coffee

Not a comfortable experience. EARLAP? Seriously? ANTICOMEDY? Huh? I dropped in ELFHAT, half expecting it to be wrong. Delighted to see NAST, creator of Puck, himself. Howdy, KOFI. But, otherwise, yeesh.

A Flap over Fillip I had never bothered to look up a definition for FILLIP before this morning. Plodding through the clues, I bumped into 28A: A writer’s fillip. Huh. What could that be? A favorite turn of phrase? A natty scarf? A treasured rhyme? You know, some unnecessary enhancement? So I looked up on-line and off and was startled. A FILLIP turns up as a snarky little gesture, a minor physical assault. The sudden sharp straightening of an index finger curled against the thumb. That particular way to annoy your sibling in the backseat on a long car trip HAS A NAME. Jeepers. Nothing to do with a delicate shape extending graceful typography. What the hell? Give a FILLIP to a writer — they won’t like it.

I got stuck on MANET/MONET. Although CLAUDE supposes MONET, the most famous "Luncheon" painting is surely Eduard Manet’s "Le Déjeuner sur L’Herbe." No contest!