Anticipating the Afterlife

Hi Dennis,

If you'd like to write to Will, please send it through the Feedback Form on the main puzzle page. Any comments directed to him will for forwarded to him.

Quaaludes (I think it's methaqualone generically) are a sedative and hypnotic. They are (by some practitioners) prescribed to relax muscles, as is Valium, but that effect is secondary to the general physiologic relaxation of tension in the erm, prescribee. The true primary 'muscle relaxers' are medications like Parafon Forte, Flexeril and Baclofen

I haven't read Clockwork Orange, either, so we're a pair!

but SOUL is a Kia model. So KIA is a SOUL MAKER. :)

As RMP says - it's the model name here.

"Seoul" as a transliteration of the name of the South Korean capital is a remainder of the French colonial influence in East Asia; the spelling makes little sense from an English-language perspective but was the way that the French made sense of the Korean vowels.

Dictionary.com definition #4:"to provide, equip, or invest, as with power or strength".

Right. That would be 'gird your loins', and I always visualized that as wrapping something around them, so the loins were 'girt'.

Girt and girded join with a day or two ago's sawed / sawn. Girded and sawed retain the verbal force, while girt and sawn cross over into adjectival territory.
Hewed / hewn, sheared / shorn, birthed / born, burned / burnt, gilded / gilt.
All of our English words that suffer this double fate are just that - very, very English words.

i do like that song. thanks for the link!

I like it too, Jimbo.

I was going to link my favorite song about anticipating the afterlife, but I forgot that Bob Dylan's songs are just not available on Youtube and I didn't care for the cover versions. Knock, Knock.

I'd put Clapton's cover about on a par with Dylan's original, Rich.

When it comes to hypocrisy, the NCAA long ago won permanent possession of the annual American Sports Sanctimony Cup, though on the world scene it always faces stiff competition from the International Olympic Committee. The IOC's claims date at least as far back as the 1936 Games in Nazi Germany, where the it set records in kissing up to Hitler and his anti-semitic henchmen, and have only been embellished over the years since—including bribe-taking—right up to the present day.

and Elke
Good afternoon, Viv.Actually we are in the Southeast soon to be on the way back West to LAND AT Vancouver later tonight. Thank you for the lovely birthday wishes.

Liked the punny puzzle. Have been trying to think of a LAME EXCUSE to work the forest denizen or brotherhood member into the Elk(e).
Looking forward to being back in the Western time zone and getting the online puzzle at 7pm vs. 10pm...

LAND AT was one of many that fooled me today. Have a great birthday, Robert.

Viv, I remember reading MOO which is a tongue in cheek look at a slice of academia (state universities in south and midwest mostly). I haven't read A NEW LIFE but will now. Thanks for the rec.

OT Note to Deb, soon to be airborne and entering FlyOver Territory in Mid-Continent:

Be sure to pack your SPF 50+ sunscreen. I can burn in 5 minutes, which means you will burn even faster, especially given the fact that's it's still winter up there in NYC, mostly. You might also bring a badminton racquet, a useful tool for fending off attacking mosquitoes. (They grow them extra-large here.). A golf umbrella would not be amiss if the forecast includes rain (it's that time of year); raindrops here are the size of kittens. You don't need to bring your bicycle, as you can rent one in the RiverMarket (just down from the Clinton Presidential Library, next door to Sturgis Hall where you will be speaking.). Then you could do all 30 miles of the bicycle trail, including The Big Dam Bridge. (Honest, that's its name.) While you're here, do plan to try some of the native foods: fried pickles and fried okra. More tips to come!

Hey, when is Deb coming out here? We have few mosquitoes and our rain drops are only as big as mice. But you do need sunscreen, thanks to the altitude and extremely clear air.

MOL: It is very far from being winter up here. In fact, we didn't really have one this year--just a few isolated periods of one or two days of promise.

Left you a late note on grammar yesterday, PolyMath.
Pecan pie.

Yum, thanks. (I guess I agree, but I'm not 100% sure.)

pm: looks like "the burning end of a midnight cigarette" to me. Maybe grids are a kind of rorschach blot? :)

Eljay,
It is some kind of convention, and the heart's delight of so many people that every once in a while I wish my brain would work that way and I would notice (or even see) the symmetry, of which there are five sorts. All sorts are lost on me; I take it on faith that they are there. If someone uses a nonstandard (unconventional for crosswords) type, it is instantly the topic of commentary and creates much excitement. It takes more than that to get me all het up, personally. As Deb would say, YMMV.

Not sure when the convention of symmetry in the grid began, but it does impose a constraint on the constructor that can be exploited, as well. Similar to a sonnet or haiku. Cruciverbalists may suffer, but "Nuns fret not..."

A departure from the usual symmetry is always significant. That's the best way I can put it. If it isn't symmetrical it is for a reason: the black squares make an image (or the white squares do), or some of the black squares have an added layer of meaning other than "blank."

