The graphic designer Ed Benguiat has died at the age of ninety-two. From the New York Times obituary:
“Music is placing sounds, to me, in their proper order so they’re pleasing to the ear. What is graphic design? Placing things in their proper order so they’re pleasing to the eye.”Benguiat’s Interlock has made several appearances in these pages.
Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is by “Anna Stiga,” or Stan Again, Stanley Newman, the puzzle’s editor. It looks intimidating, with stacks of fourteen-, fifteen-, and fifteen-letter answers top and bottom. But look, there’s an opening: 18-A, three letters, “Lentil cousin.” And another: 22-A, four letters, “Internal motivation.” And things began to fall into place. I found some moments of difficulty in the southeast quarter. For instance, 44-D, three letters, “Restraining order”? That’s tricky, especially if you’re uncertain how to spell 51-A, five letters, “Asia’s highest major city.”
Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:
7-D, six letters, “Cause precipitation.” Nice misdirection, Ms. Stiga.
33-A, eight letters, “OK to drive.” Is it clever, really? I think it’s clever.
50-D, six letters, “Put to the test.” Aah, put. Present tense, or past? And what kind of test?
55-A, four letters, “Up.” AWAK —? No.
58-A, three letters, “Get close to, in quantity.” I think that should be in number, but I still like the twist.
The funnest fifteen-letter clue in today’s puzzle: 61-A, “Secret thing since the ’50s.” But my favorite clue in today’s puzzle is 54-D, five letters, “Late spring/early summer tag phrase.” So simple once you see it, though it may take a while to see it.
No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.
The song is “New World Coming” (Barry Mann–Cynthia Weil). My guess is that too many people won’t know the singer. She is Nina Simone.Vote for America.https://t.co/eoxT07uII9 pic.twitter.com/sBd51fgmln
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 14, 2020
This news appears to have gone unremarked beyond a local obituary: Sally Foster Wallace, teacher and writer, has died at the age of eighty-two. Her husband, the philosopher James Wallace, died in 2019. David Foster Wallace was their son.
Sally Foster Wallace’s Practically Painless English (1980) is a textbook noteworthy for the loopy humor of its sample sentences. Three random samples:
George is upset because his father thinks he lied about the cherry tree.And from an exercise in commas:
Rats! My wig has burst into flames again! Help!
The big fish kept out of trouble because he shut his mouth and stayed in school.
You set fire to the pizza[,] didn’t you?
“Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II”: The New York Times today has published a special Opinion section, “End Our National Crisis: The Case Against Donald Trump.”
[From the Naked City episode “Saw My Baby There,” June 9, 1959. Click any image for a larger view. And to the girl in the first picture: stop looking at the camera!]
Swings, seesaws, slide — the only thing missing is the monkey bars.
That playground could be anywhere in mid-century New York. Those swings, like the sinks and toilets in prisons, are made to resist damage. A thoughtful parent might lay down a diaper or towel before seating a child on the metal surface. I speak from experience.
[Me, in a playground at 43rd Street and New Utrecht Avenue, Brooklyn, 1957.]
Related reading
All OCA Naked City posts (Pinboard)
Maria Magdalena Theotoky, graduate student:
Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels (1981).
The Rebel Angels is the first novel of The Cornish Trilogy.
Related reading
All OCA Robertson Davies posts (Pinboard)
[Teresa Burns Parkhurst, The New Yorker, October 14, 2020.]
Yesterday’s Daily Cartoon baffles me. “Let’s go back home — none of them are turning blue”: has this couple been traveling through a red state? campaigning for a Democratic candidate?
“A little help?” is what we used to say when a basketball rolled away to an adjacent court. People playing basketball probably still say it. So I’ll say it here: A little help? What’s going on in this cartoon?
*
I’ve added this caption to a New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest cartoon.
“He’s like the antithesis of public health”: Dr. Irwin Redlener of Columbia University, speaking of you-know-who on MSNBC a few minutes ago.
From a New York Times review of Christophe Honoré’s stage adaptation of Marcel Proust’s The Guermantes Way :
Not only does it takes chutzpah to tackle Proust’s magnum opus, whose meandering style has wrong-footed many film and stage directors, but Honoré ups the ante by dispensing with the first two books.What I first noticed: the profusion of clichés. After which I paused to take issue with “meandering style.” Merriam-Webster: “Meander implies a winding or intricate course suggestive of aimless or listless wandering.” Proust’s prose is neither aimless nor listless. It was only after copying and pasting the review sentence into this post that I noticed takes, which has stood in the review since October 8.
