The Wellington Files

  • Dynamite!

    Let’s open today with this news item from The Onion:

    Nation’s 56,000 Acres Of Spinach Crops Cooked Down To Single Half-Cup Serving

    At 60A in the puzzle yesterday the clue was “High-end suit” and the answer was ARMANI. OMG, he just died, sadly. Here are three comments that appeared:

    Elizabeth: Armani died today–or at least announced today. Coincidence?

    egs: No. I’m pretty sure Will Shortz had him rubbed out to increase the relevance of today’s puzzle.

    Liveprof (me): Nobody is safe.

    The theme yesterday centered on the phrase DOES IT SCALE? It’s apparently a term in venture capitalism. You make a proposal and the question is asked: “Does it scale?” The following exchange occurred:

    Rex: This one started somewhat disappointing, and then got promising, and then went back to disappointing again with the revealer. I understand the phrase “DOES IT SCALE?” but I care so little about “investors” and start-ups and businessspeak in general that the phrase just leaves me flat. Worse, it’s kind of off-putting. If the phrase were truly colorful or involved great wordplay or were particularly apt, my aversion would not have mattered so much, but something about “scaling” as the core concept was such a letdown that even if I were a venture capitalism admirer and fervent Shark Tank watcher, “DOES IT SCALE?” would have landed with a bit of a thud.

    Anony Mouse: Rex I love the commentary and read the blog every day, but man I get you hate business people, and business, and capitalism and all the things but stop for one moment and ponder… if there weren’t “investors” you wouldn’t have the internet to write your blog, or the laptop you write it on, or the chair you sit in to write… or god forbid you use a stand up desk because that certainly came from an Entreprenuer… iPhone, yes. Oh wait you hate Steve Jobs and Apple and you are an android fan??? Also from an entrepreneur (Larry Page)… who subsequently is spending all of his time currently making sure AI doesn’t end it all. So, for once… enough with bashing entrepreneurs as a class of humans… it’s no better than all the other things you are “against.”

    Rex’s response: Hi and thanks for reading. I will never stop bashing the so-called “entrepreneur”-ial class. The very prevalence of that pretentious French word makes me feel good about the bashing. “Business” people have reduced the entire world to AI-controlled ashes. They have all the money. They care only about money (pleasing shareholders, ROI, etc). Everything transactional. It’s repulsive to me, whatever benefits might accrue from some few businesses. Just let me have my hate. 🙏 Businessspeak is an ugly scourge rooted in dissimulation. Further, I do not understand regular human beings caping for billionaires and I never will (esp the billionaires at Google, who have over time made searching for anything accurate or useful well nigh impossible; it’s all AI slop and ads). Billionaires hate you. They are largely anti humanists who would kill their own grandmothers if it meant marginally higher profits. Am I being hyperbolic? Seems possible! I hope you keep reading though. You made your point very nicely, which is rare on the internet, so thank you.

    [I had to look it up, but “caping” is slang for standing up for somebody. Rex used it correctly.]

    In the puzzle, the theme answers were things that climbed, using the meaning of “scale” in the sense of scaling a wall. And the theme answers were all downs to be entered upside down, i.e., instead of ABCD, you entered DCBA. So ROCKCLIMBER had to be entered REBMILCKCOR.

    Commenter teedmn wrote: I took a bit of time to see the theme because I tried to believe that REB MILCKCOR was someone’s name. And I posted: Yes, Reb Milckcor was a brilliant Talmudic scholar. He and Reb Hillel would argue fine points of Hebraic law into the wee hours.

    More from The Onion:

    E-Mail From Aunt Accidentally Opened

    The question that arises today is: What the f*ck planet are we living on? Within several sentences of each other, today’s NYT says RFK Jr. once called the Covid vaccine “a crime against humanity,” and also said Trump deserves a Nobel prize for presiding over its creation. Kennedy did concede at one point that it saved lives, but dismissed studies showing millions were saved. The Times described that as “walking a fine line.”

    Here’s Dr. Susan Monarez, the former head of the CDC whom RFK Jr. fired because she has gray hair. Wait, Phil — are you sure that’s the doc?

    Both TNT (“Need for a demo, maybe”), and DYNAMITE STICK (“Ground-breaking invention?”) were in the puzzle today. They are different things, btw. Dynamite is more powerful, but TNT is more stable, and thus easier to handle and control. Keep that in mind when you finally go off the deep end.

    Commenter Lewis pointed out that the constructor of today’s puzzle, Bryan Cheong, is only fourteen years old. I thanked him for reminding me what failures my children are. (Just kidding Caity and Sam — love you!!)

    So how in the world does Bryan Cheong know about Belle Starr? Clue at 6D: “Belle _____, real-life 19th-century outlaw celebrated in film and TV.” Maybe his parents (grandparents?) like Dylan?

    The sweet pretty things are in bed now, of course
    The city fathers, they’re trying to endorse
    The reincarnation of Paul Revere’s horse
    But the town has no need to be nervous
    The ghost of Belle Starr, she hands down her wits
    To Jezebel, the nun, she violently knits
    A bald wig for Jack the Ripper who sits
    At the head of the chamber of commerce

    Mama’s in the factory
    She ain’t got no shoes
    Daddy’s in the alley
    He’s lookin’ for food
    I am in the kitchen
    With the tombstone blues

    Many women have portrayed Starr in films and on TV. Elsa Martinelli played Starr in The Belle Starr Story, a western directed by Lina Wertmüller. Phil was able to track Elsa down at her home, below.

    This poem by Paul Hostovsky was in today’s Writer’s Almanac. It’s called “Greenhouse.”

    My Aunt Ellie lived in a green-
    house. This was in Irvington
    New Jersey. A Jew alone
    is a Jew in danger, her husband
    said. Their daughter, my cousin,
    wanted to go where she wanted
    to go. They said it was a big
    mistake. In a greenhouse you
    cultivate certain delicate
    non-indigenous plants. The house
    was green and my cousin fell
    deeply in love with a black man.
    When she married him her father
    sat shiva for her, meaning that
    he mourned her for dead. But
    she was only living over in East
    Orange. She had two beautiful
    daughters who never knew
    their grandfather on their mother’s
    side. Because she was dead to him
    until the day he died. That was the day
    we all went over to Aunt Ellie’s house
    where she was sitting shiva. We met
    my cousin’s husband Toe, for the first time,
    and their two daughters, Leah and Aleesha.
    And we opened all the windows in
    the greenhouse on that day, for outside
    it was a beautiful spring day and we
    broke out the expensive delicate china
    from Germany which they kept locked up
    in a glass breakfront in the hall.

    I have no truck with parents who forsake their children because they married out of their religion or race, or out of homophobia. It’s abhorrent to me. Tommy Lasorda never accepted that his son, Tom Jr., was gay. When his son died of aids Lasorda insisted it was cancer. But I don’t know how my own dad would have reacted to my marrying Linda. He died when I was fourteen. I might have been Lasorda-ed. My mom, of course, and my entire family loved Linda immediately and unreservedly. Boruch Hashem.

    There was a pretty arcane baseball reference in the puzzle. The clue was “Slugger Scott with eight Gold Gloves.” What makes it harder is you don’t necessarily think of him as a slugger. Answer: Scott ROLEN. He’s only 50 years old now. I think of him mainly for his defense at third base, but he could hit too. Scott won eight Gold Gloves and was an All-Star seven times. In Game 7 of the 2004 NLCS (for the pennant), Rolen homered off of Roger Clemens in the sixth inning with one on, giving St. Louis the lead over Houston which it never relinquished.

