Reflections on the Week

I'm happy to get a link from Questions and Answers, a good friend, a St. Thomas alumnus, and a mighty blogger in his own write.

I'm pleased to add Diary of a Crossword Fiend to my growing list of crossword devotees.

Attention Span pointed out to me that bits of songs by The Who are used as opening theme music for all three CSI shows. On further review, I recall that a bit of "Happy Jack" was used in a Hummer commercial, where the big honking go-cart goes straight down the hill, beating the faster cars taking the longer path.

Harriet Miers Won't Get Fooled Again seems to have gone over with a dull thud. I'd be pleased if someone would tell me why.

And now for the stats: $0.72 of AdSense revenue (best, almost four times the previous best); I remain an Adorable Little Rodent in the TTLB Ecosystem (#5845), with 17 links from 16 sites in Technorati (#124,205), 3 first-time commenters (Questions and Answers, Attention Span, and Diary of a Crossword Fiend); 223 visitors this week (best, 50% improvement over previous best).

"For all that has been, thanks; to all that shall be, yes."

AdSense TTLB Ecosystem Technorati Site Meter

If You Solve It, They Will Come...

...a variation of the words of the disembodied voice in the book "Shoeless Joe," that became the movie "Field of Dreams" starring Kevin Costner. In that movie, the "they" who came are the Chicago White Sox players banned from the game in the "Black Sox" scandal, for throwing the 1919 World Series. Much has been made of the fact that the White Sox have won a World Series for the first time since then. Last year, the Red Sox overcame the so-called "Curse of the Bambino." This year, the White Sox have erased the disgrace of Shoeless Joe and his teammates. There's another team in Chicago that hasn't been to the World Series in a while, the Chicago Cubs. It's been 60 years since their last World Series appearance in 1945, and 97 years since their last World Series victory in 1908.

The reason I go on and on about this is that the Sunday puzzle that appeared in the Star-Tribune contains some mockery of the misfortune of the Cubs. A man goes for a walk and finds a bottle on a beach. (22A) When he pops the cork, a genie appears and says "I shall grant you one wish." (37A) The man says "I want to see peace in the Middle East." (59A) He then hands the genie a map of the area. (65A) The genie studies it for a while and finally says, "This is impossible. So I grant you another wish." (77A) The man says, "I always wanted to see the Cubs in a World Series." (92A) The genie replies "Let me see that map again..." (114A)

It might have been a coincidence that Cleon (123A) Jones was a member of the 1968 Miracle Mets that denied the Cubs the National League Championship that year, and broke the heart of an 11-year-old Cub fan. But if Ernie Banks wasn't broken-hearted, how could I be?



I didn't know that the Delibes opera was Lakme (7A). I had heard of Delibes, but I don't have a piece of music in my ears to associate with him. I didn't know that a Gibson was a martini with an onion instead of an olive. I knew that Leda was the mother of Helen (of Troy) from when I did a puzzle with Eris as a clue. I didn't know Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 was in E. I shall apologize to him when I meet him in heaven. I was part of the Dallas Symphony Chorus when we did his Psalm 150. Now that's the music of a heaven-bound man! I didn't know Anita Loos was the creator of Lorelei Lee, but I had _ _ O S, what else could it be? Olga as one of the "Three Sisters" (a play by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov) was a lucky guess.

There is a loose end to this puzzle. The letters to the other words seem to work out right to make ethers the answer to 18D, but how is that "Bygone numbers?" Debra shares my difficulty.

In the immortal words of Mr. Cub, let's play two.

This is post #30 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: Chicago Cubs, crossword, Ernie Banks

A Molotov Cocktail, Shaken, Not Stirred

When I wrote the post about Thursday's puzzle, it went completely over my head that the first two letters above each of the themed clues were U and P. So there wasn't really an up-pendectomy as I had originally wrote, just a broken word. This opens up a whole new domain of puzzle possibilities, where the words don't have to go in strictly straight lines anymore. I look forward to the day where there is a puzzle with some up, down, and diagonal clues.

And to think that I missed the musical connotation of "Breaks in scores" on the Friday puzzle. It was rests. I kept wanting "Do great harm to" to be damage, but it was ravage. And what exactly is a ratite, exactly? It's the class of large flightless birds, including ostriches, emus and rheas. Rheas are the south american version of ostriches. Epode made it's second recent appearance, this time as the literary invention of Archilocus.



I'm pretty pleased with myself regarding the Saturday puzzle, even though I have some problems with the upper right corner. This puzzle had two French words starting with Y, the river Yser (64A) and Yves Tanguy (40A). Molotov (34A) was the Commissar. The Molotov cocktail was named in Molotov's dishonor in 1939, when the Soviet Union attacked Finland...

When Molotov claimed in radio broadcasts that the Soviet Union was not dropping bombs but rather delivering food to the starving Finns, the Finns responded by saluting the advancing tanks with "Molotov cocktails."

I seem to recall that Molotov cocktails are mentioned in two songs, "Pop Music" by M, and "All She Wants to Do is Dance" by Don Henley.

This is post #29 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: crossword, Molotov, Molotov cocktail, rhea

The Weekly Friday Thrashing

So not only is the Sunday puzzle I see a week behind what New York Times readers see, but the daily crossword puzzle is six weeks behind what New York Times readers see. I'm told this by Orange of Diary of a Crossword Fiend.

Even with assistance, I seem to have a problem. Opening statement seems to be Ladies first (38A), it seems that sets (42A) are what are counted in gyms, but what does that make 39D? I don't get Rhea, e. g. Are they talking about the Titaness, or the Saturnian moon? I don't get 44D or 45A.

There didn't seem to be a theme to the words for this puzzle.

I did this puzzle today with my 9-year-old son and my 7-year-old daughter. They ran out of gas about halfway through, but that was still pretty good, as the Friday puzzle is relatively difficult. The hardest part was explaining why wildebeest (5A) was spelled the way it was.

This is post #28 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: crossword

Clip of the Day - Douglas Bass - Harriet Miers Won't Get Fooled Again

Somewhere in between the time that I wrote that perhaps I should be the someone who made the Won't Get Fooled Again remix with Harriet Miers confirmation soundbites, the withdrawal of Ms. Miers was announced, so opportunity wasn't just knocking, it was bashing my door down with a battering ram. I thought I could find some particularly good sound bites using the Truveo video search engine, but the really good ones were on the Yahoo news page. Some of the soundbites come from today, only a few hours old. They don't get much fresher than these. Anyone who can name all nine sources is a truly informed person.

Douglas Bass Harriet Miers The Who Won't Get Fooled Again mashups

An Up-endectomy

The themed clues of Thursday's puzzle involve phrases containing the word "up" with the "up" removed. In one's Sunday finest is All dressed (17A), carousing is whooping it (37A), a violet variety is Johnny-Jump (42A) and a vertigo sufferer might wonder which way is (61A). Here is a Johnny-Jump-Up.



Yoko Ocean Child Ono (28D) makes yet another appearance, as the inspiration for John Lennon's "Woman," a song on the "Double Fantasy" album.

I hereby predict that there will be a puzzle in the not-too-distant future with the clue "Palindromatic Beatles buster." After seeing Elba yesterday, I'm getting a hankering for seeing a puzzle with as many palindromes as possible. I'm getting a hankering for composing a puzzle.

I didn't know that Carlos Montoya was a guitarist (no relation to Inigo), or that Eri tu was Renato's aria. Renato is a character in Verdi's "Un ballo in maschera."

This is post #27 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: crossword, Yoko Ono

Who's On First? Exactly!

I'm so behind the culture, I didn't realize that a bit of The Who's "Baba O'Riley" was being used for the theme music of "CSI: NY." That's so wrong, but not completely shocking, as The Who at one time had an album "The Who Sell Out."



What's next, using the Sistene Chapel for a new creepy Burger King commercial? But the wrongness pales in comparison to Fox News Radio, who stole a Who lyric from "Won't Get Fooled Again" in reporting on the results of the Iraqi constitutional election, saying "...and the Iraqis tip their hat to the new constitution..." I almost drove off the road when I heard that one. Maybe I'm just not aware of it yet, but I'm waiting for someone to do a remix of "Won't Get Fooled Again," interspersed with sound bites regarding the confirmation of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Maybe I'm the someone.

The Who Baba O'Riley Won't Get Fooled Again

Ceci n'es pas une énigme

Or, "This is not a puzzle." Today's puzzle's theme was the lack of a theme, as the themed words were things that weren't really true about the puzzle. There was no nounifying motif (20A), the puzzle wasn't wholly themeless (38A), and it wasn't just random words (53A). The composer, David Elfman, certainly didn't just throw random words together. Life without design is an enigma indeed.



When I filled in ursa (15A), I thought of God's question to Job: "Dost thou bring forth the constellations each in its season? or dost thou guide the Bear with her sons?" (Job 38:32, Darby)

Leah (18A) may have not been loved by Jacob, but she was the great-great....-grandmother of Jesus. Yawls are small, two-masted ships, two-masters. Elia (37A) was the alias of essayist Charles Lamb. The only time I've ever heard the word eclat used is in the Disney movie The Aristocats, sung by Phil Harris...

I've got that wanderlust,
Gotta walk the scene...
Gotta kick up highway dust,
Feel the grass that's green
Gotta strut them city streets
Showin' off my Eclat, yeah
Tellin' my friends of the social elite
Or some cute cat I happen to meet

Do I need to mix with a better class of people?

This is post #26 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: crossword, Magritte, postmodern

They Left Out "Eliminates"

Tuesday's puzzle was all about various parts of the process of consumption. The Ethan Hawke movie was Reality Bites. The candy that's been around for some time is Charleston Chews. Amazingly, I've never eaten a Charleston Chew. The Monty Python birds were African swallows. I first thought it might be "dead parrots," but that didn't have enough letters. The subtle distinctions between African and European swallows was a running gag in the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." And the news summaries were daily digests. You can tell I don't have the puzzle in front of me.

You usually see arco in a musical score when the stings have been playing pizzicato (plucking the strings), and you want them to stop. Zsa Zsa Gabor was in another recent puzzle, but there was only one Zsa this time. Leopold and Loeb were two young men accused of "the crime of the century" in 1924. They had the early 20th century equivalent of Johnny Cochran in Clarence Darrow, who gave a 12-hour speech against the death penalty. I never use the word schmutz in my speaking or writing, but it is a word meaning "dirt," so in the case of a [chimney]sweep, it would be soot.

But speaking of eating and digesting, Jesus had something to say about that in Mark 7 (The Bible in Basic English), in response to a question from the Pharisees about eating with unwashed hands...

And turning to the people again, he said to them, Give ear to me all of you, and let my words be clear to you: There is nothing outside the man which, going into him, is able to make him unclean: but the things which come out of the man are those which make the man unclean.

And when he had gone into the house away from all the people, his disciples put questions to him about the saying. And he said to them, Have even you so little wisdom? Do you not see that whatever goes into a man from outside is not able to make him unclean, because it goes not into the heart but into the stomach, and goes out with the waste? He said this, making all food clean. And he said, That which comes out of the man, that makes the man unclean. Because from inside, from the heart of men, come evil thoughts and unclean pleasures, the taking of goods and of life, broken faith between husband and wife, the desire of wealth, wrongdoing, deceit, sins of the flesh, an evil eye, angry words, pride, foolish acts: All these evil things come from inside, and make the man unclean.

Those BLT's might give you higher cholesterol, and give you a sooner trip to your reward, but I'm here to tell you that they won't keep you out of heaven.

This is post #25 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: crossword, digestion

Job Applications

Going back to Saturday's puzzle, I somehow thought white doves was the symbol of innocence, but it was white roses. I kept thinking that tip reducer was some variation on lousy service, spills, etc, but it was emery, as in an emery board. I kept wanting Study, e. g. to be dorm, but it was just room. I kept wanting the Fleetwood Mac hit to be Tusk (dumb song), but it was Sara. I wanted wooden decoys to be duck models, but it was moose calls. In the immortal words of Mark Twain, it's not what you don't know that hurts you, but what you know for certain that isn't so.

