Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is one hard puzzle. I’d call it a six on the Mohs Hardness Scale. You should really use a glass plate, knife blade, or maybe a steel nail to scratch its surface. I used a pencil and eraser, and to my surprise, they worked. The northeast and southwest: fairly doable. The northwest and southeast: better with the nail.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

4-D, eight letters, “Less than lucid.” I’m surprised to see that it’s a word.

6-A, three letters, “They take their turns in clubs.” The obvious (I think) answer doesn’t work.

9-A, five letters, “Lent direction.” Or misdirection.

11-D, ten letters, “Poetic ‘King of Kings.’” Gone but not forgotten.

14-A, nine letters, “Loud lament.” Not the first time I’ve seen the answer in a puzzle, but it’s still unobvious to me.

27-A, fourteen letters, “What you'll see in the latest Indy Jones film.” I want to rephrase: what a viewer will see, or what someone else will see. I don’t plan to see it. I knew what the clue was asking about, but figuring out the eighth and ninth letters made me a bit crazy.

29-D, ten letters, “Sudden burst.” I thought first of water: OUTPOURING.

34-A, three letters, “Ashley Walker Bush, in 2006.” Guessable, but who cares? Maybe she’s a friend of the constructor.

39-A, seven letters, “Six-stanza form for Dante.” And for John Ashbery, among other poets. Caution: the link is a spoiler.

45-A, fourteen letters, “Where lessons are prepared.” I thought of the smoke-drenched teachers’s lounge of my high school.

54-D, four letters, “Brand now ‘Even Gravy-er!’” I thought this had to be YARC (Yet Another Ragú Clue).

My favorite in this puzzle: 8-D, four letters, “Something often driven in December.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“You were wrong about being done”

Gale Walden writes about her relationship with David Foster Wallace in life and in death. From “David’s Presence” (London Review of Books ):

The same day the book fell on my head I was listening to my ten-year-old daughter, Zella, playing her cello upstairs. I said out loud: “David, we are finally done.” I felt lighter, released from something. I thought I was acknowledging my happiness in the domestic life I had created, rather than the one I had imagined with him. The next evening, I found out David had hanged himself around the time I’d been listening to Zella play, and I thought: “You were wrong about being done.”

Related reading
All OCA DFW posts (Pinboard)

Michael Tracy/Tracy 168 (1958–2023)

The graffiti artist Michael Tracy, Tracy 168, has died at the age of sixty-five. The New York Times has an obituary (gift link), with many photographs.

I was fortunate to see Tracy 168’s work up close in 1983, when he and fellow artists put their art on the wall of the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

Related reading
Michael Tracy’s Instagram

What’s art for?

From William Deresiewicz, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Art” (Salmagundi ):

Art is for increasing life. That, I believe, after all the other purposes receive their due, is really what it’s for — why we revere it, why we give our hearts to it.

The World’s Writing Systems

A beautiful use of the Internet: The World’s Writing Systems (via kottke.org). Seen here: Proto-Cuneiform, 3300–2900 BCE.

FEZiBO standing desk

I ordered an inexpensive standing desk from the usual source last week. The manufacturer’s name, FEZiBO (so styled), reminds me of Cam Tucker’s (Modern Family ) clown name: Fizbo. But I’m glad that didn’t occur to me while I was ordering the desk.

The one problem: a profound wobble, and a realization that I’d done something wrong in the assembling. (The instructions for assembly came in the form of the IKEA-like diagrams that I inevitably misintepret.) The company has a 24/5 domestic number, so I called, spoke with a real person, received a text, and sent back photographs and an explanation. Within an hour I received a reply with a marked-up screenshot from the instructions and an explanation of what I needed to do.

Excellent customer service, FEZiBO.

How to improve writing (no. 114)

This sentence from a New York Times article brought me up short:

Any candidate for speaker can lose only a handful of votes and still win the speakership because Republicans hold such a small majority in the House.

The logic of winning and losing here defies logic. If you lose only a handful of votes and still win, there’s nothing remarkable about that.

Better:

Any candidate for speaker can lose no more than a handful of votes and still win the speakership because Republicans hold such a small majority in the House.

Or:

Any candidate for speaker can lose only a handful of votes and still lose the speakership because Republicans hold such a small majority in the House.

Better still:

Because Republicans hold such a small majority in the House, a candidate for speaker can lose only a handful of votes and still lose the speakership.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 114 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

It’s night, it’s really that dark, and her face fills the screen, just like so. I recognized her, but I knew she was in the movie.

Leave your guess(es) in the comments. I’ll drop a hint if one is needed, and I suspect one will be.

*

Here's a clue: Her movie appearances were few, but she spent many years as a familiar face on television and, at least for people in the New York area, a familiar voice on the radio.

*

Guesses are still welcome, but I’ve put the actor’s name 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.]

Penny Park

[Click for a larger view.]

Small change, embedded, at Penny Park in Evanston, Illinois. A nearby plaque reads: “The children of Evanston named the park in honor of their efforts to fund the project with their own pennies.”

Barnes & Noble redesigning

From The New York Times (gift link): “As the bookstore chain mounts a comeback, it’s breaking a cardinal rule of corporate branding and store design: consistency.”

In other words, different designs for different stores, and an emphasis on books. I haven’t seen anything like this at our nearby Barnes & Noble, which still teems with tchotchkes and whatnot, especially at the registers.

Slightly strange: the article has a photograph of Barnes & Noble chief executive James Daunt standing in front of the same store bookshelves he stood in front of for a photograph that accompanied a 2019 Times article about Barnes & Nobles redesigning. Were those Barnes & Noble bookshelves in 2019 — or Waterstones?

A related post
Saving Barnes & Noble