    Scott was inducted into the Hall of Fame two years ago. He holds an unusual distinction: In his first year of eligibility for the Hall he received only 10.2% of the votes. It was the lowest percentage ever recorded by someone eventually getting enough to get in, as Scott did in his sixth year. He’s an Indiana boy. Nice to see you in the grid, Buddy.

    OK Chatterheads. Let’s call it a day. See you tomorrow!

  • Katz’s Deli

    Commenter Gary came in late yesterday, but I enjoyed his note on the pretzel-centric puzzle:

    “Just last night I went to a new movie theater that opened close to my house and it has a brewery attached and they take your order and bring you food as if you’re living in a civilized society and I ordered a pretzel (despite it costing as much as my first car) and it was miraculous and delicious and life affirming. So I’m wildly pro-pretzel right now.”

    Yesterday’s grid also led to some interesting trivia. William Moulton Marston and Elizabeth Holloway, husband and wife, made key contributions to the invention of the polygraph. It stemmed from their noting the connection between blood pressure and emotions. William was also the creator of Wonder Woman. Wait. Is that Lucille Ball on the right? Nah.

    A sheet of Wonder Woman stamps is selling on eBay for $30, twice its current postal value of $14.60.

    Wonder Woman was protrayed in films by the Israeli actress Gal Gadot. It took a long time to get her costume and makeup on so she was often late to the set, a situation referred to as “waiting for Gadot.”

    Do you know the expression to “zhuzh” something up? I learned it pretty recently from a puzzle. It means to liven it up, or, using today’s clue, “fancify” it. It was the theme. ZHUZH UP was the central answer and the four theme answers all added the “ge” sound to a phrase. E.g., for the clue “Neutral shade in some Florida décor?” the answer was TAMPA BEIGE. Get it? You zhuzh up Tampa Bay phonetically. Similarly, “Headline during a zombie attack?” was THE DEAD SEIGE. It zhuzhes up the Dead Sea.

    The New Yorker is known for its intense fact checking. There’s a story about it by Zach Helfand, a former checker, in the Sept. 1 & 8 issue.

    “How do you confirm a fact? You ask, over and over, ‘How do we know?’ Years ago, John McPhee wrote about a Japanese incendiary balloon that, during the Second World War, floated across the Pacific and struck an electrical cable serving a top-secret nuclear site; a reactor that enriched plutonium for the atomic bomb bound for Nagasaki was temporarily disabled. How did McPhee know? Someone had told him. How did that person know? He’d heard about it—secondhand. The checker, Sara Lippincott, spent weeks trying to track down an original source. Just before the magazine went to the printer, she got a lead. She called the source at home, in Florida. He was at the mall. How to locate him in time? She called the police. They found him and put him in a phone booth. Did he know about the incident? He did. How? He was the reactor’s site manager; he saw it happen. The detail made it in.

    “When Parker Henry checked Patrick Radden Keefe’s Profile of Anthony Bourdain, Bourdain wasn’t able to get on the phone, so Henry sent him a memo containing a hundred or so facts about some of the most sensitive parts of his life, including his heroin use and the collapse of a romantic relationship. He responded, ‘Looks good.’

    “Zadie Smith once received a call regarding whether, years earlier, at Ian McEwan’s birthday party, a butterfly landed on her knee. When a Talk piece by Tad Friend described the singer Art Garfunkel waving his arms around, the checker asked Garfunkel to confirm that he had two arms. (It turns out that Zadie Smith was asked not about a butterfly on her knee but about a slug on a wineglass.)

    “Jane Bua checked a David Sedaris essay about meeting the Pope. She checked a detail about the color of the buttons on a cardinal’s cassock so assiduously (the department’s perception), or maddeningly (Sedaris’s), that he e-mailed his editor, ‘Can you slip her a sedative?’ Sedaris has complained, “Checking is like being f*cked in the a** by a hot thermos.” Bua mentioned this to the checker on Sedaris’s next piece, Yinuo Shi. Shi considered the analogy and said, ‘If a thermos works, the outside wouldn’t be hot.’”

    Errors that elude the checkers usually are pointed out via mail from a reader. E.g.:

    1947: “I was somewhat taken aback to find Mr. Hellman, in his article on the Stuart Collection, announcing the death of my father. To kill off a retired director of the New York Public Library is no doubt as insignificant a misdemeanor as one can commit. But I wonder if it was necessary.”

    2019: “The chicken is NOT wearing overalls (which you mention twice). He is wearing lederhosen.”

    Hrrrrrumph!

    At 49D, “Rowlands of ‘A Woman Under the Influence’” was, of course, GENA. I’m no movie critic, but that was one of the most brilliant performances I’ve ever seen. If you missed it — it’s not too late!

    She passed away just a year ago, at the age of 94.

    At 24D, the clue was “New York City deli name,” and the answer was KATZ. Commenter Sam P., clearly a member of the American Nitpickers Association and League (ANAL) wrote: It’s a nit but I’m going to pick it. There’s no NYC deli named KATZ. There is a Katz’s. The clue should’ve been “NYC deli eponym” or some-such.

    But I agree with Anony Mouse’s response: “That’s not the only way to read the clue. I might agree if it read ‘Name of a NYC deli.’ But the most you can infer from the clue as written is that it’s a name associated with a NYC deli.”

    Oriole Park at Camden Yards is a wonderful ballpark. If you haven’t caught a game there yet, what the hell are you waiting for? It opened April 6, 1992. So it was there, on 9/6/1995, that Cal Ripken Jr. broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-games-played streak. Gehrig had played in 2131 consecutive games, a record that held for 56 years. After breaking the streak, Ripken went on to finish with 2,632: 501 more. Astounding. Baltimore is commemorating the breaking of the streak this Saturday: it’s the 30th anniversary.

    Sportswriter Ken Rosenthal was there 30 years ago, reporting for The Baltimore Sun. He was only 32 years old. He says “it was was the highlight of my career. Above the multiple Super Bowls, NBA Finals and Olympic Games I covered. And above anything else I’ve done in baseball, in print and on television.” President Clinton was there, and VP Gore. Gehrig’s teammate Joe Dimaggio came too. Ripken went 2 for 4 that night, with a homer. Baltimore beat the Angels 4-2 behind Mike Mussina.

    Rosenthal goes on: “The column I ended up writing that night focused on the victory lap Ripken took around the ballpark after the game became official and the record was finally his. The Sun turned the front page into a poster that still hangs in my office. The next day’s edition was the biggest seller in the newspaper’s history. I’m confident that record, like Ripken’s, will never be broken.”

    See you next time Chatterheads!

  • 2 x 3 = 3 x 2

    These two stories are NOT from The Onion. They were in today’s NY Times:

    Pardoned Jan. 6 insurrectionists are seeking reparations from the U.S. for being mistreated.

    Border Patrol agents traveled into a fire zone in Washington State and arrested a firefighter while he was working at an active wildfire that was only 13% contained. He entered the U.S. when he was 4 and has lived in Oregon for 19 years with his family. He has been a firefighter for three years.

    Eugenia Cheng was a tenured math prof at U. Sheffield in England but gave up the position in order to bring an appreciation of math to a wider audience. So she teaches math at an arts school now and writes books. Her latest is “Unequal: The Math of When Things Do and Don’t Add Up.” Here’s a simple point she makes. In math, 2 x 3 equals 3 x 2, but two packages containing three cookies each is not the same as three packages containing two each. Here’s what she said:

    “One of the problems with math is the impression that if people can’t do it themselves, then there’s no point in doing it. You can still enjoy music even if you can’t play. You can go into an art gallery even if you can’t make art.