And now for Monday's puzzle. The only thing that was slightly interesting was that the N. C. College was Elon instead of Duke, the much more well-known school. Asia's fast-shrinking Aral Sea, which is really a lake, made another appearance. Elba as Napoleon's isle of exile, is not only a frequent crossword word, but part of one of the greatest palindromes of all time, Napoleon's lament, "Able was I, ere I saw Elba."

This is post #24 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: crossword, palindrome

Reflections on the Week

I learned from Stuff Mark Wrote that wabi-sabi is a Japanese aesthetic that recognizes imperfection and incompleteness, that on this side of heaven, nothing lasts, nothing is finished, nothing is perfect.

I'm thankful for the kindred spirits the-deblog.com and Provident 360.

King at SCSUScholars is welcoming me back to the blogosphere. Even in the short time I was gone, there were some new MOB members, such as Peace Like A River.

The people at Rollyo were very nice in getting back to me quickly. They had a display in itty-bitty letters down at the bottom that they were powered by Yahoo, so whatever syntax applies to Yahoo also applies to Rollyo. They are working on getting around the 25 site limit on the searchroll. I'm not clear on how Rollyo is going to make money. It is my hope that other MOBsters will put the Rollyo search script on their sites.

Dennis Prager had two additional complaints today to mine about the New York Times. They not only botched his change of address, resulting in weeks with no delivery, but hung up on him when he called long distance to try and fix it. They not only lost a 30-year customer, but a 30-year customer with a nationally syndicated talk show who told a few million of his closest friends about it. No matter what you think of the New York Times, it was not a good day for the customer service department.

"Oneall" had nothing to do with neckware, but with a 1-1 tie. D'oh!

And no, the fact that the blogosphere seems to be strongly against the Miers nomination is not why I came out against it. I actually sent President Bush an email giving him six reasons to withdraw the nomination. I wrote letters to Senators Dayton and Coleman requesting their opposition. My respect for the Commissioner and his arguments moved me from angry, active opposition to bewildered, cautious pessimism, but the events and conversations of the past week made me think it out again.

And now for the stats...1 click and $.04 earnings from AdSense (down from 2, $.19); moving up to Adorable Little Rodent in the TTLB Ecosystem (up from Flappy Bird); 2 links from 2 sites in Technorati, getting my first non-script permalink from Provident 360; four first-time commenters (Stuff Mark Wrote, Provident 360, the-deblog.com, and Peace Like A River, same as last week); 148 visits this week, up from 138 last week.

"For all that has been, thanks; to all that shall be, yes."

AdSense TTLB Ecosystem Technorati Site Meter

I Oppose The Miers Nomination

Normally I wouldn't blog on something like this, but the Bear says "Declare!" He's lifted his hand and given the command for bloggers throughout the land to take a stand. Seriously, he has requested that bloggers respond by creating a post including one of three exact phrases. Here is mine.

I oppose the Miers nomination.



Now those of you who have read my earlier blogs know that I have been enthusiastic in my admiration of President Bush. But I can't support this for multiple reasons.

1) While I respect the accomplishments of Ms. Miers, she possesses a different type of experience than what the country needs on the Supreme Court. I was pleased to see the intimacy with the Constitution displayed by John Roberts. Harriet Miers doesn't have that intimacy. I don't want someone who has to "bone up" on constitutional law. The thing about proportional representation seems to have been blown out of proportion.

2) Even if Ms. Miers is confirmed (it now seems to be a nontrivial possibility that she won't make it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee), her opinions and rulings will be under a cloud of suspicion because of her previous position as White House Counsel. One argument against affirmative action is that it puts the accomplishments of its beneficiaries under a cloud of suspicion. Are they where they are because of their merit, or because of affirmative action? The opinions of Ms. Miers will be under a cloud, where people wonder, "Is that what she really thinks, or is that what President Bush (or Satan Karl Rove) has directed her to think?" That's a lousy cloud to be under for the rest of one's life. When Instapundit said there's a good reason why White House Counsels don't become Supreme Court Justices, but he explicitly say what it was, so I thought for a while, and I thought of the above. I'm not even considering the certainty that there will be cases in between now and January 2009 where Ms. Miers would have to recuse herself.

3) (or 2b) The opponents of the Miers nomination have already drawn and sharpened Federalist 76, the one Hamilton wrote about how the judges are confirmed by the Senate to prevent the nomination of judges so pliable as to be obsequious instruments of the President's pleasure. Harriet Miers, for all her intelligence and accomplishment, is going to be characterized as a pliable, obsequious instrument of the President's pleasure. Given the propensity of Senators of both persuasions to orate verbosely and windily in the presence of a microphone, I hereby predict in the confirmation hearings that at least one Senator will accuse Ms. Miers of being a pliable etc. If she hadn't told President Bush he was the most brilliant man she had ever met, she wouldn't have this problem. This is actually an upstat, because Robert Bork's confirmation wasn't killed on any grounds mentioned in the Federalist, but because his beliefs didn't agree with the then Democratic Senate. I'm glad that the Federalist is entering into public discourse.

There are a lot of other arguments that have been raised, but these are enough for me. So lift every keyboard and blog!

TTLB Miers oppose

Clip of the Day - Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson - April in Paris

I got this from Provident 360's Yahoo radio station.





The song was written in 1932 by E. Y. Harburg (who also wrote the lyrics for "Over the Rainbow" and "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?") and Vernon Duke (who led a double life, using his real name, Vladimir Dukelsky, for his classical compositions, and Vernon Duke for his popular compositions). This performance of the song was recorded in 1976, with Ray Brown on bass.

April in Paris E. Y. Harburg Vernon Duke Ella Fitzgerald Oscar Peterson

MOB Search Capability (Sort Of)

It is possible using Google to search within a site or within a group of sites with the same domain ending using the site: keyword. For example, if you google "site:k12.mn.us" you will get about a million results of pages where the URLs end in k12.mn.us. But that's not what I want. What I want is to be able to quickly search the height and length and depth and breadth of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers. The site: thing won't work, as there are many different domain names in the MOB. But I learned from Kim Komando that there is something that will let me take a big step toward what I want. It's a site called Rollyo, that will allow you to create a list of up to 25 sites to search. Yes, I know the MOB has more than 25 members, so I took the top 25 MOB blogs according to TTLB Ecosystem rankings, so you can quickly search some of the MOB. Click here to reach the search page. I will be moving the link to the search page to the sidebar presently. Some of the usual suspects are there, but there are some blogs you might not expect as sources. Here is the list of sources, in order of their Ecosystem rankings:

Power Line - Props to The Elder for adding the Northern Alliance blogs to the MOB Blogroll
Captain's Quarters
Questions and Answers - Winner of a recent Warnie Award
Life As I See It - the blog formerly known as Kiihnworld
Fraters Libertas
έχω ζωη (Echo Zoe)
SCSUScholars
sprucegoose
Cake Eater Chronicles
The Patriette
EckerNet
Kowabunga
Psycmeistr's Ice Palace
Shot In The Dark
The M.A.W.B. Squad
MyView - the blog formerly known as My View From Minnetonka
Shock and Blog
Our House
Bogus Gold
Freedom Dogs
ColdHeartedTruth
what if?
Peace Like A River
Single Malt Pundit - the blog formerly known as Jay Reding. Jay actually created a Rollyo MOB before I did, but his searchroll only has 5 blogs instead of 25
Market Power.

I'm grasping that the Northern Alliance members are to be commended for cultivating major bench depth, and that more mighty bloggers are springing forth from the fertile Minnesota soil, e'en as we speak.

I took the searchroll out for a test drive, searching for "Nick Coleman" and "Vikings." I got 648 results for Nick Coleman, 609 results for "Nick Coleman" and 664 results for Nick+Coleman. It seems to be unclear what kind of syntax rules they are using. I got 333 results for Vikings, so it appears to be working very nicely.

Minnesota bloggers search TTLB Ecosystem Rollyo

Something's Horribly Wrong With My Alternating Current

I looked at the crossword puzzle in today's Star-Tribune, only to discover that it's "Alternating Current." That's the puzzle that Debra did a week ago. I don't get it... I didn't do the Sunday puzzle last week because I spent too much time on the Saturday puzzle. And yes, I looked at the comments giving the answers to the themed clues, so I've already had assistance. The themed words were all variations of common expressions where "on" was substituted for "off," and vice versa. Alternating current as described by Nikola Tesla was an improvement over Thomas Edison's direct current method for distributing electricity.

Osier (19A) is the weaving willow.

I didn't know that Earl (16D) Tupper was the Tupper in Tupperware.

I don't get Oneall (9D) for low tie. Is that some kind of fashion thing?

It was a lucky guess that Taoism (35A) was the philosophy of the "Chuang-Tzu."

I didn't know that seines (64A) are a kind of net with floats at the top and weights at the bottom.

Composer Con Pederson was a crafty gent, thinking I would fall into the trap and say that the Casablanca role was "Rick," played by Humphrey Bogart It was Ilsa (81A), played by Ingrid Bergman. It could have even been Carl, played by S. Z. Sakall, now that I think of it.

Eden (73D) was the garden site. The crossword puzzle has lots of references to Genesis: Adam, Eve, Eden, fall.

No, I didn't know Leon was north-northwest of Madrid, but I had the other letters.

I had the hardest time with 86D, Will of the Bible. Will? What do you mean, Will? There's no Will in the Bible. Last will and testament? Then the light came on and I realized it was shalt (86D), as in "you will, thou shalt..."

An orison (96A) is a prayer if you live in the Middle Ages.

I didn't know that Essen (119A) was north of Cologne. I had _ _ _ E N, and so I tried "Rouen" but that didn't work.

I didn't know that a sett is a paving stone, usually of granite.

Debra informs me that a big chunk of the country gets the NYT Sunday Crossword a week late. Now I face a dilemma. I would rather have eight-inch steel needles plunged into my eyes than pay $5.00 each week for the the Sunday edition of the Bush-hating, fact-twisting, error-hiding, Krugman-running, terrorist-abetting, Abu-Ghraib-puffing, money-charging-for-web-content New York Times. But how else will I get the newest crossword?

This is post #23 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: Con Pederson, crossword

A Kindred Spirit

To Crossword Bebop is Provident 360, even if he doesn't talk about crosswords. He has a lot of love for God, a lot of love for music, and the connection between the music of the past and the music of today. He has a Yahoo radio station with an interesting mix. I commend him to your attention.

jazz Yahoo radio

Yet Another Thrashing

I was so excited to get a Friday puzzle completed with minimal assistance, that I was unprepared for getting smacked up side the head by Saturday's puzzle. I need major assistance.

And tell me what street/compares with Mott St. (3D)/in July? Melba, e. g., is Dame (14A), as in Dame Nellie Melba, soprano of the early 20th century, and the inspiration for melba toast and peach melba. The automotive pioneer is Adam Opel (18A). What did Delaware? Some people say she wore her New Jersey, but I don't know, Alaska. (29A).

Doesn't Sweden use the Euro? But the Swedish coin they are asking about is an ore (34D). Dennis Prager said you could tell what you needed to know about a country by what they put on their coins. For example, all American coins have "Liberty," "E pluribus unum," (Latin for "out of many, one") and "In God We Trust." My friend Light Within in Pakistan tells me that a phrase on Pakistani currency is "Rizq-e-hala is the best virtue," or "earning in the right and legal ways is worship." When I visited Cuba in January of 2001, I noticed that all the coins had "Patria O Muerte" (Spanish for "Country or Death")

Jesus had something to say about coins as well, in Luke 20...(The Bible in Basic English)

And they [the Pharisees] kept watch on him, and sent out secret representatives, who were acting the part of good men, in order that they might get something from his words, on account of which they might give him up to the government and into the power of the ruler. And they put a question to him, saying, Master, we are certain that your teaching and your words are right, and that you have no respect for a man's position, but you are teaching the true way of God: Is it right for us to make payment of taxes to Caesar or not? But he saw through their trick and said to them, Let me see a penny. Whose image and name are on it? And they said, Caesar's. And he said, Then give to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to God the things which are God's.

