Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is by Matthew Sewell. It’s quite a crossword. I started with 29-D, five letters, “Tutta la ____ （till dawn),” which yielded 40-A, four letters, “Something solemnized.” And then a fingerhold here, a toehold there. I didn't think I’d ever get it all, until I did.
Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:
1-A, four letters, “No pro bono battler.” One would think law, or at least I would.
2-D, four letters, “Mythical fire starter.” Clever.
5-A, four letters, “Lee alternative.” One would think LEVI, or at least I would.
14-D, six letters, “Pop icon who lived across the street from Neil Diamond.” I will have to take your word for it.
16-A, four letters, “Pop icon with an Our Way podcast.” Really out of the way. Sorry, 16-A.
20-A, fourteen letters, “Defiant non-apology.” Great answer, at least for a crossword, though perhaps not in real life.
23-A, six letters, “Part of a peak performance.” One would think ASCENT, or at least I would, complete with fingerholds and toeholds.
24-A, seven letters, “At-work gamer’s quick-change shortcut.” I remember reading about it, many years ago.
24-D, five letters, “Set off.” Ambiguity alert.
26-D, ten letters, “Fusion favorite with salmon-topped slices.” See 14-D.
30-D, five letters, “Whom Tiger tied for PGA Tour wins in 2019.” I think the conventions of crosswords require Woods in this clue.
47-D, six letters, “Ladylike?” Really clever. I was thinking something to do with ladybugs.
53-A, three letters, “Sound made by shakers.” One would think TSK, or at least I would, shaking my head.
54-A, fourteen letters, “Online source request.” A novel answer.
56-D, four letters, “Small torch bearer.” Stumpers gonna stump.
My favorite in this puzzle: 60-A, ten letters, “Desirable character trait.”
No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.
Saturday, July 20, 2024
Today’s Saturday Stumper
Friday, July 19, 2024
“The complete embrace of violence”
My uncle and his allies in the corporate media want us to believe, with absolutely no evidence, that he’s a changed man. They want us to believe he cares about unity and “lowering the temperature.” But the people he chooses to surround himself with make it crystal clear that nothing could be further from the truth.With special guests Tucker Carlson, Matt Gaetz, Hulk Hogan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Paul Manafort, Mitch McConnell, Peter Navarro, J.D. Vance, and Dana White. Background music: James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World.”
Comstock who?
If you go looking in the Project 2025 Policy Agenda for the Comstock Act, the provisions in federal law now touted as a way to prevent sending mifepristone through the mail, you won’t find a single reference to it. But if you search just a bit, you’ll find this passage:
Stop promoting or approving mail-order abortions in violation of long-standing federal laws that prohibit the mailing and interstate carriage of abortion drugs.[16]The endnote:
16. 18 U.S.C. 1461, https://www.law.cornell.edu/And those two URLs — 1, 2 — have the relevant sections of the Comstock Act.
uscode/text/18/1461 (accessed March 16, 2023),
and 18 U.S.C. 1462, https://www.law.cornell.edu/
uscode/text/18/1462 (accessed March 16, 2023).
Growing
Paddy, our narrator, has carried fallen branches home while riding her scooter. And then the branches hit a lamp-post and Paddy came tumbling down. Her mother Louey is cross: “Just look at you. You’re not going out on that scooter again.” And Paddy reminds her mother that when they were walking the day before, they saw lots of fallen branches and her mother said they’d save money if they could carry them home for firewood.
Maureen Duffy, That’s How it Was (1962).
Also from this novel
“Oh all the things kids do”
Recently updated
A Honeymooners correction, still needed The New York Times won’t be making a correction.
Thursday, July 18, 2024
Bob Newhart (1929–2024)
The New York Times has an obituary. From a 2019 interview with the Times (both gift links):
Do you ever think about death?[Context: Shelley Berman wrongly accused Newhart of stealing the use of a telephone in stand-up comedy from him.]
I think I know what’s on the other side, but I’m not sure. Maybe it just ends. Some people think you come back. Maybe I’ll come back as Shelley Berman and be pissed off at myself.
What do you think happens on the other side?
I think if you lived a good life, some people say it is rapture. You spend the rest of your life in a state of rapture. That’d be nice. What I’m actually hoping is there’s the Pearly Gates and God’s there and he says to me, “What did you do in life?” And I say, “I was a stand-up comedian.” And he says: “Get in that real short line over there.”
In the news
It’s not just Project 2025: “A network of well-funded far-right activists is preparing for the former President’s return to the White House.” Jonathan Blitzer’s “Inside the Trump Plan for 2025” is worth reading (The New Yorker ).
George Conway’s Anti-Psychopath PAC looks like a PAC worth supporting.
The Seneca Project looks like a project worth supporting. The project’s video about what J.D. Vance thinks about women — in his own words — is worth watching.
Recently updated
The banana man I misunderstood. Now with what really happened, which is even more ridiculous.
Separated at birth
[Lee Marvin and Jerome the Giraffe. Click either image for a larger view.]
Steven Hall suggested this frankly unsettling pairing. But who am I kidding? When I see these two side by side, I cannot help laughing.
Everyone knows Lee Marvin. Jerome the Giraffe appeared on the CBC children’s show The Friendly Giant (1958–1985). The show had some American distribution as well: Elaine watched on Boston’s WGBH. As Steven points out, YouTube has an episode from PBS Wisconsin.
The Lee Marvin connection is apparently not a coincidence. Man and puppet do sound similar. Steven suggests listening to this clip. And he mentions a “You Know You’re a Canadian When” list that included something like this: “you feel nostalgic for a man who hangs out with a hyper-kinetic rooster in a bag and a purple and orange giraffe with a sleepy-Lee-Marvin voice.”
I’ve drained the purple and orange and everything else from Jerome to make the photographs more uniform.
Thanks, Steven, for some unexpected amusement.
Related reading
All OCA “separated at birth” posts (Pinboard)
“Oh all the things kids do”
From a novel of a working-class girlhood in England before and during the Second World War.
Maureen Duffy, That’s How it Was (1962).
