How to use a dictionary as a weapon

George Macready isn’t really a reverend holding a dictionary. He’s Matthew Stoker, a bad guy with a dictionary who’s pretending to be a reverend. Lee Bowman is Gilbert Archer, a newspaper columnist moonlighting as an amateur detective. Both men are looking for the Bibles that hold the answer to the whereabouts of a lost Leonardo painting of Joshua and the city of Jericho. From The Walls Came Tumbling Down (dir. Lothar Mendes, 1946). Click any image for a larger view.

[He’s a rather menacing “reverend,” isn’t he?]

Says Archer, “Joshua led his troops seven times around the city of Jericho. Remember, Reverend? Did you look on page seven of this dictionary?” Get the dictionary, riffle through the pages, point to something, and push the dictionary into your opponent’s face. Ow.


That's a Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. Two giveaways: the cover design (visible in the first screenshot) and the frontispiece of Noah Webster (visible in the third). Archer is holding the dictionary upside-down, with its thumb notches slanting the wrong way. No matter: for his purposes, upside-down is fine.

Related reading
All OCA dictionary posts (Pinboard)

Edith Boebert, Lauren Prickley

[Andrea Martin as SCTV station manager Edith Prickley. Click for a larger view.]

Every time I see Lauren Boebert’s face in the news, I try to figure out who it is she looks like. And now I have figured it out. It’s Edith Prickley. And I see that the Internets figured it out first.

Related reading
All OCA “separated at birth” posts (Pinboard)

[No Boebert picture here: I don’t want her face in these pages. For the reader who suggested that an apostrophe is missing from Internets: that's the humorous plural of Internet, which I sometimes prefer to the singular.]

O Pioneer!

[263 Bowery, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for an enormous view.]

The Pioneer Restaurant makes a brief appearance in A.J. Liebling's “Bowery Boom,” in Back Where I Come From (1938):

Five cents pays for a shave at the barber college. For 20 cents the Boweryite may have “shave, massage, shampoo, singe and hair tonic,” just like a 46th Street bookmaker. Ten cents will buy “pig snouts, vegetables, potatoes and coffee, bread or rolls,” at the Pioneer Restaurant, 263, and 15 cents will buy an even more elaborate spread at Minder’s Restaurant.

If you click on the photograph, you’ll be able to read at least most of the Pioneer menu. And you’ll be able to better see three ghosts.

This tax photograph reminds me of Berenice Abbott’s 1935 photograph of the Blossom Restaurant at 103 Bowery. There’s also a 1937 Abbott photograph of a Pioneer Restaurant on West Third Street (64, not 60 as the page with the photograph says). The tax photograph of that corner shows the Pure Food Restaurant. Perhaps the Pioneer had moved to the Bowery by the time the Liebling wrote that piece. Or perhaps the Pioneer on West Third was a Bowery sibling, or an unrelated establishment.

In 2007, the building at 263 Bowery was still recognizable as itself. By 2011, everything had changed.

Here, before we leave the Bowery, is a barber school, 15¢ for a shave and a haircut.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[Post title with apologies to Walt Whitman and Willa Cather.]

Enrobed Pretzel Rods?

Spotted at Aldi, from Palmer Candy, Patiotic Enrobed Pretzel Rods: “Crunchy salted pretzel coated with white fudge and patriotic sprinkles.” I texted the kiddos.

Rachel: Enrobed is worse that dipped!

Ben: Sounds like someone asked to ChatGPT for help.

The apples lie close to the trees.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stella Zawistowski. Boy, it is ever. I made quick work of the northeast corner, beginning with 10-A, four letters, “Four-year-old program” and 13-D, four letters, “They have all the answers.” I made much longer work of the rest of the puzzle. Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

10-D, eleven letters, “Closely held.” Getting this answer early on helped a lot.

14-A, ten letters, “Filler of notebooks now stored in lead-lined boxes.” A giveaway? I’m not sure.

15-D, five letters, “Sat (for).” The parentheses make it a bit tricky.

21-A, five letters, “Pretty good.” I’d say more than “pretty good.”

21-D, twelve letters, “Where dogs are often led around.” I think I understand this clue.

22-A, eleven letters, “Profitless pursuit.” I am glad that this puzzle wasn’t one.

27-A, five letters, “Postal Service metallic concern.” True, to my surprise.

33-A, nine letters, “What bows show.” Such an unusual word to see in a puzzle.

37-A, nine letters, “Early retirement vehicles.” An out-of-the-way answer, I’d say.

42-A, three letters, “Tadpole-shaped small things.” A wildly inventive clue.

54-A, ten letters, “Effortlessly.” An unusual answer.

57-A, ten letters, “Furniture store adjective.” An unusual way to clue the word.

My favorite in this puzzle: 40-A, eight letters, “Breakup music?”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

$47.47

Three of our household’s last four water bills ran to $47.47. I called the water department out of curiosity to see if we were receiving estimated bills. Nope. “You must be doing the same things every month,” I was told. Well, sort of. But still.

The number is remarkable for two reasons. The year 1947 is our household’s avowed favorite year in movies. And 47 is our family’s Burger King number — the order number we were given on our first visit to downstate Illinois’s one-of-a-kind Burger King. This Burger King — The Burger King — has no relation to the chain. The conflict of names became the stuff of a celebrated court case.

The numbers for Burger King orders were and are given at random. A 47 might be followed by, say, a 3. My guess is that the randomness serves to keep people from gathering at the counter to await their food. (Hey, we’re next.) Our 47 was sung out in a one-note nasal whine that went something like this: “Forrrr-dee-sehhhh-vinn,” give or take a letter or two.

Chekhov noir

For one sentence, the story turns into film noir.

Anton Chekhov, “My Life: The Story of a Provincial,” in “Peasants” and Other Stories, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: New York Review Books, 1999).

Related reading
Chekhov and Larry David : Chekhov and Joyce : No master builder

NYRB sale

New York Review Books is having a summer sale: buy two books, save 20%; buy three books, save 30%; buy four books, save 40%. I would like to see “buy ten books, save 100%,” but I know they have to draw the line somewhere. The sale ends on Monday the 24th at midnight Eastern — that is, right before Monday becomes Tuesday. Again, they have to draw the line somewhere.

My first NYRB book: Céleste Albaret’s Monsieur Proust. There have been at least a couple of more than three dozen since. (I counted.) The press has greatly expanded my possibilities of reading. Long may it wave.

Recently updated

Sondheim Blackwings at auction Now with a link to the auction catalogue.

“How's Your Mom?”

I am always behind on This American Life. From an episode that aired in February: Janelle Taylor addresses the question “How’s Your Mom?” Likely to be helpful to anyone close to a person with dementia.