Some people interpret this passage as saying that Christians are not to engage in the political process. But I consider it to be saying that just as the penny is stamped with Caesar's image, we are stamped with God's image. Caesar owns the money stamped with his image, God owns the people stamped with His image.

The 2002 Nobel laureate in literature was Imre (50D) Kertesz. There was another Nobel prize winner in Friday's puzzle, Hermann Hesse. Since this year's Nobel prizes have been announced, the blogosphere has responded to the selection of Harold Pinter for literature somewhere between "Huh?" and "@#$!%" I'm recalling Chris Hitchens ripping Pinter and the Nobel committee a new one in the Wall Street Journal. I'm interested in hearing which living writer you would pick.

You can tell I'm stalling, but I have to admit that I'm stuck, even with assistance, and I will most assuredly shake the heavens with a mighty "D'oh" when I discover the solution on Monday.

This is post #22 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati coins, crossword, Nobel Prize

Here We Go With AntiChrist Again...

I seem to have thought that two days ago was Friday, and was claiming victory over the Friday puzzle, when in fact I had only done the Thursday puzzle, which I had done in previous weeks. But I got the Friday puzzle done this week with a modicum of assistance. I misspelled Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski's (18A) name, leaving out the first z, which made 7D not make any sense. When I spelled the name correctly, Jazz Age (7D) made a lot more sense.

I ended up getting this puzzle starting from the lower right hand corner, and it just involved a lot of staring. Like I was ever going to get a tautomeric form of vitamin C. I thought 56D, Diamond stat. was kts at first, but when I got Antichrist for 55A, it became clear that it was RBI (runs batted in), a statistic at which the Twins failed to excel this year. I racked my brains in vain for French words for resident to get 45A, only to discover later from letters that it was Norman. I was certain that 27D, Snow White's poisoner was queen, but that kept not working for anything of the nearby words. Apple didn't work either, and after much frustration, crone emerged as the answer.

21D says that parts of 7 countries lie within the Arctic Circle, but what are the seven countries? I'll give you a hint: Iceland is not one of them. But if you can't think of them, they are mentioned at this Wikipedia article on the Arctic Circle. Eris (13D), the goddess of discord, has made a number of recent appearances in popular culture: she was in the recent Sinbad movie, and she seems to be a regular guest villainess on Cartoon Network's The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. I kept wanting 3D to be something to do with mines or mining, but I eventually was persuaded that it was arrowheads. I kept wanting 1A, Aerie area, to be nest, but it was crag. Aerie was a word in a recent puzzle.

And now back to antichrist. This word is one of those Bible words where it's not intuitively obvious how it should be translated. In popular usage, it means "the exact opposite of." For example, Supreme Court Justice nominee Harriet Miers has been frequently called the "anti-Souter," as she is well-known by President Bush, whereas David Souter was hardly known at all by the elder President Bush. Since antichrist is only used in two books of the Bible (1 John and 2 John), we don't have any additional context for translating the Greek word antichristos. But other uses of the prefix anti in the Greek literature of the day suggest the connotation of "a not-quite-as-good substitute for something until the real thing shows up." There isn't even a negative connotation in the other usages of anti. So Bible translators have a dilemma then. Should they translate antichristos literally as antichrist, knowing full well that regular folk such as myself will assume the wrong connotation, or should they translate it as "that which usurps the place of Christ," which is more accurate, but involves making an executive decision on the connotation? The translators have decided on the literal option, believing that the scholars will clean up the potential confusion.

This is post #21 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: antichrist, crossword

Another Crossword Blogger...

Is Debra Hamel author of the-deblog.com.



Anyone who promotes BAFAB week (Buy a Friend A Book) is just all right with me. She seems to be only doing the Sunday crossword, and then listing the themed clues, and putting their answers in the comments. I haven't had any strong responses one way or another, so perhaps I will do likewise. But if I learned something I didn't know, I still want to write about that.

Third Time's The Charm

For doing the Friday New York Times Crossword, that is.

I don't remember seeing much of him in the movie Titanic, but John Jacob Astor (14A) was the wealthiest passenger on board when the great ship went down. Oona Chaplin is a frequent visitor to the crosswords. Britney Spears might leave this message on her answering machine "I'm not in right now." (17A) Ronnie Earle left this message on Tom DeLay's answering machine, "I'll try you later." (24A) The message on the fitness instructor's answering machine was "Wait for the tone." (43A) I would have made the clue for 58A, Message on a mathematician's answering machine, but they decided to make it a record executive instead, "Leave your number."

Adlai Stevenson was before my time, but he appears in a lot of crosswords in one form or another, losing presidential elections in 1952 and 1956. His initials are in 22A. I never think about where the Pieta is, but it's not a big shock that it's at St. Peter's. Erno (11D) Laszlo was not just a cosmetics maker, but the father of the whole modern cosmetics industry. Ivan (24D) as Bunin's first name was a total guess that turned out to be right. I had never heard of Skinnay Ennis, singer and bandleader in the big band era. Nome is the biggest town on Morton Sound. I got Siam as Rama V's land from other words. Yoko Ocean Child Ono makes her second appearance in the crosswords since the launch of Crossword Bebop.

This is post #20 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: crossword

Clip of the Day - Douglas Bass - SugarFire

I've spent way too much time creating this, and its not as clever as I'd like it to be, but it's a start. I used Audacity to create this. I'm sure there are better tools for this, and I could use Audacity in cleverer ways, but again, it's a start.

I've heard that The Crazy World of Arthur Brown didn't even have a guitarist. It should be noted that Arthur Brown is alive, sane (but still eccentric) and sober in Austin, Texas, which is more than can be said for a number of musicians of his day.

What was I thinking? "Sugar, Sugar" was meant to be such a sweet, innocent song, and "Fire" has this emotional tone of doom. Somehow I was thinking that all our righteousness is as filthy rags, even in our sweetest, most innocent moments, we still need a savior.

I give you "SugarFire"

The Archies Sugar Sugar Arthur Brown Fire mashups

Don't Get Me Started On Madonna...Too Late

I am way behind the curve on the culture. I had no idea that Presbyterians (20A) was an anagram for Britney Spears, (37A) but apparently, this has been known as early as 1999. You can see from this link that the previously pregnant poptart's name is also an anagram for "best in prayers" (54A). Sounds like a category in a dog show.

But as long as Britney Spears is in the puzzle, I should make mention of the latest wisdom of her role model, Madonna, who says her new documentary says she's moved on. With all due respect, I don't get it for a New York nanosecond. Warren Beatty said everything you need to know about the quirky Qabbalist when he said "She doesn't even want to live off camera."



I don't mean to quench someone's religious seeking, but there's a rhinoceros in the corner that's being ignored. A commenter on the above item nailed it for me.

It is nice that Madonna has moved on. But what about the carnage she left in her wake? The untold damage that her raunchy, widely accepted behavior inflicted on a generation of girls (Spears, Aguilera, Pink are all messes that Madonna helped create) is left in her rear view mirror as if nothing happened. She is a Mommy now.

Madonna and I share the same birthday, August 16. She's a year younger than I am.

I didn't know that anges (1A) was the French word for angels. I just blanked out when I saw P _ _ N _ for honky-tonk sight, and got assistance to get piano (15A), I was thinking "beer, boots, bull, drinking, dancing, fighting?" Mai (53A) is the only French month of the year with three letters. Allots is usually metes, but this time it was doles. Adam appears a lot in crossword puzzles with various clues such as "husband in First Family," "Lion namer," "Most famous apple-eater," etc. Handel's Messiah contains a setting of 1 Corinthians 15:22 (KJV), "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."

This is post #19 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post
This is post #1 at this blog tagged Madonna. Next Post

Technorati: Britney Spears, crossword, Madonna

Ornithology

I'm going to look at seven blogs in the TTLB Ecosystem that are a little higher than me, and see if there's something cool about them I can steal.

Bruised Orange is a blog written by a former airborne reservist. He hasn't posted anything in a while, possibly due to fleeing the wrath of Hurricane Rita, and the impending birth of his third child.

Stuff Mark Wrote is blog about poetry and other disorders. He has some vivid word imagery in his blog.

calimero.ilcannocchiale.it is in Italian, but any blog with a picture of the Iraqi Information Minister in the upper left corner can't be all bad.

The US Market Blog seems to be but one member in a fleet of investment blogs.

heather corinna: pure as the driven slush is a blog featuring left-wing political and sexual activism. Money quote from the most recent post:

I tell you, this period of U.S. history will either end up creating more activists than ever -- this is my hope -- or shoving more of us into retirement from sheer exhaustion than ever.

I also have to give her credit for the rotating photos at the top.

Chekhov's Mistress is a literature blog. I was going to try and say something more intelligent about the blog, and I thought I would be able to because there was an "About" link in the upper left corner. All it had were links to other sites, so I couldn't. So if you're going to make an "About" link, have it link to something useful, the "elevator speech" for your blog.

Our Man in Hanoi is an English worker with a Peace Corps-type of organization in Viet Nam. He writes...

There is no where else like Vietnam. People who have been here longer than me, have told me that only five years ago it was all bicycles on the road. Now it’s mostly motorbikes but more and more cars are starting to appear. Vietnam is changing. And although I wish I had seen it then – now is also fascinating. The change is here but McDonalds and Starbucks haven’t arrived yet. Nothing is ruined. Not yet.

He also has links to a lot of pictures from Vietnam.

It's amazing, the stuff you can learn just by paying attention. It should be noted that none of these blogs mention their Ecosystem status, one of the danger signs of having a life.

This is post #5 at this blog tagged TTLB Ecosystem. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: Flappy Bird, TTLB Ecosystem

A Poorly Made Commercial

Regardless of what a commercial has, it is indisputable that if something in the commercial made you forget the company running the ad, it was a bad commercial. The commercial for White Castle, in particular their new Honey Chipolte Chicken Sandwich. The DJ takes one bite in a rather industrial club setting, then puts The Archies "Sugar, Sugar" on the turntable. A thug looks at him menacingly, so he then puts on The Crazy World of Arthur Brown's "Fire." At the end of the commercial, a mix of "Sugar, Sugar" and "Fire" is being played, and the club happily goes back to dancing. All I remembered was "spicy, honey, something..." My little peanut brain is spinning with the possibilities of how "Sugar, Sugar" and "Fire" could be remixed and otherwise commingled.



This is post #1 at this blog tagged Arthur Brown. Next Post
This is post #1 at this blog tagged Fire. Next Post
This is post #1 at this blog tagged mashup. Next Post
This is post #1 at this blog tagged Sugar Sugar. Next Post
This is post #1 at this blog tagged The Archies. Next Post

Technorati: Arthur Brown, commercial, Fire, Honey Chipotle Chicken Sandwich, mashup, Sugar Sugar, The Archies, White Castle

Privacy...

All the long words had something to do with privacy. 17A, Fifth Amendment issue, is private property, 26A, ulterior motive, is hidden agenda. I can just hear Ricky Ricardo suspiciously saying (and usually not without reason) "Lucy, I know you have an interior motive." 48A, Australia was the first country to implement it, is secret ballot, and 63A, Intelligence endeavor, is covert operation. They didn't have clues that related to the long words today.

22A, Church recesses, is apses, a frequently used word, usually in singular form. An apse is a usually semicircular recess at the east end of a building, usually a church. 38A is a pangram, a set of words that has all the letters in the alphabet. I'm more familiar with "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog," or "Please fill my empty boxes with five liquor jugs." That last one seems to be missing a z...

I didn't know what lyric poem was, and it turned out to be epode. An epode is a lyric poem sung by the chorus in a Greek tragedy, one of three parts of the stasimon. Got that? In Greek tragedy, there's stuff that happens before the chorus comes in, and then they sing a song, commonly called the parados, then some more stuff happens, and then the chorus sings again, and that's called the stasimon, and an epode is part of that, and then some more stuff happens, usually something pretty bad.

