Welcome to Owl Chatter Post #800. The only word for it is ridiculous. Fittingly, the puzzle defeated me today — literally with an Oy. It happened all the way down at 95D where the clue was “Fundamental building block of DNA.” The only building block I know is “lego,” so I had no chance. The answer was ADENINE, and I needed all of the crosses. The problem was the third letter: E. It was the last letter of 104A: “Hawaiian song of farewell.” I heard of it! It was ALOHA OE. And that was the E I needed! But if you’ve heard the song, it’s pronounced Aloha Oy, so I put in a Y and got ADYNINE, which, of course, looked fine to me. D’oh! I took solace in the fact that Rex also blew it there, although he went with Aloha Oi. (I guess mine was the Yiddish version.) Wanna hear it?

    That’s Tia Carrere, Hawaiian-born actress/model/singer of Filipino descent. She’s 58 and has had a pretty successful movie/TV career. If you missed her as the hot juror in Jury Duty, here she is. Hey! Don’t look at me in that tone of voice, Carrere!

    Hi TC — thanks for popping by to help us celebrate #800.

    Best wishes to Hailee Steinfeld and Buffalo QB Josh Allen who tied the knot yesterday. We recently saw Hailee dripping in blood in Sinners. Her dad’s Jewish but her mom isn’t and she hasn’t picked sides. Josh is Methodist. They did not opt for a Jewish wedding, but we’re sure no one went hungry. Here’s the shot Phil got for us of the bride (before he passed out).

    How ’bout those Gnats yesterday? They scored 10 runs in the first inning against ‘Zona. They had nine on the board before a single out was recorded. Nobody homered. CJ Abrams was hit by a pitch twice in the inning: once on each foot. The look on his face after the second one was classic Jack Benny.

    Great clue at 81D: “Accessory in a Jane Fonda workout video.” LEG WARMER. Remember those?

    If you were wondering whether they can be sexy, our Dirty Old Man department came up with this.

    There were two good animal clues: At 1D: “Unlikely fliers, in a saying.” PIGS

    And at 118D: “Desirable formation for ducks.” ROW

    38D was good too: “Loss of the ability to read.” You’ve heard of dyslexia. This is ALEXIA. New to me.

    At 101D, “Center of mass?” was the clue for CHURCH. Get it? It reminded Son Volt of this song by The Waterboys:

    Back in my Statistics class at Brandeis, we were assigned the task of figuring out the chances of there being two of us in our class of 30 with the same birthday. I think none of us could figure it out and I was surprised when the answer turned out to be 70%. That is, there was a 7 in 10 chance that a pair of us shared a birthday. “Let’s try it,” of the students said and Prof. Schwalberg, said Okay. So we went up the rows announcing our birthdays and we hit a match at around the 16th person. “There you go,” Schwalberg said.

    That story comes up today for two reasons. First, today is the birthday of two of the most beloved members of Rex’s commentariat: egs and Nancy. Also, this Saturday the memorial service for Prof. Schwalberg will be held at Brandeis. He passed away last year.

    Here’s a story I may have told before. In class one day, Schwalberg needed the name of a beautiful woman to use in an example, for some reason. It was 1970 so he reached for Sophia Loren. But he called her “Sophie” Loren. A kid in the back yelled out: “Sophie?” And Schwalberg said: “Well, to her friends.” Over 40 years later we were in touch again and in his very first email to me, he asked if I remembered his Sophie Loren line. He was so proud of it.

    Hi Sophie.

    There’s a bit of a follow-up. There was an article in the New Yorker by John McPhee on how each generation has its own icons: its own heroes and villains. I mentioned it and wrote to Schwalberg, “for example, if I had to use a beautiful woman in class for an example, I wouldn’t be able to use Sophia Loren; I’d probably use Taylor Swift.” And he wrote back: “Who’s Taylor Swift?”

    See you next time, Chatterheads.

  • La La Land

    Since the circumference of the Earth is 25,000 miles, how can Norway have over 60,000 miles of coastline? That was what the puzzle told us today. But according to Norway itself (on its own webby site) 60,000 is correct. The “trick” is you include all of the fjords and islands. I guess it adds up.

    This is part of the coastline. Whoa — I didn’t realize till just now how much it looks like Bayonne, NJ.

    In case, like me, you are wondering how the hell you’re going to make it through these next four years, here’s a Met Diary story for you. It’s by Nick Trepanier.

    Dear Diary:

    I was standing at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street. The blinking “walk” sign indicated four seconds left to cross.

    Tired and somewhat defeated after a long day, I thought to myself: I’m not going to rush this time.

    Just then, a tall woman dressed in pink from head to toe, with pink nails, heels, sunglasses and cowboy hat to match, slapped me on the back.

    “We got this!” she said.

    We darted across the avenue together and high-fived when we got to the other side.

