A memorial day

“An incalculable loss”: the front page of today’s New York Times. And an interactive feature.

[Trump* equals death.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is by Matthew Sewell. It’s a delightfully challenging puzzle, full and balanced with smoldering peat throughout, as fruit fades into oak spice and back to fruit again for a long and — no, wait, that’s a Scotch. I started solving with 27-D, ten letters, “Three-movement work for three instruments.” Yay that I know something, or some things, thought I knew something about classical music. (See the comments for an explanation.)

Clue-and-answer pairs that I especially liked:

6-D, six letters, “It’s drawn to scale.” A little forced, but I like the riddling quality.

16-A, four letters, “Quick takeaway.” A food? A précis? No.

17-A, ten letters, “Frequent TV Guide advertiser of old.” The dowdy world. That publication was known as “the Guide” in my grandparents’ households.

19-A, three letters, “Bits in some pits.” I like this clue’s economy.

21-A, seven letters, “Made to order.” A little strained, but I forgive that.

36-D, four letters, “‘The highest form of literature,’ per Hitchcock.” Spoiler: he really said it, perhaps in jest.

39-A, five letters, “Heliophilic jazz alias.” I like the timing, as May 22, 1914 was this musician’s Earth Arrival Day. But I think said musician would have disputed alias.

41-D, six letters, “One taking gut courses?” Groan.

54-D, three letters, “Stop posting.” Here too I like the clue’s economy.

One clue whose answer baffles still puzzles me: 14-D, four letters, “Carded one?” I saw it right after typing. But I still don’t quite get the answer. Now I get it, I think.

And now I will stop posting. No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

[Binny’s Beverage Depot describes Ardbeg Wee Beastie Single Malt Scotch thusly: “On the nose smoked meat on baked apples, seaweed, caramel sauce, vanilla cream, iodine, and black peppercorn. Sweetness drifts in on the palate as butterscotch and apple meet with waves of earthy and smoky peat and freshly crushed black pepper. The finish is full and balanced with smoldering peat throughout, as fruit fades into oak spice and back to fruit again for a long and lingering experience. Refreshing and beastly at the same time.”]

Shakespeare as Dickinson

Or is it Dickinson as Shakespeare? I thought of this effort and found it — still there! — on the hard drive. It’s William Shakespeare’s sonnet 73 in the manner of Emily Dickinson, something I wrote in 2003 for a poetry class I was teaching.

And now I’m somehow thinking of this sonnet in the manner of early Tom Waits: “It’s a cold November, winter coming on, the trees are all bare, the birds are all gone,” or something like that.

Recently updated

Nick DeMaio and the Eldorado Now with photographs of a Bronx bar and its owner.

A “lethal aversion to reading”

“It's not a stretch to say that if the president read, thousands of lives might have been saved”: in The Week, Windsor Mann writes about Donald Trump*’s “lethal aversion to reading.”

Again, Trump* equals death.

JEffrey or LEgal

From The Hidden Eye (dir. Richard Whorf, 1945). Duncan “Mac” Maclain (Edward Arnold), a blind detective, stands outside the door to the Neptone Hair Tonic Co., listens carefully as someone dials a telephone, and later works out the details with his sidekick Marty Corbett (William “Bill” Phillips):

“Now let’s see what we’ve got. Our first two numbers are five and three.”

“Right.”

“Well, five on the dial represents the letters J, K, and L. Number three represents the letters D, E, and F. That means there can only be nine combinations in that sequence. Now what is our first possibility? JD.”

“There’s no exchange startin’ with JD.”

“No, but there’s an LE — LEgal. And since there’s no LF, the prefix I heard dialed on that phone was JEffrey or LEgal.”

“The rest was, uh, uh, three, one, four, five, two.”

“Why, of course. Our man either called JEffrey 3-1452 or LEgal 3-1452. I don’t know what Jeffrey is, but LEgal 3-1452 is —”

And there’s the answer, which I won’t reveal here.

EXchange name sightings

Exchange names come into their own in Fallen Angel (dir. Otto Preminger, 1945). The scene is San Francisco.


[Dana Andrews just exited that cab.]

TUxedo 1234 was indeed the number of San Francisco’s Yellow Cab Company. That placard though looks like a prop pasted to the hood. Hugh Beaumont took a ride in a TUxedo cab in 1951, after the number gained a 5.


[Click either image for a larger view.]

DOuglas, too, was at one point a San Francisco exchange.

As for 689 Market Street, it was recently a café, La Boulangerie. Google Maps shows the storefront empty in May 2019. Next door, at 685, is the Monadnock Building. The second floor of 689 would in fact be part of the Monadnock Building.

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 : The Brothers Rico : 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 : Framed : 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?

Background of backgrounds

[The 11th Hour, May 20, 2020. Click for a much larger view.]

Obelisk? Check. Statuary? Check? Skulls? Rocket? Skeleton? Check, check, and check. Dr. William Haseltine has the background of backgrounds. Looking at other recent interviews makes me think that this background is an image, of a room to be found somewhere, to be sure, just not right behind Dr. Haseltine.

Schwan’s Dinners

 
[Click either image for a larger view.]

That logo for Mike Pompeo’s so-called Madison Dinners: where had I seen something like it? A walk brought the answer: on the side of a Schwan’s truck. Schwan’s: meals on wheels. Pompeo’s: meals for wheels, big ones.

I think Schwan’s wears it better. Stay classy, Mister Secretary.

Old and new bookmarks

Elaine has posted photographs of her old and new bookmarks. The old one, a DO-NOT-USE-AS-BOOKMARK bookmark, made it through five years of the Four Seasons Reading Club. The new one is a legit bookmark, from Three Lives & Company.

Other bookmarks
Gotham Book Mart : Paint samples : Paperback Booksmith : Strand Bookstore

[The Four Seasons Reading Club: the two of us, reading the same book.]