I wonder if Tyco Toys, maker of the Magic 8-Ball, is related to the Tyco where the CEO went to jail..."Reply hazy, ask later."

I learned that one part of a flower was a sepal, one of the outer floral leaves. I never think of the president of a university as a prexy, but there it is, so I learned something.

This is post #18 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: apse, Crossword, epode

It's A Dog's Life

That was 54A in today's puzzle, with the long clues being Barbara Boxer (20A), Joe Cocker (27A) and Mark Spitz (49A).



Ewer is a word that frequently appears. Zasu Pitts was in an earlier puzzle. Johanna Spyri is the author of Heidi, a story that will go down in television history, as network executives turned away from a football game whose outcome seemed to be certain, only to have the Oakland Raiders score two touchdowns in 50 seconds. Whenever they mention a four letter civil-rights organization, it's usually SNCC (51A), Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, instead of SCLC, Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

This is post #17 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: Crossword, Joe Cocker

Reflections on the Week

I don't know if I will continue visiting blogs that are slightly higher than me in the TTLB Ecosystem. It is my hope to point out what is good about other blogs, lighting a single candle rather than cursing the darkness, yada yada yada.

I seem to be wanting to revisit not just jazz, but the music of the 20th century.

On further review, I'm glad the OED (the Oxford English Dictionary) was one of the words in Friday's puzzle, because the gold standard of wordhood is inclusion in the OED. I give them credit for adding wiki and podcast to the dictionary, as you can see at this page of recently added words.

Ok, I do feel a little guilty about the Hingis/Kournikova picture. They were doubles partners for some time.

Folksonomy is but one aspect of a much larger movement which is being dubbed by Tim O'Reilly as Web 2.0. I will probably write some things about the Web 2.0 meme in the days to come.

I'm never going to be able to say "Aral Sea" without putting "fast-shrinking" in front of it. Why is it fast-shrinking you ask? Because the rivers that feed it are being diverted for agriculture.

I've been linked to by Instapundit once, but that really didn't count, as I was hosting the Carnival of the Vanities at the time. I was mentioned by name in Instapundit for the first time this week, but it was because of an email instead of a post. Moments after I discovered a portion of my email appearing, I hastily scribbled a post about the evening's proceedings in hopes of getting a link, but it was to no avail. Anyway, I'm sure Mark Kennedy knows about Porkbusters now!

My putting Flickr photos with the same tags as some of my posts is one way for me to get into the whole Web 2.0 spirit. Fabrice Noel's story was on the back page of the latest Sports Illustrated.

Putting in a CBox was an experiment. No one has used it since last Tuesday. But someone who was looking for me found me and used it.

And now for the stats...I made a grand total of $0.19 on AdSense ads this week, which is 9 times what I made last week. I also got my first clicks on ads this week. I rocketed up in the TTLB Ecosystem from a Lowly Insect to a Flappy Bird with my inclusion in the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers (MOB) blogroll. I welcome first-time commenters tony.dowler.com, fellow MOBster Blogizdat, John P. Hoke's Asylum, and fellow MOBster Always Right, Usually Correct. I welcome the 138 visitors from this week, an upstat from the 120 from last week.

This is post #2 at this blog tagged AdSense. First Post Next Post
This is post #3 at this blog tagged SiteMeter. First Post Previous Post Next Post
This is post #3 at this blog tagged Technorati. First Post Previous Post Next Post
This is post #4 at this blog tagged TTLB Ecosystem. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: AdSense, Site Meter, Technorati, TTLB Ecosystem

Clip of the Day - Alvin Lucier - I Am Sitting In A Room

When I listened to Raiding the 20th Century, "I Am Sitting in a Room" by Alvin Lucier was mentioned as an electroacoustic classic, a minimalist classic and a looping classic. It struck me as odd that I had never heard it or heard of it.



So it was very nice that the same people who hosted Raiding the 20th Century are also hosting I Am Sitting In A Room. It would seem that Lucier is still exploring the whole resonant frequencies bit, as the "Listen" page of his website allows us to hear his "Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drums," from 1990, where the notes of the piano trigger resonant frequencies of the snare drums.

I get the point that there's something that's intrinsic to things, after you strip away all the social conventions and artificialities. But to me, you might as well push a car off a cliff and record the crashing noises and call that music, because things happen when you push a car off a cliff. Then why am I offering it to you? Because you might find it interesting.

I give you I Am Sitting in a Room by Alvin Lucier.



Alvin Lucier I Am Sitting in a Room

You Betcha?

There are some odds and ends from the Friday puzzle. I would be remiss if I failed to mention that 39A, Fine, in slapstick, was Larry, as in Moe, Larry and Curly. When I watched Three Stooges cartoons as a child, the host went a mile and a half out of his way to say "Now kids, don't ever try to do what the Three Stooges on TV" A muon has the same charge of an electron, and about 200 times the mass of an electron. So we now have muon and pion for our collection of subatomic particles, which will probably come in handy for future puzzles. Jeans was wrong for the French royal, it was Renes. Noontide was a bit of a stretch for period of greatest success, and Doted on was the correct answer for beloved.

And now for Saturday's puzzle...

Howard Mohr, in his classic How to Talk Minnesotan, has mentioned that you're well on your way to learning how to talk Minnesotan if you master the expression "You betcha," (1A) as in response to "Thank you" or "I appreciate it" or in answer to a question.

The loser to JFK is U. S. Steel. President Kennedy succeeded in pressuring U. S. Steel to not raise steel prices. I did a term paper in middle school on political cartoons, and I remember seeing a Bill Mauldin cartoon of President Kennedy in a superhero costume, bending a steel girder over his knee. My parents gave me a record called the First Family. On that record, there was a selection where President Kennedy was telling a bedtime story to Caroline about the great prince who had trouble with the Steel duke.

Ecru (5D) is another frequently appearing word.
I had the hardest time with the what the U. S. Open is played on. I assumed it was some kind of surface, instead of EDT (19A).
The only reason that I knew that "Erl-King" is a lied, or German song, was because I had studied it in music classes in college.

I got everything above 35A without assistance.

Children's author Danziger was Paula, author of the Amber Brown series, among other books.
The Bond girl of 1969 was Diana Rigg, who for me will always be Mrs. Emma Peel, the charming, witty, intelligent, beautiful secret agent who could karate your fanny into next week without blinking.



That means that 63A, schedule checkers, is IRS agents.
That means that 42D, Big Swedish export is akvavit, a vodka flavored with caraway, dill, and other herbs and spices.

And at this point, I declare that even with assistance, I'm stuck. And I haven't even started on the Sunday puzzle.

This is post #16 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post
This is post #1 at this blog tagged How To Talk Minnesotan. Next Post

Technorati: crossword, Diana Rigg, Emma Peel, How To Talk Minnesotan, Howard Mohr, Vaughn Meader

The Weekly Fanny-Kicking

I actually knew that 19A, 1993 American League batting champ John, was Olerud, but I looked it up later to confirm.
Whenever there is a comparative like more in the clue, as in 23A, it is just about a certainty that the last two letters will be er.
That makes 5D, "It's all _____" (I can't remember), a blur.
9D, Start of a Mozart title, is most likely Eine, as in "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik."
I believe 16A, Near-slave worker, is minion.
Here we go again, where the 26A, suffix for social could be either "ists" or "ites."
29A, Author Rand, could only be Ayn. I'm currently reading her compilation of essays called "The Virtue of Selfishness." If she was around today, she would be roundly mocked in the blogosphere as one of the few people who need to get over herself even more than Paris Hilton. In the movie "The Princess Bride," there is a character named Vizzini who believes he's pretty smart...



Vizzini: I can't compete with you physically, and you're no match for my brains.
Westley: You're that smart?
Vizzini: Let me put it this way. Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates?
Westley: Yes.
Vizzini: Morons.

I remembered that scene when I read the introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness. Ayn Rand reminds me of Vizzini.
All I want is a penny for each time 25D, Jai ____, Alai appears in a crossword puzzle.
30D, Seymour ____, father of supercomputing is Cray, which was one I knew without hesitation.
I believe 51D, It comes in many vols., is enc, short for encyclopedia.

At this point, I'm now stumped without assistance. So I'm going to learn a lot today.

25A, Tamiroff of "For Whom The Bell Tolls" is Akim.
32A, "Bwana Devil" was the first one, is three-d movie.
46A, Frank Sinatra's "Meet Me At The ____", is Copa. Listen to a little bit.
47A, Fritz of the Chicago Symphony, is Reiner. Reiner died in 1963.
10D, Daughter of Hyperion, is Eos, yet another frequently appearing word in crossword puzzles. This means minion is wrong, and even eine might be wrong.
44D, French Royal called "Le Bon" and others, Jeans
41D, Trader Vic invention, mai tai
47D, "Coriolanus" setting is Rome. Coriolanus was one of Shakespeare's lesser known plays.

I seem to be a little stuck here. enc is wrong for 51D, eine is wrong for 9D, because the last letter has to be able to be part of a Roman numeral. That means it would be cosi, as in "cosi fan tutte." minion was wrong, but coolie is right. 3D is take center stage, 15D is lemonade stand, and 11D is blockade running. I've gotten most of the puzzle, so this week was not nearly as severe a fanny-kicking as last week's Friday puzzle. I seem to have something wrong in the lower right corner, which I will fix tomorrow.

UPDATE: D'oh! The cause of domestic disturbances is snorers, and the thing that comes in many vols. is the OED, or Oxford English Dictionary.

This is post #15 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: Ayn Rand, crossword, Vizzini

Minnesota Organization Of Bloggers Caucus

I have been a member of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers (or MOB) in times past. The MOB tends to congregate at Keegan's Irish Pub in Minneapolis on Thursday nights for rousing, yet informed discussion on the issues of the day, the weekly trivia competition, and consumption of adult beverages (not necessarily in that order).

But tonight was a particulary interesting night, as Representative (and future U. S. Senator, I hope) Mark Kennedy was present, moving from table to table, and asking about the bloggers that were at each table. There might have been room at the table where David Strom and Craig Westover were sitting, or at the table where Nihilist in Golf Pants and Atomizer from Fraters Libertas were sitting, but I ended up at a table with The Night Writer, Derek and the other gentleman whose name I'm forgetting from Freedom Dogs, and Always Right, Usually Correct. Heidi Frederickson, Mark Kennedy's spokesperson/staffer, was also at our table.

We had a good conversation with Mark Kennedy when he was at our table. He talked a little bit about the Tom DeLay indictment and its consequences for the Republican House. He pointed out that the narrow passage of the recent refinery bill was more than just a reflection on the merits of the bill, but a test to determine the strength of Republican House leadership in DeLay's absence.

We also had a good conversation about pork in the federal budget. In the interests of full disclosure, it should be noted that the Porkbusters web page does NOT show any pork in Mark Kennedy's district. There is currently about $135,000,000 in pork for the State of Minnesota (widening the highway between Fergus Falls and International Falls, biking trails and pedestrian paths in Minneapolis and St. Paul, etc.) So the bloggers made some progress in forwarding the Porkbusters campaign last night.

Our trivia team, which we called (on Heidi's suggestion) "No Expectations," came close, so very close, to tying the hated Fraters, who retained their title from last week. How were we to know the Irish have discovered wine? If we had gotten the two favorite movies of John Roberts (North by Northwest and Dr. Zhivago), and gotten that 2 feet of rapidly moving water is enough to float a car, that would have done it.

This is post #1 at this blog tagged Mark Kennedy. Next Post
This is post #1 at this blog tagged Minnesota Organization of Blogs. Next Post
This is post #1 at this blog tagged Porkbusters. Next Post

Technorati: Mark Kennedy, Minnesota Organization of Blogs, Porkbusters

A Suitable Puzzle, This One...

