The Wellington Files

  • 83 Hot Dogs and a Fresh Salad

    In the puzzle today at 7D the clue was “Chess game’s ending,” and I (correctly) entered MATE. Commenter Gary wrote: My chess games usually end with me pushing all the pieces onto the floor and saying, “This is a stupid game.” 

    Gary has moved to Albuquerque (a RELO in puzzle-speak) and has reported to us as follows: I’ve enjoyed some northern New Mexican food (if you know, you know), and the mariachi band there had a harp! We went to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center for fry-bread, along with blue corn crusted pickle slices marinated in black cherry Kool-Aid with green chile ranch (fer real).

    I still need to grow a mustache, buy a cowboy hat, belt buckle, boots and a pickup. People have been friendly so far. And, In New York I’m a five, a six in Denver, but here I’m a solid eight if the lighting is right.

    Under the rules for the hot-dog-eating championship held today in Las Vegas, the eating was limited to ten minutes, no dunking of dogs in water was allowed, and the dogs could not be separated from the buns. The contestants were Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, 40, and Takeru “The Tsunami” Kobayashi, 46, and the event was aired live on Netflix.

    Kobayashi had been retired for five years but emerged for one day to battle Chestnut. He retired for health reasons after downing 10,000 dogs over his career. The two last competed on July 4,2009, with Chestnut winning 68-64.5. Before that bout, Chestnut beat Kobayashi three times and lost to him twice. In today’s match, Chestnut’s victory was more pronounced with Joey coming out on top 83-66. He topped his personal best of 76, and walked off with the $100,000 grand prize.

    This is not a men’s-only “sport.” Miki Sudo is the current women’s champ having downed a record 51 dogs. She is a 39-year-old New Yorker and also holds the world records in the categories of kimchi, hotdish, and ice cream.

    This poem by Robert Hedin is called “Raising the Titanic.” It was yesterday’s poem of the day for the Poetry Foundation.

    I spent the winter my father died down in the basement,
    under the calm surface of the floorboards, hundreds

    of little plastic parts spread out like debris
    on the table. And for months while the snow fell

    and my father sat in the big chair by the Philco, dying,
    I worked my way up deck by deck, story by story,

    from steerage to first class, until at last it was done,
    stacks, deck chairs, all the delicate rigging.

    And there it loomed, a blazing city of the dead.
    Then painted the gaping hole at the waterline

    and placed my father at the railings, my mother
    in a lifeboat pulling away from the wreckage.

    Saturday’s puzzle included a clue/answer that blew up a segment of Crossworld, but I thought it was perfectly fine. I’ll let you decide. The clue was “Leaves just in time for dinner?” The answer was FRESH SALAD. Get it? The leaves are lettuce leaves, and they are fresh because they were picked just in time for dinner. Here’s Rex on it:

    It’s the worst answer in the grid. By far. I mean, the worst. I had the SALAD part, so how hard could the answer be!? Answer: extremely. Because who would guess that the answer would be something as inane and generic and not-a-thing as FRESH SALAD. What is that? What are these unfresh salads that people (implicitly) consume? I was like “PASTA SALAD? GREEN SALAD? … CHEF’S SALAD? BERRY SALAD!?” The answer may as well have been TASTY SALAD for all that FRESH SALAD makes any standalone sense. I don’t think I’ve ever resented a crossword answer this much. [OC: Wow!] All that work, all that added difficulty, so that I could get … FRESH?! And the clue. That “Leaves” trick is old as the hills, that wasn’t a problem. The problem was “just in time for dinner” did nnootthhiinngg to indicate the idiocy that is FRESH.  [OC: But it does!]

    The majority of the comments on it agreed with Rex’s take. Maybe a third (myself included) agreed with Anony Mouse who said:  I thought that clue was perfectly fine, and I completely disagree with Rex that ‘”just in time for dinner” did nnootthhiinngg to indicate the idiocy that is FRESH.’ There is an undeniable association between “just in time” and “fresh,” particularly in a culinary context.

    So there! Can we please move on to something about Taylor Swift now?

    Is there nothing the girl can’t do? According to QB Patrick Mahomes, Taylor Swift’s interest in football goes beyond sleeping with boyfriend Travis Kelce. Well, that’s not exactly how he put it. But he did say: “She’s already drawing up plays so we might have to put one in.” Yikes! He may have only been half kidding.

    Thanks for stopping by.

  • The Next Arrow

    As written up in today’s NYT, the inaugural Lebanon Ohio Pride Festival took place this year on July 20, a sunny Saturday, at the town’s Bicentennial Park and surrounding blocks. Billed as a safe, positive, family-friendly event, it had all the hallmarks of a queer celebration: balloons, rainbow apparel, drag queens. The words “Love always wins” were displayed prominently, written in chalk on the sidewalk. With the energy high and joyful, the event lasted through the afternoon and well into the night, the celebration undeterred even by the presence of a group of protesters.

    Lebanon’s a town of about 21,000 nestled between Dayton and Cincinnati. It isn’t shy about its conservative politics and hasn’t always felt welcoming to its queer residents. But James Reynolds who grew up there and Brooke Handley who still lives there dreamt of building a more inclusive community in Lebanon and devised the idea of the Festival. They were delighted with how it turned out.

    It felt personal. It felt like community. It inspired some to imagine alternate versions of their childhoods in which their identities were celebrated and cherished. It was a reminder that Pride offers something real to those who need it most. It is permission to explore identity, a reminder that there is community to be made and — at best — a redefinition of home.

    Quinton Koger Kidd, below, said: “I consider myself a Christian, a conservative, a Republican. But the Bible says: Jesus came to save, not condemn. We’re saved by grace through faith. Love God. Love your neighbor. Share the good news.”

    What a beautiful couple.

    We sent Phil out to cover it. He had the best time ever.

