The Wellington Files

  • I Cry Sometimes

    Two seemingly unrelated answers caused our favorite commenter (LMS) to make an unusual association from today’s (Tuesday’s) puzzle: 63 across was “Smooch,” for the answer KISS, and 38 down was “Mammal with a two-foot long tongue,” for ANTEATER. How does that lead to Gene Simmons, and who the hell is he anyway? Well, he is the bassist for the rock band KISS, and he is well-known (apparently) for having a very long tongue. I couldn’t accept this on faith, so I googled him and it opened quite a nest. First, here he is in his stage get-up with his famous tongue hanging out.

    Now, get this — he’s 73 and was born in Haifa, Israel, as Chaim Witz. He was a CUNY student, having attended The College of Staten Island. His mother was a Holocaust survivor. He’s married to actress Shannon Tweed (they have two kids), but from 1978 to 1980 his partner was Cher, and from 1980 to 1983 his partner was Diana Ross. How did I not know any of this? What rock have I been living under?

    He’s had a whole bunch of controversial doings, but this one stands out for me: During an interview on the National Public Radio program Fresh Air in 2002, Simmons told Terry Gross: “If you want to welcome me with open arms, I’m afraid you’re also going to have to welcome me with open legs,” paraphrasing a lyric from the Who’s 1981 song “You Better You Bet.” Gross replied: “That’s a really obnoxious thing to say.” In a 2014 interview with The Huffington Post, Simmons noted he was upset over what he perceived as Gross’s “holier-than-thou” attitude, which included mislabeling his band Kiss as “the Kiss.” Uh huh — “the Kiss.” I guess it’s okay then.

    Well, now that we all know about Gene Simmons and his tongue, I can share a comment on today’s puzzle by LMS (who is a teacher of problem children by profession). Here it is verbatim:

    So yesterday this guy came past me, on his way to search (alternative school, kids with ankle monitors and court dates. . .), with a KISS tee shirt on. I asked him if he was a fan, and he was not. He just happened to have that shirt. I helpfully told him about Gene Simmons’s seven-inch-long tongue. He smiled. But wait – there’s a prequel. . . this guy is not one of my students, so I don’t know him. More often than not, he wears sunglasses, but not in the bone-head-I-wanna-be-a-school-clown kind of way. At least this is what my spidey sense was telling me. He’s always alone, always quiet. Last week I found myself in the hall with him – just the two of us, and he had his sunglasses on. So I went for it, Question – why do you wear sunglasses so much? He looked down at me (this tall guy with long dreads dipped red at the ends), seemed to take my measure, and said, I cry sometimes. I was stunned. I said, Oh wow. Right? I bet you feel kinda protected, kinda like you’re in your own little room? He nodded, Yeah. Like that. I told him, I totally get it. I cry a lot and would love to feel that kind of safety. I usually just tell people I’ve been sneezing. But I sure wish I could wear your sunglasses sometimes. We nodded and communed in our appreciation of his sunglasses. Jeez Louise, don’t judge these kids – they’re just doing their level best to play the cards they’ve been dealt.

    The puzzle’s theme was flowers with unusual names, clued in wacky ways. The clue for one of them was “The third ‘little pig’ with his house of bricks?,” and the answer was WOLFSBANE. Here’s what it looks like up close:

    And here’s a poem that was posted:

    Even a man who is pure of heart,
    and says his prayers by night,
    may become a wolf,
    when the wolfbane blooms,
    and the Autumn moon is bright.

    Back to LMS, in a lighter vein, she says:

    “I did a brief Google dive into flower names and found a bunch that could pass as a Shakespearean insult hurled at an enemy:

    “Be gone, you Swamp Lousewort, you Humped Bladderwort!
    A pox on you, Bastard Toadflax and your Mad Dog Skullcap of a father, too!
    Out of my sight, you Cheeseweed Pussytoes!
    Viper’s Bugloss! Scurfpea!”

    Now, to be fair, she did some combining. E.g., Cheeseweed is a separate plant from Pussytoes. Still, it’s all great IMO.

    BTW, here’s some Cheeseweed with a ladybug, followed by those pesky Pussytoes.

    The clue for BABYSBREATH was “What might smell of Gerber’s products?” We’ve all seen these delicate little things, right?

    And LADYSLIPPER was “Object found by Prince Charming after the clock struck midnight?”

    “Pancakes with sweet or savory fillings” was the clue at 27 across, and the answer was CREPES. One person said he wrongly filled in BLINIS first, and he was berated by “Vlad P.” who said:

    “BLINI is plural you soulless, capitalistic pig. One BLIN, two or more BLINI. There’s no such thing as BLINIS.”

    Okay —- noted!

    Finally, six down was “Wispy clouds,” which was CIRRI.

    It leads to my graceful closing – this poem by Ted Kooser, from Winter Morning Walks:

    Horsetail cirrus miles above,
    stretched all the way from Yankton to Wichita.
    I stoop on the road, small man in coat and cap,
    tying his shoe.

    A curled, brown leaf lies on its back,
    lifting its undistinguished edges
    into the glory of frost.

  • Martha Washington’s Muffins

    Lee Lorenz died last Thursday. He was 90. Lorenz had over 1,800 cartoons published in The New Yorker over 40 years, and was its cartoon editor from 1973 to 1997. He introduced some controversial, “edgy” cartoonists to the magazine, e.g., Roz Chast.

    “There’s nothing more futile than trying to explain a cartoon to someone who doesn’t get it,” Lorenz said. He cited an illustration by Jack Ziegler of a man standing at the counter of the Bureau of Missing Toast as he tearfully shows a clerk a photo of a well-done slice of bread.

    “It didn’t seem like the craziest thing we’d ever run, but I had people come up to me and say they didn’t get it — or like it,” Lorenz said. “On the other hand, Jack got a half dozen pieces of toast in the mail.”

    In a Lorenz cartoon I like very much, a grumpy old man is standing before Saint Peter at the pearly gates. Saint Pete is looking through his big book and says: “Ah! Here you are — over on the shit list.”

    The pretty famous “I say it’s spinach” cartoon is by Lorenz. A little girl is looking at some vegetable on her plate, and her mom says “It’s broccoli, Dear.” And the little girl replies: “I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.”

    Rest in peace, Lee Lorenz. Thanks for all the laughs.

    Wanna feel old? Jessica Alba, in the puzzle at 58 down today, is 41 and has three kids. She didn’t marry for money, but her husband’s name is Cash Warren. The first pics of her oldest daughter, Honor, appeared in OK! magazine and earned JA $1.5 million.

    In 2014, Alba appeared in Henry Louis Gates’s genealogy series “Finding Your Roots,” where her lineage was traced back to the ancient Maya civilization. The research indicated that her surname was not inherited from a Spanish man, since her father’s direct paternal line (Y-DNA) was Haplogroup Q-M3, being Indigenous in origin. [Huh?] Her father’s matrilineal line was Jewish and revealed that lawyer Alan Dershowitz is a genetic relative of hers. [I did not make that up.]

