Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Brad Wilber, felt like an easy puzzle — about as easy last Saturday’s. What gives?

I began with 17-A, six letters, “Accelerando eraser,” which gave me 4-D, four letters, “Take the easy way out, with ‘out,’” and 5-D, three letters, “___ desk.” Those last two answers gave me 1-A, five letters, “Common jack-o’-lantern feature,” and before I knew it, the northwest corner was done. The rest followed.

My favorite clues: 34-D, nine letters, “Something printed without punch.” 60-A, eight letters, “George Harrison, from 1965.” (Harrison though might have disagreed.) Best of all: 2-D, nine letters, “America's Cup participant.” Why? Because I encountered the word in 1998 in a short essay by Carlo Rotella about Muhammad Ali and Homeric translation. And I took the time to look it up. And I never expected to see it again.

One curious clue: 28-A, five letters, “Shots often taken in Crete,” which harks back to last week’s 29-D, four letters, “Spirit in Cyprus.” Was there a recent crossword cruise of the Mediterranean?

No spoilers: the answers — to the clues, not to that question — are in the comments.

Cather vs. Trump

Writing in The New York Times, Bret Stephens suggests Willa Cather’s My Ántonia as “the perfect antidote” to Donald Trump. Stephens calls the novel “an education in what it means to be American”:

to have come from elsewhere, with very little; to be mindful, amid every trapping of prosperity, of how little we once had, and were; to protect and nurture those newly arrived, wherever from, as if they were our own immigrant ancestors — equally scared, equally humble, and equally determined.

That’s the “real America” that today’s immigrant-bashers, starting with the president, pretend to venerate and constantly traduce.

Stephens doesn’t take into account those who were brought to this country against their will. Nor does Cather, really. But there’s still an antidote of some effectiveness to be found in her work.

Related reading
All OCA Willa Cather posts (Pinboard)

[“Really”: Cather’s final novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl, makes things more complicated. But it’s still fair to say that Cather’s “America” is made of little more than Native peoples and people of European descent.]

Ben Leddy hosts The Rewind

Our son Ben is hosting WGBH’s online series The Rewind, an exploration of the WGBH archives. The third episode is here: “The Size of the Universe,” with educational television footage from 1957.

First two episodes: “Tchaikovsky Waits for No Man” and “Tailgating with Table Linens.” Go Ben!

Not competent

From The Washington Post:

When President Trump met human rights activist Nadia Murad, an Iraqi who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for speaking out about her agonizing torture and rape while in Islamic State captivity, he seemed unaware of her story and the plight of her Yazidi ethnic minority. . . .

In the same meeting, the president also seemed not to know that Rohingya refugees had fled violence in Myanmar, also known as Burma.

The Post has a clip of the first exchange. Here’s the second.

Anti-money laundering specialists

[The New York Times, May 19, 2019.]


[The New York Times, July 19, 2019.]

The first hyphenation error, from a Times article, has been corrected. The second, from a Reuters article appearing in the Times, is fresh.

I like the idea of anti-money laundering specialists. They remove stubborn stains and leave your clothes smelling fresh and clean, but they never take a dime for their work.

43.5

[“Expiration Date High Score.” xkcd, July 19, 2019.]

If I had played this game last year, before we went through a kitchen cabinet and tossed the old spices, I think that 43.5 would have been my high score, courtesy of some long-forgotten curry powder that I bought in the early 1980s. Tuna salad with curry powder was a “thing” then.

Drapes, Pop-Tarts, impeachment

[“Breakfast Summit.” Zippy, July 19, 2019.]

Yes, kitchen-table issues.

I like the Dutch door, just like Father Knows Best.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Shade

Oh, look, it’s shade, the only shade in the parking lot. I’ll take it, after taking a picture of it.

[Temperature: 90°. Heat index: 103°. Yes, the shade does look like an angry dinosaur.]

Word of the day: coleslaw

Is it one word, or two? Is cole a kind of slaw? Merriam-Webster has the word solid. The OED uses a hyphen. M-W’s recipe definition is a bit vague: “a salad made of raw sliced or chopped cabbage.” Lots of room for invention there. The OED is more definite: “sliced cabbage dressed with salt, pepper, vinegar, etc., eaten either raw or slightly cooked.” The word first appears in 1794, in the United States: “a piece of sliced cabbage, by Dutchmen ycleped cold slaw.” Yes, coleslaw comes to us from the Dutch koolsla, a reduced form of kool-salade. Kool is cabbage; salade is, well, obvious. The OED notes that “cold-slaw is a result of popular etymology.”

My definition of coleslaw: shredded cabbage, thin strips of carrot (cut with a peeler), red wine vinegar, mayonnaise, salt, cane sugar, and celery seed. There must be celery seed.

[Citation and etymology from the OED.]

Walter is a dilettante

Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities. 1930–1943. Trans. Sophie Wilkins (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

Related reading
All OCA Robert Musil posts (Pinboard)

[“Dilettante”: that’s the novel’s narrator opining.]