The usual symmetry is a mirror along both diagonals (if the fourth square from the left in the top line is black, the fourth square from the right at the bottom is also black). Rarely, there is a mirror on the center line (left-right symmetry) and, extremely rarely, there is a mirror on the horizon (top-bottom symmetry).

Solvers of Diagramless puzzles get to a different level of understanding about the shape of the puzzle grid, since they start out with a blank grid. If you visit the archives and look under Variety for Diagramless puzzles, you might get hooked. Or not!

I work with kids and we're preparing a musical just now. I have a new 2nd-grade girl in the group and it is unbelievable how excited she is to be Lion No. 3 with two lines to say. Some people are born to the stage, I guess.

You are so right, David. She's been at it for almost 20 years and she isn't 26 yet. Actually, she went to school probably not too far from you. This is the farthest she's gone for a show.

A week or so ago, the puzzle mentioned "butterflies" in the clue for "agita" and several commenters wrote about how that wasn't quite the right match. Some of my favorite teachers have pointed out that, if you go on stage and have no butterflies of any kind, you are just about to give a sub-par performance. The butterflies come from caring as much as from worrying, from wanting to do well as much as from not wanting to fail. Once the performer knows them as a good sign of investment in the act of performing, they become, well, one's frenemies.

And the tech crew, pit band, and house management should have some, too, while we're at it! Places, everyone. Places!

https://youtu.be/l17SQeytHN8?t=1m

OT: This puzzle left me with a smile on my face. I enjoyed the solve but beyond that, the coincidence of three answers (which I mentioned above) brought back some very pleasant memories.

On my second attempt at college I had an English professor who taught creative writing and also English lit classes which were sort of.. non-standard. His name was Mark Dintenfass. He was a published author and a very good writer (IMHO), though never very well known and I see that all of his novels appear to be out of print. Here's a Times review of one of his books:

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/28/books/come-meet-the-family.html

I took his creative writing course a few times (it was allowed), with pretty much the same gang of usual suspects as classmates each time. It was very educational but also a lot of fun. He got one of my stories (about a Vietnamese lizard) published in the school literary journal and encouraged me to submit it to the New Yorker. I wish I'd kept the rejection letter.

I also took his lit classes a couple of times and he introduced me to Singer (who remains one of my favorite authors). But I also know that we read both A Clockwork Orange and The Natural in those classes. Which is why I think all those answers dawned on me almost simultaneously.

Don't know what else to say. I just can't help but smile thinking back on those days and those classes and those discussions and a wonderful teacher.

How lucky you were to have had such a wonderful teacher, RiA.

From the review, I probably would have sought out the book--and Mr. Dintenfass's other works if available.

DL, his books are still available through Amazon and other sources, though either 'used' or from 'third party sources.'

But, I wouldn't be surprised if his works are available at the New York public library. Though he lived and taught in the mid-west as an adult, he grew up in New York and was considered a 'New York' writer (he identified that as a specific genre and used to talk about it at some length). At any rate, it might be worth checking out.

I actually haven't read the book that was reviewed (and one other as well) and plan to get them through Amazon.

I didn't get the "coincidence" until you reminded me of the date. Thanks!

I'm glad 4/20 means something else now. For too long, I have associated it with the birthday of the most evil person ever.

April 20 is National Lima Bean Respect Day.

Sufferin' succotash!

Yes... I think that's the intended meaning

Thanks for that info! I'm a print designer, so I love geek in out on typography and paper terminology!

Appreciate the appreciation, Elishka.

Anybody who works with an office printer or copier has - knowingly or not - dealt with the consequences of paper having a "right" side and a "wrong" side. Every time a co-worker takes paper willy-nilly and adds it to a feeder tray - or takes it out of one and puts it into a stack wrong way up - a paper jam or misfeed looms ahead.

In books printed right-to-left (as, e.g., Hebrew books), recto still names the odd-numbered pages - but they are on the left, not the right.

And those who work with cloth (hello, MOL) know all about grain and bias, how they can be used either to stiffen or to make flexible.

Ah, yes! You are so right :0)
And the value of starch.

The old name was Óláfr (or Áleifur, depending on how far back you go), a name meaning basically "descendant of the ancestors," with the implication of "worthy" at the beginning of that otherwise tautological expression. Olaf, Olav, Oliver, all have their roots there, though Ulf does not - it is another name for Wolf.

As an somewhat shaky speller I face this situation quite often. My solution:

o Take a deep breath,

o Enter "O", "L" and "A",

o Move on, trusting that all will be resolved in the fullness of time.

In this case that faith is rewarded as HEAVEN is our salvation.

That is the ideal method, Mike R., highly recommended.
Mauna _ _ A, just enter the "A" and figure out later whether it is Kea or Loa.

Of course, "Heaven" in early English was spelled with an F in that place! Part of the same spelling change as Olaf / Olav.