    Alba, but not Dershowitz, was listed on Playboy magazine’s “25 Sexiest Celebrities” in 2006, and she appeared on its cover. She sued Playboy for its use of her image without consent, which she contended gave the impression that she was featured in a “nude pictorial.” She later dropped the lawsuit after receiving a personal apology from Hugh Hefner, who agreed to make donations to charities Alba supported.

    In June 2009, while filming “The Killer Inside Me” in Oklahoma City, Alba pasted posters of sharks around town to bring attention to the diminishing population of great white sharks. It was speculated that she would be charged with vandalism, but none of the property owners wanted to press charges. Alba apologized and donated money to the United Way, whose billboard she obscured with one of the shark posters. Here’s the poster, followed by the lovely Ms. Alba herself.

    The NY-area football teams (both of whom play in Jersey), got off to surprisingly decent starts this season after years of dreadful futility. It induced in their fans what I like to call “delusions of adequacy.” But both teams have come back down to earth of late, the Giants with a thud — a 48-22 drubbing at the hands of Philadelphia. I liked the headline in the Times today: “Playoff-Bound Eagles Deliver Cold, Hard Truths.”

    It’s Sam’s birthday today! He’s 34, kinehora. Happy Birthday Sam!

    I was driving with Caity recently and we both yawned, one after another. It reminded me of a yawn theory that Sam’s friend Joe Urbelis propounded years ago. I thought it was something like there was only one original yawn in the world and it just keeps getting passed around. But Sam says it’s a bit narrower. It’s that you will only yawn if you see someone else yawn. So, e.g., if you yawn on an airplane, it’s because a yawn came in at the door and was going around the plane.

    I reminded Caity of Joe’s theory, and she reminded me that, years ago, I came up with an explanation for why we yawn when someone else does. It’s because when someone else yawns, your body sees it and says “Hey, that’s a good idea!”

    Here’s a family story from about 11 or12 years ago. I can pinpoint it because Lianna was still sitting in a high chair and she’s 13 now. Linda, Caity, Lianna, and I were having dinner “out,” i.e, we picked up food at Whole Foods and were eating it there in a dining area they used to have, pre-covid. I remembered that Linda and Caity had been planning to make muffins that day for Caity to bring to some event, so I asked how it went. Linda said “It was fine,” in a tone I had come to learn means it was a disaster of catastrophic proportions. “What happened?,” I prodded, and Linda said “We had a little trouble getting the muffins out of the pan, but it worked out.”

    “Next time, we can use liners,” Caity said, and Linda said “or we can cut up parchment paper.”

    So I said, “Parchment paper — is that the crinkly yellowy paper they wrote the Declaration of Independence on?” And Caity said, a little snippily, “Yes, Dad, that’s exactly what it is.”

    So I said, “Well, young lady, I’ll have you know it just so happens that Martha Washington once accidentally used a copy of the Declaration of Independence to make muffins. And when George came home and realized what happened he was furious. “What am I supposed to tell Thomas Jefferson when he comes over later?,” he asked her. “He’s been working on that thing for weeks!”

    And Martha just smiled, because she knew how much George loved her and that he could never really be angry at her. She said, “George, it was an accident — he’ll understand. Offer him a muffin — they’re delicious!“

    And Caity’s and Linda’s were too.

  • In Like Flynn

    All birds have tail feathers called “pinions” that help them fly. Crows have 3 pinions and RAVENs have 4. So the difference between a crow and a RAVEN is just a matter of a pinion. (Carlos, that was for you, courtesy of an LMS post.)

    That came up because RAVEN was a puzzle answer today, clued as “Cousin of a crow.” Here’s a shot of each, alphabetically. They do bear a striking resemblance. BTW, a group crows is a “murder of crows,” and a group of ravens is an “unkindness of ravens,” both reflecting their dark reputations.

    My brother loved this “saying:” You can tell a happy motorcyclist by the bugs in his teeth.

    Today’s puzzle was all about bugs. It was called “Step On It,” and several commenters, including Rex, took the constructor to task for the violence of the title. C’mon fellas, it’s just a crossword puzzle.

    In various answers, different insects were to be filled in in one square (a “rebus”). For example, for the clue “Having an impeccable reputation,” the answer was ABOVE REP[ROACH], with the “roach” squeezing into one square. It formed part of the down answer too: “Brings up, as a subject;” answer: B[ROACH]ES.

    My favorite was for “louse” (singular of lice): the great Peter Sellers character: INSPECTOR C[LOUSE]AU, with the down being: SILK B[LOUSE].

    For “fly” we had IN LIKE [FLY]NN. And did you know where the expression comes from? It’s at least in part from Errol Flynn, the actor, who was reputed to be quite the ladies man. But get this:

    “In later years, the rhyming phrase became associated with actor Errol Flynn, who had a reputation for womanizing, drinking, and brawling. In late 1942, two underage girls accused him of statutory rape. A group was organized to support Flynn named the American Boys’ Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn (ABCDEF). Flynn was acquitted. According to etymologist Michael Quinion, Flynn’s reputation as a ladies man increased, leading to the connotations of the phrase ‘in like Flynn.’”

    Another etymologist presents evidence that it refers to Edward J. Flynn, a NYC political boss who became a campaign manager for the Democratic party during FDR’s presidency. Boss Flynn’s candidates were almost automatically “in.”

    On the “bug” theme, LMS shared the following:

    Omigod. Friday I had a conversation with Mr. Burch (head custodian and Supreme Wonderman of the Universe) about stepping on bugs, namely – my inability to do so. I had reported yet another Hot-Wheels size ROACH in my room. He grinningly asked if I had stepped on it.

    Me: No! [shiver] I could never recover from the crunch.
    Burch: The pop? I love that pop.
    Me: I can’t kill any bug. What if it just told its kids it’d be back in just a sec and they’re all waiting? I know the thought is ridiculous, but still.

    More on bug squishing. A comment noted:

    In India I saw a procession of Jain monks. Two monks with brooms walked in front of the high priest sweeping the path so he wouldn’t step on any living thing. (Of course they could not pay close attention to where they were stepping so who knows how many bugs they squashed in preserving their leader from sin.)

    Jain prayer

    Forgiveness

    I forgive all living beings,
    may all living beings forgive me.
    All in this world are my friends,
    I have no enemies.

    For the very common answer ELSA, the constructor reached pretty far: “Internet star Majimbo known for her comedy videos.” Kenyan Elsa Majimbo’s satirical monologues usually feature her eating potato crisps, leaning back to a pillow, and using a pair of tiny 1990’s sunglasses as a prop.

    Amelia Boynton Robinson was a civil rights leader in Selma, Alabama, and a key figure in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. She was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Medal in 1990. She sat in on the puzzle today at 64 down.

