Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Greg Johnson, looks rather difficult but might prove less so. (And what might that bode for next Saturday?) Only sixty-four words, with a fourteen- over a fifteen-letter answer in the north, and a fifteen- over a fourteen-letter answer in the south. My favorite long clue: 14-A, fifteen letters, “Noticeably neutral display.” I immediately thought of a song by The Specials.

Other clues I especially liked: 14-D, five letters, “Fare that was rare to air.” 20-D, six letters, “Gang leader on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.” 29-A, ten letters, “Frequent Broadway openings.” And for the news of the weird: 38-D, six letters, “Sir        Grenville Wodehouse.” No wonder he used initials.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

“Tippy-top”

Donald Trump just stated that "our nuclear" is in "tippy-top shape."

Messing with the mail

From Time: “The Race to Prepare for a Potential U.S. Exit From the World’s Mail System.”

Merriam-Webster and they

Merriam-Webster explains the inclusion of nonbinary they in its dictionaries:

All new words and meanings that we enter in our dictionaries meet three criteria: meaningful use, sustained use, and widespread use. Nonbinary they has a clear meaning; it’s found in published text, in transcripts, and in general discourse; and its use has been steadily growing over the past decades. English speakers are encountering nonbinary they in social media profiles and in the pronoun stickers applied to conference badges. There’s no doubt that it is an established member of the English language, which means that it belongs in Merriam-Webster’s dictionaries.

The “grammatically conservative” might want to read this short commentary by Geoff Nunberg. The sentence that hit home for me: “It's not a lot to ask — just a small courtesy and sign of respect.”

Ben Leddy hosts The Rewind

Here’s the latest episode of WGBH’s The Rewind, “Who Was the Father of Country Music?,” hosted by our son Ben.

[And if you’re wondering about the comma after the question mark, see The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.) 6.125.]

Guess I’m dumb

....Knowing all of this, is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader while on such a potentially “heavily populated” call. I would only do what is right anyway, and only do good for the USA!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 19, 2019

I am reminded of the student who asked, “Do you think I’d be dumb enough to plagiarize from someone in the same class?” As it turned out, the student had done just that. X wrote a paper and gave it to Y, who used it as the basis for his paper. Then Y gave his paper to Z, who used it as the basis for his paper. I was able to put together the sequence by seeing how the writing worsened from X to Y to Z. You can change words here and there only so many times before things stop making sense.

But notice how Trump projects: not “Do you think I’d be dumb enough to” but “Is anybody dumb enough to.” I’m not dumb. You must be dumb. No puppet, no puppet. You’re the puppet.

Here is a thoughtful Twitter thread from Ned Shugerman, professor at Fordham Law School, on the sequence of events surrounding the whistleblower’s complaint.

My admittedly extreme guess as to “the promise”: “I will argue very strongly for the G8. And if not, they’ll be looking at the G6, that I can tell you.” Other perhaps more likely possibilities, suggested by journalists: a promise to turn over the recently extracted Russian spy, a promise to reopen Russian diplomatic compounds that were used for spying, a promise of better U.S.–Ukraine relations if only Ukraine would reopen its investigation of Hunter Biden.

*

2:30 p.m.: And now The New York Times reports that the complaint is about more than a single call:

A potentially explosive complaint by a whistle-blower in the intelligence community said to involve President Trump was related to a series of actions that goes beyond any single discussion with a foreign leader, according to interviews on Thursday.

*

7:21 p.m.: And now The Washington Post has more:

A whistleblower complaint about President Trump made by an intelligence official centers on Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter, which has set off a struggle between Congress and the executive branch.

[Post title with apologies to Glen Campbell and Brian Wilson.]

Weevils and hyphens

[3 1/2″ × 1 1/2″. Click for a larger view.]

I found this ticket in the supermarket, nestled among the sweet potatoes. The sickly green color caught my eye.

The area of Arkansas where these “Sweet Potatoes” were grown and stored appears to be not only “weevil free” but hyphen-free as well. Maybe the weevils ate the hyphens before moving on. Capital Letters were left undisturbed.

Yes, I still say “supermarket,” which here stands for Aldi.

Related posts
Bad hyphens, unhelpful abbreviations : “Every generation hyphenates the way it wants to” : “Fellow-billionaires” : Got hyphens? : The Hammacher Schlemmer crazy making hyphen shortage problem : Living on hyphens : Mr. Hyphen and e-mail : Mr. Hyphen and Mr. Faulkner : One more from Mr. Hyphen : The opposite of user-friendly : Phrasal-adjective punctuation

Gerber Dime on sale

If your Ace Hardware is anything like mine, the Gerber Dime multi-tool is on clearance there, selling for $10.93 — less than half its list price of $24. The Dime is no longer listed on the Ace website, which makes me think that the clearance is more than local.

I’m a fool, or at least a semi-fool, for a multi-tool. Because you never know when you might be called on to cut a wire or tighten a screw. Be prepared!

Agitated?

Donald Trump has issued thirty-one tweets and retweets in less than three hours this morning, beginning at 4:08 PDT. A record?

Bandy X. Lee’s “translations” of Trump’s tweets are a helpful corrective. Nothing yet for this morning.

From Rock Crystal

Adalbert Stifter. Rock Crystal. 1845. Trans. from the German by Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore (New York: New York Review Books, 2008).

After reading Stifter’s The Bachelors, I suggested Rock Crystal [Bergkristall ] as a candidate for our household’s two-person reading club. All I knew about this novella: the 1945 translation is by a distinguished translator and a great poet, with an introduction by another great poet, reissued by New York Review Books. Sold.

Rock Crystal is an extraordinary piece of storytelling: cozy, eerie, dream-like, fairy-tale-ish. Early on in our reading, Elaine and I came to the same conclusion: the setting is a lot like Schladming. That’s the name of the Austrian town where Elaine taught music in 1980 and 1981. I’ve never been, but Elaine, like Adalbert Stifter, is a good describer.

And lo: it turns out Stifter had a strong connection to Schladming and environs, and that those environs are indeed the setting for Rock Crystal. Schladming even has a street named for the writer: Adalbert-Stifter-Weg. Elaine explains it all in this post.

Early holiday shopping: Rock Crystal would make an excellent Christmas present.

Also from Stifter
An excerpt from The Bachelors