    “I want people to be able to gaze at math. I want to show them how it goes and what I love about it and what the possibilities are. I’m not expecting everyone to understand all the way to the end, but that’s the whole point. If you only read things you understand, then how do you grow?”

    We get attached to our stuff, don’t we? We love our stuff. When I taught Contract Law, I stressed how once Tom says “I offer to sell you this jacket for $50,” he has ceded to Sally his power over his jacket. With two little words: “I accept,” she gets the jacket. It’s like a mathematical equation: Offer + acceptance = binding contract. He can’t change his mind after it’s accepted. So you want to make certain that he was really making an offer. Suppose, e.g., he said instead: “Would you give me $50 for this jacket?” Does she get it if she says “I accept?” He could argue it was a mere inquiry and not an offer.

    There’s a balance of concerns when assessing whether Tom has made an offer or not. If he hasn’t, you don’t want to take his jacket away. We love our stuff. But if he has, you don’t want to let him weasel out of the deal. That’s why good lawyers drive nice cars. They paint the picture you want them to paint.

    I took a literature class at Brandeis with Prof. Yglesias. He was famous and it was a seminar, so I took it pass/fail, just hoping to hang on by my fingernails. It met once a week for three hours. We missed a week once and there was a holiday the following week, so we had a long gap between classes. When we finally resumed, he bounced into class and said: “Hi! Remember me?” Anyway, on Don Quixote, we were on the part where DQ finds a beat-up old wash basin and imagines it’s a golden crown. Yglesias said, “We all do that, right?” And the girl to my right said: “What do you mean? We all find junk on the street and think it’s gold?” And he said, “No. We imbue ordinary objects with special qualities. That purse of yours. [He pointed at her bag that was in front of her on the table.] It’s just a bag with some things in it. But never in a million years would I consider putting my hand into it. It would violate your personal space. We’ve ascribed special qualities to it. And we have our lucky socks, right? A lucky hat?”

    I tell that story to stress how valuable our stuff is to us and that we don’t want to take Tom’s stuff away from him via a contract if he never really intended to make an offer. Here’s a poem about a tent by Rhina P. Espaillot. It’s from today’s Writer’s Almanac and is called “When We Sold the Tent.”

    When we sold the tent
    we threw in the Grand Canyon
    with its shawl of pines,
    lap full of cones and chipmunks
    and crooked seams of river.

    We let them have the
    parched white moonscapes of Utah,
    and Colorado’s
    magnificat of flowers
    sunbursting hill after hill.

    Long gentle stretches
    of Wyoming, rain outside
    some sad Idaho
    town where the children, giddy
    with strange places, clowned all night.

    Eyes like small veiled moons
    circling our single light, sleek
    shadows with pawprints,
    all went with the outfit; and
    youth, a river of campfires.

    The puzzle today was all about pretzels. PRETZEL was the central answer (“Salty snack”) and the theme answers all ended with pretzel varieties: TITANIUM ROD, TEETHING RING, SELFIE STICK, and RUSSIAN TWIST. If you’ve never heard of a russian twist, here you go:

    Here’s a girl I’d like to get to know better. Zoey! Be friends with her!!

    The Z in pretzel was also the first letter of ZARA: “Fashion retailer headquartered in Spain.” No idea, but the crosses worked out. Turns out the company has been involved in some controversies.

    In 2007, Zara withdrew a handbag from its shelves after a customer noticed a swastika on the bag’s design. The bag came from an external supplier, and Zara claimed the symbol was not visible when the handbag was chosen. (Puh-leeze.)

    In August 2014, Zara received criticism for selling a toddler T-shirt closely resembling uniforms worn by Jewish concentration camp inmates. The T-shirt was striped and featured a yellow star similar to the Star of David. Zara said the design was inspired by “the sheriff’s stars from the classic western films.”

    You decide. It was marketed in Israel.

    More recently, the BBC reported several ZARA ads were removed for featuring models who were “unhealthily thin.” This one was okay.

    Gahan Wilson, alav hashalom, was one of my favorite cartoonists.

    He passed away in 2019 three months shy of his 90th birthday. He was married to his wife Nancy for 53 years, until her death less than a year before his. I have complained here repeatedly about the unfunniness of current New Yorker cartoons (providing an abundance of evidence in each case). I found this one of his from a New Yorker from 1978. It’s as close to perfection as they get, IMO. Let’s let it close for us tonight.

    See you tomorrow. Thanks for popping in.

  • Wobbly Bob

    We begin today with the post of Chas Thursfield of the Dull Men’s Club (UK), who shares:

    While driving across Herefordshire recently, my long-suffering wife and I found ourselves inadvertently following this van for a sizeable chunk of our journey.

    The more I had to stare at the stock image on its doors of a besuited coiffured man crouching behind a table and peering at (or through?) a glass of water, the more unsettling I found it. Remembering snippets of Physics ‘O’ Level from some 40+ years ago (Snell’s Law, and all that) I felt that the gentleman’s face staring back at me should surely be refracted: distorted, compressed or magnified to some extent – either unrecognisably, or comedically so. My long-suffering wife and I resolved to recreate the image as best we could on our return home with myself acting as the model, if only to prove the aforementioned image must have been created in PhotoShop and was not a genuine photograph.

    Et voilá. QED. (I couldn’t match the hair.)

    Andrew Harper: I’d be pulling off for a rest room visit after 3 or so miles.

    Mike James Reid: Sir, in the UK we do not have “rest rooms.” We have other pseudonyms for that activity. “Ty bach” for instance.

    Avi Liveson: Pseudonyms or euphemisms.

    [OC note: Ty bach is Welsh for small house. In this case, an outhouse.]

    Colin Catlin: Makes me wonder what the bloke on the van looks like when they take the glass away?

    Avi Liveson: Glad to see you have all of your fingers, Thursfield. The van man seems to be missing one or two.

    Vicky Jones: Firstly I want to apologise on behalf of Herefordshire for you having to drive through this absolute crap hole of a county.

    John Hampton: A bit harsh. It’s got great scenery.

    Vicky: Herefordshire countryside is beautiful, I lived there for a couple of years, I moved to get away from the insane amount of rain fall. Am now in East Anglia, near the yearly recorded driest spot in the UK, I am not a duck. I’ve seen Gloucester city and Tewkesbury surrounded by flood water more than a few times.

    Avi Liveson: I am also not a duck.

    Mike Alexander: Can’t beat the old magnifying glass gag from Top Secret.

    This poem from today’s Writer’s Almanac is by Meg Kearney and is called “Ticket.”

    I have a ticket in my pocket that will take me from Lynchburg
    to New York in nine hours, from the Blue Ridge to Stuy Town,

    from blue jays wrangling over sunflower seeds to my alarm
    clock and startled pigeons. If I had a daughter I’d take her

    with me. She’d sit by the window wearing the blue dress
    with the stars and sickle moons, counting houses and cemeteries,

    watching the knotted rope of fence posts slip by while I sat
    beside her pretending to read, but unable to stop studying

    her in disbelief. Her name would tell her that she’s beautiful.
    Belle. Or something strong, biblical. Sarah. She would tolerate

    the blue jay and weep for the pigeon; she would have all the music
    she wanted and always the seat by the window. If I had a daughter

    she would know who her father is and he would be home writing letters
    or playing the banjo, waiting for us, and I would be her mother.

