Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is credited to Zawistowski (Stella) and Agard (Erik). A tough puzzle, and I was delighted to find myself finishing it, from Z to A, so to speak.
Three clues that paired especially well with their answers: 9-D, four letters, “A lot of legal-size.” 36-A, four letters, “Where America’s day begins.” (IHOP? No.) 57-A, three letters, “Footwear from Oz.”
A clue whose answer made me startle, as I just read something about it somewhere (where?): 17-A, eight letters, “Spanish operatic genre.”
A clue whose answer seems to be a running Agard joke: 62-A, six letters, “They may be dueling.”
And a clue whose answer is a reminder that crosswords do indeed keep up with the culture: 67-A, eight letters, “Suited woman, perhaps.”
No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.
Saturday, October 26, 2019
Today’s Saturday Stumper
Friday, October 25, 2019
Some “some rocks”
For a Nancy fan, this remarkable site might be something like Four Corners. It’s some rocks, some rocks, some rocks, all the way down the parking lot. Google Maps will confirm:
[Click for a larger view.]
“Some rocks” is an abiding preoccupation of these pages.
Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Ben Leddy hosts The Rewind
Here’s the latest installment of WGBH’s The Rewind, “The Voice of the Voiceless,” featuring Mercedes Sosa. You can find all episodes of The Rewind at YouTube.
I’m in. You?
Re: “scum”: White House “press secretary” Stephanie Grisham goes Donald Trump one better in declaring anyone who opposes the leader to be “just that.”
[“Press secretary”: in quotation marks, because she’s never held a press conference.]
VDP and “Southern Nights”
This story is new to me. Allen Toussaint on his song “Southern Nights”:
“That was the last song for the album, the very last song. I had written and recorded all of the other songs, and for some reason I couldn’t come to terms that I was finished with the album. I had trouble being satisfied. I always take forever to do an album, because when I do an album, I don’t plan to do another. The only reason I ever did another album after any album was because I got a request by some company. Left to my own devices, I wouldn’t record me.“The album” turned out to be Southern Nights (Reprise, 1975). Toussaint and Parks recorded “Southern Nights” as a piano duet for American Tunes (Nonesuch, 2016), Toussaint’s final album.
“While I was finishing the album Van Dyke Parks visited me in the studio. He was a wonderful guy, a genius of a guy. He said, ‘Well, consider that you were going to die in two weeks. If you knew that, what would you think you would like to have done?’ And after he said that, I wrote ‘Southern Nights’ as soon as he left. I stood right there and wrote it. It all came at once, because I lived that story.”
Related reading
All OCA Van Dyke Parks posts (Pinboard)
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
The Colorado wall
How will the White House spin Donald Trump’s assertion that he’s building a wall in Colorado?
Easy: “In building a wall in New Mexico, President Trump is also protecting Coloradans from,” &c., &c.
It’s frightening to me that this sort of after-the-fact pseudo-logic is so easy to dream up.
*
October 24: Here’s what Trump tweeted later last night:
(Kiddingly) We’re building a Wall in Colorado”(then stated, “we’re not building a Wall in Kansas but they get the benefit of the Wall we’re building on the Border”) refered to people in the very packed auditorium, from Colorado & Kansas, getting the benefit of the Border Wall!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2019
[He was speaking in Pittsburgh.]
Kinja Deals ad fail
A Kinja Deals ad mixed in with editorial content at Lifehacker announces a low Amazon price on CRKT’s AR multi-tool. The Kinja ad shows the tool with blade open and mentions a bottle opener and three hex wrenches. I like seeing multitools in all their spidery glory, so I clicked through to the Amazon page. And I thought the tool looked a little odd, a little specialized, with small projections that had nothing to do with opening bottles or tightening hex nuts. I looked at Amazon’s list of features, which begins with “AR Cleaning Tools.” Oh. And I scrolled down to read this description:
Maintenance is the mark of a master. Designer Joe Wu knows that there’s a world of difference between the recreational shooter and the one that’s spent years honing his skill. One notable difference: proper maintenance. Joe has given the AR Tool both a compact, highly useful blade on a slip joint as well as a nine-in-one scraper tool. Built to quickly clean 12 critical surfaces of bolt components, it’s equipped to restore an AR to working order at the range or in the field. The precision-cut tool is ideal for cleaning the bolt, firing pin, carrier, and cam pin so your favorite range companion never slows down.So the marketing arm of A.V. Club, Clickhole, Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, Lifehacker, The Onion, The Root, and The Takeout is pushing a multi-tool made for cleaning semi-automatic weapons as “a perfect everyday carry.” Imagine being the sap who buys a CRKT AR, perhaps as a gift, without understanding its purpose: “Why, thank you, Uncle Ned. Thank you, Aunt Jean. You’ve gifted me with the perfect tool for — for — cleaning an AR-15??”
That the primary use of this multi-tool is missing from the Kinja ad might be a matter of carelessness. Or it might be a matter of coyness. Either way, Kinja Deals is doing Lifehacker readers a grotesque disservice.
[There’s a tweet as well, showing only the blade. All comments on the Kinja ad are marked “pending,” including mine.]
Analog strong
“Never underestimate the power of a State Department guy with a pad and pen”: Anne Gearan, Washington Post reporter, speaking on MSNBC last night.
As many news outlets have reported, William Taylor, the American diplomat who gave testimony yesterday to the House impeachment inquiry, was a careful taker of notes.