    In early 1965, Amelia Boynton helped organize a march to the state capital of Montgomery, initiated by James Bevel, which took place on March 7, 1965. Led by John Lewis, Hosea Williams, and Bob Mants, and including Rosa Parks among the marchers, the event became known as Bloody Sunday when police stopped the march and beat demonstrators after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Boynton was beaten unconscious; a photograph of her lying on Edmund Pettus Bridge went around the world.

    Boynton was a guest of honor at the ceremony when Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. In 2015, she attended the State of the Union Address at the invitation of President Obama, and, in her wheelchair, was at Obama’s side as he and others walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the 50th anniversary of the march. She died in August of 2015, eight days after her 104th birthday.

    Lets’ close today with a Brandeis story. You may recall the TV game show from a very long time ago: The GE College Bowl, hosted by Allen Ludden. Four students from each of two colleges would wage a battle over quiz questions. Brandeis was on when I was a student there. Our first match was against U. of Chicago and we won but just by a hair. It later emerged that we were wrongly awarded points for answering Monet, when the correct answer should have been Manet. (Or vicey versey.) They decided to split the winnings from that match (scholarship awards) and run a rematch the following week (which Brandeis won handily). Anyway, get this — The clue for 104 down today was “Painter Edouard often confused with painter Claude.” Of course, the answer is Manet. (Or Monet.)

    This is by Manet. What a shayna punim!

  • Emily Dickinson’s Funeral

    Let’s open with a special shout-out to old friend Bob (and Hi Justine!). Bob was the head librarian at the School of Visual Arts. He started as Assistant Shusher and worked his way up. Bob earned a Masters in Library Science after Brandeis and he kept telling us it was a challenging program. I’d say, How hard can it be? What do you need besides the alphabet?

    And the reason for the shout-out is it’s the birthday of Melvil Dewey (1851), of the Dewey Decimal system. Dewey put himself through college (Amherst) working in the library and was appalled at how disorganized their “system” was. The system he devised is a series of classifications divided and subdivided into subjects with a decimal number assigned to each book.

    As a youth, Dewey advocated spelling reform; he changed his name from “Melville” to “Melvil,” to drop “redundant letters,” and for a time changed his surname to Dui. (That didn’t catch on, you may have noticed.) He was the head librarian at Columbia University and a founding member of the American Library Association. But he resigned in 1905 amid widespread allegations of sexual harassment, racism, and anti-Semitism. Yikes! Bottom line: Not a mensch.

    Here’s a poem by Ted Kooser, from Winter Morning Walks (2000):

    The sky hangs thin and wet on its clothesline.

    A deer of gray vapor steps through the foreground,
    under the dripping, lichen-rusted trees.

    Halfway across the next field,
    the distance (or can that be the future?)
    is sealed up in tin like an old barn.

    It’s a good day for a poem because it’s Emily Dickinson’s birthday too (1830). She wrote about 1,800 poems but only ten were published in her lifetime. She spent hours in the kitchen with Margaret Maher, the family’s Irish maid, baking breads and cakes, and scribbling poems on chocolate wrappers and the backs of shopping lists. Maher dabbled in poetry herself; they wrote poems back and forth to each other. Dickinson trusted Maher with her poems — literally. She stored them in the trunk that Maher had brought over from Ireland. Maher did not honor’s Dickinson’s request to burn her poems after her death.

    When Emily died, her family honored her request to have her coffin carried not by Amherst’s leading citizens, but by six Irish farmworkers — all Dickinson employees. Thomas Kelly, Maher’s brother-in-law, was the chief pallbearer, and they carried her coffin out through the servants’ door.

    Here’s a joke freshly stolen from Vermont Lizzie’s 8-year-old friend: How much do Santa’s reindeer cost? Nothing — they’re on the house.

    Today’s puzzle had some clever clues:

    “Let-them-eat-cake occasion?” Answer: CHEAT DAY (think diet)

    “Mug shot subject?” Answer: LATTE ART

    “Evidence of one’s hang-ups?” Answer: DIAL TONES

    Heard of Leo Baekeland? Father of PLASTICS? Me neither. He was a Belgian chemist, born in 1863. His invention of Bakelite, an inexpensive, nonflammable, and versatile plastic, marked the beginning of the modern plastics industry. He was on the cover of the September 9, 1924 issue of TIME. We had Katherine Ross from The Graduate in owl-chatter recently. You may recall this line from the movie too: “Just one word, Ben: Plastics.”

    Time for another adventure in mathematics! Judy, pay attention. The clue for 37 across was “Mathematician Terence who won a Fields Medal at age 31.” Answer TAO. Here’s a (lengthy) comment by TTrimble that I found absorbing despite understanding very little of it. Amazing what these puzzles elicit.

    “Terry TAO is an unusually brilliant mathematician. Many consider him the best mathematician working today, with no sign of slowing down. He also has a great talent for collaboration, and has spearheaded a number of “polymath projects” which seek to crush problems through crowd-sourcing. It’s not easy to find problems that submit to such an approach (and to skillfully herd a crowd of mathematical cats), but he finds them. A great example came after the breakthrough of Yitang Zhang in 2013 in the area of number theory.

    “In case you haven’t heard of this, I’ll explain. Number theory is full of really hard problems, many dating to antiquity. It’s been known at least since the days of Euclid that there are infinitely many prime numbers. Those Greek mathematicians were also interested in “twin primes”: pairs of primes differing by 2: 3 and 5, 5 and 7, 11 and 13, etc. Are there infinitely many pairs of twin primes? Everyone thinks so, and there are statistical heuristics that suggest so, but we seem to be very far from being able to prove this. The breakthrough result of Zhang (who held a very modest position as a college lecturer), a bolt from the blue, is that there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers that differ by less than 70 million (to prove the twin prime conjecture, you’d want to replace that 70 million by 3). His proof rocked the mathematics world: although 70 million sounds like a lot, it was a significant toe in the door. And it rocketed Zhang personally, when he was close to 60 years old, from nameless obscurity to a distinguished professorship at UCLA, where Tao himself works. Anyway, Tao and others started a polymath project to refine Zhang’s methods, to see how far they could whittle that number down: Zhang knew 70 million was overkill, but getting any number was the significant thing. Polymath 8, with Terry Tao at the helm, sought to extract maximal juice from Zhang’s (and related) methods, and succeeded in lowering that number from 70 million to 246. He (Tao) is not only an insanely powerful mathematician, but a class act.”

    Ouch, my brain hurts. Can we get back to Taylor Swift? Here’s Terry Tao.

    I’m sleepy now. See you tomorrow.

  • Tay-Tay

    According to The Writer’s Almanac, it’s poet John Milton’s birthday today (1608).  Hands up if, like me, you forgot to send a card.  After attending Christ’s College in Cambridge, he underwent six years of intensive independent study, reading literature, mathematics, and languages. But how hard could the math have been — it was 1630, they were only counting up to around 25 by then, right?  