    We’d have a dog, a mutt, a stray we took in from the rain one night
    in November, the only stray we ever had to take in, one night in our

    cabin in the Catskills. It would be impossibly simple: two train tickets;
    a man, a dog, waiting; and a girl with her nose pressed to the window.

    Back to the DMC (UK) for a bit. If you can indulge me, I love this for the wonderful names of British ales. Nick Scotty started things off with this post:

    Any cask ale recommendations? The Hobgoblin is a little flat.

    Richard Browning: It’s an ale. It’s meant to be flat….. And not chilled, neither.

    Adrian Don: Hilarious drivel. It’s not supposed to be as flat as that awful specimen.

    Dan Robertson: There’s really nothing in the picture alone to suggest it’s massively out of condition. Given the lacing on the glass, the lack of head (assuming that’s what the poster is alluding to) is probably more indicative of it being killed by oils on his lips or facial hair, or simply the fact he’s already supped it!

    Some recommendations (and notes)

    Joe Murray: Sarah Hughes’ Dark Ruby Mild

    Diane Reed: Oh, yes please.

    Andy Turner: Timmy Taylor’s Landlord.

    Matt Tompsett: always.

    Nicola Weatherall: Theakston Old Peculier

    Sultan Brown: Always chuck a bottle in my beef stew. Lovely.

    Nicola: Or Bradfield Pale Ale

    Peter Saxton: Try Oakham Citra

    Josh Bamber: Wobbly Bob

    John Scotland: If you can find it, Fraoch… [below]

    Phil Woodridge: Incredible beer.

    Steve Leach: Proper Job

    Alastair Gilbert: Jail ale! Dartmoor brewery

    Garry Mills: I’m visiting Dorset, and Butcombe Brewery Bitter on draught is amazing stuff. Only 4% but full of flavour.

    Nigel Carter: Batham’s Bitter.

    Wilf T. Beige: Otter

    Ian Cranmer: Try Chantry brewery from Rotherham

    Brian Cummins: Abbott’s Ale, or Old Speckled Hen.

    Garry Donald: Doombar ……. Or, if you’re in that area they don’t ‘export’ to, anything from Hook Norton Brewery, superb Ales.

    Rob Woods: Taylor’s Boltmaker

    John Hampton: Hobson’s Twisted Spire.

    Burp!

    From The Onion:

    U.S. Mint Introduces New Double-Stuf Quarters


    Bizarre Assemblage Of Shapes Visible Through Area Man’s Pockets

    Excellent line by newsman Jim Acosta as he watched labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, fawning over Trump during that abhorrent and embarrassing three-hour cabinet meeting: “Get a room.”

    Here’s a shot of Bill Belichick, 73, and his 24-year-old girlfriend Jordon Hudson on their way to Bill’s autopsy.

    What the hell does he see in her? They met on a flight. She was first runner-up in last year’s Miss Maine USA pageant. Anne Baldridge came in first.

    We mention this because the college team Bill’s coaching now has its first test tonight: UNC vs. TCU. The nation’s eyes will be watching. Except for Phil. He’ll still be drooling over Miss Maine.

    See you tomorrow, Chatterheads. Thanks for dropping in on Labor Day.

  • We Miss You And Love You Georgie!

    The time is not passing rapidly in prison for Owl Chatter staff member George Santos. We haven’t been able to figure out how many years 87 months is (his sentence), but it’s a lot. More than five, we think. George was in charge of keeping the OC fridge stocked with diet soda — that was his only responsibility, actually — and it’s been a disaster since he’s been “on leave.” The last time I checked there was just one half-empty can of Diet Pepsi in there — the kind with no caffeine. Celebrities come by and we have nothing to offer them. We’re probably out of chips too, big fella.

    George wrote an op-ed piece for the South Shore Press (of Long Island). [Not kidding.] “Let me tell you something: I thought I’d seen government dysfunction before, but never at this level,” he wrote. “What I’ve witnessed here is not just inefficiency, it’s outright chaos, sometimes bordering on what I can only describe as criminal negligence. Now, this is not some cash-strapped government agency struggling to keep the lights on. No, this is the Bureau of Prisons, one of the most well-funded agencies in our federal government. And how do I know that? Simple. I worked on their budget back when I served in Congress.”

    “It’s meant to be difficult,” he wrote. “But there’s a line, a moral line between punishment and outright neglect of human dignity. When you house 48 men in a dorm with poor air quality due to a broken AC system and black mold on the ceiling…when the bathroom is unsanitary and falling apart…when you serve food that is clearly past its ‘good through’ date, you’re not enforcing justice; you’re stripping people of their basic rights.

    [OMG! They are forcing him to eat food beyond the expiration date! Animals!]

    “What’s worse, when I’ve pressed administrators for answers, I’ve been met with excuses so flimsy they’d be laughable if they weren’t so insulting to my intelligence,” he added.

    What Santos describes as “unexpected light” comes from the wildlife that surrounds the prison complex. The wooded, “pastoral-like area” he describes is routinely trodden by a litter of cats. Santos said he’s spent “plenty of my commissary money” on tuna to feed them. “Those cats bring us a sense of normalcy, a moment of tenderness in an otherwise harsh environment,” he wrote. “They’re a blessing, a morale boost, and a reminder that life, in all its forms, finds a way even here.”

    He’s also been friendly with frogs and garden snakes. “They shift my mindset, break the monotony, and remind me that even in confinement, the world outside is still turning,” he concluded. “So yes, this is prison. Yes, it is tough. But it’s also America, and in America, even behind fences, we are supposed to hold ourselves to high standards. “We must never forget that prisoners are human beings.”

    Marjorie Taylor Greene has asked that his sentence be commuted. [Not kidding.]

    George wrote the following on X last month:

    “Well, darlings… The curtain falls, the spotlight dims, and the rhinestones are packed. From the halls of Congress to the chaos of cable news what a ride it’s been! Was it messy? Always. Glamorous? Occasionally. Honest? I tried… most days. To my supporters: You made this wild political cabaret worth it. To my critics: Thanks for the free press. I may be leaving the stage (for now), but trust me legends never truly exit. Forever fabulously yours, George”.

    We love you and miss you Georgie. Big sloppy kisses from Ana (and Phil!). Remember the good times, Buddy.

    This is the “poem of the day” from The Poetry Foundation. It’s by Chi Lechuan, translated by Wang Ping.

    Three Horses Drink Water at the Riverbank

    One white, one red, one black
    Three horses are drinking at the riverbank

    They drink at their own pace, some up
    Some down
    Sometimes their heads reach the river 
    At the same time

    As if a river were flowing
    Out of their mouths

    As their minds flow from the river source
    Still innocent, clear, undisturbed

    The sun is setting slowly
    A man watches, without blinking

    How a river disappears into the night
    Held in the mouths of three horses

    In an LA Times puzzle I did recently, the clue was ” Rhyme of ‘Romeo’ in the last couplet of ‘Romeo and Juliet.’” Three letters and I had no idea. I guess I could rule out “snow.” Turned out to be “woe.” Of course! Look who we’re talking about.

    Bring me southern kisses from your room
    Let me smell the moon in your perfume

    A clue that puzzled many yesterday was “Heat setting, perhaps.” The answer was MEET. What? It’s from track and field. At a track MEET, heats are run. That’s some Saturday-level sh*t, for sure.

    Everybody’s favorite was at 33A: “Classic warning to a knight.” Answer: HERE BE DRAGONS.