    Who comes up with this stuff? At 47A today the clue was “Participant in a hybrid sport that requires both brains and brawn,” and the answer was CHESS BOXER. Yes, chatterheads, there is an actual sport that combines boxing and chess. Two combatants play alternating rounds of blitz chess (speed chess) and boxing until one wins by checkmate or knockout. It’s popular in the UK, India, Finland, France, Russia, and, as of today, apparently, Crossworld.

    You’ve seen the acronym CAPTCHA, right? And if you’re like me you’re perfectly fine with not knowing what the hell it means. Until something about it shows up in the puzzle. Today the clue at 60A was “What the “T” in CAPTCHA stands for,” and the answer was TURING TEST. What?

    Okay, let’s take a step back. First, CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. It’s a type of challenge–response Turing test used in computing to determine whether the user is human in order to deter bot attacks and spam. The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing, tests a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to that of a human. Glad you asked? I started to dig a little deeper but it quickly became clear I am too stupid for it.

    Hey — Hi Lois! LOIS LANE popped into the puzzle today. Yes, that Lois Lane — Supe’s babe. I think we have some cheese in the fridge, but we’re out of Fresca since George, you know, was jailed. You drink coffee?

    The first actress to play Lois was Noel Neill, who was pretty hot in her own way, way back by 1948 standards. NN was born in Minnesota in 1920 and lived to the age of 95, passing away in 2016. She didn’t have much of a career outside of her Lois work. In 2010, the southern Illinois city of Metropolis unveiled a statue of Lois Lane modeled on Noel Neill. Neill stated that she was honored to be memorialized with the statue.

    Margot Kidder may be the best known LL, from the Superman movies, and she played Lois less as a damsel in distress and more as an independent brave and intelligent woman. Margot was born in Yellowknife, Canada, and sadly, died by suicide (drug and alcohol overdose) at the age of 69 in Montana. She had a very troubled life. She was married to the actor John Heard, but they separated after only six days. She was romantically involved with PM Pierre Trudeau in the early ’80s. She had her only child, a daughter, with her first husband, the writer Thomas McGuane.

    You can see why Kent fell for her.

    At 11A, the answer was LALA. How would you clue it? There was that movie La La Land. Or maybe “song syllables?” But those would both be too easy for Saturday. So the constructors went with: “Edgar Degas’s ‘Miss _____ at the Cirque Fernando.’” According to Wikipedia, it is Degas’s only circus painting, and Miss La La is the only identifiable person of color in Degas’s works.

    Miss La La was a mixed-race acrobat, known as la femme canon. The nickname came from her most sensational trick: to fire a cannon suspended on chains that she held in her teeth while hanging from the trapeze, hooked at the knees. (Yeah, that same old tired trick any five-year-old can perform blindfolded today.) In the painting, Degas has the viewer seeing the spectacle as the audience would have done, gazing up at the daring feat taking place above.

    Let’s go with art for our farewell tonight too. It’s Roz Chast’s work from the May 12/19 New Yorker. See you tomorrow!

  • World Otter Day

    Let’s visit with a few of the fine folks at the Dull Men’s Club (UK) today.

    Greg Smith shared some good news. He posted the following photo with this note: “Yeah, I managed to get the lid off my pot noodle without tearing it.”

    Allison Shaw was impressed and wrote: Now you can chase your dreams.

    Jane Sutherland wrote: So there we were on holiday in Cyprus recently and my project manager of a husband sits there frantically making notes regarding our imminent house move! 🤣 He said he could have done with a spreadsheet ideally but had to make do with a good old-fashioned notebook and pen!

    Lee Collins replied: Who goes away without access to a spreadsheet?

    My dad used handkerchiefs and not tissues and I picked up the habit from him, although I will also use tissues sometimes. And Sam uses handkerchiefs too. Tradition!!

    Mark Hurd posted the following note and photo in the DMC (UK):

    A baker’s dozen neatly ironed handkerchiefs. …Please don’t tell me that they’re unhygienic and that I should switch to tissues, some of those handkerchiefs have been used by me for more than 10 years so I’m doing my recycling bit for the environment. The “hygiene” factor was one of the best ever marketing ploys of the 20th century. After WWI ended the cellulose industries that had been making gas masks for the US military suddenly found themselves with an industry but no market. Tissues were one of their solutions and the “hygiene” factor was swallowed hook, line and sinker.

    Mark later added the following: All my handkerchiefs are gifts from various relatives. A few are getting very frayed around the edges (the handkerchiefs, not the relatives … Well, some relatives may be getting that way…). My wife re-hemmed a few (handkerchiefs) but that makes them a bit small.

    I added this note: My Uncle Morris used to own a variety store that sold, among many other items, handkerchiefs. He casually glanced at his laundry bill at home one day (my Aunt Emma sent the laundry out to a laundry service), and noticed that he was paying more to have a handkerchief cleaned than it cost him to buy for the store. “Ever since then,” he told me, “I just blow my nose and throw it away.”