    Here’s a story of mine about acceptance. I had just met Linda, so this was about 45 years ago. She was living in a postage stamp apartment off Washington Square in the Village and I was in Park Slope. I was riding the subway home after a date. It was very late and I had the car to myself. Then a yuppie-ish white guy got on with fancy glasses and his gym bag. He sat opposite me. Then a Black guy got on, and he was a sight to behold. Chiseled and muscular, tall, dressed brilliantly, and wearing some makeup, even. Hair very sharp-edged. I said to myself, “Sh*t. If I were one percent as cool as this guy, I’d be alright.” He also sat across from me, but more to my left.

    After a while, the Black guy took out a cigarette, tapped it on the seat next to him, lit up, and puffed. It was so graceful — like a ballet. Now, you weren’t supposed to smoke on the subway, but the car was mostly empty and well-ventilated, so it didn’t bother me. But the yuppie turned to the Black guy and glared. The Black guy must have sensed it, because he turned and looked back at the white guy. They locked eyes. It became one of those staring contests from third grade. I was watching it all from my seat across the aisle.

    Finally, I was surprised to see the Black guy cave first. “Why the hard looks, man?” he asked. The white guy said: “Is this your first time on the subway? Don’t you know you can’t smoke in here?” A strategic blunder because it left the Black guy the opening to say, “This is my first time — is there a sign somewhere?” (As the lawyers say: What’s your authority?)

    It put the white guy on the defensive. He started looking all over the car for a No Smoking sign. He pointed to something near my head, but it was the emergency cord. “That’s the emergency cord,” the Black guy said.

    Now the white guy was getting a little desperate looking for a sign. As it happened, as I could plainly see from my seat, it said NO SMOKING in big red letters right above the white guy’s head. But he couldn’t see it because he didn’t turn to look directly behind himself. It was hysterical and it took some effort on my part not to burst out laughing.

    Finally, the Black guy took pity on the white guy and said, “Look, I’ll just finish this one and stop,” and the white guy was mollified. Happy ending, great scene, and I got this story out of it. I thought to myself, you can spend $150 for a Broadway ticket, but you can’t match the scenes put on by regular New Yorkers every minute of the day.

    Years later I was taking a walk and going over the story in my head. And it struck me that the Black guy must have trusted me not to betray him, not to say something like, “Hey the sign’s right there.” I mean, I’m a white guy too. But he must have sensed that between the two of them I’d take his side, at least enough to let it roll. He must have seen some coolness in me — maybe that one percent! I’m very proud of that.

    Sticking with the theme of acceptance, this story is by Donna Ledwin and it’s from today’s Met Diary.

    Dear Diary:

    It was 1980, and I was a student at Fordham. Disco was king, and Studio 54 was the place to be. One Saturday night, although my girlfriends and I knew the odds of getting in were long, we decided to take a shot.

    So, decked out in our hottest disco wear, we hopped on a D train in the Bronx and headed into Manhattan to take our chances at getting past the velvet rope. We knew that admission was at the whim of the doorman. How could we convince him we were worthy?

    With my long hair pinned up, wearing sparkly earrings, a short black coat with a big fur collar and black, strappy, high-heel sandals, I stood slightly away from the fray and feigned indifference.

    It took a while, but at some point, my eyes and the doorman’s met. He pointed my way and beckoned me to come inside.

    I managed to maintain my poker face.

    “I’m here with my two girlfriends,” I said, staring straight in his eyes.

    He hesitated, and I started to think I had overplayed my hand.

    “OK,” he said. “Them too.”

    And in we went.

    I don’t remember much about what happened after that, but I was on top of the world for that one night.

    The puzzle yesterday picked me up and threw me against the wall. I just couldn’t nail it down. Right off the bat, at 1D, the clue was “Some start-up funding, in brief.” I figured the last five letters could be MONEY, but I had no hope of getting the first two: VC. It stands for venture capital. And that V came from 1A where the clue was “Liquid found in some pens.” A pen like a sty or a writing pen? But the answer was VAPE JUICE. Yikes! I even thought fleetingly of vaping, but juice?

    Another bruiser was 19A where the clue was “10-point play.” WTF? I finally thought it could be a word in Scrabble that adds up to ten points. ADIEU seemed to fit, but it’s not worth ten points. The answer turned out to be from Scrabble after all but was Z TILE. Ouch.

    44A drove me nuts: “Rapper who shares his name with the 29th U.S. president.” Why didn’t I pay attention more in Social Studies in Seventh grade!!?? Turned out to be WARREN G, as in Harding. D’oh!

    Here’s today’s Owl Chatter quiz: Is this the Prez, or the rapper?

    How about this one? 16A: “Fast-food order that comes in four shapes: bells, balls, boots and bow ties.” My first guess was MCNOODLES, but no such thing exists. It was just your old MCNUGGETS — Boo!

    Two other WOEs for me (what on earth?) were 46D: “Dances in duple time.” Answer: GALOPS. And 30A: “Smallish smart device from Amazon.” Answer: ECHO DOT. Ridiculous.

    Would you have gotten 28A? The clue was “‘Coach.’” It finally came to me, mostly via the crosses: ECONOMY. (Get it? Think airplane fares.)

    At 51A, “Spurt” was JET, which led Son Volt to post this song:

    Took a hike to the Soldier Huts in Jockey Hollow yesterday. Here are Linda and Caity and her five-some, posing not posing for a picture.

    This wonderful poem about “the best kind” of love is by Billy Collins. It’s from today’s Writer’s Almanac and is called “Aimless Love.”

    This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
    I fell in love with a wren
    and later in the day with a mouse
    the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

    In the shadows of an autumn evening,
    I fell for a seamstress
    still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
    and later for a bowl of broth,
    steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

    This is the best kind of love, I thought,
    without recompense, without gifts,
    or unkind words, without suspicion,
    or silence on the telephone.

    The love of the chestnut,
    the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

    No lust, no slam of the door—
    the love of the miniature orange tree,
    the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
    the highway that cuts across Florida.

    No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor—
    just a twinge every now and then

    for the wren who had built her nest
    on a low branch overhanging the water
    and for the dead mouse,
    still dressed in its light brown suit.