    Milton was 34 when he married 17-year-old Mary Powell. He proved to be too strict, though and she went back home after a month.  They later divorced and Milton kept all the appliances.  He wrote Paradise Lost when he was blind, impoverished, and living in seclusion.  I guess he bought into that lemons/lemonade thing.  Happy Birthday, JM!

    Harvard envy.  Near the basement entrance to Hunter, there’s a chalkboard that has imprinted on it over and over: Before I die I want to:__________________.  Today I noticed someone filled in “graduate from Harvard.”  It reminded me I saw a Hunter student once wearing a sweatshirt that said HARVARD on it in large letters, and beneath it, smaller, it said “(not really).”

    One complaint some folks had about today’s puzzle was that it had “UP” as part of answers too many times:  BUYING UP, UPON, DON’T GET UP, and POP UP SHOP.  It didn’t bother me.  In fact, I liked how DON’T GET UP crossed SIT STILL.  And it reminded me of the following which I shared with the commentariat via a Rex post:

    Victor Borge used to tell of a relative of his who was a chemist but dreamed of being an inventor.  He came up with a formula for a new soft drink and sank all of his savings into it.  He called it “4 Up,” but it failed and he lost everything.  He spent years improving the formula and saving up cash and tried again, this time calling it “5 Up.”  Again, it failed and he was ruined.  Undaunted, he spent years revising the formula once more, went into debt, and produced it under the name “6 Up.”  This time when it failed he grew depressed.  He died several years later, embittered, never realizing how close he had come.

    The clue for MAGPIE was “Bird that can recognize itself in a mirror,” and Wikipedia confirms that the Eurasian magpie is one of the most intelligent creatures in the world. 

    On the other hand, the term “pica” for the human disorder involving a compulsive desire to eat items that are not food is borrowed from the Latin name of the magpie (Pica pica), for its reputed tendency to feed on miscellaneous things. 

    You can refer to a group of magpies as a “mischief” of magpies, or a “charm” of magpies, among other less adorable terms.  The first syllable “mag” was added to its name from the woman’s name Margaret, or Meg, which was considered to be the name of a talkative female chatterbox (the bird chirps a lot). Here’s what this smarty-pants chatterbox looks like:

    It’s about time! — The electric Taylor Swift was in the puzzle today at last — we were asked for “the nickname of singer Swift.”  It’s TAY-TAY.  It’s appropriately crossed by SUPERNOVA, cutely clued as “Huge pop star?” 

    Years ago, I was corresponding with an old professor of mine (Barney Schwalberg), who famously in class once mentioned Sophia Loren when he needed an example of a beautiful woman.  But he called her “Sophie,” and when a kid in the back exclaimed “Sophie?,” Schwalberg said, “Well, to her friends.”  There was a New Yorker article out at the time on how each generation has its cultural points of reference, and I cited it and noted that if I had to use a beautiful woman in an example in one of my classes, I wouldn’t be able to use Sophie Loren — I’d use Taylor Swift.  And he wrote back to me:  “Who’s Taylor Swift?”

    She was born Taylor Alison Swift (it’s her real name), in West Reading, PA.  She’ll be 33 next Tuesday (12/13).  Her rise was almost Mozartian — she signed a songwriting deal with Sony when she was 14, and a record deal when she was 15.  Her dad was a stockbroker and her mom a mutual fund marketing executive.  Her grandmother was an opera singer, and one of Swift’s earliest musical memories is hearing her grandmother singing in church.  She was named after James Taylor.  (Wow! — that’s news to me.)  

    Swift identifies as a pro-choice feminist, and is one of the founding signatories of the Time’s Up movement against sexual harassment.  She advocates for LGBT rights, and has called for the passing of the Equality Act, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity.  Swift performed during WorldPride NYC 2019 at the Stonewall Inn, frequently cited as the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement. She has donated to LGBT organizations.  In August 2020, Swift urged her fans to check their voter registration, which resulted in 65,000 people registering to vote within a day after her post.

    She must be the most photographed woman on the planet. I’m going to pick one that’s not too sexy — I’m a married man!

    Unfathomable grief.  I woke up today to the weekly Story Corps feature on NPR: People telling “stories from the heart.”  It was a conversation that took place in 2017 between the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook massacre: their six-year old daughter Avial.  The mother requested that it be replayed for the tenth anniversary of the killings, which is coming up this week. 

    The mother started by explaining that Avial was not supposed to be in school that day: a family outing to New York had been planned.  But the class was making gingerbread houses and Avial so much wanted to participate that they brought her in.  After the shooting occurred it was chaotic and parents were seeking out their children and the father discovered that Avial was among the missing.  He placed his hands on his wife’s shoulders and looked her in the eyes and said he had to tell her directly so she wouldn’t hear it from someone else, that Avial was probably dead.  The mother said it was hard for months and it’s been years and it’s still hard, all the time.  The father said it’s with him every waking moment and he feels it in his sleep sometimes.  

    He asked her what she missed most about Avi and she said, “the weight of her arms on my body when she’s hugging me.  And her cheeks.”  They later had two more children. He asked her what she fears most for her children and she said even though it’s statistically improbable, she fears that they will be shot.  But she’s living her life without letting herself be ruled by fear, and she is doing her best to give her children the tools to enable them to not live in fear. She closed by saying, “And I love you,” and he closed by saying “I love you too.”  The program’s theme music came on, and the program’s host said that a year after that story was recorded the father died by suicide at the age of 49.

    It seems like more than ten years ago to me, but it’s ten years ago this week. It took place on December 14, 2012.

  • Sugar Magnolia

    Not everyone is rejoicing over Brittney Griner’s release from her Russian prison camp. Not by a “long (3-pt) shot.”

    “With the playoffs starting next week, this couldn’t have come at a worse time,” said Tatiana Volovodskaya, captain of the women’s basketball team at Penal Colony IK-2 in Yavas, in Russia’s Western region of Mordovia. The colony traces its roots to a Gulag labor camp called Temlag, but everyone calls it Penal Colony 2. “Brittney was a real force in the paint and a great passer — very unselfish. She’ll be hard to replace. This is the biggest roster loss we’ve suffered since our point guard Melanoma Kornapopova was caught stealing an onion and shot.”

    Today is National Crossword Solver’s Day! (Not to be confused with National Crossword Puzzle Day, which is Dec. 21.)

    There are 50 million cruciverbalists in the U.S. The oldest puzzle constructor was Bernice Gorden at 101 in 2014. Eight of the answers were “I forget.”

    I just got a call canceling Lianna’s dental appointment for next week. Her dentist’s in jail! It turns out he was running a kickback scheme with the Tooth Fairy. He yanks ’em, and then he gets a piece of the “under the pillow” action. The goddamn Tooth Fairy is corrupt!! What’s left?