I knew there was something funny about Thursday's puzzle, when I wanted 13D to be heartburn, but it's only five letters. A burn? I was thinking that 67A, status-changing gift, could be a ring, but that would make 48D, Singer with a 1978 #1 hit with Barbra Streisand, Neila. That couldn't be right, but Neil Diamond would make 67A Diamond ring. Neil Diamond has a new album about to be released.

That made 69A Sam Spade, the hard-boiled detective created by Dashiell Hammett...



...and 56D Kate Spade, a purveyor of handbags, among other things.

Which made 1A Club Car, which reminded me of the song "The City of New Orleans"

Dealin' card games with the old men in the club car.
Penny a point ain't no one keepin' score.
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels rumblin' 'neath the floor.

And 9A, a kind of surgery, is Open heart, which made 13D Heartburn.

And 40A, It's not to be found within the four corners of this puzzle was an unsuitable card, Joker.

Asia's fast-shrinking Aral sea was in this puzzle as well. It was last spotted on October 4.

You will find Eloi a lot in crossword puzzles, the people in the distant future in "The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells. The link will take you to a searchable version of the book. This book was the first of an enormous number of books dealing with the subject of time-travel.

And no, I didn't know what a pion was, and looking at the definitions of a pion doesn't seem to help. They seem to be part of God's glue that holds the nucleus, and hence the universe, together.

If someone can show me how to do card suits, I would appreciate it. I found some .gif files, but Blogger wanted to skip a line everytime I tried to put them in.

This is post #14 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: crossword, Dashiell Hammett, H. G. Wells, Neil Diamond, Sam Spade, The Time Machine

Tags, Categories and RSS Feeds

One site that following the Technorati tags has led me to more than once in the brief history of Crossword Bebop is John P. Hoke's Asylum. When I came across his site the second time because he had a post with a Betty Boop Technorati tag, I felt I should comment on some neat things he is doing.

Movable Type users appreciate that they can set up categories for posts. When you set up a category, MT creates an html file containing all the posts for that category. It should be noted that MT allows you to put a post in multiple categories. Furthermore, it's possible to create individual feeds for those categories, in the event that someone would want to subscribe to what one has to say about crossword puzzles, but not about Charlie Parker, for example. On the other hand, very few people do this, and I don't think very many people subscribed to my category feeds.

When you go to John's post, you will see not one, but multiple categories of tags. The first category is "local tags," which is John's way of describing categories so that it is consistent with Technorati tags. The local tags take you to different directories in his site, where the index.html file has a list of all the posts with that tag. So he has local tags, Technorati tags, and Flickr tags, where you can see photos with particular tags. The only drawback is that I can't subscribe to a feed for a particular tag.

I'm ticked because I think what John is doing is cool, and I don't think I can do likewise with Blogger. I will start a campaign to get Blogger to implement tags, and to create Atom feeds for those tags.

This is post #1 at this blog tagged Flickr. Next Post
This is post #1 at this blog tagged tags. Next Post
This is post #2 at this blog tagged Technorati. First Post Next Post

Technorati: categories, category feeds, Flickr, Movable Type, tags, Technorati

A Proven User Of Browser-Enabled Software...

...is a post title that is much like four of the words in today's puzzle. I got 51A first (800 channels and still nothing is on worth watching!). A name was supposed to be hidden in 51A, but I didn't see any first names, I did see notHING IS on and thought, well, there is a lady tennis player named Martina Hingis



25A looked at first like it could be remorseless, but that didn't seem quite right, because remorse and pity are two different feelings, but after seeing Martina Hingis's name embedded in 51A, remorSELESs was ok...



This made it easy to get 17A, sever ties, which hosts Chris Evert...



And 65A, skin graft, hosts Mrs. Agassi, also known as Steffi Graf



...which makes 41A lady tennis stars. Four embedded lady tennis stars deserve two more, so the title hosts Venus and Serena Williams



I had no idea what brand Bucky Beaver advertised, so I discovered it was Ipana toothpaste.

This is post #13 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: Chris Evert, crossword, Ipana, Martina Hingis, Monica Seles, Serena Williams, Steffi Graf, tennis, Venus Williams

Coming To A Crossword Puzzle Near You...

I have been going on and on about the use of slang in the NYT Crossword. But I must admit that it takes a while for a word to get into the crossword. There are words and phrases which are working their way through the pipeline into the language. A word starts out as a "stunt word" or a sniglet. While sniglet is not listed at Merriam-Webster Online, it is very solidly embedded in our language as a word that should be in the dictionary, a candidate for inclusion.

When a sniglet gets used multiple times or in multiple places, it becomes a subject of lexpionage or part of the vetting process. One such person that does this is The Word Spy. There are a lot of words I haven't heard of yet, so I plan to examine some of them in the future, and see if they're really being used very much. Many of the words you will find here are already five minutes ago, and it drives me stark raving bonkers that I can't submit new words, or see the progress of words toward wordhood.

Some of these words will wither and die, and should. A few of these words will remain in this linguistic limbo, and a few of these words will enter into the dictionary and full-blown wordhood. I'm interested in your thoughts as to what words you think will eventually succeed.

An inclination of the homburg to Blogizdat for writing about Word Spy.

This is post #12 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: crossword, Dictionary, sniglet, Word Spy

Well, That Certainly Wasn't ARDuous...

The four long words in today's puzzle were all two-word phrases that could be turned into phrases by adding "ard" at the end of the second word. False rumor about seafood was sardine canard, $0.40 per fifth of a mile in New York City is taxi standard, Holy chicken is sacred coward, and Chic scavenger was latest buzzard. That should give you enough for the rest of the puzzle.

There was another attempt at hipness with phat (10A). Does anyone say something is phat anymore? I know I never did. TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) seems to appear in puzzles a lot. I didn't know that the Oder (40A) River was one of the borders of our coalition partner Poland. I seem to recall spa (60D) in a puzzle recently.

It's a good thing this puzzle was easy, because I'm still trying to get my ears and my brain around that mashup...thing I told you about in the last post. I listen to it and my head explodes in dark forebodings. Time has a job to do, to keep everything from happening at once, and these renegades are not just sampling and mixing, they're slamming the 80's into the 00's, and California into Carolina. I liked them just fine where they were.

This is post #11 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: crossword

Clip of the Day - DJ Food - Raiding The 20th Century

The beboppers were the experimentalists of the mid 20th century. The music for today is an attempt to document in mashup form, the history of cut-up music, including tape manipulation, turntablism, sampling and mashups. It drunkenly careens between intellectual and historical discussions about cutting and pasting music, and unexpected mashups of all sorts of things. One of the pieces of music mentioned was Deserts by Edgard Varese. A young Frank Zappa living in the desert in California, made a long-distance phone call to Varese, to discover that the composer of the music he loved was composing about his home town!



UPDATE: DJ Food now goes under the moniker of Strictly Kev.

This piece of music is like a crossword puzzle in its own right, in that pieces of music weave in and out of each other, like words cross each other in a puzzle.

I give you Raiding the 20th Century by DJ Food with a removal of the bowler to Minnesota blogger Crazy But Able.

This is post #2 at this blog tagged Frank Zappa. First Post Next Post

Technorati: DJ Food, Edgard Varese, Frank Zappa, Raiding the 20th Century

Ods and Endds

That was from last Saturday's puzzle, so I can tell you where I messed up.

I kept wanting Santa spotters to be elves, but it was ashes.
I kept wanting Detachable, in a way to be coupon, but it was clipon (like a tie).
But I did learn something from the Saturday puzzle. I learned that a sestet is a six-line stanza in a poem. Sometimes they have different rhyme schemes, but Byron's was ababab.
I was racking my brains for things about castles...turrets, towers, drawbridge, portcullis, when the answer was silent t. That just shows it doesn't pay to get stuck on a context hypothesis.
The O. T. book wasn't even Nahum, but Neh (short for Nehemiah).

And now for today's puzzle...

The Queen of Sheba (10D) will rise up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.
The word oracle gets used many times in the Old Testament, but hardly ever in the New Testament.
Espies (44D) or espy is one of those words you see a gazillion times in crossword puzzles.

I needed a little help...

I didn't know that the capital of Samoa was Apia.
I didn't know that lath was plaster backing.
I wanted six-stringed instrument to be vina, but it was viol.
I never use enow for plenty or enough, but there it is.
It was particularly scary, because when I googled "define: wale" it said something to the effect of "Are you sure you want to limit your search to English?" But it is at Merriam-Webster Online as a term for "one of a series of even ribs in a fabric: the texture especially of a fabric." Sounds like corduroy feature to me. I'm just waiting for an opportunity to say "Just look at the wale on those corduroy pants, dear, dear dear."

This is post #10 at this blog tagged crossword. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: crossword

Lowly Insect Watching...

Since I'm now a lowly insect in the TTLB Ecosystem, it has occurred to me to look at a few blogs that are a little higher than me in the Ecosystem, and comment on them.

Management Thoughts has some good business content, but I don't enjoy the combo of blue NavBar, green template and pink/lilac AdSense background. I also don't like it that the hover color is different from the link color.

Aah Million Days has a brilliant post about how giving iPods to school children is a brilliant stealthy tactic for manipulating behavior, like the Ludovico technique of "A Clockwork Orange"

Business Referral Club is only a kinda sorta blog, as it's more of a portal to many, many business referral clubs.

This is post #2 at this blog tagged Color. First Post
This is post #2 at this blog tagged template. First Post
This is post #3 at this blog tagged TTLB Ecosystem. First Post Previous Post Next Post

Technorati: Clockwork Orange, color, template, TTLB Ecosystem

Reflections on the Week

Since the blog started on a Monday, I will use Mondays as a day to reflect on how the blog is progressing.

The measure of success isn't the devastating unanswerability of the arguments, or the sparkling incandescence of the writing, but the fun I'm having in reveling in the geekiness of crossword puzzles, and some of the most wonderful music of the 20th century.

I've made a grand total of $0.02 in AdSense earnings. I want to be like the Manolo, the six-figure blogger.

I'm currently a Lowly Insect in the TTLB Ecosystem, which isn't a big shock.

I welcome Tony Dowler as the first person to link to Crossword Bebop. Technorati told me about it.

I welcome first-time commenters Tan Truong, sprittibee, Tony Dowler and God of Biscuits. I'm particularly glad to hear from sprittibee, because I hope that Crossword Bebop will become known in the future as a resource for homeschoolers.

I welcome the 120 visitors from 25 of the 50 states of the US, and 14 countries other than the US.

05/18/08 UPDATE: Tan Truong's blog is no longer active, but the other blogs still are. It's been a long time since I've had any interaction with any of them. My wonderful dream about Crossword Bebop becoming a resource for homeschoolers has gone exactly nowhere. I did Reflections on the Week in my first blog, but I stopped doing it in this blog at the end of 2005. It just seemed kinda dorky, and if I think something is dorky, it must really be dorky...

|< << AdSense (1) >> >|
|< << SiteMeter (2) >> >|
|< << Technorati (1) >> >|
|< << TTLB Ecosystem (2) >> >|

Technorati: AdSense, SiteMeter, Technorati, TTLB Ecosystem

Clip of the Day - My Heaven by Mary Chapin Carpenter

Clicking on the Alice Sebold tag that I put on the last post led me to God of Biscuits, who pointed out that Mary Chapin Carpenter was inspired by the book "The Lovely Bones" to write a song about heaven...

Nothing shatters nothing breaks
Nothing hurts and nothing aches
We've got ourselves one helluva place in my heaven
Looking down at the world below
A bunch of whining, fighting schmo's
Up here we've got none of those, in my heaven

All is prayer and praise, and God has wiped away every tear...

There's pools and lakes and hills and mountains
Music, art, and lighted fountains
Who needs bucks here, no one's counting
In my heaven
No one works, we all just play
We pick the weather everyday
If you change your mind, that's ok, in my heaven
Grandma's up here, Grandpa too
In a condo with to-die-for views
There's presidents and movie stars
You just come as you are
No one's lost and no one's missing
No more parting just hugs and kissing
And all these stars are just for wishing
In my heaven

I'm not sure that in heaven there's no work...what about the "prayers of levitating" mentioned later in the song? Just come as you are...so many are ashamed, unable to receive that which is beyond their imagination...The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost...

