“qX3;nE7%sX9*zL4, e.g.”

The clue for 19-A in today’s New Yorker crossword: “qX3;nE7%sX9*zL4, e.g.”

The answer: STRONGPASSWORD.

Well, yes. I checked with several password checkers, one of which estimates that it would take four hundred billion years to crack qX3;nE7%sX9*zL4.

But that password might take just as long to memorize. I’m reminded of an xkcd strip: “Password Strength.”

[As for xkcd’s correcthorsebatterystaple: that memorable password would take 100 quadrillion years to crack.]

Rewriting

The New York Times reports on Republican efforts to rewrite the events of January 6: “The message is clear: Adherence to facts cannot overcome adherence to the party line.”

Cf. George Orwell: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

[The long strange URL? I’m using the new NYT option for subscribers to share ten articles a month. Shared articles don’t count toward the ten free articles a month available to non-subscribers. Details here.]

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, August 1, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

SPISH? Really?

Two panels later, Ditto’s cannonball makes a SPLASH. All in today’s Hi and Lois.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Newsday Saturday

Today’s Newsday  Saturday crossword, by Brad Wilber, seemed easy at first. I started in the northeast corner with 10-A, four letters, “Magician’s accessory.” The clue for 12-D, seven letters, “Admired oneself,” helped me decide which accessory. That corner went quickly. Then to the middle of the puzzle, and then to clues and answers here and there. And all along, 2-D, seven letters, “Simple life,” and 13-A, four letters, “Tahiti sweetie,” had me thinking I’d never get this puzzle right. When I finally saw what had to be (and was) the answer for 2-D, I was happy about solving and impressed (once more) by Brad Wilber’s smarts.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

10-D, six letters, “Shortcuts that take years to complete.” Paradox.

13-D, seven letters, “W-2 addressees.” A helpful reminder to read clues carefully: addressees, not addresses.

17-A, fifteen letters, “Keep-in-touch request.” It felt like a giveaway, and I took it.

22-A, six letters, “Order manager.” I was thinking of shipping and receiving.

46-D, six letters, “Candidates for 10 Down.” Really clever.

55-A, four letters, “It’s in garlic’s genus.” I like it, or them.

My favorite clue in this puzzle: 51-A, eight letters, “How stalactites form.” Dang: do they form on cave ceilings, or on cave floors? Is there a mnemonic for remembering which is which? Is there a mnemonic for remembering the mnemonic? It’s a witty clue, because the difference between stalactites and stalagmites makes no difference to the answer.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Chuck E. Weiss (1945–2021)

His first name and his middle initial are part of American music. The Los Angeles Times has an obituary and a remembrance by Rickie Lee Jones.

If you’re not old enough to remember, or even if you are, here’s the song.

Saying and believing

“Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen”: it’s the same tactic Donald Trump** used re: Ukraine. Just say there’s an investigation of Hunter Biden. Just say that the election was corrupt.

See also “You provide the prose-poems, I’ll provide the war.”

Gilgamesh to Iraq

A looted tablet with a crucial part of the Gilgamesh story, once displayed at Hobby Lobby’s Museum of the Bible, is returning to Iraq. Here is a Christie’s brochure about the tablet, with photographs and a translation — and a false provenance. More about the tablet’s history here.

Related reading
All OCA Gilgamesh posts (Pinboard)

Welty and Hurston and a pear tree

Another passage that made me think about Eudora Welty and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God :

Eudora Welty, “Moon Lake,” in Thirteen Stories (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1965).

There it is, thought I, Janie Crawford’s pear tree again. But in One Writer’s Beginnings, Welty recalls this rhyme as appearing in a book from her childhood. Here’s one possible source:

From Our Boys: Containing Over Two Hundred Pages of Entertaining Stories, Hymns, etc., Told in Simple Language by Popular Authors (Akron, Ohio: Saalfield Publishing, 1914).

And now, when Janie Crawford lies beneath a pear tree, wondering where the bee for her blossom might be, I wonder whether Hurston, too, might have known and repurposed this rhyme.

A related post
Trees: chinaberry, peach, pomegranate, pear

[Other likely sources for the pear-tree scene in Their Eyes Were Watching God: the birds and the bees, and blues metaphors. See Memphis Minnie and Bertha Lee.]

Pinboard tags

After more than ten years using Pinboard to tag blog posts, I’ve finally discovered that links to Pinboard tags — for instance,

pinboard.in/u:M.Leddy/t:Nancy

— only work if a reader is signed into a Pinboard account. Without a Pinboard account, that link is useless. You’ll just get a 404 page. Why didn’t I know that before now? Because I’m always signed into my Pinboard account. I assumed that the results were available to anyone.

But there is a way to make Pinboard useful for non-users, by searching for a word or phrase or name instead of a tag:

pinboard.in/search/u:M.Leddy/?query=Nancy

So I’m now adding that kind of link to some posts. The disadvantage: searching finds text as well as tags, so a post that mentions, say, Nancy Reagan, will turn up. (Not that there is one.) The advantage: searching finds text as well as tags, so a word or name or phrase without a tag of its own is findable too. Like, say, Aunt Fritzi’s name.

*

September 19, 2021: Pinboard now appears to be working as I always thought it’s supposed to, returning results for tags regardless of whether I’m logged in. I must have encountered a temporary (weeks-long? months-long?) glitch. Never any word from the developer in response to my e-mails about how links to Pinboard tags are supposed to work.

The final four

Ephemeral New York takes a look at the last outdoor telephone booths in New York City. They were there in 2009. They were replaced by new booths in 2016.

I find it cheering that each booth has a mailbox or postal relay box at its side for companionship.

Related reading
All OCA telephone booth posts (Pinboard)

[The booth at 100th Street and West End Avenue, not pictured in the Ephemeral New York post, also has a mailbox.]