    But my heart is always propped up
    in a field on its tripod,
    ready for the next arrow.

    After I carried the mouse by the tail
    to a pile of leaves in the woods,
    I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
    gazing down affectionately at the soap,

    so patient and soluble,
    so at home in its pale green soap dish.
    I could feel myself falling again
    as I felt its turning in my wet hands
    and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

    Posted in the Dull Men’s Club (UK):

    Things can get pretty heated at the Club. Alice Ahern asked the following, not realizing it would open quite the can of worms: Why do so many police stations have these glass towers?

    Chris Williams noted: Technically a criminal offence to photograph a police station. I’ve seen Youtube and twitter videos of people while walking away being called back by officers coming out of the station asking “You!! Why were you photographing our police station just then?”

    A bunch of folks disagreed, and then Simon Page wrote: Thank god so many people here have answered this, with some conviction too. And you are totally, absolutely and annoyingly WRONG. So please don’t post such “technical” garbage based on YouTube without properly researching the law.

    Williams replied: here in Cardiff there is a crank who deliberately goes out of his way with his YouTube and Twitter to photograph police cars, police stations and unmarked buildings etc. Every single time his videos feature cops ordering him to delete his footage/hand over his camera.

    Page again: For your own safety on this thread Chris, please just delete it! You seem like a nice guy. There are videos out there of Police moaning or insisting on ID but believe us, you are legally entitled to film any emergency worker or depot, station, pig farm etc without hindrance or explanation.

    Williams’ final reply: No I will not delete something factually correct despite being shot down by clueless idiots.

    Hrrrrrumph!

    I’m too upset to continue. See you tomorrow.

  • Ballads of Long Nights Lifting to Starlight

    When I first read this poem to try to determine if I wanted to share it in Owl Chatter, I wasn’t sure. But a second reading convinced me. Let’s see what you think. It’s from yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac. It’s by Paul Zimmer and is called “Dog Music.” Woof, woof!

    Amongst dogs are listeners and singers.
    My big dog sang with me so purely,
    puckering her ruffled lips into an O,
    beginning with small, swallowing sounds
    like Coltrane musing, then rising to power
    and resonance, gulping air to continue—
    her passion and sense of flawless form—
    singing with me, but mostly for the art of dogs.

    We joined in many fine songs—”Stardust,”
    “Naima,” “The Trout,” “Jeg elsker Dig,” “Perdido.”
    She was a great master and died young,
    leaving me with unrelieved grief,
    her talents known only to a few.

    Now I have a small dog who does not sing
    but listens with discernment, requiring
    skill and spirit in my falsetto voice.
    When I sing her name and words of love,
    Andante, con brio, vivace, adagio,
    at times she is so moved she turns
    to place her paw across her snout,
    closing her eyes, sighing like a girl
    I held and danced with years ago.

    But I am a pretender to dog music.
    Indeed, true strains rise only from
    the rich, red chambers of a canine heart;
    these melodies best when the moon is up,
    listeners and singers together and apart,
    beyond friendship and anger,
    far from any human imposter—
    songs of bones, turds, conquests,
    hunts and scents, ballads of
    long nights lifting to starlight.

    Different guys respond differently to fatherhood. When my Caitlin’s Danny was about to have his first child, our Zoey, I could tell he was nervous about the whole business. I secretly hoped he would have that moment that I had when I first held Caity, early in the morning back on May 17, 1986: an explosion of love that blows all those little things you worried about right off the map. But there was certainly the chance that he wouldn’t. That it would overwhelm him in a different more troubling way. As it happened, he’s a great and loving dad and they have four incredible kids now, kinehora.

    The Times ran an article this week by a man who regretted becoming a dad, who missed the life opportunities he had to give up. I’m not going to sit in judgment of him. As I said, different guys have different reactions to it. But I did like the letter that Andrew Ginsburg of Wellfleet MA wrote in response to it. Here’s what he said:

    “I regret reading Miguel Macias’s essay about his own regret of being a father to an 18-month-old. As a 44-year-old father of three young kids, I have no patience for his self-pity about his loss of personal time and freedom that every parent in the history of civilization has experienced.

    “His assertion about parents that ‘we are supposed to love it, to think it is the most wonderful thing we have ever experienced’ is simply untrue. While joyous, being a parent is also harrowing because kids are challenging. Each day is emotionally draining, and our time to recover at night is often interrupted.

    “But our job as parents is to raise happy, kind adults — not enjoy every single moment of the relationship. Rather than moan about your own lost dreams, open up ‘Goodnight Moon’ and make your daughter’s that much sweeter.”

    Here’s Zoey. I saw a sign in a store window years ago that said: “Spend time next to people who feel like sunshine.” I took a picture of it and sent it to Caity with the caption, Zoey.

    The puzzle today gave me a good workout, though Rex rated it “easy.” (Arggggh.) It started right off in our Dirty Old Man Dept. The clue at 1A was “Consideration when donning an off-the-shoulder dress,” and the answer was BRA STRAPS. But it quickly got serious. At 15A “Defiant protestor” was REFUSNIK. Commenter JNKMD shared this info on it: “Refusenik is a very specific term referring to Soviet Jews who in the early 1970s were REFUSED permission to leave the Soviet Union to emigrate to Israel.” [Probably shoulda known that.]

    Did you know the “Tragic heroine of Irish mythology” was DEIRDRE? News to me. She’s more fully known as Deirdre of the Sorrows, and was typically the last person anyone at school wanted to invite to a party. Jeez Louise, what the hell is she doing here? Very pretty, though — that’s part of the legend.

    How’s this for a turnaround? You know how a lump of coal is what you get from Santa if you’ve been bad? Well, at 37A, the clue was “Traditional Scottish New Year’s gift, representing warmth for the year to come,” and the answer was COAL. Go figure.

    But everyone’s favorite clue/answer today was at 38A. The clue was “Marked Twain?” And the answer: DOGEARED. (Get it?)

