Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Lester Ruff, aka Stan Newman making an easier Stumper. It is indeed less rough, or more than easy, and about 31% three-letter words.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I liked seeing:

4-D, seven letters, “Metaphor for holdups.” My mind went first to criming. What does that say about me?

6-D, three letters, “Physical features?” The clue improves the answer.

11-D, eleven letters, “Sound-effects specialist.” Maybe now I’ll finally remember what the term means.

41-D, seven letters, “Many miniatures.” Oops, not HUMMELS.

48-A, six letters, “Word from Old French for ‘bread room.’” Huh. Now it seems so obvious.

49-A, four letters, “Specify multiply.” I like the clue’s playful syntax.

50-A, three letters, “In particular, in the OED.” Because dictionaries. And I find myself typing the answer often.

Two clues I’m not happy about:

18-A, three letters, “2027 Super Bowl designation.” Kinda ridiculous, though it’s difficult to imagine a good alternative. “Roman blues route”?

34-D, three letters, “Detergent brand once ‘rhymed’ with ‘glad’ in commercials.” I found one of these commercials on YouTube — from 1971. I think the time for this clue has passed. How about “Harrison’s ‘When We Was       ’”? Or ”Ab follower”? No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

And one clue whose answer could, I think, be improved while keeping the puzzle Les Ruff: 22-A, six letters, “Sources of twangy sounds.”

No spoilers; the answers (and some explanations) are in the comments.

Professor gone wild

“I’m a fucking tenured professor!” Inside Higher Ed reports on a seventy-four-year-old history professor’s first-week video for his students. The performance/protest about teaching in a pandemic is at YouTube.

If I were still teaching, I would share the guy’s exasperation. But I would never speak to my students as he does.

And speaking of exasperation: my former employer “encouraged” and “expected” students to test for COVID-19 when returning to campus this January. In contrast, the state’s R-1 school required a booster shot and on-campus test and is now distributing free N95 masks to students.

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January 20: The professor, who was suspended, is threatening to sue his school if he’s not reinstated.

Another letter from an American

I read (I think) a fair amount of news and commentary. But the historian Heather Cox Richardson reads more (and knows more). Letters from an American, her daily report on the news, always catches something I’ve missed.

The latest installment references this opinion piece by Greg Sargent, which speculates about Kevin McCarthy’s January 6 conversation with the defeated former president. It’s worth not missing.

A shopping tip

For anyone going to the grocery store: when you check out, keep your cart behind you at the start of the checkout lane and unload your groceries from the front of the cart. Your cart thus keeps the unmasked asshat behind you at a greater distance. As the cashier begins to scan your purchases, you can pull your cart forward, still keeping the hat at a greater distance.

The advantage of this tactic: no need for words. You’re just an oblivious shopper trying to get through the day.

A related post
SPA Day

“Grey sky and withered garlands”

Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898).

The governess might be mad, but she can write well, though she sometimes shares James’s penchant for convoluted syntax. Not here though.

[It’s strange to read this narrative in light of a recent conspiracy theory about danger to children. And I think that’s all I’m going to say about that conspiracy theory.]

Ronnie Spector (1943–2022)

Singer, survivor. The New York Times has an obituary.

Here’s the song that made Brian Wilson pull his car over to the side of the road.


[“Be My Baby” (Jeff Barry–Ellie Greenwich–Phil Spector). The Ronettes: Estelle Bennett, Ronnie Bennett, and Nedra Talley. From The T.A.M.I. Show (1964).]

NPR interviews a former president

In case you missed it: on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning, Steve Inskeep aired excerpts from an interview with a former president — a defeated former president. The defeated one just cannot update, as they say, his priors.

Spectacular Vernacular

“Linguist Nicole Holliday and Wall Street Journal language columnist Ben Zimmer discuss the ways language is changing, talk to scholars and writers, and set and solve word puzzles”: it’s Spectacular Vernacular, from Slate. It’s an excellent podcast.

Among the topics in recent episodes: words of the year, the pronunciation(s) of omicron, and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Brooklyn accent. Highly recommended.

[Dr. Fauci has an accent?]

Wordle clones

Last night, The Verge reported on Wordle clones in Apple’s App Store: The App Store clones are here to profit off Wordle’s success. An hour and a half later, the apps were gone.

Wordle is good fun, free, one play a day.

From The New Yorker

[From The New Yorker online.]

What are “we” supposed to make of it? I don’t feel the need to make anything of it.

This piece of Cultural Comment characterizes Kim Kardashian and Kanye West as “our two biggest tastemakers.” Again, with the first-person plurals. Your taste, not mine.

I asked someone who’s much closer to popular culture than I am about the phrase “our two biggest tastemakers.” She thought it must be a joke — until she read enough to realize it isn’t. This piece also calls Kardashian and West “one of the most iconic celebrity-mogul couples in the world.” Yep, in the world. At least the writer didn’t choose “on the planet.”

Our household began to wonder months ago about whether to renew our decades-long subscription to The New Yorker. Elaine has given up on the magazine without hesitation. I’ve wavered. This effort at humor put me off. Recent errors of fact about Ralph Ellison and Frank O’Hara, unacknowledged and uncorrected, also put me off. (Yes, I wrote to the magazine.) “Kim & Kanye & Pete & Julia” feels like a message of sorts: this is no longer for me, at least not on a subscription basis.

If this site for advertisers can be trusted, the average age of a New Yorker reader is fifty-four. As I wrote in a previous post, I think the magazine is pitching not to the readers they have but to the readers they hope to acquire, which is one way to lose readers they have, or once had.