    As we near our 800th Owl Chatter post, I’d like to remind our two or three readers about our incredible staff, whose tiresome and dispensable efforts make it all possible. What can we say about Phil, our intrepid photographer, trained at the School of the Blind? We love you Philly! Georgie (Santos) our administrative assistant whose return from prison (in seven years, give or take) we eagerly await. George’s sole responsibility was to keep the fridge stocked with diet soda. He’s a genius at it and the operation has pretty much fallen apart, tbh. Our sports consultant, the exquisite pro hockey player Sarah Fillier, and the amazing Ana de Armas, our beauty and culture czarina. If you want to get to know Armas a bit like we have, spend some time with this video. It was posted on Rex Parker’s crossword puzzle blog today in connection with 16A “Bottleful at a barbecue,” HOT SAUCE.

    At 63A “Some nostalgic throwbacks” was OLD SONGS. Commenter kitshef recalled a wonderful Monk line:  “I like the old songs. Why don’t people write old songs anymore?” (Monk, Season 5, episode 8.)

    At 5D, the answer was ANGELS (“Early investors, in lingo”). So here’s “She’s An Angel,” a musical interlude for us by They Might Be Giants.

    The oddest clue today was at 50A: “Creature with ‘Underwater eyes, an eel’s / Oil of water body,’ per the poet Ted Hughes.” The answer was OTTER. I’ve learned a bit about them through puzzles, in particular that they are playful. Rex commenter Pabloinnh shared his favorite otter quote with us:  “If an OTTER cannot have fun doing something, he simply will not do it.”

    Wednesday was World Otter Day. It’s always the last Wednesday in May. (Visit otter.org for more info.)

    OMG, have you ever seen such a beautiful trio?

    If you look up “mild-mannered” in the dictionary, you might very well find a photo of David Brooks next to the definition. He admits it himself. But his column today in the NYT was written in anger. Here’s one paragraph of it.

    “Over the past four months, a small cabal at the top of the administration — including Trump, Vance, Miller and the O.M.B. director, Russell Vought — have brought a series of moral degradations to the nation [American soldiers] fought and died for: the betrayal of Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine, the cruel destruction of so many scientists’ life projects, the ruination of PEPFAR. According to the H.I.V. Modeling Consortium’s PEPFAR Impact Tracker, the cuts to that program alone have already resulted in nearly 55,000 adult deaths and nearly 6,000 dead children. We’re only four months in.”

    Those numbers are not typos, they are atrocities.

    In Congressional testimony, Sec’y of State Marco Rubio lied and danced around the question of deaths caused by his and Musk’s cuts. He is up to his neck in blood. Every one of them is.

    OK, let’s go to the ballgame. On Tuesday night, with the Mets facing the White Sox, Nimmo was on first base. (If you are interested in “finding Nimmo,” he was on first base. (Never gets old.)) Soto drove the ball 350 feet to right-center where Michael A. Taylor dove for it. It was clear that Taylor trapped the ball, i.e., caught it on a short bounce. The first-base ump signaled “safe,” meaning “no catch.” But Nimmo was running and did not see the signal. He interpreted the crowd roar to mean the ball was caught so he turned around to run back to first. Soto also thought the ball was caught so he stopped running between first and second. Under the rules, when Nimmo crossed Soto on his way back to first, Soto was out (for having passed the runner). He does not get credit for a hit. Nimmo is not out and could stay on first.

    Some sports talk show hosts in their illiteracy occasionally improve upon the language. Evan Roberts (whom I like — he’s just a big goofy kid pretending to be a grown-up) was trying to say “greater likelihood” today. But that’s a sh*tload of syllables. He saved time by saying “likelier-hood.” A keeper.

    Here’s Evan with his pretty wife, Sylvia. He’s Jewish and they have two sons.

    Two items from The Onion:

    Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch’ Falls Off Museum Wall After Sticky Tabs Come Loose

    Pigeon Feels Silly About Still Being A Little Scared Of Plastic Owl

    The 3-year-old pigeon, above, who months after his initial encounter with the artificial owl acknowledges he still gets “kind of freaked out” by it, reportedly doesn’t like walking or flying near the railing where the 16-inch-tall lawn ornament has been placed, despite knowing full well that it’s just a harmless piece of molded plastic and not a dangerous predator.

    The pigeon conceded he will sometimes take out-of-the-way routes to avoid the plastic owl and, when in its vicinity, will circle overhead for several minutes before working up the courage to land. “I get that it isn’t real. I even saw it tip over in the wind once, so I know it’s fake. But it still gives me the creeps.”

    He recounted an episode in which he was flying along contentedly with a large piece of bagel in his beak when he caught a glimpse of the plastic owl below and, in a state of fright, dropped the baked good, fearing to retrieve it because it had landed too close to the bird decoy. “God, I’m so fucking pathetic.”

