Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor, constructing as “Anna Stiga” (Stan Again). The pseudonym is supposed to be the sign of an easier puzzle, but I found this one quite challenging. (Forty-one minutes.) One difficulty: the puzzle’s northwest and southeast sections each have just one point of exit or entry. No other cross streets, so to speak.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

2-D, nine letters, “‘Jezebel of Jazz’ who sang with Satchmo and Shearing.” Yes! But how she must have hated that name. She sang with Louis Armstrong at least once, sort of. With George Shearing, I just don’t know. But Stan must be a fan.

4-D, seven letters, “Mused till morning.” Kinda misleading.

5-D, six letters, “Billy Bob or Angelina, in 2000.” If you say so. I don’t have much patience for this sort of factoid.

10-D, eight letters, “Household wedge.” Neat. My first thought was HANDIRON.

17-A, eight letters, “Suckers ready to scam.” A nicely colloquial answer, but I think “to be scammed” would be clearer.

18-A, five letters, “Sucker with sensors.” Ha.

23-D, seven letters, “Word from Malay ‘fish sauce.’” Huh.

29-D, nine letters, “Muppet collectibles, e.g.” I’d want something less blatantly commercial as an example.

30-D, nine letters, “‘Best musical satirist of the 20th century,’ per Dr. Demento.” The doctor is right.

33-A, seven letters, “What to do at a reunion.” Crossing with 23-D, this answer is a bit of extra fun.

39-D, six letters, “Hail-fellow well met.” Well, I’ll be: that’s an adjective.

40-A, eight letters, “Advocate hyperactively.” I imagine people might still be said to do it.

42-D, five letters, “The loudest of them was 112 decibels, per Guinness (2021).” Ick.

My favorite in this puzzle:49-A, eight letters, “What might cover your elbows.” Academic that I am, or was, I thought of suede patches. But I like this answer better.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

A store-brand crossword

On the back of a box of Great Value cereal (Brown Flakes), a strange crossword. The 15 × 15 grid includes eight two-letter answers and six squares that don’t cross other squares, giving the puzzle something of the look of the simple crosswords that might appear in the back pages of a tabloid. And yet the puzzle includes some wildly out-of-the-way clues and answers:

1-A, five letters, “Egg white.”

1-A, four letters, “Growl.”

13-A, seven letters, “Not freely moving.”

35-A, four letters, “Fetid.”

54-D, four letters, “Portable ice-box.” The Internets tell me that this answer is Australian slang.

I don’t think AI created this puzzle — unless someone forgot to tell it to make every letter cross. The answers, if you want them, are in the cereal aisle, on the side of the box. Also in the comments.

[Brown Flakes: à la Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.]

Down to the Gulf of Mexico

The Associated Press is down with the Gulf of America:

The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name.... As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.

Yeah, but “Gulf of Mexico” is already easily recognizable to all audiences. Particularly to blues audiences. As Mississippi Fred McDowell sang:

The 61 highway, longest road I know
You know it reach from Atlanta, Georgia,
    down to the Gulf of Mexico

[“As the major route northward out of Mississippi, U. S. Highway 61 has been of particular inspiration to blues artists. The original road began in downtown New Orleans, traveled through Baton Rouge, and ran through Natchez, Vicksburg, Leland, Cleveland, Clarksdale, and Tunica in Mississippi, to Memphis and north to the Canadian border.... Although many bluesmen used the lyrics ‘Highway 61, longest road that I know,’ their descriptions of the highway’s route were often misleading”: Highway 61 Blues (Mississippi Blues Trail).]

He’s going there

The FFOTUS is speaking and blaming last night’s horrific helicopter-plane collision on the Biden administration and DEI. He adds that Pete Buttigieg has “a good line of bullshit.”

[FF: First Felon.]

“A fragrance of stunning richness and complexity”

I’ve always thought of the smell of New York City as a blend of urine, exhaust, garbage, and cigarette smoke — plus the hot mechanical smell wafting up through subway grates. I think Alison Bechdel and I are sharing some bandwith here. From Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006):

[Click for a larger view.]

Bechdel’s Fun Home and (the more difficult) Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama (2012) are profound graphic memoirs. I recommend them both.

The background for this panel: Village Cigars, at 110 Seventh Avenue South. The landmark store closed in 2024 after a hundred or more (?) years as a tobacco shop. In its WPA tax photograph, it was known as United Cigars.

Reading scores in decline

The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows reading scores for fourth- and eighth-graders in decline. On the NBC Nightly News last night, the conclusion was that “no one is quite sure why.” An educational researcher suggested a number of reasons: “could be screens, could be hangover from the Great Recession, could be relaxation of accountability, could be grade inflation.” No consideration of how reading instruction might play a part.

Related reading
All OCA reading posts (Pinboard)

Knees

Mark Zuckerberg is running out of knees.

Car(a)mel

It came up in conversation. Two syllables, or three? Edwin L. Battistella considers the difference.

I say the word with three syllables, using Merriam-Webster’s sad leftover pronunciation bits: /ˈka-rə-mel/. Those bits don’t even get an audio recording of their own at M-W. But if I were speaking of caramel-coated popcorn, something I never get to speak of these days, I’d say /ˈkär-məl/.

[Yes, there are plenty of more important things to talk about right now. And I do. But I’m wanting to post other things these days.]

Housman, misquoted

The television was on for “warmth.” Dr. Arnold Vincent (Jeffrey Lynn) was pouring himself a drink. From Whiplash (dir. Lewis Seiler, 1948):

“‘This does more than mortals can, to justify God’s ways to man.’ I think that’s misquoted, but it’s a rousing sentiment.”

The source, of course, is A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, LXII (1896):

Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.

I wonder whether the misquotation, announced as such, is a way to avoid complications with copyright. Or maybe it’s a way to signal that the doctor is sloppy in all things.

"We"

[Click for a larger, perhaps more exasperating view.]

Gosh, how I dislike this use of “we.” Speak for yourself, Arts & Letters Daily. And if you really mean what you say, stop linking to items about Joyce, Knausgaard, Proust, &c.