Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Matthew Sewell. I started with 6-D, six letters, “Microcomputer Woz admired” and 23-A, seven letters, “James Stewart’s whistleblower,” and for a moment I thought that this puzzle and I were on the same wavelength. Not quite. I worked on it (the puzzle, not the wavelength) some more, quit, went out to dinner with Elaine (pad ped and pad Thai, spicy no. 3), came back, took another swing, and everything fell into place. Spicy no. 3 FTW!

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

4-D, eleven letters, “Underscore?” Nicely colloquial.

8-D, three letters, “Cell progenitor.” Is this biology?

24-D, eleven letters, “Beyond beautiful.” A hilarious answer.

30-D, six letters, “Works.” I did not see this answer coming, not even after having its first letter.

32A, fifteen letters, “Fully exploit.” This clue fully exploits the fifteen columns of the puzzle.

35-D, eight letters, “Finish line.” Ha.

40-A, three letters, “Follow a stat.” Good grief.

41-A, eight letters, “Capsule contents.” My first smarty-pants guess was EPHEMERA. I was thinking of a time capsule.

43-D, five letters, “Above and below.” Sneaky, Stumper-y, and I’m happy that I caught on.

49-A, eight letters, “Where low-fat meat comes from.” A strange, surprising anwer.

54-A, nine letters, “Weblog with an Eyre Apparent exhibit post.” Excuse me: “weblog”? And said weblog hasn’t been updated since 2009. There are better ways to clue this answer.

My favorite in this puzzle: 8-D, eight letters, “Advice column.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Another try at a Pinboard bookmarklet

I asked ChatGPT to write a bookmarklet that would add a URL to Pinboard and paste in text copied from the clipboard as a description. Here’s what I got:

javascript:(function(){ var url = encodeURIComponent(window.location.href); var title = document.title.replace(/^.*?-/, '').trim(); var description = prompt('Enter description (Ctrl+V to paste from clipboard):'); if (!description) { return; } description = encodeURIComponent(description.trim()); var pinboardURL = 'https://pinboard.in/add?url=' + url + '&title=' + title + '&description=' + description; window.open(pinboardURL, '_blank'); })();

I know — huh? But it works. It doesn’t do exactly what I’d like it to do: I cannot add a blog post’s URL to Pinboard without having my blog’s name show up as part of the post title, so I just delete the prefatory Orange Crate Art. (I’m not sure it‘s even possible to remove the blog name automatically.) Two advantages of this bookmarklet: it allows text from the clipboard to be pasted in as a description, and it shows existing tags when I begin typing a tag name. For those reasons, this bookmarklet beats other bookmarklets and a Safari extension that I’ve tried.

[It works!]

With Alfred workflows and, now, a bookmarklet, ChatGPT does what I’d never be able to do on my own.

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Adding links to Pinboard

“Decline by 9”

In “Not Lost in a Book” (Slate ), Dan Kois writes about a decline in children’s reading:

It’s called the “Decline by 9,” and it’s reaching a crisis point for publishers and educators. According to research by the children’s publishers Scholastic, at age 8, 57 percent of kids say they read books for fun most days; at age 9, only 35 percent do. This trend started before the pandemic, experts say, but the pandemic accelerated things. “I don’t think it’s possible to overstate how disruptive the pandemic was on middle grade readers,” one industry analyst told Publishers Weekly. And everyone I talked to agreed that the sudden drop-off in reading for fun is happening at a crucial age — the very age when, according to publishing lore, lifetime readers are made.

Kois describes the causes as numerous: screen time, lack of screens (no marketing via BookTok), a decline in word-of-mouth reading recommendations during the pandemic, test-focused teaching with an emphasis on excerpts not books, and the defunding of libraries.

Related reading
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NYRB Nancy

You know the end times are upon us when New York Review Books puts out a Nancy collection: Nancy and Sluggo’s Guide to Life: Comics about Money, Food, and Other Essentials. It’s on sale now at NYRB, 25% off.

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First!

[Click for a larger view.]

The first one we’ve seen, on a walk this morning. I hope it got across the street.

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Cicadas, prime numbers, and the Great Confluence of 1998

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

That’s Johnny Roventini (“Call for Philip Morris”) in the background, above a display of upside-down Chesterfield packs. But who’s in the foreground?

I’ll drop a hint if one is needed, and brother, one is gonna be needed. (I’m typing like the 1940s.)

*

A hint might help: In this movie, she’s a long way from Salzburg.

*

Noon: I think this one’s ungettable. You’re still welcome to play, but I’ve put the answer in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

[Garner’s Modern English Usage notes that “support for actress seems to be eroding.” So I use actor.]

Travel

Martin Edelweiss’s tutor deems Cambridge student Darwin “ ‘a splendid specimen.’ ” Darwin’s studies at Cambridge were interrupted by the Great War: he spent three years in the trenches, “ ‘and not a scratch, either morally or physicially.’ ” And he’s published a book of short stories that, the narrator tells us, “connoisseurs were raving about.”


Martin has to say something back, yes? But that last sentence will prove prophetic.

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A hidden figure?

From The Spiral Staircase (dir. Robert Siodmak, 1946). Blanche (Rhonda Fleming) has gone to the basement to fetch her suitcase. I can’t decide if the vaguely human form at the center of the screen is meant to suggest a person, lurking, or not. All I know is that it scared the bejesus out of me. The form turns into a pitcher and some shelving with a bit more light. Click any image for a larger view.

[Now you see it.]

[Now you don’t.]

[In case you missed it.]

Exile and pleats

Vladimir Nabokov, Glory, trans. Dmitri Nabokov and Vladimir Nabokov (New York: MacGraw-Hill, 1971).

Yes, university is a time for trying on new identities.

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The secret comics of plants

At Oscar’s Day : Do plants get Nancy?