Takes the Edge Off

SAUSAGE DOG is nickname of choice here.

That reminds me — I never did understand the clue "Appreciate" for SEE. Will have to check that one out.

I appreciate what you're saying, polymath.

hee hee

You might look at the puzzle scandal from last year, in which it was found that the puzzle editor was skimming payments to faked names and publishing old NYT puzzles... but that was truly plagiarism. There are only so many ways to clue some words, so duplication is inevitable, but the case you present makes me think that unusual clues might be more in the 'protected' category. Let's see what some constructors have to say! Great question.

Starting out, this puzzle was not even in my ship, let alone my wheelhouse. After entering WEB for 1a, I erased it because "Indian bread?" at 1d clearly had to be Rupees. It was not until some time later that I remembered that each day's puzzle is now required to have at least one clue that is an insult to some ethnic or social group. Today it was the turn of Native Americans, and the correct answer is WAMPUM.

So, I'm in the middle of my yoga practice this morning, Barry, and the following pops into my head, a confluence no doubt of an echo from yesterday's puzzle, and the fact that I enjoy your comments:

Higgeldy piggery
Barry Ancona, sir
Fountain of knowledge and
Smart as a whip

Not one to shy from a
Salient comment, you
Flow from the heart and you
Shoot from the hip

Yikes! That "piggery" should be "piggledy" -- must be an auto-correct. No pig-ness intended!

The title of Chapter VII of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is "A Mad Tea-Party."

The mercury thing is what gave rise to the phrase "mad as a hatter." Lewis Carroll knew this, hence the character *and* the chapter title.

Drag Racing? Gentlepeople, start your nitro-burning methane fueled engines!

http://www.etownraceway.com/

Oh yes, there is such a thing as a drag race -- on the track but (in my day) at least as often on an arterial road at the edge of town. No idea if the etymology is right but I always thought the 'drag' came from the term 'main drag'.

"Off-track" drag racing is also real:
http://www1.nyc.gov/nyc-resources/service/1561/drag-racing

LEONA HELMSLEY wouldn't have fit, anyway.

Thanks for the link, Bru -- I loved The Roches -- but I think they were too young to have played at the original Gerde's location...

Gerdes Folk City (sometimes spelled Gerde's Folk City) was a music venue in the West Village, part of Greenwich Village, Manhattan, in New York City. Initially opened as a restaurant called Gerdes, by owner Mike Porco, it eventually began to present occasional incidental music. First located at 11 West 4th Street (in a building which no longer exists), it moved in 1970 to 130 West 3rd Street. It closed in 1987.

Thanks for that info Barry. I went to the Third Street location on a New Year's Eve in the mid-eighties and it was my only visit. The Washington Squares were the headliners. As always, a face down, fun time was had by all.

All of those printable labels and address stickers are AVERY products; does that help ?

"Yakety Yak" by the Coasters. I didn't hang out with many hoodlums during my teen years, but one high-school acquaintance was known as a "supplier."

I was wondering how you did with today's lyric quote in the puzzle. You did not fail the test, since you eventually got it without outside help. (It was a nice long gimme for me.)

Jimbo, I hardly think we qualified as 'hoodlums' (coincidentally, I watched 'West Side Story' last night on TCM). The extent of our hoodlumizing was fights, pranks, under-age drinking, the aforementioned drag racing and, of course, maintaining a contentious relationship with the local police, who really had nothing else to do but harass us (think 'officer Krupke'). There weren't any formal gangs, but there were two identifiable 'contingents': The jocks and the greasers.

But I did more than once get a ride home in a police car, and my mother invariably invoked my 'hoodlum friends' on such occasions (of course it wasn't my fault).

While I'm up, I think I may have told this story before, but it's one of the great pranks in the history of mankind. My senior year, middle of winter just after a big snowstorm. Somebody called the police station and reported a big fight at a hunting camp - outside of the residential part of town but still within the city limits. The camp was a half a mile or so off the road and the dirt road leading to it was of course unplowed so when the cops got there they had to park and walk through the snow back to the camp. When they got there of course it was abandoned and nothing was happening. When they got back to their car, its engine was sitting in the road beside it.

And then there was the Latin professor attacked one night by a group of hoodla.

Update. The page is back in place. Mysterioso.

wiki says: 'Stir crazy is a phrase that dates to 1908 according to the Oxford English Dictionary and the online Etymology Dictionary. Used among inmates in prison, it referred to a prisoner who became mentally unbalanced because of prolonged incarceration. The term "stir crazy" is based upon the slang stir (1851) to mean prison.'
as for the puzzle, our special brand of pb is crunchy and smooth at the same time.

Morgan's character does say he's known some long nights IN STIR, but I know it's older than that movie, for sure.

I only had the two Is when I got to that clue, and entered IN JAIL. That really messed up 7D.

I had the same initial reaction, but it's not like "Redskin." It's a bead craft using white-shelled beads and was once a widely recognized monetary unit, from my reading (which in this case I did promptly). The Native American sites I looked at don't seem to find it derogatory, so even if some people use it as slang in a rather disrespectful way I don't think that makes it unacceptable.

Suzy, I also looked that up as WAMPUM didn't set well with me, and found the same information, so was glad I did.

Having lived for a few months in Onondaga County, I wanted to see what the Onondaga had to say about WAMPUM:
http://www.onondaganation.org/culture/wampum/

Hmmm. Film maker? Videographer?

Happy birthday, Wags.

Yep. Happy birthday, Wags.

Buon compleanno, Wags!