Today’s Saturday Stumper

I had considerable difficulty getting started with today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper — a word here, a word there. But Matthew Sewell wasn’t crewell after all. The pieces of this puzzle ended up falling into place fairly easily, even with a clue I still don’t understand: 18-A, three letters, “#2s.”

Lots of long, lively answers in today’s puzzle. For instance:

1-A, ten letters, “Little Havana dance style.” Partly a giveaway.

17-A, eleven letters, “Turn biomass to fuel, e.g.” Huh?

31-D, nine letters, “Uneasy feeling.” I like the colloquiality of the answer. Yes, colloquiality is a word, and not at all colloquial.

32-D, nine letters, “Certain sausage purveyor.” I had never heard of the answer.

33-A, eleven letters, “Wicca category.” I can’t imagine that the answer has a long crossword history.

39-A, eleven letters, “Corkscrew-shaped Aquarius formation.” See 17-A. (I.e., Huh?)

56-A, eleven letters, “Parting phrase.” I thought of my sardine spammer.

My favorite clue in today’s puzzle: 25-D, six letters, “Boast after a casting session.” A neat bit of misdirection.

No spoilers: I direct you to the comments for the answers.

Hat and gloves

It is cold or colder these days. Having just come in from a walk, I want to express my gratitude to my hat and gloves.

My Carhartt Acrylic Watch Hat is the warmest such hat I have worn. Dark Brown/Sandstone for me.

My Caiman 2395 Heatrac gloves are the warmest gloves I have worn. I bought them for $15 in what might be described as an Amish version of Wal-Mart (groceries and everything else). I figured that the Amish must know what’s good for working outdoors in the cold. These gloves look and feel like everyday work gloves, lightweight, not massive on the hands. But they’re very warm. Indeed, they’re warmer than another pair of gloves I have that cost three times as much and make my hands look like monster-robot hands.

Caiman’s 2395 model has been superseded by 2396, with “touch-screen capability.” I take my gloves off anyway to use the phone — better aim.

[I know the “watch cap” as a “ski cap,” or, from childhood, an “Eski cap.” Was “Eski” (as in “Eskimo,” someone living in a cold climate) a kids’ misunderstanding of “ski”? I might have to try to figure it out.]

Go phish

Yesterday morning (local time), over the span of an hour, an anonymous commenter on a distant shore left this comment on ten different sardine-centric OCA posts:

I have always fancied taking sardines, bread and a bottle of milk for breakfast every morning. I guess anyone would say i am addicted to sardines. Reading this article, i had a new perspective. Thanks, Amigo!

I am moved, deeply, to know that a fellow sardinista would take the time to say thanks, again and again and again. I’m sure my commenter won’t mind my posting this comment here, where it will receive the attention it so richly deserves. And I’m sure my commenter will thank me for omitting the sketchy credit-card-application URL that somehow found its way into the comment, again and again and again.

Thanks, Amigo!

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

[Someone took the time to create a Blogger account and deal with reCAPTCHA in order to leave these comments. What was that person thinking? “I’m being paid.”]

Trump* in Colorado

If you can stand it, Aaron Rupar has short clips from Donald Trump*’s rally last night in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The president is not well. And unlike everyone else’s crazy old relative, he’s the president. And he’s not well. And unlike everyone else’s crazy old relative — well, I could go on.

“The truth still matters”

United States District Judge Amy Bergman Jackson, sentencing Roger Stone today: “The truth still exists. The truth still matters.”

And she called Stone’s insistence that truth doesn’t matter “a threat to our most fundamental institutions, to the very foundation of our democracy.”

Cf. Adam Schiff: “If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost.”

A related post
Truth, “theory,” and Donald Trump*

[Source for Jackson’s words here.]

Make it new

In the “news”:

Shortly after the Democratic Presidential debate on Wednesday night, aides to Michael Bloomberg announced that he would spend ten billion dollars to buy an entirely new personality.

Acknowledging that some attributes of the former New York mayor’s new personality have yet to be ironed out, campaign advisers indicated that the eleven-figure outlay would be used to purchase warmth, empathy, and humanity.

Domestic comedy

[Of a correspondent on the news.]

“He looks like a boy.”

“He does look young.”

“But he has gray hair.”

“Then he’s a boy in a school play.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Disses, digital and analog

In tonight’s debate, Elizabeth Warren called Pete Buttigieg’s healthcare plan “a PowerPoint.” She likened Amy Klobuchar’s healthcare plan to a Post-it Note.

In her response, Klobuchar pointed out that the Post-it Note was invented in her home state of Minnesota.

“Fellows of the first importance”

Young Dunstable Ramsay aspires to the life of a magician:


Robertson Davies, Fifth Business (1970).

Fifth Business is the first novel of The Deptford Trilogy, one of Elaine’s favorite works of literature. The trilogy is now the stuff of the Four Seasons Reading Club, our two-person adventure in reading. Ninety-eight pages in, I can say that Fifth Business is indeed a wonderful novel, mysterious in small ways (so far, at least, they’re small), and highly Dickensian. How can you not love a novel whose second section is titled “I Am Born Again”?

[David Copperfield, Chapter One: “I Am Born.”]

EXchange name sighting

[Safety Last! (dir. Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, 1923). Click for a larger view.]

A list of Los Angeles County exchange names drawn from the now-offline Telephone Exchange Name Project has no BRyant on record. The numbers on the most famous Hester Street, in Manhattan, never ran to 1110. So where was Uncle Ike’s Pawn Shop? The best answer: in the movies.

More EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : Chinatown : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Side Street : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success : Tension : This Gun for Hire : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?