There's little white lights everywhere
Your childhood dog in Dad's old chair
And more memories than my heart can hold
When Eva's singing "Fields of Gold"

I want my childhood dog in Dad's old chair in heaven...

There's neighbors, theives and long lost lovers
Villains, poets, kings and mothers
Up here we forgive each other, in my heaven
For every soul that's down there waiting,
Holding on, still hesitating
We say a prayer of levitating, in my heaven
You can look back at your life and lot
But it can't matter what you're not
By the time you're here, we're all we've got
In my heaven
In my heaven
In my heaven

We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses...Can you look back on your life and lot, with love and not judgement? On my bad days, the things I'm not get me.



05/17/08 UPDATE: Since I've developed a custom of titling any post where there's music "Clip of the Day," it seemed I should do the same with this one. While the post has a new title, the URL is unchanged. I originally had the name of the album as a tag, but on further review, I'm not going to do that unless I play more than one song from a particular album, or put up a playlist of an entire album.

|< << Mary Chapin Carpenter (1) >> >|
|< << My Heaven (1) >> >|

Technorati: Mary Chapin Carpenter, My Heaven

Are You the 1 Who Is To Come, Or Shall We Look For Another?

That's sort of what the disciples of John the Baptist asked Jesus. I use it to introduce the solution of the Sunday puzzle.

I ended up starting in the lower left corner, knowing Ursula (92D) K. LeGuin, author of the famous Earthsea fantasy books. I'm not all that up on Virginia Woolf, but somehow A Room of One's Own sounded familiar. Why didn't it fit? Why didn't Lonesome Dove fit for 53A, the Larry McMurtry book? Why didn't Me Talk Pretty One Day fit for 110A? The words were all two letters too short. Clearly there was some kind of treachery afoot.

Then I noticed that the title of the puzzle was "One For The Books," and I thought, "Could it be? Could it be that they were using numbers to go in boxes?" It turns out that was exactly the case. Furthermore, they were using the number 1 as shorthand for the letters "one." It made life much easier when I discovered that.

It meant that A Room of One's Own was A Room of 1's Own (95A), making the ragtime dance a 1-step (99D). Me Talk Pretty One Day was Me Talk Pretty 1 Day (110A), and the Tarzan actor was R1ly (Ron Ely) (108D). The Agatha Christy novel was And Then There Were N1 (87A). My mother succeeded in getting me to read some of Christy's Hercule Poirot mysteries, and the vitamin dosage was 1aday (91D). The Anna Quindlen novel was 1 True Thing (79A), the Bill O'Reilly book was The No-Spin Z1 (65A), The Larry McMurtry book was L1some Dove (53A), the Ellen DeGeneres book was My Point (and I Do Have 1) (41A), the Alice Sebold novel was The Lovely B1s (32A), and the Helen Fielding book was Bridget J1s's Diary. That should be enough to do the rest.

I only needed assistance to tie up some loose ends. I didn't know that LeeLee Sobieski was an actress, and I didn't know that the Searle company was a pharmaceutical giant.

It was nice to see the Biblical word at1s (7D) in the puzzle. It was also nice to see the word cat for bebopper.

The sayings of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings given by one Shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. (Ecclesiastes 12:11-12, RSV)

05/17/08 UPDATE: It seemed like a good idea at the time to have post tags of all the authors mentioned in this puzzle, but I never wrote anything else about them, so they went away as tags.

|< << crossword (9) >> >|

Technorati: crossword

Clip of the Day - John Coltrane - Acknowledgement

John Coltrane was the tenor saxophone player on the Miles Davis clip, so I'm playing some of his music as a leader for today's clip.



This is the first cut from the suite "A Love Supreme," from 1964, with McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums.

This music was called "a humble offering" to God. I believe He received it with happiness. Many people received it with happiness as well.




|< << A Love Supreme (1) >> >|
|< << Acknowledgement (1) >> >|
|< << John Coltrane (1) >> >|

Technorati: A Love Supreme, Acknowledgement, John Coltrane

Obsessing With Statistics

I appreciate Site Meter for adding a "By Location" feature for tracking visits. It was very upsetting when people from other countries visited, but it didn't show up because they used a .net or .com domain name instead of the country code. Site Meter seems to have fixed this.

The last time I checked, Site Meter seems to have become the de facto standard for tracking statistics, as the TTLB Ecosystem checks Site Meter links for its traffic rankings.

Assimilation into the Blogger empire seems to have its benefits, as whenever I make a new post, I get a small spurt of visitors either from people clicking on "Next Blog" on the NavBar, or people clicking on "Recently Updated Blogs" from the Blogger Start Page. On the other hand, I know that these visitors weren't looking for me, but rather just cruising.

But the combination of Google encouraging visits and Site Meter recording their locations is intoxicating to me.

|< << Blogger (1) >> >|
|< << SiteMeter (1) >> >|
|< << TTLB Ecosystem (1) >> >|

Technorati: Blogger, SiteMeter, TTLB Ecosystem

Give Us This Day Our Daily Whuppin'

From yesterday's puzzle...ah so for "Now I get it," facetiously? That's so not PC!

roan for stable shade... roan was in last Monday's puzzle as well.

in the house for Among those attending, an attempt at hipness?

I kept expecting Betty Boop's trademark to be some variation on "boop-boop-be-doop," but it was spitcurl instead.



My mother watched many Betty Boop cartoons in her day. Not on television, which hadn't been invented yet, but at the movie theatre.

I kept wanting 39D, Infatuated with, to be smitten instead of stuck on, and 47A, tacit, to be silent instead of unsaid. But that would keep 41D, Words of sympathy, from being I'm sorry, which is what I thought it was all along.

I was racking my brains in vain for religious references over 55D, Heavenly altar, only to discover that they were speaking of the constellation Ara

Crossword Bebop showed up in a search for the first time I know of today....

And now for today's puzzle...

Job (20A) is the only book in the Old Testament, yea the entire Bible, with only three letters. I was thinking about Job yesterday when one of the clues was "Ump's cry." In Job 9:33 (NAS), Job longed for an umpire or mediator between him and God. That umpire is none other than the man Christ Jesus.

Ted Olson's (18A) wife was killed in the 9/11 attacks.

For John the Baptist, locusts and wild honey were food.

I'm now stuck, so I'm starting to get assistance.

I bluffed by thinking that the ___ in Washington's ___ Constitution Hall would be old, but it's DAR, as in Daughters of the American Revolution. My ancestry goes back to the revolution as well.

Dodie Stephens's one hit was Tan Shoes and Pink Shoelaces, which means Job was wrong, which means the book was abbreviated, which means it must be Nah, short for Nahum, the prophet who prophesied the downfall of the Assyrian empire and its capital city of Nineveh.



atto is the prefix for 1 quintillionth. No doubt as computer operations move into the attosecond range in the future, it will work its way into the language where someone will say, "Excuse me, may I have an attosecond of your time?"

I'm feeling pretty bad that I didn't know Modern ad-hoc collection of computing devices, but I'm pretty sure it's piconets, a common term in the Bluetooth wireless community. Which makes 1A, Hopping good times, potato sack races.

sel is the French word for salt, which is what goes on top of pommes frites, the French phase for French fries.

Ketones are compounds containing a carbonyl group with two hydrocarbon groups attached to them. Fructose is a ketone. I so wanted to say sugars, but it didn't fit.

14A, ods and endds, is errata, a collection of errors. Sometimes people won't pay attention to intentional misspellings. Does it strike you as odd that "misspelling" is a commonly misspelled word?

There are three stanzas in Byron's poem, "She Walks in Beauty," (a great love poem to give to a brunette), but stanza doesn't seem to fit yet...hmm...

Saying that Yoko Ono (6D) is a musician is a bit of a stretch. That sculpture she made with the ladder and the magnifying glass was pretty amusing though.



The restaurant seen in the Woody Allen movie "Manhattan" was Elaine's, apparently a place to see and be seen, as Billy Joel also mentioned it in his song "Big Shot:" "They were all impressed/With your Halston dress/And the people that you knew at Elaine's"

The author of "Winter's Tales" was Isak Dinesen, whose book about Africa was made into the movie "Out of Africa."

Big Sam was the foreman at Tara in the movie "Gone with the Wind" (#4 on the American Film Institutes List of the greatest American movies of all time).

Donati was the Italian astronomer.

Some nonproliferation treaty provisions are snap inspections, which means that locusts and wild honey was the diet of John the Baptist.

Some picnic box contents are moist towelettes.

And even with the vast knowledge stored on the Internet, I am sacked. I will go over this on Monday.

05/13/08 UPDATE: Somehow I don't have the link to Betty Boop's tagline anymore. It was pointless linking to the search in which Crossword Bebop was found in the first place, so I got rid of the link. I don't have the audio to Tan Shoes and Pink Shoelaces either, but I have something even better, a video with some pictures of Dodie. I fixed the link to Byron's poem. The Yoko Ono sculpture is called Ceiling Piece. Elaine's isn't a place to see and be seen anymore. I'm getting rid of Gone with the Wind and Lord Byron as tags, because I never wrote anything about either of them again. Generally speaking, if I use some other form of media, such as a picture, an audio clip, or a video, there will be a related tag.


|< << Betty Boop (1) >> >|
|< << crossword (8) >> >|
|< << Dodie Stephens (1) >> >|
|< << Isak Dinesen (1) >> >|
|< << Woody Allen (1) >> >|
|< << Yoko Ono (1) >> >|

Technorati: Betty Boop, crossword, Dodie Stephens, Isak Dinesen, Woody Allen, Yoko Ono

The Whole Issue of Assistance

Is it cheating to use assistance in doing a crossword puzzle? I've thought so, but I'd rather learn than have a pride thing going on. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Some people use text assistance, such as a dictionary or an atlas.

Some people use electronic crossword assistants.



You have probably noticed that ads for them are commonly in the AdSense ads on this site. I'm planning to do a detailed product review in the not-too-distant future.

I've never heard of anyone who is so bereft of a life, that they would call a 900 number, and pay money to get the answers to clues. There must be some people that do that, but I've never met any of them. If you have done so, tell me how it worked out for you, and how you felt after doing so.

05/13/08 UPDATE: The bit about God opposing the proud but giving grace to the humble is in James 4:6 (NIV). Somehow I never got around to doing product reviews of these products, and I don't feel like I've left something undone by not doing them. I was able to find a bigger picture. There was a link to the 900 number for crossword clues, but it doesn't work any more.

|< << crossword (7) >> >|
|< << CWP-206 (1) >> >|
|< << puzzle tools (1) >> >|


Technorati: crossword, CWP-206, puzzle tools

A Good Old Fashioned Tushy-Whuppin'

Is what I received today from the Friday puzzle. Even with a computer, I only was able to get about about 40% of the squares filled in. This is not uncommon on Fridays for me, but what is new is that I will start looking at the solution to see what I can learn from it.

The definition of expostulate is "to reason with someone, usually for the purpose of dissuasion," or to talk someone out of something.

One of my consolations is that I got 35A, Cardinal features, crests.



Cardinal is one of those words that has not only has multiple connotations as a noun, but is used as an adjective as well. I seem to recall that in some parts of the country, this bird is called a redbird, as in Redbird Airport in Dallas. But its crest and brilliant red color reminded people of high Roman Catholic officials.

