Today’s Saturday Stumper

Given the difficulty of last Saturday’s puzzle, I thought that this week’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Brad Wilber, would have to be easier. And it was, much easier. I began solving with 1-A, eleven letters, “Gets no help.” I needed no help getting an answer, and I didn’t realize until long after I finished the puzzle that I might have started with an equally plausible, nearly right answer. The longer steps beneath 1-A posed more difficult: 12-A, thirteen letters, “Cast layer” and 14-A, fifteen letters, “Frequent letter carriers.” But still, I got them, without help.

Some good cultural stuff, old and new, in today’s puzzle:

2-D, five letters, “Vague ‘rumeur.’” Probably my favorite clue in the puzzle, if only because I was pleased with myself for nailing the answer right off. I did have help from 1-A.

8-D, seven letters, “‘To thine own self be true’ addressee.” Easy, I think, but I’m not sure.

22-D, five letters, “Mayflower Cafe entrée.” I had never heard of the Mayflower Cafe (no accent), but thinking about its name helped me get the answer. After looking up the Mayflower, I think I may have eaten there, many years ago.

34-A, six letters, “Poet/novelist/critic/inventor from Ottawa.” Inventor? I didn’t know that.

40-D, six letters, “‘Benighted walks under the      sun’: Milton.” I will admit though to not knowing the source, having last read it forty or more years ago. But I do remember, forty or more years ago, typing out lines from that work — “Offering to every weary traveller / His orient liquor in a crystal glass” — and taping them to a magazine ad for Suntory whisky featuring George Raft in black tie. I cannot find the ad online, so you’ll have to take my word that such an ad existed.

50-A, fifteen letters, “College news of 2019.” The challenge here was just how to phrase the answer.

55-A, eleven letters, “Creator of ‘the miserable monster.’” No, the answer predates reality TV.

And no, no spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

Beethoven, anyone?

If you, too, were inspired by this New York Times article to listen to all of Beethoven’s string quartets, Elaine has a detailed and well-received post with suggestions for listening. Two of her favorite recordings of the quartets are available from Amazon for ridiculously low prices: those by the Alban Berg Quartet (7 CDs, $16.74) and the Végh Quartet (10 CDs, $20.99). The Végh set includes Bartók’s string quartets.

I’m listening to quartets as performed by the Guarneri Quartet, if only because I brought their boxed set years ago with the thought that it would be fun to, &c. And now I am. I find that having the score in hand (courtesy of Elaine, of course) is tremendously helpful. My music-reading ability is minimal, but looking at the score still helps me to follow the movement of the music and the interplay of instruments.

When I checked Amazon last night, the Guarneri set (a CD reissue of 1969 recordings) was listed as out of print. Today there’s a December 2019 reissue available (8 CDs, $24.98). Another bargain.

But for furthering one’s humanity and lifting one’s spirits in difficult times, Beethoven is a bargain at any price.

Analog rising

“Sales of stationery and cards are actually up among younger and youngish people”: so says Marketplace Morning Report, in a brief item on young people and greeting cards. With this comment: “I love my friends’ handwriting, because it’s personal.”

The story begins at the 5:26 mark.

Related reading
All OCA stationery posts (Pinboard)

Five cyber freedoms

From Print Mag, and in the form of posters, five cyber freedoms: freedom from election tampering, freedom from identity theft, freedom from hacking and malware, freedom from online scams, and freedom from misinformation.

I think the poster about online scams is esp. striking. Which reminds me — wait, that’ll be another post.

Valentine’s Day

[“Heart Amulet.” From Egypt, Upper Egypt, Thebes, Deir el-Bahri, ca. 1070–945 B.C. Lapis Lazuli. 3/8″. Metropolitan Museum of Art. From the online collection. Click for a larger view and you’ll see what the red is.]

More about amulets and the heart, or ib, at this museum page.

iOS autocorrect and alcohol

John Gruber suggested last year that iOS 13 autocorrect is drunk:

One thing I and others have noticed is that when you type a dictionary word correctly — meaning you hit the exact right keys on the on-screen keyboard — iOS 13 autocorrect will replace it with a different dictionary word that makes no contextual sense. Even beyond dictionary words, I’m seeing really strange corrections. Two nights ago I typed “Dobbs”, including the Shift key for the “D”, and iOS 13.1 autocorrected it to “adobe”, with a lowercase “a”.

Last night I typed toast on my iPhone (letter by letter) and found the word changed to toaste. (What?) I typed have twice, letter by letter, and each time found it changed to gave. I said to Elaine, “It changes random words — words that are correctly smelled.”

That was no autocorrection. That was domestic comedy.

The problems arise with both letter-by-letter typing and iOS 13’s Slide to Type option. I can’t decide which form of text entry is more prone to error. Incidentally: on an iOS 13 device, the keyboard settings offer Slide to Type. In Apple’s online documentation the feature is called QuickPath. The only “QuickPath” on my phone is an entry in the Apple Dictionary.

I gave my phone a sobriety test this morning, entering the name of my favorite Scotch with Slide to Type. I went from letter to letter six times, with absolute accuracy. The results:

Lemonier
Lemonier
Glamorous
Fleming’s
Glamorous
Lemonade

The name I was trying to enter: Glenmorangie. I think that John Gruber is correct: autocorrect is drunk, and it’s only 8:17 in the morning. And it’s gonna stay drunk all day.

Is there one in Hawkins?

Aldi Breakfast Best Homestyle Waffles are better than Eggo Homestyle Waffles. More delicate, not so wooden. Aldi waffles cost less too.

Is there an Aldi in Hawkins?

Oxford and its comma

“Beadnell comma doesn’t have the same ring to it as Oxford comma”: CMOS Shop Talk, from The Chicago Manual of Style, presents the history of the Oxford comma.

Related reading
All OCA comma and punctuation posts (Pinboard)

Campaign typography

George Butterick (as in Butterick’s Practical Typography) considers the campaign logos of Democratic presidential candidates: “A Special Listicle for America”: “Over­all best in show: I am sur­prised to say it’s Joe Biden.”

Elsewhere, Print Mag invites your participation in a game of logo brackets.

Joseph Shabalala (1941–2020)

Joseph Shabalala, founder of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, has died at the age of seventy-eight. The New York Times has an obituary.

Here’s a song written by Joseph Shabalala, performed by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, “Hamba Dompasi (No More Passbook).” The Zulu lyrics may be found in the liner notes for the album Journey of Dreams (1988), along with a summary and sample lines in English: “This song hails the abolishment of the abhorrent pass laws in South Africa while at the same time detailing the beauty of the land.”

The requirement that black people in white areas carry a passbook ended in 1986. I remember playing this song and teaching the play Sizwe Bansi Is Dead (Athol Fugard, John Kani, Winston Ntshona) when apartheid was still the order of things in South Africa.