John McWhorter on Othello at Michigan

I find myself disagreeing with John McWhorter about lots of things. (For instance.) But I think his discussion of Othello at Michigan gets it right.

[But “Were me and my students missing something”? Block that pronoun: “my students and I.”]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by “Lester Ruff,” or Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor. It felt to me like a New Yorker Monday — not too rough (but also not as self-consciously hep). A kinder, gentler Stumper.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

1-D, four letters, “Partner in eye health.” I’ve known the answer from childhood, but with no relation to eye health.

10-D, seven letters, “Big name in big heads.” EGOTISM? No, that’s a word, not a name. It’s a good clue for an ugly, ugly name.

14-A, ten letters, “What may infuse olive oil.” MOREGARLIC? This idea is new to me.

13-D, five letters, “Apple, mostly.” What kind of Apple/apple?

17-A, ten letters, “Rather soft.” I liked seeing the answer, new to me in crosswords.

20-A, nine letters, “45 descendants.” Ugh — I thought of you-know-who. Fortunately, the answer has nothing to do with his spawn.

25-D, four letters, “They may get into a jam.” Yes, but it’s harmless fun.

26-D, ten letters, “Number associated with Yale.” I sometimes wonder what it might be like to be a Yale grad and see oneself — as ELI — in crosswords day after day. Would one preen? Swell with self-regard? The closest I’ve gotten to Yale: 1. watching Gilmore Girls, 2. eating pizza from Frank Pepe, though not at the same time.

34-A, three letters, “Olympic VIP.” Ha.

56-A, ten letters, “Crime story where the perpetrator is revealed early.” New to me, but I realize that it describes every episode of Colombo. Is this a well-known term?

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

National Dictionary Day

In case you hadn’t noticed: it’s National Dictionary Day. Here to celebrate are some pages from an unusual item available at archive.org, a salesperson’s 1937 demonstration model of Webster’s New International Dictionary, second edition, aka Webster’s Second or W2.

The comments at archive.org are cranky: “random pages,” “of little or no value.” What the commenters fail to understand is that this item isn’t the dictionary but a tool with which to sell the dictionary. Thus, promotional pages, front matter, color plates, sample pages of entries, an advertisement for dictionary stands, and endorsements. “Here for the seeker are many evenings of word orgies,” promises O. O. McIntyre, newspaper columnist.

Click on any image for a much larger view. And don’t miss the weigh-in.


Dictionaries are in the news today: Madeline Kripke’s dictionary collection will have a new home in Indiana University’s Lilly Library.

Related reading
All OCA dictionary posts (Pinboard)

Mongol sighting

[Elizabeth Wilson as Dr. Anna Willson, Cliff Robertson as Lee Tucker. From Man on a Swing (dir. Frank Perry, 1974). Click either image for a larger view.]

Elizabeth Wilson might be recognizable as “Mrs. Braddock” (no first name), Ben’s mother in The Graduate. A Mongol pencil is always recognizable as itself.

Related reading
All OCA Mongol pencil posts (Pinboard)

“”Think metric!”

[Peanuts, October 18, 1974.]

Peppermint Patty’s reaction to Franklin’s whisper: “AAUGHH!”

Wikipedia notes that “the International System of Units has been adopted as the official system of weights and measures by all nations in the world except for Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States.” Yesterday’s Peanuts truly is today’s Peanuts.

I’m not sure how the sequencing works, but there may be a Sunday “Think Metric” Peanuts coming in the near near future.

Related reading
All OCA Peanuts posts (Pinboard)

A notebook and a pencil

When Gary Paulsen was a teenager, a librarian gave him a library card, then a book a month, then a book a week, and then a Scripto notebook and a no. 2 pencil:

“She said, you should write down some of your thought pictures, which I called them, you know. I said, who — for who? And she said, me. None of this would have happened except for that.”

Gary Paulsen died earlier this week. NPR has an obituary: “Beloved children’s author and wilderness enthusiast Gary Paulsen has died at 82.” And here is the conversation I’ve quoted from.

I’d never heard of Paulsen before today. Now two copies of Hatchet are on the way to our house.

Thanks, Ben.

What is a straight wire?

Or was.

People in old movies are always sending their telegrams straight wire. The term comes up, for instance, in the opening scene of Executive Suite (dir. Robert Wise, 1954), which must be the greatest telegram scene in film, with a clerk counting the words and making change. Neither Webster’s Second nor Third has a definition. Nor does Wikipedia’s article on telegrams. But look:

[Click for a larger explanation.]

This explanation appears in a handbook of questions and answers about third-class mail, created by Harry J. Maginnis, Executive Manager, Associated Third Class Mail Users. It formed part of Maginnis’s testimony before a Senate subcommittee (Postal Policy: Hearings Before a Senate Subcommittee of the Committee on the Post Office and Civil Service, 85th Congress, 1st session, 1957).

Once again, it’s Google Books FTW.

A related post
How to send telegrams

[$2.70 in 1957 = $26.36 in 2021. Mighty expensive words.]

Lloyd Nolan

He was an actor: Lloyd Nolan.

Not Norman Lloyd. Not Lloyd Bridges. Lloyd Nolan.

And the more often I type his first name, the odder it looks. How must have he and the other Lloyds have felt?

Red Cars

[Hell Bound (dir. William J. Hole Jr., 1957). Click for a larger view.]

The extraordinary final minutes of this movie, shot on Los Angeles’s Terminal Island, include sweeeping views of junked streetcars. They are the Red Cars of the Pacific Electric Railway. So much for that great mass-transit system.

Also from this movie
A Ticonderoga sighting

Ticonderoga sighting

Just another day at the office: a Hawaiian travel brochure, drugs, and a Dixon Ticonderoga for jotting down appointments. If you squint, you can almost make out the name.

[Hell Bound (dir. William J. Hole Jr., 1957). Click either image for a larger view.]

More Ticonderoga sightings
The Dick Van Dyke Show : Force of Evil : The House on 92nd Street : Lassie : Lassie again : Perry Mason : Since You Went Away