Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor, is not my favorite kind of Stumper. Too much fact, too much trivia. The toughest part for me: the upper right corner, where 18-A, four letters, “Belgian-based imaging giant” and 32-A, three letters, “Reduced number” left me baffled. I turned to an online version of the puzzle to try letters until I found the ones that fit.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

9-D, three letters, “He’s had 40+ jobs since the ’60s (surfer, boxer, barista,...).” Yes, him.

17-A, ten letters, “ ‘This Land Is Your Land’ to ‘God Bless America.’”  I think I should have known.

21-A, six letters, “Foreign Legion wear.” What’s the name for those hats? Never mind; it doesn’t matter.

22-A, seven letters, “Type of terrarium.” Amusing, at least if you’re outside the terrarium.

26-D, four letters, “Eight-time Burton collaborator.” But which Burton?

28-A, five letters, “Seat’s proof of purchase.” Pretty obscure.

30-A, five letters, “First synthetic detergent (still widely sold).” I guessed correctly, but still pretty obscure.

40-D, eight letters, “Whom Khrushchev’s son-in-law wrote for.” I knew the answer because I know the word, but to my mind, it’s a ridiculous clue, and it did a lot to spoil my enjoyment of the puzzle. Too much fact, too much trivia.

56-A, four letters, “Collector’s item.” A bit of a stretch, but okay.

65-D, three letters, “Coverage from Calvin Klein.” I caught on.

My favorite in this puzzle: 67-A, ten letters, “Sort of a small saw.” Because it reminds me of younger days.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“The presence of a mechanical medium”

Paduk is the dictator of an unnamed Eastern European country. He leads the Ekwilist Party, the Party of the Average Man. Paduk’s father, an inventor, was the creator of the padograph.

Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister (1947).

A mechanical device that reproduces personality: Nabokov was eerily prescient here.

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

Morley’s ghost

In The Guardian , Sarah Safer, daughter of Morley Safer, writes about the destruction of a television show :

My dad wasn’t sure about an afterlife and neither am I, but after the decimation of 60 Minutes, I like to imagine that he is still hanging around. To his colleagues’ dismay, he was famous for flouting the rules around smoking. If anyone at CBS News smells smoke in an edit room, or another place they shouldn’t, my dad is surely haunting it, encouraging those who carry on his legacy and, let’s hope, making trouble for the brass.

Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton are hereby on notice that our household has removed CBS from our televison universe.

A related post
Oh, that guy

No Soup

[From Big City (dir. Frank Borzage, 1937). Click for a larger view.]

The signage is one odd bit in a movie filled with odd bits. Talk about odd: what follows this scene is the cabbie drinking that entire bottle of milk. Why? Because someone thought it funny.

Is “No Soup Served During Radio Concerts” a joke about the pretensions of this lunch stand’s proprietor? Because slurps, like coughs and the crackling of candy wrappers, would interfere with the appreciation of good music? Or perhaps the words are a joke on “No soap, radio.” But that anti-joke didn’t become well-known until the 1950s. I tried to figure this one out, but — that’s right, no soap.

Spontaneous generation

Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister (1947).

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard) : On paper clips (An informal essay) : Paper clips (A prose poem)

Orange kiddo list

[Click for a larger list.]

This list, the work of a six-year-old, joins the list of supplies for an imaginary camping trip that my daughter Rachel made at the age of six or seven, many years ago. Two generations of youthful lists on Orange Crate Art.

Related reading
All OCA list posts (Pinboard)

Words of the day: milliner , millinery

Somehow I started thinking about those odd-looking words, milliner , millinery . Were they originally related to textile mills? No.

From the Oxford English Dictionary entry for milliner:

With capital initial. A native or inhabitant of Milan, a city in northern Italy. Obsolete.

The first citation for that meaning is from 1449, in a sentence about every “Venician, Italian, ... and Milener.” And then comes the more familiar meaning:

Originally: a seller of fancy wares, accessories, and articles of (female) apparel, esp. such as were originally made in Milan. Subsequently: spec. a person who designs, makes, or sells women’s hats.

The first citation for that meaning is from 1530, apparently from expense accounts for Henry VIII: “Paied to the Mylloner for certeyne cappes trymmed ... withe botons of golde.”

Millinery came later:

The articles made or sold by milliners. In earlier use frequently attributive .

The first citation is from 1676: “Millinery; disbursements for combs, mittens, gloves, thread, silk.”

And a later meaning:

The trade, business, or craft of a milliner,

with a first citation from Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792): “In the afternoon, the girls should attend a school, where plain-work, mantua-making, millinery, &c., would be their employment.“

The OED entry for the word ends on a hopeful note, with a citation from The Palm Beach Post (January 15, 2000): “Don’t toss millinery onto the scrap heap of dead-end 21st-century careers just yet.”

Hats on!

Recently updated

Local man hits 100-post limit: And now the 100-post monthly limit is gone.

Arts, shmarts

Earlier today I posted a passage from Nabokov’s Bend Sinister on the role of education in a police state. I didn’t expect this New York Times article (gift link) to appear on the same day: “New Federal Guidelines Threaten Almost Half of Graduate Arts Programs.”

Deathtrap Mongols

[Michael Caine as Sidney Bruhl. Mongol pencils as themselves. From Deathtrap (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1982.) Click for a larger view.]

Related reading
All OCA Mongol posts (Pinboard)