    And, last on the puzzle, back to our Dirty Old Man Dept, at 28D, for the clue “Film character with an iconic gold bikini,” the answer was LEIA, as in Princess Leia. The bikini itself, as part of a seven-piece set which included jewelry, sold at auction for $175,000. Carrie Fisher said she felt uncomfortable wearing it, that it was too revealing.

    Did you think the campaign was going to get ugly at some point?

    According to an article in the Times today, Trump reposted material that claims Harris engaged in oral sex to advance her career. Trump’s repost specifically states that “blowjobs impacted” her career. Previously, Trump shared a video that included a song parody stating Harris “spent her whole damn life down on her knees.”

    The Times says Trump has acknowledged that some of his advisors have urged him to stay away from such personal attacks, since they can alienate women and moderates, but he said he won’t be listening to them.

    God bless America.

    See you tomorrow.

  • Amphibian Gams

    I’ve never eaten frogs’ legs. I did taste eel once in sushi form and grilled octopus, both pretty good. It came up because of this lovely bit of writing Frank Bruni shared with us in his “For the love of sentences” feature. It’s by Helen Rosner in The New Yorker, discussing what to order at a recently spruced up French restaurant: “You can hardly go wrong, though it would be the height of tragedy if not one person at the table ordered the frogs’ legs persillade, a cancan line of amphibian gams in an audibly sizzling bath of butter and garlic that a server oomphs up, upon presentation, with a squeeze of lemon.” 

    The puzzle’s theme today was about following directions. Four long answers hit circled squares. Each square represented a direction. You had to fit the direction into the square (e.g., “east”) and then continue with the answer turning in that direction. So, e.g., at 53A, the clue was “Keeps the faith.” The answer starts out HOLD, and then hits a circle which you need to fill in with SOUTH, then you turn downwards and finish with OPE. So the full answer becomes HOLD[S OUT H]OPE (holds out hope).

    I haven’t heard of Suzy Bogguss under my rock, but Rex shared this puzzle-appropriate song of hers: “Drive South.” She has the chutzpah to rhyme “smile on” with “nylons,” in this racy stanza:

    We can go south with a smile on
    Ain’t going to pack my nylons
    Just leave these legs showin’
    It gets hot down where were goin’

    The Gnats shook the baseball world this week taking two from the power-laden Yanks, who drove all the way down Route 95 to get whupped in DC. On Tues, the Nats were clinging to a shaky lead like Leonardo D to his bit of flotsam in Titanic. And then, suddenly, some rinky-dink hits and an error loaded the bases for Aaron Judge. Yikes! But the big man’s hot liner reached CJ on a bounce and was good for two outs and an end to the threat. Whew.

    Weds, again, the Gnats took a tenuous lead into the 8th but when they got men on first and second with nobody out, it looked like the Gnats might be able to grab an insurance run or two. New third-bagger Tena drove the ball to the deepest part of center, over Judge’s head, and it banged off the wall. But the lead runner hesitated and was tagged out after a rundown between home and third. And then, oh, no!, the batter was caught between first and second, for an improbable and devastating double play. Instead of getting two runs they ran themselves into two outs. They limped into the ninth, embarrassed by it, and when the first two Yankees reached base, a Gnats’ collapse looked all but inevitable. But Finnegan, grimacing, was having none of it. A soft fly to right, and a feeble grounder back to the mound restored order. When Torres struck out it was over. He’s a Detroit boy, Finnegan, born and raised.

    Sarah Palin is back in the news, and not a moment too soon, as far as Owl Chatter is concerned. She’s been granted a retrial for her libel lawsuit against the NYT. You may recall that Ms. P’s political action committee published a map with crosshairs over several congressional districts, including that of Gabby Giffords. Shortly thereafter a shooter went on a rampage that left six dead and injured Giffords. SP said the Times defamed her by wrongly suggesting she incited the shooting. The Times did swiftly correct and apologize for the piece. The jury ruled in favor of the Times, but an appeals court just granted her a new trial. It held the trial judge erred in preventing jurors from hearing evidence that might have shown the Times knew or should have known Palin did not incite the shooting.

    If you’re following the case closely, you may want to pick up one of these refrigerator magnets for $7.50 on eBay. Lookin’ good, babe!

    Tomorrow is opening day for my final semester. Hope it goes well. Thanks for stopping by.

  • Ten Hammers and 105 Friends

    Here’s an ironic headline for you: Tom Brown Jr., World-Renowned Survivalist, Is Dead at 74.

    Brown was the country’s leading authority on wilderness survival. For most of his life, he took on the greatest survival challenge in the world: New Jersey.

    This is from his obit in the Times:

    His preferred wilderness was the Pine Barrens, a vast, unpeopled expanse of sandy forest that stretches across the middle of New Jersey. He would disappear into the woods for weeks at a time, often with nothing but the clothes on his back, and emerge ruddy in health and even a few pounds heavier.

    When he was 7, he befriended a boy named Ricky, whose grandfather Stalking Wolf was a Lipan Apache from New Mexico who had moved to New Jersey to be near his son. Over the next decade, Stalking Wolf taught the boys the ways of the forest. Both Ricky and Stalking Wolf died when Tom was 17, and he left home to wander the country for the better part of a decade, living mostly off the grid.

    He came back to NJ in the mid-1970’s, provided training, wrote books, and helped legal authorities with wilderness tracking. E.g., he was brought in to help locate a mentally disabled man who had gone missing for days in the Pine Barrens. When he found the man, they both sat down and cried.

    He wrote 16 books that sold 2 million copies. Two of his sons followed their dad and are survivalist trainers. Taking their cue from Brown, he is survived by his third wife, Celeste; three sons, Cody, River, and Tom III; his brother, Jim; four stepchildren; and three grandchildren.

    Here’s a shot of the Pine Barrens.

    And here’s Tom, several hours after rigor mortis set in.

    Rest in Peace Tom.

    Mark Heath, of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) shared that he organized his shed and can declare that he owns ten hammers.