My mother strove valiantly to get me to read some of the books she enjoyed. She gave me "Death Comes for the Archbishop" by Willa Cather. In the beginning of the book, a group of Catholic Cardinals are having lunch. My mother asked me what was happening in the book, and I said "Well, there are these birds..." And somehow after that, the "expose the child to fine literature" campaign fell by the wayside.

|< << cardinal (1) >> >|
|< << crossword (6) >> >|
|< << Willa Cather (1) >> >|

Technorati: cardinal, crossword, Willa Cather

Technorati Tags Rock

I never got around to using these in either of my two previous blogs, but they seem to have become more useful this year. Tim Berners-Lee has had a vision for a long time of "the semantic web," where web pages contain more information about the significance of their content. But it implied that someone should decide about the significance of the content, and I don't want to cede that to some other party.

That's why Technorati tags rock. They are an attempt at "folksonomy" or "folk taxonomy" of the web. I have put Technorati tags at the end of each of the posts here at Crossword Bebop, and I encourage anyone who reads this to do so as well. I've already received a number of visits from Kill Ugly Radio, another Frank Zappa site, which I found by clicking on the Frank Zappa tag I added.

One of the things that seems to be important for bloggers is "finding their tribe," finding people who are interested in similar things, so that they can contribute to a community. Technorati tags seem to be an express lane to finding one's tribe. It seems to have emerged as the custom to put the tags at the bottom of a post. When you see these tags, you should think of them as saying "Find more blog posts about..." And the person making the post would do well to click on them after making the post, in the possiblity that an important piece of information regarding your tag might only be a click away.

|< << folksonomy (1) >> >|
|< << Semantic Web (1) >> >|
|< << Technorati Tags (1) >> >|

Technorati: folksonomy, Semantic Web, Technorati Tags

Occupational Hazards of Poker

From yesterday, 2D was ably, 16A was olio, and 22A was mined, for "Dug up." I couldn't get 2D because I didn't know that a gaff was a spur of a climbing iron, or that Saragossa's river was the Ebro. Saragossa is in northeast Spain. I couldn't get 16A because I didn't know that William Boyd was the actor who played Hopalong Cassidy. But I digress.

I didn't know beryl was a larger class of stone including emerald and aquamarine.

The moon goddess Selene was the lover of Endymion, in myth. And no, I didn't know that.

I had never heard the word fanfaronade until today, but given that it was a lot like fanfare, it seemed reasonable that it was brag. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

I knew that 8's on top of aces is the dead man's hand from the Bob Seger song Fire Lake, and from seeing a picture at Wall Drug in South Dakota, of Wild Bill Hickok getting shot. This is yet another of the occupational hazards of poker playing. But knowing that helped with a lot of other words, such as 54A and 60A, knowing that 54A had to have an "ace" in it, and 60A had to have "eight" in it.



My dear wife would know that a coping saw was what you use to make curved cuts. I kept thinking in terms of power tools, and nothing worked.

I learned that an arhat is a synonym for Buddha, or someone who has destroyed greed, hatred and delusion. Whoever shot Wild Bill Hickok certainly wasn't one of those.

This is post #5 at this blog tagged crossword.

|< << crossword (5) >> >|
|< << Dead Man's Hand (1) >> >|
|< << poker (1) >> >|
|< << Wild Bill Hickok (1) >> >|

Technorati: crossword, Dead Man's Hand, poker, Wild Bill Hickok

Fall Decoration

While Blogger-surfing, I came across a list of the most frequently used colors in New York Fashion Week's Fall 2005 collections.



I appreciate Peter at blog.forret.com for converting these popular fall colors into webcodes. Since I'm going on and on about improvisation in this blog, it really stinks to have a cookie-cutter template.

Since I was using green anyway, I'm using burnt olive, moss and rattan as the general palette. The text is a variation on rattan that is even a little brighter. Changing the NavBar to tan is as close as I'm going to get to atmosphere. I'm now going on a rant about the Blogger Son of Moto template. It violates the number 2 web usability flaw of 2005, according to Jakob Nielsen, and it violates it in multiple ways. First, the links aren't underlined, but they are underlined when the pointer is over them. Second, there is no differentiation between visited and unvisited links. Third, showing that you're over a link by underlining is not very grabbing visually. Getting the millions of Son of Moto users to remedy this would be a noble crusade indeed.

I have remedied this in a number of ways. I've made it where all links are underlined. I'm using burnt orange and glazed ginger for unvisited and visited links, respectively, and I'm using burnt olive text on a burnt orange background when you're over a link. You're going to have to really not be paying attention to not notice when you're over a link.


05/11/08 UPDATE: In between the time this post was originally written and now, I've brightened the visited link color, because glazed ginger was just too dark. Friends Debra Hamel, Clare Dudman and Susan Barr informed me in April 2008 that they don't like reading light text on a darker background. It would be one thing if it was just them, but I noticed that the top 30 blogs in the TTLB Ecosystem all use black text on a white background. It would seem I need to do a radical redesign of the color scheme, which is a pity, as I've enjoyed it over the past two-and-half-years.

|< << color (1) >> >|
|< << New York Fashion Week (1) >> >|
|< << template (1) >> >|
|< << usability (1) >> >|

Technorati: color, New York Fashion Week, template, usability

Clip of the Day - Miles Davis - So What?

This blog is a celebration of improvisation, and today's music reflects that spirit. The album "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis is an inspired instance of both individual and group improvisation.



This is the first song on the album, originally released in 1959. The performers are Miles Davis (trumpet), Julian "Cannonball" Adderley on alto saxophone, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Bill Evans on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums.



|< << A Kind of Blue (1) >> >|
|< << Miles Davis (1) >> >|
|< << So What? (1) >> >|

Technorati: A Kind of Blue, Miles Davis, So What?

4 More King (But Not Elvis) Sightings

It only took me doing two puzzles to figure out that it was boring to list a clue for a three-letter word where you already had two letters. Today's puzzle had four kings, and what they were called by the people who knew them when.

I can see the Monty Python sketch in my mind's eye. Alex the ordinary? Alex the ordinary? They might have called me that back in Macedon, but they're not calling me that after I conquered most of the known world, are they? Kings get so touchy about what they think they own, and their place in history.



I bet you didn't know that Peter the Great was called Pete the Mediocre by his mother. "Why can't you be more like your brother Vladimir Vassilovich? He's going to medical school!"

Frederick the Great at the time might have been a big shot, but when he was younger, he was called Fred the not so hot.

Calling Catherine the Great Kate the Passable has a nice Lake Wobegon flavor to it. Lake Wobegon is the home of Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery.

As I write this, I'm remembering that speech in Hamlet about how a man might eat a fish that ate a worm that ate a king, thus showing how a king could progress through the guts of a beggar. Kings seem like a big deal at the time, but they're only flawed, temporary subcontractors for the King of Kings.

I regret to inform you that I couldn't get 2D, 16A, or 22A.

|< << Alexander the Great (1) >> >|
|< << crossword (4) >> >|
|< << Hamlet (1) >> >|
|< << Monty Python (1) >> >|

Technorati: Alexander the Great, crossword, Hamlet, Monty Python

Clip of the Day - Frank Zappa - Waka/Jawaka

I just didn't say enough about Frank Zappa yesterday to get it out of my system. He really was an American master.



This cut is on the second side of the album Waka/Jawaka, which was the middle album in a string of three sort of big-band albums (Hot Rats, Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo). When you hear this cut now, it still sounds interesting, but in 1972, this was a revelation that made a 15-year old boy in Indiana think "He can't do that...or can he?"




|< << Frank Zappa (1) >> >|
|< << Waka/Jawaka (1) >> >|

Technorati: Frank Zappa, Waka/Jawaka

4 Elvis Sightings In One Day

It took too long to do the puzzle and write about it. I definitely didn't say enought about Frank Zappa.



1A, Bit of dandruff, _ _ _ _ _. I first thought fluff, but looking at the other clues made me realize it was fleck.
1D, Shutterbug's setting F _ _ _ _. Focus? Flash? Knowing 14A lets me know it's F-stop. Do digital cameras have an F-stop control?
2D, Caterpillar, for one. L _ _ _ _, larva, not the heavy equipment manufacturer. BTW, the founder of Caterpillar, Paul LeTourneau, is a remarkable example of how God prospered someone with a heart to give to the gospel.
3D, Internet commerce, E _ _ _ _. eBay? email? Knowing 14A helps show that it's etail.
14A, Debussy contemporary Erik, S A T _ _, could only be Satie.
4D, Opposite of military: Abbr:, C I _, civ, as in short for civilian.
17A, Document shown at border patrol, T R A V _ _ _ _ _ _, need more letters, but the next two letters are E L.
5D, Button one's lips, K E E _ _ _ _, keep mum. When a fool closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.
24A, California observatory, P A L _ M _ _, Palomar.
18D, Credit union offering, L _ A _, loan. The borrower is the slave to the lender.
21A, Yeats or Keats, P O _ _, poet.
6D, Pub, _ _ _ E R _, tavern.
6A, Drivers' aids, T _ _ _, ? Drivers with AIDS?!?
15A, Cart part, A _ _ _, axle. Everybody goes on and on about the guy who invented the wheel, but what about the person who invented the axle? Huh?
7D, Off-ramp, _ X _ T, exit.
8D, Raised railroads, _ L _, els, the most notable example being the ones in Chicago.
9D, Denver is way above it, _ E _ _ _ _ _ _, sea level. About a mile in face.
25D, Elevator pioneer Elisha, O _ _ _, Otis. My parents gave me a phonograph record of stories of inventors, and to this day, the song about Otis is still in my head.
27A, Fixation indication, T U N N _ _ V _ _ _ _ _, tunnel vision.
22A, Cape Canaveral event L _ _ _ _ _, launch. Are the stars for man?
23D, Like the Kalahari, A _ I _, arid. The Kalahari is a desert region in southern Africa.
26A, Salon jobs, _ E R _ _, perms. What a misnomer.
10D, Philatelist's books, _ _ _ U M S, albums. Philatelists have always gotten a bum rap by the weird sound of the name of their ... obsession.
10A, Captain of the Pequod, A _ _ _, Ahab. Also (not coincidentally) Israel's wickedest king.
12D, Knighted Guinness, A _ _ C, Alec, the late Alec Guinness, well-known for playing Obi-Wan Kenobi in Episodes IV, V, VI of Star Wars.
13D, The Wife of _____ (Chaucer story-teller), B _ _ H, Bath. Haven't thought about it since high school.
11D, Interrupts, H _ _ N S I _ _ _, horns in on.
26D, Ballerina's bend, P L _ _, plie. Easier for women than men.
33D, Served up a whopper, _ I E D, lied, like when Tom DeLay said there was no fat in the federal budget.
28D, The King (subject of four "sightings" elsewhere in this puzzle), E L _ _ _, Elvis. I'm still mad at him for dying on my birthday.
36A, Very humble home, _ _ V E L, hovel.
29D, Cousin of an English horn, O _ _ _, oboe. Grape nuts are neither grapes nor nuts, and English horns are neither English nor horns.
34A, Magic org. N B _, NBA, as in the Orlando Magic.
30D, Catch a few Z's, N A _, nap.
38A, Score for a 34-Across player, _ O O P, hoop.
38D, Sister and wife of Zeus, H _ _ _, Hera. No wonder the Greek gods were so petty and spoiled.
41A, Pool part, _ E N E, ?
31A, Meager, _ _ I M, slim.
31D, Arty Manhattan district, S _ _ _, Soho.
35A, Feathery scarves, _ O _ S, boas, like the one former Governor Ventura wore when he was a wrestling referee.
35D, "Balderdash", B _ _, Bah, as in "Bah, humbug!"
39A, Satisfied sighs, A H _, Ahs. God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in Him.
32D, The cellar, L A S _ _ _ _ _ _, last place, as in "where the Packers are right now."
40A, 1952 Hope/Crosby "Road" destination, _ _ _ I, Bali
42A, Rubbernecker at the Ritz, perhaps, H O T _ _ _ _ S _ _ _ R, ? Most likely hotel something...
43D, Rubbed out or off, erased.
55A, Long stretches, _ _ A S eras.
59A, Derby, _ _ C E, race
51D, Lowly laborer, _ E R _, serf
52D, Asia's fast-shrinking ____ Sea, _ R A _, Aral.
40D, Ran in the wash, B L _ _, bled.
46A, Fuss with feathers, P R E _ _, preen
36D, Participate in decision-making, H A _ E A _ _ _, have a say.
60A, "I smell _____", A _ _ _, a rat.
63A, Candied tubers, Y _ _ _, yams. "This is such a great Thanksgiving meal! Pass me the candied tubers, please."
53D, Ore deposit, _ _ A M, seam.
53A, Gin flavorer, S _ _ _, sloe.
Ok, I looked up "estuary" and Lena Olin. It's stupid that Rubbernecker at the Ritz, perhaps, is hotel visitor, but perfectly reasonable that "estuaries" is inlets.
41D, Settled a score, got even. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.
47A, Zilch, Not a bit
64A, Like Vikings, Norse
61A, Perfect places, Edens
48D, More despicable, baser
50D, Abrupt, terse

When they say "four sightings," there were four occurrences of "Elvis" in the long words, travel visa, tunnel vision, hotel visitor, and steel visor.

|< << crossword (3) >> >|
|< << Elvis Presley (1) >> >|

Technorati: crossword, Elvis Presley

Clip of the Day - Charlie Parker - Summertime

Charlie Parker playing George Gershwin, two American masters.