    See you tomorrow Chatterheads!

  • Full Diva

    A whole bunch of corporations have received Owl Chatter’s Gutless Worm Award for aligning themselves with the forces of hatred and bigotry. They are retreating from support for NYC’s annual Pride festivities for fear of angering scary old Donald Trump. It’s disgusting. Pride already operates at a loss and this will cause a reduction in Pride Week activities. Companies on the Roll of Dishonor include Mastercard, Garnier, Target, Citibank, Nissan, and Pepsi.

    In a Mets game this week a routine fly-ball-tag-up play turned into something I had never seen before in my 65 years or so of watching baseball games. Starling Marte was on third and tagged up and tried to score on a fly out to right field. He was thrown out at the plate. But the third base umpire reversed the call and ruled him safe. He said the third baseman, Max Muncy, blocked Marte’s view of the catch, thus affecting his ability to time his run for home. Here, take a look. Good call, Blue.

    You may recall we were visited by a lucky lady bug in DC recently. Well, get this — there was one in the puzzle today at 41A. Careful, lady bug! — don’t move to the left — there’s GLUE there (at 39A)! Did you know the “lady” in lady bug is the Virgin Mary? Yup, the clue was “Insect named for the Virgin Mary.”

    Also, in the UK they are called lady birds. Their colors and patterns, i.e., in many cases the red color and black dots, are sort of a reverse advertisement. They send a message to predators that they taste bad. They can live for up to a year. Not all species are red.

    21D was impossible: “Female in Mexican-style wrestling.” LUCHADORA. What? Well, lucha libre, which means “free style,” is a unique form of pro wrestling introduced into Mexico in the early 1900s. It’s characterized by colorful masks, rapid sequences of holds and movements, and “high-flying” maneuvers by the “luchadors.”

    Not all of the masks are this creepy.

    Here’s a luchadora.

    At 36D, “Over-the-top dramatic” was FULL DIVA. An example of how to use it would be: “Hey, don’t go full diva on me, Babe, it’s just a lady bug — it’s not going to bite.”

    From The Onion:

    Rusted Qatari Plane Sitting On Blocks On White House Lawn

    Hey, New Yorker readers. Did you notice our George Santos was quoted in the Talk of the Town piece on the Knicks in the June 2 issue (p. 15). He’s a lifelong Knicks fan and predicts they will lose to Indy in six. Good to see you’re still relevant Georgie. We miss you!

    Thanks for popping by! See you tomorrow.

  • The Hockey Women

    As usual, coverage in the NYT lags badly behind our coverage in Owl Chatter. They finally splashed some ink on the wonderful PWHL season that just ended with the Minnesota Frost hoisting the Walter Cup for the second year in a row. To its credit, admittedly, the Times gave the league good coverage. It’s growing beautifully with two new teams joining next year: Seattle and Vancouver. The downside is the makeup of the current six teams will be changing dramatically as players are drafted to stock the newbies. Each current team will only be able to protect 4 players. Happily, it is expected that Laura Stacey, below, and Marie-Philip Poulin will both be protected by Montreal. They are married to each other!

    Gah! Those sexy uniforms do a number on me every time! Here’s the duo, off-ice.

    Poet Major Jackson wrote the following note about the poem of his we are sharing, below:

    “To an immense degree, I, like many, have been deeply impacted by addiction. My last painful encounter with a family member who battles substance abuse seeded the start of this poem. So much energy and resources have been expended over the years. And yet, we remain hopeful, maybe, to our demise. Our love is cavernous.” 

    Addiction

    A family spots their brother sleepwalking 
    in a narrow hallway. He is cooking in his dreams, 
    pretending chef, moving around a kitchen, 
    screaming humbug at dried bits 
    of onion powder in a spice container, and so
    takes off to the grocery store,

    his hands miming a driver’s 
    who is having a heartfelt
    conversation with a passenger
    which could be any one of them. 
    They are careful not to wake him 
    for fear of triggering a heart attack 
    or a fall down the stairs.

    He bares his teeth which means he is now
    a canine, most likely a pit bull; his eyes
    go dark as a chimney, so he hums a little 
    Scottish ballad about time.

    They hope he finds his way back.
    They tire of circling him and think, by all means,
    continue your travels in your cardboard world. 
    His wife feels ever his value
    and grabs their hands and shifts when he shifts
    and falls when he falls.

    At 55A today the clue was “Sounded like a brook” and the answer was GURGLED. It confused commenter Gary a bit: “I thought brooks babbled, now I learn they gurgle. Do oceans still roar? And what exactly are rivers doing other than rushing? We have a fountain that gets water all over the patio.”