    Lori Smith said: “Let’s see ’em then!!” So Heath came back with:

    Eamonn Flynn noted: I see a mallet hiding among them. And Heath said: Ah, you got me there.

    Sterling Chamberlain said: I know a bloke that has 11 — sorry. And Heath replied: No, no, it’s not a race.

    Steve Bunting asked: Are any of them left-handed?

    Jonathan Shepard said: I’ve got 105 friends.

    That prompted Matt Matterson to say: Excessive!, and Roland Bushell to ask — Where do you keep them?

    Back to hammers, Jackie Hunt said: Damn, I thought 3 was enough!

    Gareth Edwards: I have around 30. Most of them do not identify as hammers, but are used as such.

    And, last, if you prefer the macabre, Liam James asked: “A new one for each murdered prostitute?” [Yikes! Where’d that come from?]

    Goethe was born on this date back in 1749. He said: “One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”

    Or read an Owl Chatter post!

    It’s also Rita Dove’s birthday today: she’s 72. Her dad had a masters degree in chemistry but had to work as an elevator operator because he was Black. He eventually became the first Black chemist to work for Goodyear. Rita was brilliant in high school and was expected to become a lawyer or doctor. When she said she was going to be a poet, her dad said he didn’t understand poetry and asked her not to be upset if he didn’t read her poems. Her college profs urged her to take a more practical direction. You probably know where this is headed. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her work, was the first Black Poet Laureate of the U.S., and has been awarded 29 honorary doctorates, including from Harvard and U. Michigan. She frequently appears in NYTXW puzzles and has had soap named after her. She has been married to a German writer/professor, Fred Viebahn, since 1979 and they have a daughter, Aviva.

    This is a poem of Dove’s that we’d bet even her dad would understand. It’s called “Scarf.”

    Whoever claims beauty
    lies in the eye
    of the beholder

    has forgotten the music
    silk makes settling
    across a bared

    neck: skin never touched
    so gently except
    by a child

    or a lover.

    Happy birthday, Madam Laureate.

    BTW, I posted the headline on Tom Brown, above, for the Dull Men’s Club — “survivalist dies,” noting it was the most ironic headline I’ve ever seen. And Adrian Bull quipped: “He had one job . . . . “

    Puzzles sometimes use the clue “Losing tic-tac-toe line” for the answer XOX, OOX, etc. Apparently, this has driven some people batty and one of them posted (as Anony Mouse): Only “xxx”and “ooo” are losing in tic-tac-toe. The former is losing if you are playing o’s and the latter is losing if you are playing x’s. They are also winning lines for the player playing X’s and O’s, respectively. All other lines are neither winning nor losing.

    OK. Thanks.

    One of my favorite people in Crossworld is Wyna Liu. I met her once just to say hi and she seemed very sweet. She puts together the daily Connections puzzle that many of us enjoy (or the opposite of enjoy, depending on the day). Anyway, she was the constructor of yesterday’s XW in The New Yorker and it had one of the greatest ever clues/answers, IMHO.

    The clue was: Ruminations such as “Whenever you clean something, you make something else dirty” and “If Cinderella’s slipper actually fit perfectly, it wouldn’t have fallen off.”

    And the answer was: SHOWER THOUGHTS.

    Wow.

    Can’t top that. See you tomorrow.

  • Triple Word Score

    The scourge of anti-Semitism is insidious and can infect even the unlikeliest of places. Like Owl Chatter!

    In yesterday’s puzzle, the clue at 28A was “Honnold who was the first to free-solo climb El Capitan,” and the answer was ALEX. If you saw the film Free Solo you know the incredible story.

    Anyway, so on Rex’s blog, I posted the following comment: In the Jewish version of Free Solo, it’s not free, but we can get you a pretty good deal.

    And commenter Germanicus came back with: Enough of the anti-Semitic tropes, already. They are not funny but mean spirited.

    Ouch! Moi?

    And, speaking of not funny, my post for the Dull Men’s Club (UK) yesterday on the five-sided state flag of Ohio, elicited a comment that has me puzzled. Here’s the flag again:

    So Rayne Passmore said: That object has seven sides.

    And Alistair Easthope said: Surely just two sides and five edges.

    Passmore replied: those edges have a depth, so they are sides… it’s a heptahedron.

    What the f*ck are they talking about? The only way I get up to seven is by counting the inner blue sides/edges. So I asked Passmore: Are you counting the inner (blue) sides to get up to seven?

    His terse response was “No.”

    So I asked: Then how do we reach seven? Front and back?

    [The more I think about it, he has to be counting front and back.]

    I hope this gets resolved. I’ve got enough keeping me up nights. I’ll keep checking every ten minutes for the rest of my life and let you know what happens.

    Is Rhode Island big enough to hold them? With Taylor’s tour in Europe complete, she hung out with Travis, Owl Chatter photographer Phil, and friends (including Bradley Cooper) in the tiny state over the weekend. Phil managed to take a few shots of TS before falling down a flight of stairs, drunk (him, not her). Nice work Philly! Maybe get some ice on those bumps?

    Today’s puzzle was a crafty nod to Scrabble fans. The revealer was TRIPLE WORD SCORE, clued as “Coveted Scrabble space,” but it also worked as musical score, because the theme answers were all hit songs where the title was a “tripled” word: FUN FUN FUN (Beach Boys); GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS (Motley Crue); MONEY MONEY MONEY (Abba); and BYE BYE BYE (N Sync). Also, re Scrabble, all 26 letters appeared in the grid. That’s called a pangram.

    Olympic gold medalist ALY Raisman popped into the puzzle today. Easy for her, since she’s retired. She’s from Needham MA, and is Jewish. You got a problem with any of that? Hey, don’t look at me in that tone of voice.

    Aly is short for Alexandra. She’s 30 years old and 5′ 2″ tall. In 2018 she shared the Arthur Ashe Courage Award for speaking out against sexual abuse along with other victims. Before retiring she did things like this.

