Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Steve Mossberg, is not that difficult by Stumper standards, but it’s full of surprising stuff. I like it.
Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:
1-A, nine letters, “Green sauce for osso buco.” Osso oscuro, at least for me.
2-D, four letters, “St. Paul and St. Denis, north of New York.” When I see “New York,” I think “City.” At first I thought they must be somewhere upstate.
5-D, seven letters and 40-A, five letters, “Request to keep playing.”
6-D, twelve letters, “When miniskirts were in again.” I think the answer is at least debatable.
16-A, five letters, “Show with projectors.” I thought not of MOVIE but of planetariums and Pink Floyd — though not from personal experience.
21-D, twelve letters, “Frequent player in the 6 Down.” Yes, this puzzle is full of surprising stuff.
29-D, ten letters, “Aviation adjective.” See the comment on the previous clue.
32-A, four letters, “Memorable count.” I don’t get it. Why memorable?
34-D, five letters, “Spring thing.” Not necessarily seasonal.
36-A, four letters, “Occasional sportscast coverage.” A nifty clue.
43-A, ten letters, “Tangible trifles.” Fun to say. Fun to try to spell.
48-A, three letters, “Send up.” A dictionary will okay the answer.
62-A, nine letters, “Potential power under the hood.” Under, indeed.
67-A, five letters, “Plumbers often work on them.” Tile contractors too.
No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.
Saturday, April 15, 2023
Today’s Saturday Stumper
Friday, April 14, 2023
In beta
A typo in a post? I have always blamed carelessness and haste. But now I have an all-purpose excuse explanation, which hit me yesterday afternoon: the post is in beta.
Mack McCormick’s Robert Johnsons
Biography of a Phantom, an edited version of Mack McCormick’s never-finished biography of Robert Johnson, is now in print. Here’s an account of McCormick’s work by Michael Hall: “Hellhounds on His Trail: Mack McCormick’s Long, Tortured Quest to Find the Real Robert Johnson” (Texas Monthly ).
The strangest result of McCormick’s efforts: his contention that everyone has been looking at the wrong man, that the musician who recorded in 1936 and 1937 was a different Robert Johnson.
I will soon have the book in hand, and I’m sure I won’t know what to make of it then either.
Related reading
All OCA Robert Johnson posts (Pinboard)
A dictionary and a prison
The guy who made violent threats against Merriam-Webster last year over its definitions of female and girl has been sentenced to a year in prison.
Related reading
All OCA dictionary posts (Pinboard)
Thursday, April 13, 2023
“All-In”
A look at the conditions of teaching and striking at a regional university in Illinois: “All-In.” It’s a point of view, of course, but it’s one that grounded in fact.
Our household is supporting the strike by picketing and by contributing to a fund to help strikers in need. And I’m now able to add the noise of my Metropolitan Police Whistle to the picket-line din. (It took me three days to find it.)
5:48 p.m.: The strike has been suspended.
[When I began keeping a blog in 2004, I made a decision never to mention my university by name. I wanted to keep this work separate. And now I’m retired, and I still do.]
MSNBC, sheesh
Chris Jansing, earlier this afternoon: “The Washington Post reports that Jack Smith is honing in on Trump’s post-election fundraising,” &c.
Garner’s Modern English Usage (2022) notes that home in is “the traditional and still preferred phrase”:
In modern print sources — both AmE and BrE — the collocation homing in on the ~ predominates over *honing in on the ~ by a 2-to-1 margin.Garner puts hone in at stage 4 of GMEU’s language-change index:
The form becomes virtually universal but is opposed on cogent grounds by a few linguistic stalwarts (the traditionalists that David Foster Wallace dubbed “snoots”: syntax nudniks of our time).So how can I not say “Sheesh”? But I’m still willing to acknowledge that usage seems to be honeward bound.
Related reading
All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)
Cloud-stuff
One more passage, from a visit to Atlantis.
Steven Millhauser, From the Realm of Morpheus (1986).
Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)
Wednesday, April 12, 2023
Thimbles
Carl Hausman recounts a visit with Morpheus to a land of giants.
Steven Millhauser, From the Realm of Morpheus (1986).
Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)