    And here’s jberg on Rice-a-roni: “So you’ve got Rice-a-RONI for people who have rice but want it to feel like pasta, and orzo for people who have pasta and want it to feel like rice. Why don’t they just switch their plates?”

    Right off the bat, at 1D today, the clue was “Genre for Count Basie or Charlie Parker,” and the answer, of course, was JAZZ. Rex commenter Son Volt shared this song with us. I had not heard of the song or The Felice Brothers from under my rock.

    But the puzzle was not otherwise about JAZZ — it was about FIDDLER, as in “on the roof.” SUNRISE and SUNSET worked their way up and down the grid in circled letters (along with GOOD MORNING and NIGHTY NIGHT).

    Rex shared this song by Caroline Polachek.

    A Yiddish writer Sholem ASCH was in the puzzle too. Here’s what I posted on Rex’s site:

    It was nice to see Sholem ASCH in the puzzle, a great Yiddish writer who lived from 1880 to 1957. It was a different Sholem, though, Sholem Aleichem (1859-1961), also a Yiddish writer, who wrote the stories of Tevye the Milkman upon which Fiddler was based. A warm memory of my youth was seeing Fiddler on Broadway with my mom. My brother used to call it “Fiddler on a Hot Tin Roof.” I catch it now from time to time in High School productions in North Jersey and it never fails to get to me.

    See you next time, Chatterheads. Thanks for popping in!

  • Badassery

    We returned from our excellent trip to Maryland in time to catch the thrilling end of the Minny-Ottawa PWHL game. Minny was up 2-1 in the best-of-5 series so Ottawa had to win or the series was over. Alas, Liz Scheper’s goal in overtime gave Minny its second Walter Cup.

    How tight were the games? All four were settled in overtime and the finals MVP was the goalie for Ottawa, the losing team. Great games, ladies. Amazingly, Liz scored the winning goal for last year’s championship too — and that was her first ever league goal. Go figure. Billie Jean King presented the trophy, a great supporter of the league. In fact, the league’s MVP award is named in her honor.

    Here’s Liz. She’s 26 years old and is from Mound, MN. You ever been to Mound? It’s about 10 miles east of Stump; just south of Blob. She played college hockey at Ohio State, leading them to their first ever national title. Sorry fellas, she identifies as a member of the LGBTQ community and is partnered up right now.

    Sticking with women’s sports for a bit, you could probably count on one hand if you were Mordecai Three-Fingered Brown the number of people who did not fall in love with Mary Lou Retton when she won her Olympic gold for the US back in 1984. MLR was the first American woman to win the all-around gold medal in Olympic gymnastics. She was Sports Illustrated’s Woman of the Year and was the first woman to appear on a Wheaties box (which boosted sales, they said). But it was her ability to see through solid objects and fly that earned her Supergirl status. Our Phil caught her mid-air in this shot.

    That’s the shiny part of the story. Darker facts include her never earning a high school diploma, and her hospitalization for a rare form of pneumonia in October of 2023, with which she is still struggling. She did not have health insurance (yikes!) but her daughters raised $460,000 for her via internet donations. She married Shannon Kelley, a U of Texas QB, in 1990 and they had four daughters before divorcing in 2018. She came to our attention this week, via an arrest for driving under the influence in West Virginia.

    Hang in there Mary Lou. Take care of yourself.

    Miriam Webster’s Word of the Day on Sunday was dyspeptic, which describes someone who is bad-tempered, or easily annoyed. The noun form is dyspepsia, which is the state of someone who is annoyed because his Pepsi was taken away, like this woman’s. Hey, give back my Pepsi, you idiot!! My dad’s a cop!

    We had a visitor while dining on our sandwiches at a neat hole-in-the-wall coffee place in DC. Brought us (and the Gnats) good luck!

    Enjoyed a nice French/British romantic movie at Baltimore’s historic Charles Theater on Sunday. “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.” Its Rotten Tomatoes score is 88% and that’s about what I’d give it. Very likeable. Here’s Camille Rutherford with her smokey eyes.

    Does she end up with the similarly smokey-eyed Charlie Anson, below, or stick with the boyfriend from back home? And what about her writing? Will she ever finish anything?

    We reached this milestone on the way back. I took a photo so I could share it with the Dull Men’s Club (UK) members.

    Yesterday’s puzzle contained ASH WEDNESDAY as an answer, and today’s theme was the HOLY TRINITY. It had three (a trinity) theme answers all using the word “holy” with different spellings (homophones): WHOLLY OWNED, HOLEY CHEESES, and the HOLI FESTIVAL. It led me to post the following on Rex’s site:

    With Ash Wednesday yesterday and today’s Holy Trinity, has the NYTXW violated the separation of Church and Puzzle? What’s next — the Ten Commandments in a Sunday grid?