    A recent post in the Dull Men’s Club (UK) was by a woman wondering what the proper number of swipes is when applying a stick deodorant. Most folks answered 3 or 4, and there were a bunch of “it depends” (on a variety of factors). But my favorite response was: Whatever you do, don’t follow the instructions that say “Remove cap. Push up bottom.”

    Some crazy baseball history was made today by the Blue Jays and the Red Sox. It started way back on June 26 when the teams were facing each other. Danny Jansen was at bat for the Jays with a one-strike count when the rains came and the game was suspended. It was scheduled to resume today, which it did. But Jansen was traded last month, so he couldn’t finish the game for Toronto. (A pinch hitter finished Jansen’s at-bat for him and got credit for it.) But get this — the team he was traded to was Boston — so he finished the game with Boston, going 1 for 4, and thus became the first player ever to play for both teams in the same game. Toronto won 4-1.

    Here are both of them. Or both of him. D’oh — you know what I mean.

    We end on a sad note today. The wooden grandstand, locker rooms, press box and dugout of the Jay Littleton Ball Park, a baseball field in Ontario, CA, were destroyed in a fire. It was featured in the movie about women’s baseball, A League of Their Own, and in The Babe. It was “an old-school, 1937, all-wood grandstand.” They don’t make ’em like that anymore, and they’re gorgeous.

    You can see the stands and dugout in this eggs-zerpt from the film.

    Good catch! See you tomorrow!

  • Elevator Pitch

    Fans of UMich will be keeping an eye on the LA Chargers of the NFL this year to see how coach Jim Harbaugh fares on his return to pro ball after leading the ‘Rines to the NCAA title last season. He was bursting with pride yesterday in this statement:

    “You get in those situations, and it’s a test of wills. I was proud of each of the guys who were there. That’s a win. You feel good about yourself. You were challenged. It was a test of will, and you pull it down, or pull it in.”

    Competitive sports has its ups and downs, except for two hours yesterday. What Coach Harbaugh was talking about were the eleven men and two women who were trapped in an elevator for two hours. In Dallas. Without air conditioning. Harbaugh praised QB Justin Herbert for staying cool and taking a leadership role during the crisis.

    They were finally rescued by Dallas Fire-Rescue, one by one, pulled out through a ceiling panel, drenched in sweat. One of the women trapped with the eleven young athletic men, pictured below, was quick to assure her family that she was fine.

    If you’re in Iceland, don’t waste your time shopping for cucumbers. According to a story in the NYT today, the whole country is out of cucumbers. It’s the fault of Logan Moffitt, a TikTok “influencer” known as “Cucumber Guy.” He posts videos on preparing cucumber salads and they’ve gone viral with devastating effect in Iceland, where the entire nation’s population is around 380,000. Since the country is relatively isolated (the name Iceland has nothing to do with “ice.” It’s from “island.”), it’s expensive to import foods when there are shortages. Nevertheless, an emergency cucumber shipment was rushed in from the Netherlands which helped a little. They’re a hardy breed, the Icelanders: they’ll live. Here in Jersey, I just picked up six adorable little ones (a pound) for just $2. God bless America.

    Today’s puzzle featured an “echo” theme. Clues repeated themselves and the answers were wacky puns. The best was “Pooh-pooh?” as the clue for THIS BEARS REPEATING. Get it? And “11?” was the clue for ONE AFTER ANOTHER.

    For a non-theme clue at 14A: “City with a cowboy hat-wearing replica of the Eiffel Tower,” the answer was PARIS, TEXAS. In 1993, a 65-foot-tall replica of the Eiffel Tower was erected southeast of the city square. In 1998, when Paris, Tennessee put up their 60-foot version, the Texas folks responded by putting a giant red cowboy hat on top of theirs. Hrrrrrrumph!

    Paris, TX, however, is marked by some horrific history. This is from Wikipedia:

    In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, several lynchings were staged at the Paris Fairgrounds as public spectacles, with crowds of white spectators cheering as the African-American victims were tortured and murdered. A Black teenager named Henry Smith was lynched in 1893. His murder was the first lynching in US history that was captured in photographs sold as postcards and other trinkets commemorating the killing. Journalist Ida B. Wells said of the incident “Never in the history of civilization has any Christian people stooped to such shocking brutality and indescribable barbarism as that which characterized the people of Paris, Texas.”

    Well, I can certainly see why the GOP would want to keep that stuff out of the history books. Way too gruesome.

    I’ve had a chance to review Puzzle #4 from yesterday’s tournament. All of the puzzles, with solutions, were sent to us. #4 was the one that flummoxed me. It’s by Hoang-Kim Vu, and it’s pure genius, IMO.

    I’m going to try to explain its brilliance as best I can. (Bare with me, as one nudist said to the other.) First the central across answers made it so the middle column reading down turned out to be FUN HOUSE MIRROR. Next all of the down clues on the left side of the mirror had to be read by reducing a double letter to a single letter, e.g., common saloon job had to be read as common salon job (because the answer was HIGHLIGHTS). Then, on the right side of the mirror, you had to do the opposite — a single letter in the clue had to be doubled. So Go on the road had to be read as Goo on the road (because the answer was TAR). As a final touch of elegance/genius, it was the same letter that was altered up or down, in terms of the grid’s symmetry. So if an “ee” was reduced to “e” on the left side of the mirror, it was an “e” that was added at the symmetrical position on the right side. (Wow)

    It took me forever (in crossword puzzle time) to see what we had to do to the clues, and I ran out of clock before I could get through it with that knowledge.

    I know several OC readers are noobies as far as crosswords go. Puzzle #1 from the tourney was for you. Here it is, give it a try.

    C-LPZ17 Puzzle 1 Love Tester (Madeline Kaplan).pdf

    Did you know the Ohio State flag is five-sided? Learned that from the puzzle today at 56D. I think that may be dull enough for me to share with the Dull Men’s Club (UK). It’ll be my first post. (I’ve commented there before but have never posted.)

    Here’s a song about the Ohio River.