    If there are any Deadheads out there, Bob WEIR dropped by at 55 across, clued as “Grateful Dead founding member Bob.” He played rhythm guitar, wrote songs, and contributed vocals. He’s 75 now, kinehora. Weir was inducted into the R&R HOF with the Dead in 1994.

    Weir was single while a member of the band, but lived for several years with Frankie Hart, a former go-go dancer at the Peppermint Lounge in NYC. Hart changed her name to Weir even though they never married. She was the inspiration for “Sugar Magnolia,” which Weir co-wrote with Robert Hunter. In July of 1999, Weir married Natascha Munter and they have two daughters: Shala Monet Weir and Chloe Kaelia Weir. Here’s a family shot taken when the girls were little.

    Today’s puzzle had a pirate theme, but missed the chance to include Pittsburgh in the grid, darnit. It was very well-executed though, using three different tricks: An “eye patch” was created by having the letter I (from LONG JOHN SILVER crossing MARINERS) land in a black square. Then there was a hook for a hand by having the letters of “flush” (a poker “hand”), in circles curved into a hook. And, finally, for the down answer SHAKE A LEG, the L became a P when crossed by APOP, so it became a “peg leg.” There was no parrot, so I’ll supply one.

    Instead of a parrot, there were SHRIKES, the clue for which was “butcher birds.” The shrike’s family name, Lanius, derives from the Latin word for butcher. Also, they have vicious feeding habits. Get this — they catch insects and small vertebrates and impale them on thorns, branches, the spikes on barbed-wire fences, or any available sharp point. This helps them tear the flesh into smaller, more conveniently sized fragments, and serves as a cache so it can return to the uneaten portions later.  This impaling business also allows them to eat the toxic lubber grasshopper. The shrike waits 1–2 days for the toxins within the grasshopper to degrade before eating it.

    It’s a jungle out there, guys. I’m staying in the rest of the day.

    Thanks for dropping by!

  • Lights! Caramel! Action!

    Two notable deaths in the NYT today. First actress Kirstie Alley, whose Rebecca Howe on Cheers replaced Shelley Long’s Diane Chambers — very big ladies shoes to fill. Alley’s memories of her Cheers years were “somewhat chaotic.” “We never paid attention, we were always in trouble. We never showed up on time.” Sounds like High School, but it worked. She appeared in 150 episodes and won an Emmy for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series (as had Shelley Long earlier). She is survived by two adopted children: a son, True, and a daughter Lillie. In 2016, True had a son, Alley’s grandson.
    Close friend John Travolta, along with Cheers-folk Ted Danson, Kelsey Grammar, and Rhea Perlman released statements memorializing her. In the headline of her obit in the Times it said: “Everybody Knew Her Name.”

    [Side note: Rhea Perlman (“Carla”) graduated with a BA from Hunter College in 1968, studying drama. She later was awarded an honorary doctorate from Hunter. In her very funny acceptance speech, for which I was in attendance, she beamed as she said she looked forward to being called Doc Perlman.]

    And Sal Durante died, at age 81. Who? He’s the guy who caught Roger Maris’s 61st home run ball. It was an excellent bare-handed one-hand catch. Amazingly, Sal went to the Stadium with that goal in mind. He got tickets for himself, his fiancee, his cousin, and his cousin’s date in right field. He was broke at the time, so his fiancee paid for the tix ($10!).

    Tracy Stallard of the Bosox was the pitcher. Here’s what Durante said about the catch: “I watched the pitching motion, the release of the ball, and I had my eye on the ball all the way to Roger’s bat. I didn’t take my eye off that ball for a second.”

    As the ball soared towards him, he jumped onto his seat and caught it in the palm of his right hand. “I got it! I got it!,” he shouted, before falling into the row behind him.

    Durante met with Maris after the game, intending to give him the ball, but Maris refused to take it. He knew $5,000 was being offered for it and he said Sal needed the money more than he (Maris) did. He was right. He used half of it to help his parents, and the other half to start off his married life.

    After meeting Maris, Durante was brought up to the TV booth to be interviewed by Phil Rizzuto. The Scooter said: “I’m glad you’re a paesano.”

    The next August, Durante was invited to the Seattle World’s Fair, and offered $1,000 to catch a ball off the Space Needle. When it was determined that a ball thrown from the 605-foot-tall tower would generate too much speed, the stunt (with Tracy Stallard, then pitching for a local minor league team, throwing the ball) was moved to a 100-foot-tall Ferris wheel.

    After catching some practice throws from lower heights, Durante dropped the one for all the money (he got the money anyway). When Stallard asked what happened, Durante said, “I guess I wasn’t relaxed when I knew the money was riding on the toss.”

    Here’s a shot of Durante meeting Maris. Rest in peace, Sal.

    The funniest clue/answer today came early, at 3D. The clue was “Flying a commercial airline, often.” The answer was ORDEAL.

    It inspired me to post the following on Rex’s blog:

    Old timers may recall that no one skewered the airline industry like comic Alan King. It was relentless and high profile (e.g., on the Ed Sullivan Show). He was sued over his act by Eastern Airlines – a godsend for any comic!

    Here’s what he said about it:

    “When I made fun of Eastern Airlines on the Gary Moore Show, their chairman, [former World War I hero] Eddie Rickenbacker, sued. To this day, when I see a World War I movie, I root for the Red Baron. At the preliminary hearing, the judge laughed and threw the case out. He had flown Eastern.”

    I liked Alan King. He also said: You live longer if you eat bran, but you spend the last fifteen years on the toilet.

    More seriously he observed: “There’s a charm, there’s a rhythm, there’s a soul to Jewish humor. When I first saw Richard Pryor perform, I told him, ‘You’re doing a Jewish act.’ He said, ‘I know.’”

    The puzzle’s theme today was words that mean something else in a different language, e.g., MULTIPLEX means plywood in Dutch. It inspired LMS to share this story:

    I’m reminded of the time this shy, retiring, sweet foreign exchange student from Spain came up to my desk during a test, looked around furtively, and very carefully whispered, I need a rubber. That *&%$ will wake you up. I helpfully told him that in the US, he should ask for an “eraser” from then on. Then I showed him the Google translate for rubber, and he turned all kinds of red.

    She also shared this Swedish roadsign:

    (In Swedish, “fart” means speed.)

    And this one:

    It means “final sale.” You can see that it’s in a shop window.

    There were some complaints yesterday that AVA DUVERNAY was too obscure, especially for a Tuesday puzzle. (I knew her, but mostly from previous puzzles.) Today, Pete posted the following:

    To all those from yesterday who complained about Ava DuVernay, as in “how the hell am I supposed to know her,” she now has her very own ice cream flavor called “Lights! Caramel! Action! directed by Ava DuVernay” from Ben & Jerry’s. Yes, she’s that famous.

    For HAMM, the constructor, Karen Steinberg, chose Mad Men’s Jon for the clue, and not soccer’s Mia. I won’t play favorites, tho — let’s Hamm it up and have a look at both of them (below).