    Which reminds me:

    Our old friend Thibodeaux was in Church one Sunday and the pastor went up to him after the service and said “Thibodeaux, you old scoundrel. I never thought I’d live to see the day you came to Church. Are you finally turning to God” And Thibodeaux said, “Well, Reverend, it’s like this. I had a hat. And I loved that hat. And I lost it. I looked everywhere for it. It’s just gone. Then I remembered that Johnson has a hat just like it, and Johnson’s a church=going man. So I thought I’d come to services and when he gets out of his seat for some reason, I’d grab his hat.” And the pastor says, “Oh, man, I should have figured it was something like that — you’re hopeless.” But then he noticed that Thibodeaux had not taken the hat. So he said: “But you didn’t take the hat. Why not?” And Thibodeaux said — “It was something in your sermon.” The pastor grew excited: “I finally got to you!! Fantastic. Let’s see, the topic was the Ten Commandments. Did the part on Thou Shall Not Steal hit home?” “No, that wasn’t it,” Thibodeaux said. “It was the one on adultery — I remembered where I left the hat.”

    And I learned a great new word from 11D. The clue was “Acts that are tough, rebellious and cool, in slang.” BADASSERY

    In Sunday’s puzzle, Rex took exception to the clue at 70D: “Best place to go in London.” It was using “to go” as in “to go to the bathroom” so the answer was LOO (bathroom in England). Here’s Rex:

    I get why this is a “place to go,” but “Best?” What’s next best? An alley? Your pants? What’s the worst? Please don’t answer.

    The Jewish Russian poet Joseph Brodsky was born this week in1940 in Leningrad and died in NYC at the age of 55. When he was 23, he was charged with “malicious parasitism,” you know, badassery. [Is there any other kind? Is there benevolent parasitism?]

    When the judge asked him, “Who told you that you were a poet? Who assigned you that rank?” he responded: “No one. Who assigned me to the human race?” He was sentenced to five years in a Siberian labor camp. D’oh! Wrong answer! In 1972 he was booted out of Russia and fared much better over here. Oh, yeah? — he won the goddamn Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987. Probably would have been a Swiftie had he lived longer.

    The ones behind the table in dark tops, below, are Zoey and Leon, selling lemonade at the beach for a buck a glass. For the buck you got the choice of pink or regular, plus Leon told you a joke. (I suggested they charge more for dirty ones, but no one listens to me, thank goodness.) They made $70 in one hour. (Not kidding.)

    See you tomorrow, Chatterheads. Thanks for popping by!

  • Xi’s Language

    My research paid off. The burgers at the White Oak Tavern in Ellicott City MD were outstanding. We didn’t want to overdo it with the fries so we converted one order into the optional salad. When the burgers were placed on our table by a young server who was not our waiter, I asked him for some ketchup. “It’s there,” he said, but pointed to the salt and pepper shakers next to the Sweet and Low holder. I figured he didn’t hear me because it was noisy so I asked for the ketchup again. But he just pointed towards the shakers again and said “It’s there.” WTF?? I was going to say “Where? I don’t see it,” but he was off. Gone like the wind, if that’s the expression.

    Our waiter appeared at that point to ensure that everything was fine, so I thought I might have better luck with him. I didn’t want to be stuck using the invisible ketchup. “Can we have some ketchup?” I asked. He explained that they make their own ketchup, “which is over there,” and he pointed towards Linda’s plate — behind the shakers — upon which, finally, I saw a small container, black, with ketchup in it. Aha! That explained everything. He continued to say he could bring us a bottle of regular ketchup but I said, No, that’s fine. It was excellent ketchup, much better than the invisible stuff would have been, for sure.

    The Poem of the Day from the Poetry Foundation is by Kevin Young and is called “Ode to the Midwest.”

    The country I come from
    Is called the Midwest
    —Bob Dylan

    I want to be doused
    in cheese

    & fried. I want
    to wander

    the aisles, my heart’s
    supermarket stocked high

    as cholesterol. I want to die
    wearing a sweatsuit—

    I want to live
    forever in a Christmas sweater,

    a teddy bear nursing
    off the front. I want to write

    a check in the express lane.
    I want to scrape

    my driveway clean

    myself, early, before
    anyone’s awake—

    that’ll put em to shame—
    I want to see what the sun

    sees before it tells
    the snow to go. I want to be

    the only black person I know.

    I want to throw
    out my back & not

    complain about it.
    I wanta drive

    two blocks. Why walk—

    I want love, n stuff—

    I want to cut
    my sutures myself.

    I want to jog
    down to the river

    & make it my bed—

    I want to walk
    its muddy banks

    & make me a withdrawal.

    I tried jumping in,
    found it frozen—

    I’ll go home, I guess,
    to my rooms where the moon

    changes & shines
    like television.

    Loved today’s puzzle, which Welly and I filled in together late last night in our Inn in Columbia MD. So kudos to constructor Gene Louise De Vera.

