Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is a doozy. It took me forty-two minutes to complete, and I then had to look up the meanings of two (correct) answers that baffled me: 47-A, four letters, “Balance checkers” and 50-A, three letters, “USO honorary chairman.” Aside from a handful of easily gettable long answers — e.g., 26-D, “Reluctant acknowledgment” — this puzzle showed little mercy.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

4-D, eight letters, “Nigerian music.” One variety.

8-D, ten letters, “‘We’re gliding along with a song’ song.” A fambly favorite.

9-D, five letters, “Sequoia claim to fame.” Lordy.

14-A, four letters, “Caught in the air?” Clever.

15-A, nine letters, “Mysterious atom-smasher detection.” A novel answer.

15-D, three letters, “Shortened ‘I shall return.’” Sometimes I’m too clever for my own good: I was sure it had to be IOU, but that answer would include the I of the clue.

19-A, fourteen letters, “Attraction at Indonesia’s Trans Snow World.” Speaking of novel answers — and clues.

22-A, three letters, “Base level, briefly.” Considerable thought went into this clue.

34-A, five letters, “Ellie’s relative.” Name-premised clues often mess me up. My first thought was of The Beverly Hillbillies, but that was Elly May.

41-A, five letters, “Put on the line, perhaps.” Perhaps indeed.

53-A, fourteen letters, “Don’t be devious.” I didn’t think the answer fit the clue until I realized that the clue itself is devious.

55-D, four letters, “PR, e.g.” Another short answer with much thought going into the clue.

59-D, three letters, “What Lionel first meant.” Oh, now I get it.

My favorite in this puzzle: 39-D, eight letters, “Flops.” Crazy, man, crazy.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Mystery actors

[Click for a much larger view.]

Elaine identified one of these fellows right away. I recognized another. One remained a mystery until we checked the credits. Can you identify one or all? Leave your answers in the comments. I’ll drop hints if they’re needed.

*

The name of the fellow on the right is now in the comments. Here’s a clue for the fellow on the left: he became a leading man. Yes, really. But don’t overlook the fellow in the middle. In later life he managed a hotel.

If nothing’s happening, I’ll add the answers in a comment later today.

*

The names of all three actors are now in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all)
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“Films noir”

[“Double Trouble.” Zippy, June 7, 2014. Click for a larger view.]

Double as in Double Indemnity (1944), with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. Today’s Zippy is all noir. A strip search for noir at the Zippy website will reveal many more noirish strips.

Merriam-Webster gives film noirs as the preferred plural, with films noir and films noirs as alternatives. To my surprise, the Google Ngram Viewer shows shows films noirs on a rapid rise since 1987.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

“Jacksonville”

From The Late Show: the company of Illinoise perform Sufjan Stevens’s “Jacksonville.” Sufjan‘s 2005 album Illinois (so spelled) is one my favorite things, and “Jacksonville” in particular is dear to my fambly and me. This performance moved me in a way I didn’t imagine.

Get well, Sufjan.

Two more Sufjan Stevens posts
“Casimir Pulaski Day” : To: Miley Cyrus From: Sufjan Stevens

[I’m adding some words from “Jacksonville” to the sidebar.]

June 6

[Peanuts, June 6, 1996.]

Yesterday’s Peanuts and today’s Peanuts.

Here’s a brief history of D-Day in the strip.

A dongling peripheral

[Caution: Los Angeles Times/Washington Post spoiler below.]

A clue-and-answer pair in today’s Los Angeles Times (or Washington Post ) crossword has me baffled: 49-A, thirteen letters, “Peripheral with a dongle.” The answer: WIRELESSMOUSE. A wireless mouse needs no dongle. Or am I missing something?

*

I was missing something. It may be that my Mac use led me to think that a wireless mouse needs no dongle.

[Post title with apologies to dangling participles.]

A Ticonderoga sighting

[From Targets (dir. Peter Bogdanovich, 1968). Byron Orlok (Boris Karloff), Jenny (Nancy Hsueh), and a Dixon Ticonderoga. Click for a larger view.]

The ferrule is the giveaway.

Dudel Draw

[By me. Click for a larger, perhaps angrier view.]

A 2024 Apple Design Award finalist: Dudel Draw, free for the iPad (and it may work on a Mac). Every day a random shape to turn into something. Plus many more random shapes. So far I just see cartoons. But I just discovered that it’s possible to draw in both landscape and portrait modes.

Siebold

I had written a sentence from W.G. Sebald on the blackboard, and a student in the front row said that she had begun trying to figure out how the parts of her life fit together. ”Oh,“ I said, ”then you have to read Proust.“ I held up my hands to show the approximate length (width?) of all seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time. ”Three thousand pages!“ I said. Was that accurate? And then I saw that I had misspelled Sebald as Siebold.

This is the twenty-ninth teaching dream I’ve had since retiring in 2015. In all but one, something has gone wrong.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts : Sebald posts : teaching dream posts (Pinboard)

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New directions in apparel Now I think I understand what “gentleman shirts” are.