    Jon is best known for playing Dan Draper on Mad Men. He won a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a TV Series (Drama) for it twice, as well as an Emmy. But this terrible blot from his youth is in Wikipedia:

    While a member of Sigma Nu fraternity at the University of Texas, Hamm was arrested for participating in a violent hazing incident in November 1990. He lit a pledge’s jeans on fire, shoved his face in the dirt, and struck him with a paddle over his right kidney, before leading him around the fraternity house with a hammer claw around his testicles. [WTF Hamm!!??] The incident resulted in the fraternity being shut down. The pledge ended up needing medical care, and ultimately withdrew from school. Hamm made a plea deal and completed probation allowing him to avoid being convicted of a crime.

    I’ll tell you, folks – stuff like that didn’t happen at Brandeis.

    As promised, here’s Mia Hamm too (no relation).

    Let’s finish today with Dodger (former Bosox) Mookie BETTS, nicely placed out in right field (at 22 across), if you view the grid as a ballfield. For the longest while, I didn’t like Mookie, and not just because he was with Boston. He seemed to play with an arrogance that annoyed me, especially because he is so good. But I watched a game this year in which he had a microphone on during a half inning of play. He was just chatting with one of the announcers and he won me over — he seems like a genuinely nice guy.

    But whatever one may think of him, he’s a helluva ballplayer. In 2018 with Boston he became the first player in MLB history to win the MVP, Gold Glove, Silver Slugger, batting title, and World Series in one season. He’s only 5′ 9″ 180 lbs. He’s also an outstanding professional bowler. Mookie married his long-time girlfriend last December. They began dating in high school, and they have a four-year-old daughter, named Mookelina. No, I made that name up — her name is Kynlee Ivory Betts.

    That’s more than enough owl chatter for the day. See you next time!

  • Ana, V, and Ida B.

    Sunday evenings, or early in the week, I often exchange Sunday Spelling Bee results with Larry, a doctor who is the husband of a colleague of mine at Hunter. He’s a hoot because he often comes up with rafts of wonderful medical words that don’t stand a chance of getting accepted. And we chit chat a bit about the week’s events. This week he mentioned that the Wordle competition between his wife and himself is heating up, and he’s concerned it may end in divorce. I’m sure he was kidding, but it made me think there should by now be some Wordle-based cartoons in the New Yorker — maybe a scene in divorce court? I gave it some thought (no more than 5 or 6 hours — I have stuff to do!), and here’s what I came up with: A guy is on the couch in his shrink’s office and he’s saying: “I thought all those notes starting with Adieu were her Wordle tries. It turns out she left me two weeks ago.”

    [For those of you who do not Wordle, adieu is a very popular first try.]

    Palindromic Cuban-born actress ANA DE ARMAS, 34, may be the most beautiful woman in the world.  At least I wouldn’t want to be the poor slob having to argue the case against it.    You may have seen her as the nurse in Knives Out in 2019, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination.  She also played “Bond girl” Paloma in No Time To Die in 2021, and more recently Marilyn Monroe in Blonde. De Armas married actor Marc Clotet in 2011, but they divorced in 2013.  She dated Ben Affleck from March 2020 to Jan. 2021.  There is a very good chance there is no man on the planet worthy of her. 

    I mention Ana because she is one of seven women in today’s puzzle who form a “word ladder” with their three-letter first names.  That is, you progress from each rung (name) to the next by changing one letter.  Here they are:

    • INA GARTEN (18A: The Food Network’s “Barefoot Contessa”)
    • IDA B. WELLS (22A: Civil rights leader who co-founded the N.A.A.C.P.)
    • ADA LOVELACE (29A: Mathematician regarded as the first computer programmer)
    • ANA DE ARMAS (35A: Portrayer of the nurse Marta Cabrera in “Knives Out”)
    • AVA DUVERNAY (47A: Director of the miniseries “When They See Us”)
    • EVA MENDES (54A: “Girl in Progress” star with a line of cosmetics)
    • EVE ENSLER (59A: “The Vagina Monologues” playwright)

    The names are also symmetrical.  I.e., each of the names in the pairs 1 and 7, 2 and 6, and 3 and 5 are the same length.  For that reason, Ava Gardner could not have replaced Ava Duvernay.  And four of the names are palindromes:  ADA, ANA, AVA, and EVE.

    Rex also noted, though it may not have been intentional on the part of the constructors, that the ladder starts with IN A GARDEN (“INA GARTEN”) and ends with EVE.  On Rex’s blog he posted a very funny photo of Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, consoling IVA Archer on her exclusion from the puzzle.

    Did you know playwright Eve Ensler changed her name to V?  After publishing her book The Apology in 2019, where she described sexual and physical abuse by her late father, Ensler stated she wished to distance herself from his surname and be called by the mononym V.  

    After graduating from Middlebury College in 1975, she had a string of abusive relationships and became dependent on drugs and alcohol. In 1978, she married Richard Dylan McDermott, a 34-year-old bartender, who convinced her to enter rehab.  When she was 23, she adopted her husband’s 16-year-old son Mark from his first marriage. Their relationship came to be a close one, and V said that it taught her “how to be a loving human being.”  After V suffered a miscarriage, Mark took the name she had planned for her baby, Dylan.  

    V wrote The Vagina Monologues  in 1996 which was first performed in the basement of the Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village.  Subsequently, the play was translated into 48 languages and performed in over 140 countries. Celebrities who have starred in it include Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Idina Menzel, Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Sandra Oh, and Oprah Winfrey. 

    Among her many honors, V received a Tony Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship Award, and has been named a Lion of Judah for her commitment to Jewish causes.  Of course, her greatest honor is her inclusion in today’s puzzle.

    Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in Mississippi on July 16, 1862 and was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.  She was one of the founders of the NAACP and was a fearless and brilliant journalist.  She died in 1931, at age 69.  In 2020, Wells was posthumously honored with a Pulitzer Prize special citation “for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching.”  And just last year Memphis dedicated the Ida B. Wells plaza with a life-sized statue of her. It is adjacent to the historic Beale Street Baptist Church, where Wells produced her Free Speech newspaper.

    That’s as good an image as any to end on today. Happy Puzzling!

  • Crime Dog

    We went to the Symphony yesterday (the New Jersey Symphony in Newark). They opened with Beethoven’s Eggplant Overture (tee hee), but the highlight was a modern piece by Aaron Jay Kernis, born 1/15/60: his Symphony No. 2 (1991).