    It was international. E.g., at 24D the clue was “Xi’s language.” Gotta be something Chinese, right? Wrong Bozo-brain (me). It’s the Greek letter Xi, so the answer was GREEK. And “Neck, in Newcastle.” What the heck? Answer SNOG, British term for smooching.

    Get this: Did you know that a SEA TURTLE is the “Creature that returns to the beach where it was born for laying eggs?” How does it remember? Might you call that its SPAWN POINT? That was the answer to: “Location where a video game character starts (or restarts) a level.”

    And here’s a Saturday-level clue/answer for you: at 6A the clue was “Song and dance.” (10 letters) Answer: RIGAMAROLE. What a great word — sounds like something off the menu in an Italian restaurant. That was murder in two ways — the word itself, plus that’s a variation on the regular spelling: rigmarole. The extra A is atypical. (See what I did there? tee hee)

    My eight years of post-secondary education left me just a smidge shy of the capacity to figure out how the DC Metro works. I came sooooo close. We made it to the library in Bethesda and filled out the forms to get our senior discount cards. We just had to load them up at the station. The problem was I had two cards (one for me and one for Linda). So I put $5 on one successfully, but then the machine asked me to tap it again to complete the transaction and I got confused over which of the two cards I had used. It might have gotten cancelled so I tried it again and confused the cards again. Enough time passed for the attendant to notice that idiots from New Jersey were trying to manage what a local five-year-old has no trouble doing. He came over and we did it together successfully. That aside, it was fantastic going to the Gnats game via the Metro instead of paying $30 to park way far away from the stadium and fighting crowds to get out of the lot.

    What can I say about the game? It was about as great a game as you can see. James Wood popped a two-run dinger in the first inning giving the Gnats the lead. Then protecting it was like hacking your way through a snowstorm with a baby. Every pitch mattered. Any runner brought the tying run to the plate. And the Jints have a good lineup. Jake Irvin was pitching beautifully, but scary stuff came up. E.g., in the 4th, the Jints had runners on first and second with no outs. But a sweet double play followed by a strike out ended the crisis. In all, Irvin made it through the 8th on just 96 pitches.

    I had forgotten my heart pills in the car so, luckily, for some reason, Jorge Lopez was brought in to close, rather than Finnegan. He got two quick outs before Chapman lofted a fly to shallow right. Rookie Daylen Lile made a spectacular diving catch to end the game.

    Let’s finish up tonight with the clue/answer at 43A: “Rock band formed by three sisters” is HAIM. It’s the three pretty Haims — Este, Danielle, and Alana, in that order.

    See you next time!

  • Bartolo

    I was today years old when I learned (from today’s puzzle) that the currency (money) of Costa Rica is the colon.

    A financial audit there is called a colonoscopy. What we would call a 50-cent piece is a semi-colon there.

    I think that’s all I have. Drawing blanks on Bartolo Colon, the wonderful former MLB pitcher.

    Ha! I posted my colonoscopy and semi-colon lines on Rex’s blog, and Anony Mouse noted: “Your first statement is suspect and the second is just wrong. 50 cents would be worth about 250 colones.” I replied: “You caught me!” He (or she) spelled “statement” incorrectly (statemement), but I let that go. How’s that for magnanimous? I remember a high school teacher (Mr. Carmel) telling us that Julius Caesar was “magnanimous,” and gave the example — “if someone trod on his toe, he would forgive him.”

    Some Bartolo Colon trivia: In 2016, he became the last active MLB player to have played for the Montreal Expos. Pitchers still batted in the NL back then and Bartolo hit his first MLB home run on May 7, 2016 with the Mets. He was just shy of his 43rd birthday and became the oldest player ever to hit his first MLB HR. He’s turning 52 on Saturday.

    He was a hell of a pitcher. Won the AL Cy Young Award in 2005 and was an All Star four times. Lifetime record 247-188 with a 4.12 ERA and 2,535 strikeouts. It’s no wonder Costa Rica named their national currency after him. (No they didn’t.)

    Bartolo met his wife Rosanna when he was 13 years old. They have four sons, Bartolo Jr., Emilio, Wilder and Randy, and live in Clifton, NJ. Ever fall in love with a cute waitress or waiter? Ever not? Bartolo did during a period of marital difficulties and had a boy and a girl with her. Yikes! Her name is Alexandra and she sued him for support at one time. But the parties seem to have worked out some sort of peace deal. Alexandra’s kids visit BC at his marital home. They came to see him pitch when he was with the Mets.

    Wife Rosanna was a little suspicious whenever Bartolo got all fancied up to go off to meet Alexandra. She would ask him: Why the cologne, Colon?

    The theme of today’s puzzle is MONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING. Using ALL to represent “everything,” each theme answer contained a different national currency and you had to change it to ALL for the answer to make sense. Clear as mud, right? Here’s what I mean:

    At 24A, the clue was “How some medications are taken [Jordan].” It helped if you knew that Jordan’s money is the DINAR. Only then does the answer ORDINARY make sense because changing DINAR to ALL gives you ORALLY. Crystal clear now, right?