    Per Rex: I always think of the phrase as THERE BE DRAGONS, but HERE is right. The Latin phrase is “hic sunt dracones” (“here are dragons”); it’s a phrase that became associated with medieval maps, though I just learned that there are only two extant globes that bear this phrase, and that the standard phrase used by medieval cartographers for parts unknown was actually “hic sunt leones” (“here be lions!”). So HERE BE DRAGONS is an anachronism.

    Right above it was “Wind up in ruin:” COME TO A BAD END. Scary. And both were crossed by NOT A GOOD IDEA (“I’d avoid that”).

    But four lines above was a nice plate of MINI DONUTS (“Little dippers?”) So all is well.

    Coach Prime, Deion Sanders (Colorado), may have lost his son (to the NFL) who was the QB of the team last year, but he gained a toilet. What? Special cheers to DS for working on taking the stigma out of incontinence. Taking the stigma out? Hell, he said he’s going to make it sexy.

    The background is a bit scary, but also reassuring. Sanders was diagnosed with bladder cancer last April. Aggressive. He opted to have his bladder removed. It’s been replaced by a “neo-bladder” made out of his intestines. He is now cancer-free. But it has affected how he urinates and has left him incontinent.

    Sanders said he “depends on Depends,” and it led to him signing a sponsorship deal with the company. He never considered giving up coaching but was concerned about getting through a game without access to a bathroom. Not a problem: the Colorado sideline now sports a portable toilet for the coach.

    Meanwhile, Colorado lost its opener to Georgia Tech, 27-20. Delaware’s next. Good luck, Coach!

    Today’s theme was James Bond, with an unusual phonetic twist. First, to cover 007, there were seven places where the across answer contained OO, and no other double Os in the grid. And if you connected the OOs, you formed a large seven.

    Additionally, JAMES BOND and SEAN CONNERY were the answers forming one row across, near the bottom. But did you know that Sean Connery was known for pronouncing S as SH? I didn’t. So there were theme answers that were wacky phrases using SH to replace an S. E.g., at 22A, the clue was “Don’t flick that cigarette over here!” and the answer was MOVE YOUR ASH. 63A spanned the grid. The clue was “Just dropped off some of your newly buffed knight’s protection!” Answer: SHINED SHIELD DELIVERED.

    Other neat stuff in the puzzle included 61D: “New Zealand parrot that can solve logic puzzles.” It’s the KEA. Did you know about this bird?

    42A was a good clue: “Device for cutting bangs?” Answer: SILENCER.

    Did you know PERIDOT is a “Green gemstone?” Also, fittingly, it’s the August birthstone.

    See you tomorrow — Happy Labor Day 2025!

  • Safe At Second!

    You heard it here first: Look for Ghislane Maxwell to be appointed head of the CDC. I can see it.

    The real reason Monarez was fired is she refused to dye her hair. Per Trump: “She’s not bad looking in a doctory-sort of way, but what’s with the gray? Doesn’t she know we’re living in the 20th century? Find someone cuter like Bondi or that press girl — Levin?”

    By the way, you know that cute but repulsive press secretary Karoline Leavitt? She’s 28 and got married in January to a real estate developer who is 60 years old. Yeah, you heard me. They had a son out of wedlock, gasp, last year. KL is the youngest of 4 and the first in her family to graduate from college (St. Anselm). Despite everything, Owl Chatter has a (very small) warm spot in our heart for her: her family owns an ice cream stand in Atkinson, NH.

    Here she is with You-Know-Whom, enjoying Phil’s spot-on Putin impersonation.

    I don’t think my fortune cookie has any idea of how old I am. It says: “You will be successful someday.” Ouch.

    I’ll tell you folks, I made it through 50, 60, and 70 in one piece. Well, one piece minus a prostate. But 75 doesn’t pull any punches. I’m old now. I see people on the street who look old as hell and I find out they’re ten years younger than me. If you asked me at 55 what I thought it will be hard for me to do at 75, I would have never guessed most of it. I would not have guessed getting sleep would be hard. I would not have guessed putting my shoes on would be hard. Those ads you might think are ridiculous where Tony Romo or Howie Mandel crow about how great it is that they can just step into their Skechers — where you might think — do we really need to invent something for putting on our shoes? Yes, we do. The bending and contorting I need to do now for that task is not easy. By the time I get down there, parts of me get in the way.

    Did you see that movie Free Solo about that guy who climbed up the face of El Capitan in Yosemite? You know, with the ropes? Well, they’re making the Jewish version now: it’s me climbing up the steps to my bedroom.

    In the puzzle yesterday the clue at 4D was “Painting on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, with ‘The.’” The answer was 14 letters long. I could picture it, with the fingers, but it took me a bit to come up with CREATION OF ADAM. Egs came up with:

    Mrs. M: Honey, would you come home and help with the kids?
    Michelangelo: I’m working on The CREATIONOFADAM painting on the f***ing ceiling. Call your sister.

    At 32D the clue was “Dog’s post-op wear.” The answer was CONE, but Rex said for a moment he thought it might be gown, and he posted this neat pic:

    At 27D, “Library regular, perhaps” was AUTO DIDACT which I figured out must mean someone who is self-taught. (Whenever I see “self” as a prefix I think of Tom and Ray on Car Talk asking someone how long he’s been unemployed. And when the guy said he was a consultant they said: “Oh, so you’re self-unemployed.”)

    Wanna hear a dirty joke? So this kid wakes up in the middle of the night from a bad dream and runs down the hall to his parents’ room. He opens the door and sees his mom dressed as a cheerleader and his dad dressed as a Viking and he’s screwing the hell out of her. The kid says “Dad! What are you doing!!” And the dad says, “Don’t worry about it, we’re just having a little fun. Go back to your room and I’ll come by soon to tuck you in.” About ten minutes later, the dad goes down to the kid’s room. He opens the door and sees the kid in bed screwing his grandmother!! The dad says “Jimmy! What the hell are you doing??” and the kid says: Yeah, it’s not so funny when it’s your mom, is it?

    You know you’re in a slump when . . .

    I left a small fact out of my recent description of that incredible inning in which the Yanks sent fifteen men to the plate, hit four homers, and scored nine runs. While all the fireworks were going on, poor Anthony Volpe, who has been mired in a terrible slump, made out twice — once by striking out and once by lining out. “C’mon fellas, let me in on the fun.”

    Josh Naylor is one big motherf*cker, at least by baseball standards. Can you tell by this photo? He’s 5′ 10″ and weighs 235. He ranks #532 out of 546 players in terms of speed.

    But get this — he’s stolen over 20 bases this year! Twenty-two, to be exact. And he’s only been caught twice — once when stealing home!! He hasn’t been caught since late April. No one his size has ever stolen over 20 bases in a season in baseball history.

    “I think it’s about not being afraid to fail,” Naylor said. “Not being afraid to take a chance. That’s big for me. I try not to think about failure. Try not to think about, ‘What if I do this?’ I just like to play baseball, play hard.”

    But those who’ve been paying attention say that’s bullshit and ascribe Naylor’s success to baseball acumen, preparation, and a lifelong eye for detail. “He has a good baserunning IQ, good instincts,” Guardians first base coach Sandy Alomar Jr. said. “He sees tendencies and stuff.”

    He has stolen off of the game’s best catchers — Gold Glove winners. This weekend he faces his old team, Cleveland, where his brother Bo is the catcher. Their parents are coming down from Canada to watch. (He’s Canadian.)

