Bob
Anacortes, Washington
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Anacortes, Washington
Another example of why I love crosswords. For "hyena" I had "Hausa" at first, because I vaguely remembered that it's a subsaharan language, and might therefore be the people who speak it, and those folks might be matriarchal. Wild guess, way wrong. But it turns out that it IS a language and the people who speak it, and that they USED to be martriarchal. Words and things. So beautiful. And now I know that hyenas are matriarchal!
@D You mean "jibe," In fact, you did "jive" the constructor. Delicious puzzle. Perfect for Monday.
Caitlin, on the Games crossword page on my pc, the featured picture of Dolly Parton was directly beneath the blank grid. For me, that was an unfortunate spoiler, which made the solve of a great puzzle a little less fun. Maybe picture selectors or page designers could take the issue into account in the future. Small matter. Food for thought. Thanks.
Speaking of "creative names," "Dear Abby" yesterday featured a letter from a frustrated friend of a soon-to-be-mother who liked the sounds of the words "chlamydia," "bidet," and "chalet," and thought they'd be nice names for her daughter. The friend wanted to steer her away from them, but the mother's family was supportive.
As to FauxPoohs and other WTP underbrush, see Frederick Crews' book of essays The Pooh Perplex, one of the great satires of academic literary criticism.
Scot crossing Clyde was nice too. Great puzzle.
When you've had too much whiskey in Rye, there's generally a bathroom on the right.
@Barry Ancona No point, really. I just like these little redundancies that the evolution of the language has coughed up. Three of the classics in the same puzzle is kind of cool. I guy I know once told me he had just recovered from the avian bird flu.
@john ezra Since I first read that Kooser poem, it has always reminded me of Billy Collins' "A Portrait of the Reader with a Bowl of Cereal."
Has anybody commented that "pan pan" (paella pan) and "desert desert" (Sahara Desert) are both in this excellent puzzle? Haven't seen "the the people" (the hoi polloi) for a while.
@Francis In any case, Gladly the Cross-eyed Bear was looking on.
One of the lucky things about living on the west coast and doing the puzzle on the morning of the day it's dated is that I can go immediately to abundant "Reader's Picks," where the complaints about the puzzle itself don't show up very often and where things are happiest when Mike is number one (viz today, as of this writing). By way of complaint, I would like to say that the complaints about complainers and about putative braggarts are--to me--as annoying as the complaints about the puzzle and the putative bragging (I did today's in 14 minutes with no lookups and loved the experience). And the fact that the complainers about complaints and putative braggarts also recommend the posts of complainers about complaints and putative braggarts means that complaining rises to the top. How 'bout we keep complaints in the minority, where they actually exist?
If you love palindromes and haven't read Roger Angell's essay "Aonmosni," you'll be well-rewarded if you track it down.
@Becca, v cute! BTW, the problem was that I DIDN'T go to the column. I try to avoid hints, and go to the column after I've finished the puzzle. The picture was on the puzzle page itself, where they have teasers for columns. I saw the picture and thought, "uh oh," and, sure enough, ran almost immediately into the clue for the long lower-right entry.
I think They Might Be Giants (1971) is a better film than Vincent Canby thought it was. What's not to like about Joanne Woodward and George C. Scott chewing the scenery together? Plus its a nice addition to the Sherlock Holmes pastiche genre, the best of which, to my mind, is Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. TMBG also alludes to Saturday crosswords, though, as I recall, it was the Times of London's, not Canby's paper's. (I suspect you'll get more pleasure out of the movie if you ignore Scott's "British accent.")
@Stephanie Of course. But for the elderly, a charmingly evocative 1971 movie full of wonderful now-dead actors resonates a bit more than a semi-passe 80s boy band. Try the movie if you haven't seen it.
@Steve I do indeed.
@Michael B. It's a beaut. My favorite is still "exercising" demons. This continues to get by copy editors at respectable periodicals. One of life's little pleasures.
@CalGal Simplified Employee Pension [Plan]
Thanks for the Weird Al link. I've been running into an engaging solecism today: Sam Darnold has finally overcome his (perceived) tendency to perform poorly in big games, and therefore has exercised his demons. I picture him ("his," actually) walking his two very badly behaved dogs.
@Tricia109 No offense intended. I was replying originally with a little irony because, as far down the pike as I am, I know the difference between old (!) movies and 80s bands with adaptive staying power. And there is no truer Latin motto than "de gustibus non est disputandum." (Plus I'll take the pro-Wiki side of the debate any day.)
@CRTH If "deposed" means "had her head cut off."
@Steven M. Ask the lawyers about moot court.
@Mike You keep this up, somebody be inclined to beat the crepe out of you.
@Marshall Walthew My favorite of his is About Grace, which seldom gets attention. If you haven't read it, give it a try.
@Cindy NOAA describes Puget Sound as the Pacific waters south of the southern entrance to the Swinomish Channel (Slough), east of the western end of Deception Pass, and south of the northern entrance of Admiralty Inlet. "Salish Sea" is informal nomenclature. It would be more accurate, from a cartographer's point of view, to say that Orcas (which doesn't refer to the whales) Island is in the Strait of Georgia. I don't think the The Strait of Juan de Fuca is in Puget Sound in anyone's mind, so Puget Sound would have to be discontinuous for Orcas Island to be in it. However, we now have "Gulf of America," so who cares what the cartographers think, I guess. Here, north of both Seattle and Puget Sound, Anacortesans look out the window and see the Pacific Ocean, which makes most of us up here very happy.
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