Story.

[Click for a larger view.]

As found at the Library of Congress. The library reminds us, “This is a digitized catalog card, not an audio recording.”

I hope it’s a good night for trick-or-treating. Happy Halloween to all.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by “Lester Ruff” — the puzzle’s editor, Stan Newman, offering an easier Saturday puzzle. I often find Les’s puzzles pretty Ruff, but this one is indeed easy. It’d be a good puzzle for anyone who wants to test the Stumper waters, say at the four-foot end of the pool.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, eight letters, “Dessert with coffee.” A nice start, or finish.

1-D, seven letters, “’59 Eldorado claim to fame.” Must be seen to be believed.

8-D, fifteen letters, “New England attraction named by Washington.” Attraction might be slightly misdirective.

13-D, seven letters, “Kind of case.” Where’s mine? Oh, I know.

17-A, eight letters, “Takes for a trial.” My first thought was BETATEST — not something third-person singular.

23-A, five letters, “Canterbury pilgrim.” I haven’t thought of him in years.

30-D, four letters, “It might have to wait for a second.” Yikes, I’m back on a university committee.

36-D, seven letters, “Square structures.” Mildly Stumper-y.

42-D, three letters, “Signal officially replaced in 1992.” I learned something.

44-A, four letters, “Ken Burns topic.” Not one of his best efforts.

My favorite in this puzzle: 49-D, four letters, “Skip.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

*

Crossword Fiend has a discussion of 30-D, which crosses 41-A, five letters, “Distinctive aspect.” If you follow through to the comments, you’ll see that Evan Birnholz thinks that there was some sort of mix-up and that the puzzle’s answers for 30-D and 41-A are mistakes. I think he’s right (and that my answers are the intended ones).

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Leave your guess(es) in the comments. I’ll drop a hint if one is needed.

*

No hint needed; the answer is now in the comments.

Related reading
All OCA mystery actor posts (Pinboard)

[Garner’s Modern English Usage notes that “support for actress seems to be eroding.” I use actor.]

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois , October 30, 2026. Click for a larger view.]

“Remember when the night before Halloween was ‘Mischief Night’?” Hi asks.

Credit where it’s due: the panel that follows Hi’s question is nicely done. The Waning Gibbous moon even fits today’s date.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Dan and Dan and Cornel and Elon

I think a ballot-stacking effort is a nasty thing, in Alaska or anywhere else. But for something far nastier, consider the Elon Musk effort to prop up Cornel West’s presidential ambitions. From Sludge (archived) , “Musk-Linked Dark Money Network Funded the Group Behind Cornel West’s Ballot Push”:

People Over Party raised $7.7 million in 2024, all of it from the nonprofit behind the Fair Election Fund, which in turn got every dollar from a Musk-funded dark money group.

Another reminder that a vote for Jill Stein or Cornel West or some other “progressive” third-party candidate is a wasted vote, sometimes for reasons one hasn’t imagined.

Two related posts
Allegory and Allegory redux (My theory of voting)

A pocket notebook sighting

[From Still of the Night (dir. Robert Benton, 1982). Click for a larger view.]

Okay, it’s a datebook. But there is a prescription pad, and the datebook’s owner is using one of its pages to write a note. Yet another movie moment in which a surface for writing fills the screen.

Related reading
All OCA notebook sightings (Pinboard)

Scheduled

The schedule for next year’s classes was out. What’d I get?

Fall: freshman comp, freshman comp, freshman comp.

Spring: freshman comp, freshman comp, freshman comp.

There was, really, nothing more left to teach. All the literature classes were gone. Maybe, I thought, it was time to retire.

This is the thirty-third teaching dream I’ve had since retiring in 2015. In only two of them has nothing gone wrong.

Related reading
All OCA teaching dream posts (Pinboard)

[“Only fools and children talk about their dreams”: Dr. Edward Jeffreys (Robert Douglas), in Thunder on the Hill (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1951).]

Recently updated

A Dartmouth provost and AI: He’s resigned and left the university.

RhymeHamster

Jeremy Desmon, a bookwriter and lyricist for musical theater, has created a (free) online rhyming dictionary: RhymeHamster. I think it’s a worthy companion to such resources as Etymonline and Green’s Dictionary of Slang.

How good is RhymeHamster? I tried meh and rizz — they’re both in there, which I think is a sign that this dictionary is “with it.” (You can also find hep .) Elaine tried the Gilbert and Sullivanesque hypotenuse , and the dictionary obliged with 103 perfect rhymes of one, two, three, four, and five syllables.

And I had to try orange , which yielded 123 imperfect rhymes. For as the poet and novelist Gilbert Sorrentino reminds us, “Nothing is the thing that rhymes with orange.”

Thanks, Jeremy, for sharing your project.

[“With it”: I’m joking. “Nothing is”: a line from the poem “The Crown,” in The Orangery (1978).]

Zippy preps

[“Clean Palate.” Zippy, October 28, 2026. Click for a larger view.]

In today’s Zippy , we learn that Zippy prepares all his meals in the sink. “Dishes are so 20th century!” he says.

See also Cosmo Kramer’s shower prep.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Shoutout to our daughter Rachel, who introduced us to Dawn Platinum Powerwash Dish Spray, which makes dishwashing more fun. Way more fun than Seventh Generation. And dish spray makes it unnecessary to decide whether to say dish soap or dishwashing liquid .]