    Chad Jennings, of the NYT asked: Will the slowest base stealer in the major leagues try to swipe a bag against his little brother with Mom and Dad in the stands?

    “Oh, 100 percent,” Bo said. “I’d be shocked if he didn’t, to be honest.”

    When he’s not stealing bases, he’s stealing hearts — well, just one — here’s his pretty wife Chantel.

    I’m going to let this drop now. Thanks for coming by!

  • A Blushing Crow

    We had such a good time at Yankee Stadium yesterday that I am canceling my pledge never to go there again, the one I violated yesterday. I still hate the stadium. It’s a giant concrete and plastic ogre with no charm or personality, but there’s good baseball to be had there, and that’s something.

    After Max Fried dispatched the Gnats in the top of the first, leadoff Yankee Grisham opened with a home run that just barely made it into the stands. Hmmmm. Well, it’s only one run. Soon enough, though, the bases were loaded via a sharp single, Judge getting hit by a pitch, and an infield hit. No outs. Oy. The game was at risk of blowing up early.

    On the mound young Cade Cavalli bore down. One strike out. Then another. Finally a line out to third ending the threat. Good work! Nothing happened in the second inning and Max took care of the Gnats in the third too. In fact, Max had quietly pitched three perfect innings.

    So it was the bottom of the third, and in the bottom of the third, not only did the wheels fall off the Gnats bus, the whole bus fell apart. I’ll lay it out for you: The Yankees sent fifteen men to the plate. They hit four home runs (Judge started it) and scored a total of nine runs. So it was 10-0 Yanks before the visitors had a baserunner.

    Including the homers, the Yanks had eight hits in the inning, drew three walks, and had a batter reach via catcher’s interference. That’s when the batter swings and the catcher’s glove makes contact with the bat. It’s the catcher’s obligation to let the swing proceed unhindered. If the batter does not reach base on his own (e.g., by getting a hit), he is awarded first and the catcher is charged with an error. The batter is not charged with an at-bat. I’ve noticed these are becoming more common.

    What was neat in this case is the Gnats’ catcher must have gotten hurt by the bat because he left the game. Now get this: the only other catcher the Gnats had (Riley Adams) was in the lineup already as the DH. So he gave up being the DH and took over as catcher. When a DH becomes a position player, the DH is lost. That is, the pitcher will bat, unless separately pinch hit for. (The pitcher moves into the position in the batting order that was made open by the batter who left the game: in this case, the Gnats’ starting catcher.) So we got to see a pitcher bat! It was Shinnosuke Ogasawara. Max struck him out, of course. He was only the fourth pitcher to bat this season in all of major league baseball.

    Max’s perfect game ended with a walk in the fourth inning and his no-hitter ended in the sixth. He pitched seven innings, yielding one run and four hits. Brilliant. Boruch Hashem!

    One more little piece of candy for us. With two outs in the ninth, Andrés Chaparro blasted a home run deep into the left field stands for DC. Final score Yankees 11 Washington 2.

    Here’s Shinnosuke Ogasawara.

    He’s 28 and single, but he may have a little something going with popstar Jurina Matsui, also 28. He’s been drooling over her for years (who wouldn’t?), and she’s admitted she “follows” him.

    This poem by G. E. Johnson is from today’s Writer’s Almanac and is called “Basketball.”

    Once after dinner a woman and I walked past
    An empty basketball court and she says,
    “I played on a team my junior year in Belfast,”
    And I say “Want to shoot some?” She says “Yes,”
    Though she was wearing a long black dinner dress.
    She kicked off her high heels and she caught
    My pass and with great finesse
    Drove to the baseline, jumped and shot
    Swish. Two points. We played for awhile,
    Man in a black suit, woman in a long black gown,
    I loved her quickness and her heads-up style,
    Her cool hand as she beat me hands down —
           Her jumpiness, like a blackbird in the night—
           Her steady eye, her feet about to take flight.

    Two items from The Onion.

    Cyclist Friend Explains Necessity Of $35 Socks

    Area Man Crawling On Ground Like Pig To Plug Macbook Power Cord Behind Desk

    Today’s puzzle featured spoonerism’s, which I love. You had to spoonerize the clues for the answers to make sense. E.g., for the clue “Packed lunch” the answer FELL FLAT made no sense. But if you convert the clue to “lacked punch” it works. Similarly, “No guts” for FREAK OUT had to be spoonerized into “go nuts.”

    Commenter Lewis wrote: When I was having trouble cracking the NW corner, there was a fleeting moment when I wondered if this puzzle would deal me a blushing crow.

    At 9D the clue was “Hebrew name for God,” and the answer was YAHWEH. It took me aback because I vaguely recalled learning in Hebrew school that we weren’t supposed to say that. And Commenter Ellen noted:

    “Hard NO to YAHW_H. The word is based on the four Hebrew letters (the tetragrammaton) that is seen — but not said in Hebrew — in the Torah & other ancient texts. In Hebrew & thus in Judaism, the tetragrammaton is considered too holy to be vocalized. Instead, the Hebrew word ADONAI is used. The texts often use ELOHIM to refer to the G-d of the Hebrew people. The Hebrew words HA-SHEM (“the name”) & AV (“father”) are also used. As written, the clue is wrong & displays an ignorance that is both stunning & vaguely insulting.”

    Commenter Raymond fell deeper into the rabbit hole (rabbi hole?), as follows:

    I [Raymond] am not myself observant, but I think Orthodox Jews would find filling in the Yahveh clue problematic. The problem starts with the Third Commandment: “You shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold guiltless he that takes his name in vain.” ( Exodus 20:7 in the KJV)


    For this reason, observant Jews when speaking of God, refer to the deity as “ha’Shem” (literally, “the Name”). This usage is also part of modern Hebrew speech even among nonsecular Israelis who often say “todah la’Shem” (“thanks to the Name,” i.e., “thank God”) or “baruch ha’Shem” (“blessed be the Name,” i.e., “blessed be God”) on hearing good tidings. Also liturgically the name of God in the Torah is prononced euphimistically as “Adonai” (literally, “my Lord”).


    The custom of not explicitly mentioning God’s name is especially observed in writing, out of concern that a document containing any version of God’s name might one day be torn up or discarded, thereby potentially destroying the name of the deity. Consequently, tattered sacred books and even commercial documents containing God’s name (including versions such as “Adonai” and “Elohim”) which are no longer usable are not discarded, but are either buried ceremonially, or are preserved in a special storage room (“genizah”), the most famous of which is the Cairo Genizah in which were stored unusable religious and commercial documents which mentioned God’s name, covering more than thousand years from the 6th to the 19th centuries CE. The existence of the genizah became known in the West in the late 18th century, but it was only researched methodically following a visit to it in1896 by two Scottish sisters (Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson) who brought fragments to Solomon Schechter (1847⁠–1915), a lecturer in Talmud at Cambridge University. Schechter excavated and researched 100,000 pages of documents found in the genizah, and thus contributed immensely to present-day knowledge of medieval Judaism and commerce.


    One other point. The precise pronunciation of the 4-letter Hebrew word denoting God is not known (and therefore the clue is fuzzy). At the time of the 2nd Temple (destroyed by the Romans in 70CE) on Yom Kippur the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies in the Temple only once a year where he would pronounce this name of God, while the crowds in the Temple courtyard prostrated themselves. The account from the Mishnah in poetic form is part of the Yom Kippur Orthodox liturgy and some congregants and the cantor prostrate themselves when the cantor chants “on hearing the holy and awe-inspiring name uttered explicitly by the High Priest, the people in the Temple courtyard would bow down and prostrate themselves.”

