From the Saturday Stumper

A clever clue, from today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, 36-Down, eight letters: “Senior partner.” No spoilers; the answer is in the comments.

Today’s puzzle, by Andy Kravis, is not especially tricky, but it offers few toeholds. Finishing a Saturday Stumper is always cause for minor self-congratulation.

Just a thought

Children restrained, taunted with food: I wonder if so-called blanket training is a partial explanation of what went on in David and Louise Turpin’s house. Just a thought.

Filing a complaint

Look: it’s Jeremias, one of K.’s two assistants. But he looks older, wearier. Why?


Franz Kafka, The Castle, trans. Mark Harman (New York: Schocken, 1998).

The complaint: K. cannot take a joke.

Related reading
All OCA Kafka posts (Pinboard)

Brian Wilson, A student

Not from The Onion: the grade of F that high-schooler Brian Wilson received for his song “Surfin’” has been changed to an A. No word on whether Mike Love (who went to a different high school) will have any of his grades changed.

Thanks, Rachel.

Sardine art

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has Michael Goldberg’s Sardines. Not on display.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has Joe Brainard’s Sardines. Also not on display.

Someone given to making bad puns might say that in Brainard’s collaged drawing the word becomes fish. Looking at Goldberg’s painting should make that pun clear. See also Frank O’Hara’s poem “Why I Am Not a Painter.”

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Eberhard Faber letterhead

[You really should click for a much larger view.]

Sean at Blackwing Pages and Contrapuntalism passed on this scan of the Eberhard Faber letterhead, complete with telephone exchange name, cable address, diamond star trademark, and two-digit postal code. And trailing clouds of graphite, a bright, sharp no. 2 Mongol.

This letterhead gives new meaning to the phrase “leaden sky.”

Thanks, Sean, for sharing this find.

Related reading
All OCA Mongol and pencil posts (Pinboard)

[Notice that the postal code has been typed in: codes for large cities were first used in 1943.]

Tyke

“A little bit of scratch paper that lives on your Mac menu bar”: Tyke is a free app that looks extremely handy.

A tenuously related post
Word of the day: tyke

Soul Music again

The BBC podcast Soul Music is rolling again, with episodes about Adolphe Adam’s “O Holy Night,” Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” and J.S. Bach’s Ich habe genug. I’ve never heard a bad episode of Soul Music. Highly recommended.

The Clean Plate Club

Dammit, I always assumed that my parents invented it. But no, it was Herbert Hoover.

[Prompted by a conversation in an Original Pancake House.]

The imperfect present perfect

Rex Tillerson, as heard on NPR today: “This is a strategy that has and will require patience.”

But the present perfect verb requires a participle: “This is a strategy that has required, and will require, patience.”