    Its theme is the horror of war — in particular modern technological war as waged in the Gulf War. If you can capture it in sound, he did. I noticed at several points that the harpist had her hands over her ears, and, later, I saw members of the string section taking earplugs out of theirs. The power of the music was provided in part by a percussion section that required four players on the following “battery:” snare drum, piccolo and high snare drum, tenor drum, small and large bass drum, medium log drum, brake drum, bongos, congas, wood blocks, reco reco, lead pipe, mounted handbells, cowbells, thunder sheet, crotales, cabasa, small and high triangles, China boy cymbal, small, medium and large cymbals, small and medium crash cymbals, ride cymbal, vibraphone, xylophone, glockenspiel, marimba, chimes, medium and large tam tams, and tom toms. (I copied that list directly off of the program notes: I didn’t make up the items such as lead pipe or cabasa (which sounds like a melon), as some of you may have thought.) Here are a cabasa and a reco reco (scraper):

    Among his many awards, Kirnis won the Pulitzer Prize and Grammys. His Lament and Prayer for Orchestra (1996) commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Holocaust. At the conclusion of the performance of the Second Symphony, the conductor, Hugh Wolff, motioned to the boxes to the left of the stage. Kirnis was in attendance. The work premiered in Newark back in 1992, with Wolff conducting the NJ Symphony then as well.

    [Note: The above is an example of how someone who is utterly ignorant about music (i.e., me) can write a few paragraphs on the subject.]

    And, speaking of utter ignorance – welcome to the 50th post to appear on owl-chatter.com! I had absolutely no idea what it would be like when I started. And I pretty much still don’t. To my two or three readers — thanks for stopping by! Let’s take a look at today’s puzzle now.

    Like me, you may have been unclear on the distinction between rabbits and hares. Well, for one thing, as the clue for 50 down states: “Unlike rabbits,” HARES’ “young are born open-eyed and hopping.” This was posted as a comment on Rex: “Rabbits nest below ground, the young are altricial, and when they run from you, they’ll run to cover and hide. Hares nest above ground, the young are precocial, and when they run they’ll just flat out run.”

    Altricial means born helpless and requiring substantial parental care. Precocial means born in an advanced state and able to feed itself and move about independently almost immediately. Below is first a hare, and next a rabbit.

    Delighted to see a big fat tuchas plop right down at 9D (ASS, “beast of burden”), right on top of SASS, and crossing CABOOSE! And if that’s not enough for you rear-enders, 51D is clued “Get Yer [blank] Out!” with the answer YA-YAS, the title of a Rolling Stones album. Well, one Rex comment today notes: “I wondered about the origin of ‘Get Yer Ya-Yas Out’ and it comes from a Blind Boy Fuller song where he tells someone to get out of his house or he’ll ‘throw your ya-yas’ out the door. And “ya-yas” means ASS.”

    I was not able to confirm this meaning of ya-yas via Google, but so what?

    The SAN ANDREAS FAULT (i.e., those words: not the thing itself) crosses the entire grid in the center. A Californian noted that it does not actually pass through the town of San Andreas, CA. Inhabitants like to say “It’s not our fault.”

    The Fault runs for 750 miles and forms the boundary between tectonic plates. It runs mostly up California, but extends into Mexico too. The plates are moving in different directions which is “creating significant compressional forces,” meaning essentially “we’re f**ked.” The compression helps form mountain ranges, but also leads to earthquakes with the next one expected to hit the LA region at some indeterminate point in the future. Here’s a range rising above LA.

    On the subject of devastation, there was a good New Yorker cartoon not too long ago. It had one of those gaunt, prophet-type fellows holding up his sign: The End Is Near. But we were viewing the sign reflected in the side view mirror of a car. And the sign said: The End Is Nearer Than It Appears.

    Welcome to The Hall of Fame, Fred McGriff! What the hell took you so long, Crime Dog? In addition to hitting 493 home runs (the same exact amount as fellow first baseman Lou Gehrig), McGriff has the great nickname “Crime Dog,” from commercials featuring a crime-preventing cartoon dog named McGruff. From ’88 through ’97, McGriff hit the most home runs in major league baseball, if you don’t count the steroid-inflated numbers of Bonds and McGwire.

    When I first started collecting baseball autographs in high school my goal was to obtain as many Hall of Famers as I could. So I try to add new members to my collection unless the cost would be prohibitive (e.g., Jeter and Mariano Rivera). McGriff’s was a gaping hole in my collection, which I remedied by picking one up on eBay this morning for not too unreasonable an amount. I look forward to passing the collection on to my grandchildren one day, none of whom is likely to have the slightest interest in it.

    The James Lipton book on the venery of animals came in (i.e., what groups of animals are called): An Exaltation of Larks (the ultimate edition, with over 1,000 terms). In the intro, Lipton admits he is not the first to undertake the task, and he quotes this passage from Arthur Conan Doyle, from his non-Holmesian writing.

    Answer me now, lad, how would you say if you saw ten badgers in the forest?

    A cete of badgers, fair sir.

    Good, Nigel — good, by my faith! And if you walk in Woolmer Forest and see a swarm of foxes, how would you call it?

    A skulk of foxes.

    And if they lions?

    Nay, fair sir, I am not like to meet several lions in Woolmer Forest.

    Ay, lad, but there are other forests besides Woolmer, and other lands besides England, and who can tell how far afield such a knight errant as Nigel of Tilford may go, when he sees worship to be won? We will say that you were in the deserts of Nubia, and that afterward at the court of the great Sultan you wished to say that you had seen several lions. How then would you say it?

    Surely, fair sir, I would be content to say that I had seen a number of lions, if indeed I could say aught after so wondrous an adventure.

    Nay, Nigel, a huntsman would have said that he had seen a pride of lions, and so proved that he knew the language of the chase. Now, had it been boars instead of lions?

    One says a singular of boars.

    And if they be swine?

    Surely, it is a herd of swine.

    Nay, nay, lad, it is indeed sad to see how little you know. No man of gentle birth would speak of a herd of swine; that is the peasant speech. If you drive them it is a herd. If you hunt them it is other. Can you tell us, Mary?

    Surely, sweet sir, one talks of a sounder of swine.

    The old Knight laughed exultantly. Here is a pupil who never brings me shame! Hark ye! only last week that jack-fool, the young Lord of Brocas, was here talking of having seen a covey of pheasants in the wood. One such speech would have been the ruin of a young squire at the court. How would you have said it, Nigel?

    Surely, fair sir, it should be a nye of pheasants.

    Good, Nigel — a nye of pheasants, even as it is a gaggle of geese or a badling of ducks, a fall of woodcock or a wisp of snipe. But a covey of pheasants! What sort of talk is that?

    Apparently, we have a shitload of work ahead of us. That’s enough for today though.

  • Your Motto

    Here’s some owl chatter from today’s Met Diary in the NYT:

    My husband and I were on West 81st Street on an unseasonably warm fall evening. A group of us were gathered in front of the Excelsior Hotel around a very small owl that was looking up from the sidewalk with otherworldly eyes.

    One man told people to avoid stepping on the owl while a woman redirected those who approached with dogs. It appeared to be a baby, though it didn’t have any baby fluff. Its tiny feathers were sleek and mature. Surely it was injured and unable to fly.

    We all had our phones out, taking pictures of the bird and searching the internet for bird rescue groups. Finally, someone reached a rescue center operator and was told to bring the owl to an office on the East Side, where it would receive proper care.