    Never having been to Hawaii, I had no idea that the “Maui tourist attraction” at 15A was the HANA Highway. My bro-in-law Mitch was the only person I ever heard complain about Hawaii. My sister and he were there for about a month one summer (Bonnie landed a cushy counseling gig), and Mitch said it was too hot. Here’s that highway.

    At 60A, the clue was “Follower of Joel,” and the answer was AMOS. Think books of the Bible. Why that’s cute is the constructor’s name is Joel Woodford.

    Owl Chatter sports consultant Sarah Fillier of the New York Sirens of the PWHL (Professional Women’s Hockey League) tells us the league has teamed up with the Mattel people to produce a Barbie doll that will not hesitate to slam Ken into the boards. The original production run sold out fast. More are skating your way.

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

  • Engaged

    Here are some lines of a poem that did not make it past the Owl Chatter guard puppies:

    I have built a house in the middle of the Ocean
    Its windows are the rivers flowing from my eyes
    Octopi are crawling all over where the walls are.

    Creeps me out a little. Sounds like my dorm room at Penn.

    Not to panic (much), but is it starting to seem a little obvious to you that Trump will not let the midterm elections proceed in a free and fair manner? He has already inured us to federal troops in blue state streets. At a minimum he will tie up the results to prevent Dems from taking their seats. Will anyone in the military leadership stand up on principle? Will the courts hold? Surely cannot count on the Supremes. As the viola teachers say: Stay tuned.

    In a related matter, Owl Chatter headquarters were raided by ICE agents this morning. Fortunately, before they were able to make any arrests they melted. But as one of them was turning into a puddle he said “We’ll be back in the Winter!” Yikes. “F*ck you, puddle!” I shouted. “Bring it on!”

    Did you have one of those inflatable punching bags when you were a kid? I had one that was a big clown and you punched it over and it bounced back up so you could punch it again. I’m going to get one made up with the image of Kilmar Abrego Garcia on it. Jeezus — was there ever a poor sucker more reviled by the government? What did he do — f*ck Stephen Miller’s wife or something? He finally gets a couple of days with his family freed by a judge after months of government harassment (including wrongful imprisonment in El Salvador with scary bald people in underwear), and they just have to grab him again. Have to cart him off. Hang him already — let’s get it over with.

    Remember the horrific mass killing of 49 people at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando in 2016? A beautiful portion of the memorial to the victims was a crosswalk painted in Pride colors, approved by the state’s DOT at the time.

    Well, under a coward’s cover of darkness (after 11 pm), a road crew of the state of Florida painted it over with black paint. In case anyone wondered what the message was (out of disbelief that the government could be so callous and homophobic), U.S. Transportation Sec’y Sean Duffy wrote: “Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks.” And Florida’s Gov. DeSantis said he would not allow state roads “to be commandeered for political purposes.”

    Brandon Wolf, a survivor of the shooting, stated “A memorial to my dead brothers isn’t political.” Within a day, angry citizens restored the Pride colors via sidewalk chalk, and within two days, the colors were restored in paint. According to the NYT, it’s unclear if the new rainbow paint pattern will stick around. But people left messages in chalk between the lines. “Not going anywhere,” one read.

    God bless America.

    I thought the puzzle today was fantastic and I only appreciated it after I finished and the grid lit up, see below. First of all, for a puzzle to be accepted by the NYT, it must be symmetrical. A rare exception will apply if the theme for some reason requires asymmetry. Today’s theme was “asymmetry” in two senses: first, the grid was not symmetrical vis-a-vis the black squares. BUT there was a giant symmetrical letter A comprised of all of the As in the grid! Get it? A-Symmetry. Incredible.

    So the constructor, Kevin Curry, had to see to it that every A was in its proper place to form the big one, and that there were no other As anywhere else. Wordplay at its highest level, IMO.

    Did he also sneak in a subtle nod to a namesake? At 57D the clue was “Shot that made its N.B.A. debut in 1979, slangily,” and the answer was TREY. Of course that’s the signature shot of Steph Curry.

    At 24D the clue was “Where the sidewalk ends.” The answer was CURB. Pretty straightforward, no? But Rex’s sub today, Clare, recognized it as a Shel Silverstein poem: WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS.

    There is
    a place where the sidewalk ends
    And before the street begins,
    And there the grass grows soft and white,
    And there the sun burns crimson bright,
    And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
    To cool in the peppermint wind.
    Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
    And the dark street winds and bends.
    Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
    We shall walk with
    a walk that is measured and slow,
    And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
    To the place where the sidewalk ends.
    Yes we’ll walk with
    a walk that is measured and slow,
    And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
    For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
    The place where the sidewalk ends.

    At 60A the clue was “Fruit traditionally eaten with the fish it’s named for.” It’s SALMONBERRY. Really? Never heard of it. It’s prevalent in the Northwest. It gets its name from its salmon-like color — it has nothing else to do with the fish. Commenter Theo adds:

    Grew up in the PNW. We call them salmonberries for the color, like blueberries or blackberries. They’re good straight off the bush when you’re hiking. I don’t know anyone who collects them to cook with — they’re not that good. I guess you could make a savory sauce out of them? But pale orange on pale orange will not be beautiful. I do pair berries with my salmon, but I use a heartier berry with more sweetness and tannins to pair with the richness of the fish: I recommend a sauce of blueberries, red wine, and cinnamon. If you gave me a basket of salmonberries, I’d want them with a smoked whitefish, not a salmon. If you have some pretty purple pansies, you could add some petals for color. Or I’d just enjoy the berries on top of a mixed green salad, with ricotta salata and bread and butter if you insist on making it into a main dish.

    Here’s what I posted: If Halle Berry married Salmon Rushdie, she’d be Halle Rushdie. But in another universe . . .

    Unless you live under a rock like I do, you don’t need Owl Chatter for the news that Taylor and Travis are engaged.

    Phil caught that nice shot of them for us after she said “Alright, I guess so.” Phil also claims he had a hand in her decision to go with the striped dress by Ralph Lauren for the occasion. It’s selling for $319. But if you mention Owl Chatter when you place your order, you can get it for $350.

    We’ll be up at the Stadium tomorrow for the Gnats-Yanks game. Will be rooting against Max Fried. Probably a sin.

    Good night — see you tomorrow!

  • Lake Trout

    Let’s keep our owl eyes on Ligaya Mishan. It shouldn’t be too hard: she’s the chief restaurant critic for the NYT. Here is the remarkable opening paragraph in her review of the seafood restaurant Smithereens in the East Village:

    To describe Smithereens as a New England-style seafood spot is like calling “Moby-Dick” a story about fishing. The restaurant is darker and weirder, a love letter to the North Atlantic at its most ominous and brooding, written in seaweed and smashed lobster heads. Even the martini tastes like a gulp of saltwater, the last memory of a drowning man.

    Who writes like that?

    This person.

    From food to football. Here’s how Jim Souhan in The Minnesota Star Tribune, described a pass by Sam Howell, one of the Vikings’ backup quarterbacks: “The ball hung in the air like an oblong piñata. Time passed. The Twins traded another 10 players. Beards grew. Finally, Howell’s pass fluttered back to earth, and a few Patriots drew straws to decide who would intercept it.”

