From the Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper crossword, by Frank Longo, is difficult. (Forty-two minutes’ worth of difficulty for me.) I had to go all the way to 64-Across, four letters, to find a way into the puzzle: “It gives an actor visibility.”

A clue that I especially liked, 34-Across, eleven letters: “Stand with tangy products.” And a clue that taught me something: 55-Across, six letters: “First Best Actor/Supporting Actor Oscar winner.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

A theory

“This account — as bizarre as it may seem at first glance — is actually more plausible than the story leaked to the Journal, the New York Times, and CNN”: “Here’s a Theory About That $1.6 Million Payout From a GOP Official to a Playboy Model” (New York).

Thanks, Elaine.

Wall art

“This crumbling, beer-splotched wall in the back of a sports bar on East 44th Street is one of New York’s more neglected cultural treasures”: “The Sistine Chapel of Comic-Strip Art” (The New York Times).

A Mark Trail revision

[Mark Trail, May 11, 2018.]

Mark, are you reading cue cards? Or are you just a big hunk of clip art? Look at Cherry when you speak to her.


[Mark Trail revised, May 11, 2018.]

That’s better.

Mark and Cherry are vacationing at the Hotel Azyoulik, an “eco-resort” in Tulum, Mexico. “Finally, a legitimate vacation!” Mark exclaimed on April 28. In real life, Tulum’s Azulik Resort is an adults-only, clothing-optional resort. Is the Trails’ chosen vacation spot also adults-only and clothing-optional? Is that why Mark’s eyes are wandering?


[Mark Trail, May 11, 2018.]

Can’t be, because their son Rusty is with them, right there in panel three. And there’s nothing I can do to fix his hand.

Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

[I flipped Mark and his words with the free Mac app Seashore.]

“We never have any sharp pencils”

Beverly and Clarence Cleary, in their newly bought house in the Berkeley Hills:

We had discovered in the linen closet a ream of typing paper left by the former owner. I remarked to Clarence, “I guess I’ll have to write a book.” My ambition, refusing to die, was beginning to bloom again.

“Why don’t you?” asked Clarence.

“We never have any sharp pencils” was my flippant answer.

The next day he brought home a pencil sharpener.

Beverly Cleary, My Own Two Feet: A Memoir (New York: William Morrow, 1995).

Elaine was waiting for well over a year for me to read Beverly Cleary’s memoirs, this one and A Girl from Yamhill. She knew I would love them. She was right.

Related reading
All OCA Beverly Cleary posts (Pinboard)

“Etc., etc.”

Beverly Cleary (then Bunn) is now a student in the School of Librarianship, University of Washington. It’s noon:

As we ate our meager lunches and watched drama students, scripts in hand, emote over cups of coffee with soggy napkins folded in their saucers sopping up spills, we discussed the finer points of cataloging and invented an imaginary series of books for our instructor to catalog: six volumes, each with a different editor or sometimes two, one of whom wrote under a pseudonym and the other under her maiden name, some volumes translated from foreign languages and requiring translator cards, each volume with a preface by a different author, etc., etc. This sent us into gales of laughter as each of us thought of an addition to make the assignment more difficult. Such is the sense of humor of librarians. We also had earnest discussions on the finer points of grammar.

Beverly Cleary, My Own Two Feet: A Memoir (New York: William Morrow, 1995).

Related reading
All OCA Beverly Cleary posts (Pinboard)

A Gmail problem

If you prefer using plain text in Gmail (as I do),
you’ve
probably noticed odd line breaks in sent messages.

That sentence, written in plain-text Gmail, illustrates what I’m describing. It’s long puzzled me. But no longer.

In 2014, Mathias Bynens, who works at Google, explained the problem and suggested a solution: Dear Google, please fix plain text e-mails in Gmail. Today, plain text is still a problem in Gmail. But at least I now know why. And I’ll probably switch to rich formatting. With plain text, it’s too likely that an e-mail recipient unfamiliar with the line-break problem will think there’s a strangely sloppy person at the other keyboard.

Brooks Kerr (1951–2018)

Brooks Kerr, pianist and Duke Ellington scholar, has died at the age of sixty-six. The New York Times has an obituary.

There’s a YouTube channel for Kerr’s recordings, but no trace online of the recording I’d like to link to: Soda Fountain Rag (Chiaroscuro, 1975), a wonderful sampling of early Ellingtonia, with Kerr (then twenty-four) accompanied by a spirited Sonny Greer, the Ellington band’s first drummer (then seventy-nine). Instead, here’s a live recording from 1974 of Kerr playing “Soda Fountain Rag,” generally considered Ellington’s first composition.

Robert Johnson, mortgagor

“She got a mortgage on my body now, and a lien on my soul”: Robert Johnson, “Traveling Riverside Blues,” recorded in Dallas, June 20, 1937.

A related post
Mortgagee, mortgagor

Mortgagee, mortgagor

Ogedi Ogu, a lawyer, is suing Oxford University Press over Oxford definitions of mortgagee and mortgagor. Mr. Ogu says that he suffered embarrassment and loss of reputation when he relied on definitions in the Oxford English Mini Dictionary and the Oxford Mini Reference Dictionary. He says that these dictionaries define mortgagee as a borrower and mortgagor as a lender.

I think he may have things backwards. The Oxford Dictionaries website gives this definition for mortgagee: “the lender in a mortgage, typically a bank, building society, or savings and loan association.” And for mortgagor: “The borrower in a mortgage, typically a homeowner.” The Oxford English Mini Dictionary gives these shorter definitions for mortgagee and mortgagor: “the lender in a mortgage,” “the borrower in a mortgage.” I cannot find a dictionary with the title Oxford Mini Reference Dictionary.

The Oxford English Dictionary too defines mortgagee as “a mortgage lender” but adds a second definition: “in popular usage: mortgagor.” And the OED defines mortgagor as “the borrower in a mortgage.” Uh oh. I am reminded of what happens when someone uses the word nonplussed to mean its opposite. I look forward to further news of this case.

Mortgagee and mortgagor seem to me vexed terms, and writing this post about them has made my head spin, more than once, though I was never left nonplussed. Consider these Merriam-Webster definitions: “a person to whom property is mortgaged,” “a person who mortgages property.” Can you tell which definition goes with which word? Garner’s Modern English Usage glosses a similarly confusing pair, lessor and lessee, and suggests a change: “landlord and tenant are simpler equivalents that are more comprehensible to most people.” I would like simple, clear alternatives to mortgagee and mortgagor: lender and borrower or lending institution and borrowing homeowner would work well.

This post is for my friend Norman, who knows the difference between lessee and lessor and wishes that everyone else did.

[Mr. Ogu says that he has a letter from Oxford University Press and the University of Oxford acknowledging the mistaken definitions. The OEMD that I looked up (in Google Books) dates from 2013. Mr. Ogu says that he bought his dictionaries in 2005 and 2006, so it’s possible that in an earlier edition the definitions were switched. But I’m puzzled that no article about this case has a photo of the relevant dictionary page.]