    That’s how I learned about the COLON. At 51A the clue was “Ones on your side [Costa Rica].” And answer was COLONIES, so when you change COLON to ALL you get ALLIES.

    If your bucket list includes “Watch Cyndi Lauper sail through the air in a garbage can” check out this video. And turn it up!!

    I said, “I’m sorry, baby, I’m leaving you tonight
    I found someone new, he’s waiting in the car outside”
    “Aw, honey, how could you do it?
    We swore each other everlasting love”
    I said, “Well, yeah, I know, but when we did
    There was one thing we weren’t thinking of, and that’s money”
    Money changes everything

    I haven’t been following the NBA playoffs too closely, but with the Gnats rained out last gnight, I tuned in to the Knicks-Pacers game. Yikes! An historic collapse by the Knicks. They were up by, literally, a gazillion points with like no seconds left, and they ended up losing in overtime. Ouch. Double Ouch. Actually, they were up by 14 points with 2:45 left. The record for teams in that position in the past was 994-0. (Not kidding.)

    Our Owl Chatter sports consultant, the gorgeous Sarah Fillier of the NY Sirens of the Pro Women’s Hockey League, filed this report on the game for us. [Note: Sarah is Canadian and is relatively new to sports other than ice hockey.]

    Here’s Sarah’s commentary on the Knicks game: In basketball in the USA, making a basket can earn your team one, two, or three points depending on various things. If they let you shoot from a line on the court without trying to stop you, you get one point if it goes in. That’s called a “free shot” or free something. If you shoot while everyone is running around like crazy and it goes in, you get either two or three points depending on how far away from the basket you are.

    Thanks SF! Good job! It’s all stuff our readers should find valuable.

    This poem is called “Heaven,” and it reminds me how personal the idea of heaven is for each of us. There’s no universal Eden, IMO. E.g., mine would include baseball, beer, and a decent cheeseburger. I would also need some connection to Zoey. Not that she’s my favorite, of course. It’s just that she’s the one who feels like sunshine.

    It’s by Carrie Fountain and is from today’s Writer’s Almanac.

    We spent months of our lives walking
    from Sears to Penney’s, back when we were
    vague, a couple of ideas forming ourselves
    against the certainty of merchandise,
    in the presence of strangers, when no one
    knew us or wished to know us or could even
    perceive us as we passed, two girls, unsmiling,
    unwilling, not finished. When I think
    of what we looked like then I think
    of newborn horses: stunned and exhausted,
    still slick with the cumbersome fluids of birth.
    You were the leader. You’d stop
    at the waterfall by the food court, dig a coin
    from your pocket, and toss it over your shoulder
    into the fiberglass river, then turn, press a coin
    into my palm, and say, “Now you do it.”
    We were hopeful. Our quarters slapped the water
    and disappeared beneath it. The little river
    went on, past the shoe store. And we followed it—
    we followed it as long as we could, longing
    toward this: the unseen, unwished-for present.

    Here’s the poet:

    In Frank Bruni’s “love of sentences” feature, there was this on JD Vance.

    From The Atlantic, George Packer: “Few people are capable of conscious, persistent self-betrayal. A change that begins in opportunism can become more passionate than a lifelong belief, especially when it’s rewarded. Ventriloquize long enough and your voice alters; the mask becomes your face.”

    Also, in Esquire, Dave Holmes on Lindsey Graham’s suggestion before the conclave that cardinals consider the idea of Trump as the next pope: “I guess he had not yet closed the day’s humiliation ring on his Apple Watch.” Holmes added that while Graham was probably joking, “You can’t be tongue-in-cheek when you are actively licking the boot. There is just not enough tongue for both jobs.”

    Uma Thurman was in the puzzle today, no relation to Thurman Munson the dead former catcher for the Yankees. Uma was born in Boston and was raised as a Buddhist. She went to a prep school in Amherst but dropped out to pursue her acting career, and did not go to college. All in all, probably a good move. She was married to and divorced from Gary Oldman and Ethan Hawke. (She was married to Gary Oldman when he was a youngman. However, she was never married to Henny Youngman.)

    In 2003, when working on Kill Bill with Quentin Tarantino, Uma was in a serious car crash because he insisted she perform her own driving stunts. She suffered permanent damage to her neck and knees. Tarantino referred to the incident as the biggest regret of his life. He apologized and she accepted the apology.

    Here’s Uma. I don’t know — she still looks a little miffed. Maybe it’s the bedhead.

    We’re heading down to Maryland tomorrow for a few days at an inn. Will be catching the Gnats/Jints game on Saturday. Hope we can still broadcast, but can’t be sure. Thanks for popping by!