    “I have a box in my apartment,” one man said.

    “No,” said someone else, “I think I have a bag you can use.”

    The sense of camaraderie was palpable.

    “I am used to handling wild animals,” said an elegantly dressed older woman who was wearing gloves despite the warmth of the evening.

    She bent down to pick up the owl, which appeared calm and quite interested in the group that had gathered. It turned its head freely to take us all in.

    As the woman reached for the owl, it squawked loudly, spread its small wings and flew into the nearest tree.

    A spontaneous cheer erupted as we ran to the tree to make sure our little friend really was OK. By the time we got there, it had flown into the night.

    — Melaney Mashburn

    Lloyd Carr is featured in Maureen Dowd’s column today. He was Michigan’s head football coach when Sam was a student there. The story is about the death of Carr’s 5-year-old grandson Chad from a brain tumor: diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG). Carr and Dowd became friends and kept in touch regularly until Carr fell silent from his loss. She says, “I found out that this man, so full of verve and life, had gone into a miasma of grief.”

    “My entire life, from the time I was a kid, I hated losing,” Carr said when I (Dowd) called him Thursday. “As a player and as a coach, anytime we lost, it was a heartbreaking loss for me, in my eyes. I thought I knew what heartbreaking was, but I didn’t. Chad’s experience taught me. I know now.”

    Carr was a great coach. Urban Meyer won the national championship at Florida with Tim Tebow in 2006 and 2008. But in 2007 Michigan and Carr beat them in the Capital One Bowl. Carr’s overall record at UMich was 122- 40, and he won the national title with them in 1997, the last time they won.

    I saw Carr up close at a UMich women’s basketball game a few years ago. He was retired and saying hi to some friends in the crowd. He looked good.

    Today’s puzzle has the following clue at 82 across: “[Blank] Questionnaire, character assessment that might ask ‘What is your idea of perfect happiness?’”

    “Sacre blue!” (from right above it at 76A) — the answer turned out to be PROUST Questionnaire. Have you heard of it? I hadn’t. It’s a list of questions felt to determine your character. Proust did not devise it, but he answered the questions and the questionnaire became associated with him.

    Proust answered the questions in a confession album –a form of parlor game popular among Victorians. The album was found in 1924, and published in the French literary journal Les Cahiers du Mois. It was auctioned on May 27, 2003 for roughly $114,000.

    Other historical figures who have answered confession albums are Oscar Wilde, Karl Marx, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Paul Cezanne. A similar questionnaire is regularly seen on the back page of Vanity Fair magazine, answered by various celebrities. In October 2009, Vanity Fair launched an interactive version of it, that compares individual answers to those of various luminaries.

    Among Proust’s answers, for favorite qualities in a man he wrote “intelligence, moral sense,” and for a woman he wrote “gentleness, naturalness, intelligence.” For favorite color, he wrote “I like them all,” and “the beauty is not in the colors, but in their harmony.”

    There are various versions of the questionnaire. Here are the thirty-five questions Proust originally answered in 1890. Feel free to skip one or two.

    1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
    2. What is your greatest fear?
    3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
    4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
    5. Which living person do you most admire?
    6. What is your greatest extravagance?
    7. What is your current state of mind?
    8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
    9. On what occasion do you lie?
    10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
    11. Which living person do you most despise?
    12. What is the quality you most like in a man?
    13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?
    14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
    15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
    16. When and where were you happiest?
    17. Which talent would you most like to have?
    18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
    19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
    20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
    21. Where would you most like to live?
    22. What is your most treasured possession?
    23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
    24. What is your favorite occupation?
    25. What is your most marked characteristic?
    26. What do you most value in your friends?
    27. Who are your favorite writers?
    28. Who is your hero of fiction?
    29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
    30. Who are your heroes in real life?
    31. What are your favorite names?
    32. What is it that you most dislike?
    33. What is your greatest regret?
    34. How would you like to die?
    35. What is your motto?

    Here’s a shot of Proust, right before he chomped down on that fateful cookie.

    That last question — “What is your motto?” — figured in Al Pacino’s speech in Scent of a Woman, as he defends Charlie who was going to be expelled from his fancy prep school for refusing to rat out his friends. The headmaster says he is recommending that Charlie (Mr. Simms) be expelled, but he gives him one more chance to speak up. Pacino says:

    “Mr. Simms doesn’t want it. He doesn’t need to be labeled ‘still worthy of being a Baird man.’ What the hell is that? What is your motto here? — Boys, inform on your friends, save your hide, anything short of that we’ll burn you at the stake? Well, gentlemen, when the shit hits the fan, some guys run and some guys stay. Here’s Charlie facing the fire, and there’s George: hiding in big daddy’s pocket. And what are you doing? — you’re going to reward George, and destroy Charlie.”

    “Are you done, Mr. Slade?”

    “No, I’m just getting warmed up.”

    I had trouble with the puzzle — came down with a DNF (did not finish). I don’t know Andy SERKIS, clued as the voice of Gollum in Lord of the Rings (duh), and I’m not familiar with the SHAKA SIGN — the “hang loose” hand gesture. So I blanked on where the K’s cross. It’s a gesture with friendly intent associated with Hawaii and surf culture.

    And here’s from commenter Pete: Fun fact about Andy Serkis – when he and Lorraine Ashbourne eloped in 2002, her parents disowned and disavowed her. I can understand, as who wants a daughter who ran away with the Serkis?

    Here’s Andy:

    “Defense of a history paper?” was the clue for FORTRESS, and it puzzled me for a while. It’s a history paper that contains a discussion of a fortress as a type of military defense. It’s not that the fortress is defending the paper.

    Not too many folks were invited to the grid today. Channing TATUM popped by. And for those of you who might accuse me of only featuring hot babes, here’s a hot shot of CT. I haven’t seen any of his films. He was born in Cullman, Alabama, on 4/26/80. His mom was an airline worker and his dad was in construction. Channing’s pretty well-built himself. Ba da boom!

    Funnyman Jay Leno dropped by too. Here’s a quick trio of his: The crime problem in NY is really getting serious — the other day the Statue of Liberty had both hands up. I went into a McDonald’s yesterday and said “I’d like some fries.” The girl behind the counter said, “Would you like some fries with that?” At Sharper Image, I saw a “body fat analyzer.” Didn’t that used to be called a mirror?

    How about the artist EL GRECO? For one thing, he wasn’t insulted if you called him a Cretan. The clue read: “Cretan-born painter who was a leader of the Spanish Renaissance.” In fact, he normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος (Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos), often adding the word Κρής (Krḗs), which means Cretan. Here’s some work of his:

    All Hail the 2022 Big Ten Champs: the Wolverines! Purdue put up a good fight. We were only up by one point at the half. But all’s well that ends well. TCU is next, on New Year’s Eve. Dare we dream of a national title?