Summertime,
And the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin'
And the cotton is high

Your daddy's rich
And your mamma's good lookin'
So hush little baby
Don't you cry

One of these mornings
You're going to rise up singing
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky

But till that morning
There's a'nothing can harm you
With daddy and mamma standing by

This is from the album Charlie Parker with Strings: The Master Takes, a relatively unusual setting for Bird.



05/06/2008 UPDATE: I've just discovered I can embed the imeem player in a Blogger post. That means I have a lot of work to do in updating a lot of my Clip of the Day posts to actually contain the music.

|< << Charlie Parker (1) >> >|
|< << George Gershwin (1) >> >|
|< << Porgy and Bess (1) >> >|
|< << Summertime (1) >> >|

Technorati: Charlie Parker, George Gershwin, Porgy and Bess, Summertime

Take The Cake (Only Bring It Back When You're Done With It)

What should I call these posts? It's stupid to call them the date, because Blogger is going to put the date up anyway. The Sunday puzzles usually have a title, but the daily ones don't. My 12-year old son is usually interested in the "theme" of the puzzle, which is usually shown by the answers to the long clues. I will use that for the title of the posts.

1A (Across) - Frank _____, leader of the Mothers of Invention could only be Zappa. The late Frank Zappa, alas, having died way too soon in 1993. Maybe not an American master, but definitely an American original, composing jazz, music for orchestra, and coming ever so close to the top 40 with "Valley Girl."

Since we now have letters for some of the words, I will do those first.

1D (Down) - Zoo equine, Z _ _ _ _, must be zebra, which the English pronounce with a short e.

2D - Consumed eagerly, A _ _ _ _. I looked at 14A, 17A, 20A and 23A to confirm this, and it's ate up, as in "Air America's audience ate up the accusation of Bill Bennett as a racist."

I now have two letters for some words, so they go to the head of the line.

14A - Hawke of Hollywood, E T _ _ _ must be Ethan. I do recall that he's an actor, but that's about it.

17A - Keep cool, B E _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _, could be a zillion things, need more letters.

20A - Fraternity hopeful, R U _ _ _ _, must be rushes. That's a crossword puzzle trick, to use words in the clues that could be either singular or plural.

23A - Gorillas and such, A P _ _, apes.

If I was completely consistent, I would have done 3D, 4D and 5D first.

3D - Developmental stage, P H _ S E, phase, as in, "This burning down houses thing is just a phase Junior is going through."

4D - Trajectories, P A _ H S, paths, although I usually think of paths as two dimensional, and trajectories as three-dimensional.

5D - Gambler's stake, A N _ E, is ante. This is a frequently used word in the NYT puzzle, with the clues being things like "preliminary wager," "feed the kitty," etc.

At this point, 20A is now B E A T T _ _ _ _ _ _, and Beat the heat is a reasonable guess. But that would make 18D H S _ _. Something's amiss...

18D - ____ and now, H S _ _. It must be here, as in "God doesn't want to take you to the sweet by and by, he wants to help you help others in the nasty here and now." Which means that 20A must be rushee instead of rushes. My school had residential colleges instead of fraternities, like I would know.

6D - Word with cutie or sweetie, _ _ E, pie. I gave a glance at 6A to see if I knew it, but I didn't.

7D - ___ Wednesday, Ash, beginning of the Christian season of Lent, a period of self-denial and reflection on the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. It's called Ash Wednesday because Christians sometimes receive ashes on their forehead as a symbol of humility. In the Bible, you sometimes hear of people repenting in sackcloth and ashes.

6A - High Ottoman official - P A _ _ _, pasha.

15A - Speck in the sea, I S _ _ _, islet. This was used recently in another puzzle, with the clue being "spot of land."

8D - Whole bunch, S L E _, slew.

9D - Cozy spots by the fire, H E A _ _ _ _, hearths.

10D - Get-up, A T T _ _ _, attire.

21A - Twisted in pain, W R I _ _ _ _, writhed.

27A - Three: Prefix, T R _, tri.

28A is _ E _ _ _ H E _ _ _ _. Since 17A was Beat the heat, it's a reasonable guess that 28A is seal the deal.

22D - Morsel, T I D _ _ _, tidbit. I didn't see it at first, but in between the time I gave up on it for the moment, and the time my hands reached the keyboard to say so, it came to me.

30D - British nobleman, E _ _ _, earl, as in "duke of." I did 30D before 11D because I had the first letter of 30D.

38A - Unadorned, B A _ _, bare.

31D - Zone, A R _ _, area.

41D - Ambulance sound, _ I R E _, siren. When this is a word in the Saturday puzzle, the clue would be something like "Odysseus avoided their song..."

32D - Optical device - L E N _, lens.

44A - Rand McNally product - _ T L A S, atlas. Ah, the foul stench of product placement. Must everything in life be a commercial?

41D - Actor Mineo - S A _, Sal. This gets used in crossword puzzles a lot.

24A - "The most trusted name in electronics" sloganeer, once, R _ _, RCA. Another frequently appearing word in puzzles, more commercials.

25D - Fairy tale dwelling, C A _ _ _ _, castle.

26D - "Arabian Nights" hero, A L _ _ _ _ _, Ali Baba, as in "and the 40 Thieves." I first thought it was Aladdin, but that made 37A and 40A not look right.

37D - Knights, S I _ S, sirs, as in Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the world wide web.

40A - Scheduling abbr. T B _, TBA, which stands for "to be announced." I liked "TBA v. Kennedy" as the name for Kennedy v. The Machine, but hey, it's their blog.

05/08/08 UPDATE: The blog formerly known as Kennedy v. The Machine renamed itself Truth v. The Machine, after Mark Kennedy's campaign for U. S. Senate failed.

29D - Heartbreaking, T R A _ _ _, tragic.

43A - Smelting waste, _ L A G, slag. If you take the first letters of the seven deadly sins (pride, envy, wrath, sloth, lust, avarice and gluttony), you get PEWSLAG. Jesus is getting rid of the pewslag in his church, He is like a refiner's fire.

45A - Be just what's needed, _ _ _ _ _ _ E B I _ L, since 17A was beat the heat, and 28A is seal the deal, this must be fill the bill.

49A - 11-pointer, in blackjack, A C _, Ace. Don't get me started on the evils of gambling, ok?

47D - Polish Nobelist Walesa, L E _ _, Lech, leader of the Solidarity movement that brought freedom to the nation of Poland. A hero of the 20th century. His last name is pronounced "Vo (as row, row, row) - wensa"

58A - "In" group, C _ _ _ _ _, clique. Clubs and cliques they choose and pick and they make their interviews, screen the undesirables and turn down clowns and fools. But Jesus died for sinners, losers and winners, it's proven by his love for me and you.

59D - Mad king of the stage, L _ _ _, Lear, title character in one of Shakespeare's tragic plays.

61A - Be a lulu, _ _ _ _ _ H E _ _ _ _, it must be something-the-something, but I don't have enough letters yet.

50D - Small: Prefix, _ I _ _ _, micro.

66A - Shady retreat, A R _ _ _, arbor.

69A - Horses of a certain color, R O _ _ _, roans. I've only heard this word used in the context of horses.

51D - Mideast's Gulf of ______, _ Q _ B A, Aqaba. Crossword puzzle makers love to use Arabic words where a q doesn't have to be followed by a u.

52D - 1890's gold rush destination, _ U _ O N, Yukon in Northwest Canada.

Now that 61A is _ _ _ _ _ H E C A K _, it is plain that it is take the cake.

53D - Prophets, _ E E R S, seers

63D - Newsman Koppel, T _ _, Ted.

62D - Female sheep, E _ _, ewe.

65A - Amazed, _ _ _ W E, in awe, as in the worship chorus "I stand, I stand, in awe of You..."

43D - Doo-wop group that sang in "Grease", S H _ _ A N _, Sha Na Na.

68A - Overfull - _ A _ E D, sated.

46D - In other words, T _ _ T I S, that is.

48A - "So there!", _ H A, Aha.

54A - Woolen blankets - _ _ _ _ A N _ - Afghans. I mistakenly called them "Africans" when I was a child.

36D - Islamic leader - _ _ _ L A H - Mullah.

54D - Place to stick a comb, once, A _ _ _, Afro. Like the one Randy Moss had last year, for example.



55D - Pet's tiny tormentor, F _ _ _, flea.

60A - The bug, F L _, flu.

64A - B-ball official, R E _, ref.

67A - Bumbler, O A _, oaf.

33A - Large feather, _ _ _ M _, plume.

28D - Upper house member: Abbr., S E _, Sen, short for Senator, a member of the upper legislative house of the United States.

32D - Grad student's mentor, P _ _ F, prof, short for professor

39A - Second chance for viewers, R _ _ U N, rerun.

34D - Big name in denim, L _ V I, Levi. They could have said, "Third son of Judah," or "Ancestor of Moses..."

35D - Eurasia's _____ Mountains, U R _ L, Ural, the mountain range in central Russia.

11D - Tease, _ _ _ H, josh.

11A - Boeing 747, e. g. - J _ _, jet. e. g. means for example.

12D - Lake near Niagara Falls, E _ _ E, Erie.

13D - Watch over, T _ _ D, tend.

Well, there it is. I'm still working on the rhythm of when to digress.


|< << crossword (2) >> >|
|< << Randy Moss (1) >> >|

Technorati: crossword, Randy Moss

Welcome To Crossword Bebop!

Crossword Bebop is a project that I hope people will find interesting. I'm starting it because of something that has upset me for some time. I've been doing crossword puzzles with my children for some time, thinking that it helps their language and thinking skills. I would invariably come to some clue that had something to do with something in a time before they were born. I would say something like "I wouldn't expect you to know about..." and launch into a major discourse about it, only to see my children's eyes glaze over, and hear them expressing a need to go work on their homework.

The plan is to do the New York Times Crossword Puzzle each day, describe the thought process as the puzzle is completed, and say a little bit about the people, places and things mentioned in the puzzle. So this site is not exactly a puzzle devotee site, but it will use each day's puzzle as a springboard.

If, heaven forbid, I fail to solve the puzzle for that day, I will use the next day's post to address the things I didn't get from yesterday.

The Jazz Piano StudyLetter describes bebop as:

the style of jazz developed by young players in the early 40s, particularly [Charlie] Parker, [Dizzy] Gillespie, Kenny Clarke, Charlie Christian and Bud Powell. Small groups were favored, and simple standard tunes or just their chord progressions were used as springboards for rapid, many-noted improvisations using long, irregular, syncopated phrasing.

That's the spirit of this blog. I was also thinking about the popular anime series Cowboy Bebop when I was contemplating a title.


|< << bebop (1) >> >|
|< << crossword (1) >> >|

Technorati: bebop, Crossword