    So I posted my first post with for the Dull Men and was quickly asked by Des O’Brien if there was any significance to the 17 stars on the flag (see above). It turns out (as I replied) that 13 are for the original 13 colonies, and four were added because Ohio was the 17th state to join the Union. I’m an expert on the Ohio flag now and don’t even know what NJ’s looks like.

    Oy. Enough nonsense for today. Thanks for popping by.

  • Lollapuzzoola 2024!

    The 17th annual Lollapuzzoola Crossword Puzzle tournament was held today in NYC and Owl Chatter competed!

    I have to tell you, when I first entered the big room, I was pretty nervous.

    But after I found a seat and settled in and picked up some (dreadful) coffee, I looked around at the competition — and then I got really nervous. But it wasn’t my first rodeo. Actually, it would have been my first rodeo, but it wasn’t my first XW tourney — it was my third. And that really helped. I was pretty calm.

    Each puzzle had a time limit, 20, 30, or 40 minutes. You earned ten points for each square filled in correctly, 100 bonus points for a perfect grid, and one point for every second you finished before the time expired. There were two divisions: local (for mortals) and express (for serious puzzle folk — those who can complete a NYT Saturday puzzle in ten minutes on average). There was also a pairs division — two people work on each puzzle together. The tournament organizers proudly announced that they have been responsible for close to 40 divorces. [No they didn’t.]

    In my division, I came in at #116 out of 169. Fine by me. That’s in the top half, right? Wait. Never mind.

    I finished the first two with no errors and had just one error on the last one. D’oh! The fourth one — billed as the toughest — killed me. It was 40 minutes and I was staring at a blank grid for about the first 15 minutes or so. The theme was a “fun house mirror” and each clue was “distorted” with an extra letter in a word on half the grid, and in some other way on the other half. When I finally saw that, I was able to fill in a lot of it, but it took me all 40 minutes and I had 49 errors/blanks. Ouch. There was a lot of blood shed all over the place on that one.

    My favorite was the third, although they were all top quality — and the constructors were there, so we could applaud them. The third one was based on the Drop Tower amusement park ride. At a bunch of places in the grid, an answer that had an A in it would suddenly “drop” via a long down string of A’s. Like you were falling and screaming. Then it would hit a level and finish off horizontally. It helped that you could fill in a whole bunch of A’s once you saw that. Several of the clues encouraged us to scream when we reached them, so there was frequent screaming from all over the place. It was funny and less distracting than I feared.

    Two women wore dresses like this.

    There was an hour-long break for lunch. I brought a tuna salad sandwich on a bagel with a pickle and enjoyed it outdoors on a park bench. Pizza and soda was provided to solvers who wanted it, for $15 (in advance). It looked good, but I was happy with my sandwich.

    So that’s my report of a tiring day. Owl Chatter will resume normal broadcasting tomorrow, probably.

    Until then — happy puzzling everybody!

  • Take the Girl Shopping!

    Owl Chatter readers — have you seen these men? According to NYPD, these two broke into Rick Pitino’s St. Johns office and made off with a ceremonial sword, a bullhorn, and an autographed basketball. Pitino’s entering his second year as the Johnnies’ head coach. Our staff photographer Phil snapped this shot of the duo as they left the crime scene. The University is offering a reward for any information leading to their capture although, at the moment, the reward is only a few sandwiches.

    Please keep an eye out for the sword as well. Pitino released this photo of it:

    I’m not going to sugar-coat it — the Owl Chatter offices are falling apart with George on an extended leave to attend to his legal troubles. The new guy is a disaster. I asked for material on Edgar Lee Masters and he brought me the file on Lee Harvey Oswald. Jeez Louise. And we’re completely out of Diet Pepsi except for the decaf kind which everyone hates. Arggggggh.

    Edgar Lee Masters was born on this date in Garnett, Kansas, back in 1868, but he grew up in small farming towns in Illinois. He got the idea for his Spoon River Anthology from a collection of Greek poems which focused on daily life and ordinary people. He had over 200 local characters look back on their lives from beyond the grave in the small fictional farming town of Spoon River. It was a great success, selling 80,000 copies in four years, and for the first time in American literature put the focus on small towns.

    The only glitch was that the people from the real town (Lewistown, IL), found it insulting and were outraged. It was banned from Lewistown schools and the library for 60 years (until 1974)! Masters’ own mother was on the library board and voted in favor of the ban! Ouch! Masters conceded that his mom was not a fan, but noted that his father loved it. (Not kidding.)

    The town has since come around and is proud of Masters and the work. In 2015, the 100th anniversary of its publication was celebrated with tours, exhibits, and performances. The local Oak Hill Cemetery features a memorial statue of Masters, and offers a self-guided walking tour of the graves that inspired the poems.

    In yesterday’s puzzle at 2D, the clue was “Sleeveless top” for CAMISOLE. Here’s my tax student, Evelyn, modeling one. Thanks, babe! We’ll see you in class next Friday — it’s my last semester!

    At 50D, the clue was “University of North Carolina team, to fans,” which is, of course, HEELS, short for Tar Heels. Here’s Taylor with her broken pricey Louboutin heel that she tossed into the crowd in Brazil. The fellow who caught it is selling it to raise money for his cousin’s cancer treatment. A mensch.

    Tay’s butterfly heels have held up, kinehora. But look at them — they could go at any minute, the way she runs around. Travis — skip a practice and take the girl shopping! Remember that t-shirt I saw near Times Square? — “I have as many shoes as I want — said nobody, anywhere, ever.”

    Taylor was in the puzzle today. Did you know the term SWIFTIES was added to the Oxford English Dictionary last year? [The clue for it in the puzzle was “Fan base added to the O.E.D. in 2023.”]

    The puzzle yesterday was an exercise in wordplay. The theme clues all had words the first two letters of which, phonetically, formed another word that started off the answer. [Huh??] So, e.g., for the clue “SAY WHAT?” the first two letters are S and A, which are also the word “Essay.” And “What?” is a question, so the answer was ESSAY QUESTION. (Get it?) Similarly, “MEDALS” were EMMY [“M-E”] AWARDS.

