When I saw Stella Zawistowski’s name on today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, I thought I was in for it. Zawistowski makes tough puzzles. (Her website: Tough As Nails.) I tried 2-D, seven letters, “Common umbrella holders.” Could be. And it went with 1-A, four letters, “Where many Bedouins live,” and 20-A, three letters, “Kid from/in Brooklyn.” This puzzle turned out to be surprisingly doable.
Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:
8-D, ten letters, “Pineapples’ family.” To my ear, the answer sounds like science-fiction. I don’t know where I know the word from. Not from crosswords though.
12-D, six letters, “Word from the Greek for ‘egg.’” Huh. Or, rather, huh? (See the comments.)
21-D, six letters, “Course with a twist.” I never mind this kind of clue.
26-A, eight letters, “Bard’s players.” I’m not sure I’ve seen the answer in a puzzle before.
28-A, four letters, “Beyond buzzed.” Buzzed has entered my head via PSAs: “Buzzed driving is drunk driving.” Yes, I was thinking overindulgence.
45-A, six letters, “Small part.” Clever.
45-D, five letters, “Brats, for instance.” I had a hunch (correct) about the answer.
50-A, six letters, “Swing-stopping device.” Scotch Tape won’t do.
One clue whose answer I do not understand, 11-A, three letters, “‘2010’ monogram.”
And my favorite clue in this puzzle: 30-A, eleven letters, “‘Walking’ jazz style.” Yes!
No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.
Saturday, December 12, 2020
Today’s Saturday Stumper
"The rhythm of the seasons
and the incidents of daily life“
Sunday, and time for the midday meal, prepared by the family’s cook, Françoise. The family sits at the table, “oppressed by the heat and especially by the meal”:
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, trans. Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002).
Françoise’s chocolate custard is still to come.
Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)
Friday, December 11, 2020
“Double-extra whipped cream”
Yow: The Christmas Bow might be the most cloyingly sweet Hallmark holiday movie ever. See post title, straight from my TV.
Also:
“Smells like shortbread in here!”
“Guilty as charged!”
*
Snark aside, I predicted, correctly, a major plot development. Elaine: “Take a Christmas bow.”
*
Also: “I have a bunch of festive-themed dishes!”
*
A second prediction pans out. Elaine: “Take another Christmas bow.”
[The movie’s title is a pun: the bow is the kind you rub with rosin. Elaine, violinist and violist, is watching without snark. Send help.]
Mystery actor
[Click for a larger view.]
Ya got me. But perhaps someone will get it. Leave your guess or more certain answer in the comments.
*
Or perhaps no one will get it. The only hint I can think to offer: She’s best known as the co-owner of a Santa Monica apartment complex. Yes, it’s her again, really. Her name is now in the comments.
More mystery actors (Collect them all!)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?
[Garner’s Modern English Usage notes that “support for actress seems to be eroding.” I use actor.]
“Old” ones
The narrator’s grandmother “could never resign herself to buying anything from which one could not derive an intellectual profit”:
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, trans. Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002).
Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)
Thursday, December 10, 2020
“Now who can that be?”
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, trans. Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002).
Proust’s similes are epic.
Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)
“A nice cool dinner”
From The Naked City (dir. Jules Dassin, 1948). It’s a hot day. Mrs. Halloran (Anne Sargent) greets her husband Jimmy (Don Taylor):
“Got you a nice cool dinner — jellied tongue.”As Daniel Tiger reminds us, we gotta try new foods ’cause they might taste good. So here’s a recipe for jellied tongue. Oh, swell.
“Oh, swell — I’m starved.”
The Criterion Channel has The Naked City and a new documentary, Uncovering “The Naked City” (dir. Bruce Goldstein, 2020), a detailed look at the movie’s locations and production.
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
Proust–Sebald synchronicity
Today I posted a passage from W.G. Sebald that mentions linguistic “regionalisms, redolent of things long fallen into disuse.”
Then, reading Swann’s Way, I found the narrator describing novels “full of expressions that had fallen into disuse and turned figurative again, the sort you no longer find anywhere but in the country.”
Sebald: regionalisms, disuse. Proust: disuse, regionalisms.
Tomorrow I’ll begin posting Proust sentences, one a day.
Related reading
All OCA Proust and Sebald posts (Pinboard)
[Swann’s Way, trans. Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002).]
“Word-eddies and turbulence”
Obama pens
In The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani interviews Barack Obama about reading and writing. We know from an excerpt from his first volume of memoir that Obama writes his drafts in longhand on legal pads. In this Times piece, he opens up about pens:
He says he is “very particular” about his pens, always using black Uni-ball Vision Elite rollerball pens with a micro-point, and adds that he tends to do his best writing between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.: “I find that the world narrows, and that is good for my imagination. It’s almost as if there is a darkness all around and there’s a metaphorical beam of light down on the desk, onto the page.”“With a micro-point”: the anti-Sharpie.
Related reading
All OCA Barack Obama posts (Pinboard) : Obama revisions