    Last, in The Atlantic, Tom Nichols described a television interview in which Trump made preposterous claims about the war between Russia and Ukraine: “The setting, as it so often is when Trump piles into a car with his thoughts and then goes full ‘Thelma & Louise’ off a rhetorical cliff, was ‘Fox & Friends.’ The Fox hosts, although predictably fawning, did their best to keep the president from the ledge, but when Trump pushes the accelerator, everyone goes along for the ride.”

    Thanks to Frank Bruni’s newsletter for all of the above.

    Picked you up in Pocatello
    At some truck stop parkin’ lot

    You could do worse than start a song with that verse. In the puzzle today, the clue at 3D was “A smile, perhaps,” and the answer was POKER TELL. I needed a few crosses to nail it but thought it was a wonderful clue, perhaps a bit advanced for a Monday, but so elegant. It conjures an image. Rex hated it:

    “What in the world is a POKER TELL? Let me rephrase. I know precisely what a “tell” is, but how (in the world) is a POKER TELL any different from any other tell!?!?!? It’s a tell. The smile is a tell. You’d call it a tell. A POKER TELL!?!?! That is a silly phrase on its face, and it’s ridiculous when absolutely nothing in the clue suggests a card-playing context. [A smile, perhaps] … that’s it? Ugh. The wikipedia entry is for “Tell (poker).” Not POKER TELL (a phrase that appears nowhere in said entry). It’s a term from poker, but the term is tell, not POKER TELL. POKER FACE, that’s a term. POKER TELL, that’s a redundancy. Bah and humbug to that answer.”

    And it caused him to think of Pocatello, Idaho, partly because IDAHO was also in the puzzle. Turn it up!

    The theme of today’s puzzle was things that are ON THE LINE. And the theme answers were LEFT TACKLE (on the offensive line in football), LAKE TROUT (fishing line), COLD CALLER (phone line), and LAUNDRY.

    Some folks groused about Lake Trout, thinking “lake” was arbitrary. You know, it’s a trout. Why do we care where it hangs out?

    But Commenter Bob says: “Lake Trout” is a recognized classification, just like “Grizzly Bear” or “Sperm Whale.” The word “Lake” is not extraneous.

    And Carola says: I’ll pile on and as another Upper Midwesterner defend LAKE TROUT, which we are sometimes lucky to be able to get and are much different, flesh-wise from the trout-stream trout that are locally available.

    Want more? Anony Mouse says: We’ve learned a lot about trout in the last couple of decades. The lake trout is a “char,” like the arctic char. We now know that the brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) and a couple of others are also chars. The brown trout (Salmo trutta) is closely related to the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). Most surprisingly, we now know that the venerable little rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) is closely related to the various Pacific salmons, like the Chinook (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha).”

    [Love the “most surprisingly.”]

    Let’s give jberg the last word:

    I’ve got to defend the LAKE TROUT, which is indeed a species of fish. When I was growing up on the shores of Lake Michigan, it was the dominant commercial fish of the great lakes. The local dish was the fish boil, where you would cook a whole lot of lake trout in a huge pot and people would line up to get their portion, along with an ear of corn and probably some potatoes. Much more delicious than it sounds. Talented boil-masters made a living at it. They were a big business (they had other uses, as well). Then the St. Lawrence Seaway was opened, some lampreys came in from the ocean on the hulls of ships, bred like mad, and pretty soon there were very few lake trout. The problem was finally solved by poisoning all the fish, including both the lampreys and the trout. Then the lakes were restocked, but to create a sport-fishing industry they were stocked with coho and sockeye salmon, and steelhead trout along with the lake trout. So there are not so many of them. There are even more fish boils than there used to be, but the fish are often imported from the great lakes of northern Canada. They are still a lot of fun.

    At 10D, “Loosens, as a shoe,” was UNLACES. Any nitpickers out there? jberg: You just need to untie them and loosen up the laces, not take the laces out, which is what UNLACE means.

    OK, thanks!

    Best “line” of the day, from egs, of course: TV game show for coke heads: Where’s My Line?

    That’s him — the guy who tried to eat me.

    See you tomorrow!

  • King Tut

    Our public radio station announced that August is “National Make-A-Will Month.” Of course, they were suggesting we leave something to them in our wills. And September is National Drop Dead Month.

    Speaking of dropping dead, how about this latest shot of our drop dead gorgeous sports consultant Sarah Fillier that Phil just sent in? Yikes!

    Sarah, whose sport, of course, is women’s professional ice hockey, assures us she’s ready to provide trenchant analysis of the upcoming college football season. She seemed surprised to learn that the quarterback does not play defense, but we’re sure she’ll get her act together in time. And don’t let the pretty smile fool you — she’ll knock your teeth out with a stick if it means winning a face-off.

    As noted in the NYT, Mark and David Geier once created an illegitimate review board for their research, composed of themselves, family members and business associates. They also promoted the drug Lupron, used for chemical castration and prostate cancer, as a supposed treatment for autism, charging $5,000 to $6,000 monthly for unproven therapies. As a result, Mark Geier’s medical license was revoked or suspended by all 12 states in which he was licensed, and David Geier was fined for practicing medicine without a license.

    Need I continue? Of course, RFK Jr. has tapped Mark Geier as a researcher for his new federal study on autism. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network has said that it is “appalled” by the hiring of a “quack” for the government study.

    Phil got a shot of the doc for us.

    Anagrams are amazing, but I prefer them separate from crosswords. In a crossword they are effectively giving you the answer. So today’s NYTXW was a giant splat, as far as I was concerned. Clever anagramming but a blah puzzle. The constructor Michael Lieberman took names of corporations and anagrammed them into products they might sell. E.g., If POST & SCHICK merged and became a kitchenware company, they would sell: CHOPSTICKS.

    Roald DAHL was in the puzzle, wittily clued with “Author Roald.” Did you know he was married to the actress Patricia Neal for 30 years (until they divorced), with whom he had five children? The first was named Olivia Twenty. Her middle name, Twenty, originated from the date of her birth (April 20), and the fact that her father had $20 in his pocket when he saw her in the hospital for the first time. (Begs the question: what if he also had a few singles on him?) Sadly, she died from measles when she was only seven. Dahl later advocated strongly for vaccines.

    Dahl held anti-Israel views that bled into anti-Semitism enough to cause his family to apologize for it in 2020 on their website. Rex (who isn’t Jewish) took issue with Dahl’s inclusion in the puzzle on these grounds, referring to Dahl as “noted antisemite.”

    Here’s Patricia Neal, competing in a funny hat contest.

    On the other hand, strong kudos for including the brilliant New Yorker investigative reporter Jane MAYER! You made it, girl!

    Remember when Steve Martin showed up on the scene and blew the roof off American comedy? At 53A the clue was: “King in a 1978 novelty hit.” Three letters.

    A Wordle issue came up today. I’ll try to explain. Suppose you know the last four letters are ATCH. It comes down to guesswork — could be BATCH, MATCH, LATCH, PATCH, CATCH, HATCH, or WATCH. When that happens, I “waste” a guess with a word like PLUMB, that at least tests four of the options. But today I learned there is a “hard” mode for Wordle in which you have to use the letters you’ve already established so my trick would not be available. You can turn on the hard mode via settings. Not sure I want to.

    Let’s close tonight with a poem by Ted Kooser. It’s been a while since we’ve treated ourselves to one. It’s from Winter Morning Walks.

    My wife and I walk the cold road
    in silence, asking for thirty more years.

    There’s a pink and blue sunrise
    with an accent of red:
    a hunter’s cap burns like a coal
    in the yellow-gray eye of the woods.

    See you tomorrow, Chatterheads!