    Commenter Lewis reminded us that this constructor (Brad Wiegmann) likes to play with letters. In an earlier puzzle of his, a brilliant clue was “Nicholson and Nicklaus, e.g.?,” for ONE-EYED JACKS. (Each last name has one letter “i” in it, and their first names are Jack. Wow.) And “Søren Kierkegaard and Chris Isaak, i.e.” was the clue for DOUBLE AGENTS. They each have two letters “a” in their names so they are “double-a” gents.

    From egs today: If you get paid for uttering cries of fear, do you “eek out a living?” 

    Lewis is brilliant at finding little serendipities in puzzles that would be easy to overlook but add to the appreciation of the puzzle. E.g., today he noted that the answers ARM WRESTLE and SHAKE ON IT are near each other, and that the answer SNARE, which is right next to SWIFTIES, contains “ERAS.”

    At 55A, “Spice derived from the inner bark of a tropical tree,” was CINNAMON. Remember the first Mission Impossible series? Cinnamon Carter was played by Barbara Bain. She was married to Martin Landau for 37 years (divorced in ’93), and they had two daughters. Bain, who is Jewish, will be turning 93 in a few weeks. Landau died in 2017.

    Here’s a good example of a song I would never hear (or hear of) because I am too f*cking old and live under a rock, but is popular enough to be cited in a clue in the NYTXW. The clue was “TiK ToK creator,” and the answer was KESHA.

    “Ain’t got a care in the world, but got plenty of beer.”

    Let’s end today with two more musical selections. First is a song shared by commenter Son Volt connected to the puzzle’s HORNY TOAD (“Spiny reptile that, despite its name, is actually a lizard”).

    And, finally, another LR classic which Rex tapped for the puzzle answer BIG PICTURE, clued with “Forest, in a metaphor.” (You know — not being able to “see the forest for the trees.”)

    Honey child, I’ve got my doubts. . .

    Who doesn’t? See you tomorrow.

    [Late-breaking news: I got the call from the waiting list and will be competing (to use the term very loosely) in this year’s Lollapuzzoola, the XW tournament in NYC tomorrow. Should be fun. I’ll bore you with details in our next post.]

  • Tree Street Treats

    The best thing in the puzzle today was the clue for LAVA: “The floor is [blank].” It’s the kids’ make-believe game that Zoey and Leon like to play. You’re climbing on something, in this case — me, and you absolutely positively cannot touch the floor. Because it is LAVA. Of course, I thought my brilliant grandchildren made it up. Not so, apparently.

    For 1D, where the answer was SARA, the constructor chose to go with “Fleetwood Mac song with Stevie Nicks on piano,” instead of Dylan’s.

    ALMA was in the puzzle today too, but as ALMA mater, not as ALMA Thomas, whose painting Breeze Rustling Through Fall Flowers we saw yesterday in the Phillips Collection in DC.

    Alma Thomas taught for 35 years in the Shaw Junior High School in segregated Washington DC. She taught the entire time in the same classroom. She only became a full-time artist after she retired from teaching. Her painting on the 1963 March on Washington, in which she marched, became the U.S. postage stamp issued in 2005 commemorating the event.

    Thomas did not marry. She wrote, “Once upon a time it was said, don’t die having a ‘Miss’ on your tombstone. I feel very proud of having maintained my Miss. I say that Miss stands for all the jackasses I missed in life.” Her family took a demotion in social status when they moved from Georgia to DC, but they wanted their children to be able to get an education beyond elementary school. Alma and her sister John Maurice Thomas (named after their father), lived in the family home they moved into in DC their entire lives. This painting of Thomas is by Laura Wheeler Waring.

    You’ll probably be as shocked as I was to learn that the “Most common Czech surname” is not Bernstein — it’s Novak. Remember Kim? She’s still with us at 91. Her husband since 1976, Robert Molloy, passed away in 2020. Earlier in life, she dated Sammy Davis, Jr., and Wilt Chamberlain. A bad experience with plastic surgery left her open to much abusive criticism after a rare public appearance at the Oscars in 2014. This included Trump graciously stating “she should sue her plastic surgeon.”

    Enjoyed the hot dogs at the Gnats game very much — only $4 for a jumbo Hebrew National. Good mustard options and relish. That’s a Tuesday night special. The game itself, not so much. Gnat bats were asleep. Lost 3-1 to Colorado. CJ popped one.

    There’s no shortage of idiots in this world. I’m not complaining — where would Owl Chatter be without them? But sometimes the idiocy is so perfect, so brilliant, we just have to stop and marvel. It’s a form of genius. Let’s have a look.

    Danny Doherty of Norwood MA is 12. His brother Patrick is 15 and plays hockey with the Boston Bears Club. It’s a very special team, literally, – a special education team formed 25 years ago by John Quilli, for his son who is autistic. Patrick is autistic too and has been on the team for ten years, since he was five.

    When Danny complained that he was bored over the summer, his mom Nancy suggested he open an ice cream stand on their lawn and donate half of the money they make to the team. His family made their own ice cream at home and Danny came up with a few flavors, designed a logo, and set up his table. That’s Danny on the right, below. They call the stand “Tree Street Treats.”

    They raised $124 the first week and gave $62 to the team. Good stuff! It sounds like your basic feel-good story — American as apple pie, amirite? Until several days later they received a letter from Norwood’s Board of Health. “The Norwood Health Department has received a complaint that you are making and selling scooped ice cream and cookies at your residential property. The Massachusetts Food Code (105CMR. 590) does not allow for the sale of ice cream made in the home. Please desist in these activities.” It was signed by Abbie Atkins, Assistant Public Health Director, and clearly a moron of the highest order.

    Rather than close up shop, the Dohertys started giving the ice cream away, for donations from the recipients. Local ice cream shops jumped aboard and held fundraisers. At last report, the stand has raised $7,500 for the team. Save two scoops for us here at Owl Chatter please!!

    This is Patrick, in full regalia.

    See you tomorrow.