Sara Wheeler is a biographer of heroic explorers, having written not only Terra Incognita, but Cherry (a biography of Antarctic explorer Apsley Cherry-Garrard) and Too Close To The Sun (a biography of Denys Finch Hatton, the guy played by Robert Redford in Out of Africa). But I digress. Here’s the quote:
Robert Scott, Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen and Douglas Mawson were the heroes of a generation of children who pored over images of bergs towering above wooden ships, and men and dogs straining in front of sledges.
Some how I was recalling the ship Endurance as Endeavour. On the other hand, that would have been very strange to have one of the words in clue G be the answer for clue H. It took me a little while to realize Endeavour was wrong. Furthermore, all the clues about Antarctica, and letter A in Adios for clue Y got me thinking that the last word in the title might be Antarctica, and I was wrong about that as well. In a similar way, I was recalling Shackleford instead of Shackleton. Low intelligence all around.
I want my children to read books. They want to play video games. They are fully persuaded that the interactivity of video games is an unqualified improvement over the use of one’s imagination in reading. I want them to think Robert Heinlein is the mighty Colossus of storytelling. They think James Cameron is, and they’re pretty stubborn about it. But a still, small voice tells me to not be too attached to any particular technology, any particular era of heroes, or to heroes of any particular country. Heroes come in all shapes, sizes and colors, and there are heroes in every age and every country.
Melanie Mitchell’s book investigates, among many other things, how relatively complex things like ant colonies and minds arise from relatively simple things like ants and neurons. The full title is Complexity: A Guided Tour, and the reviews suggest that it’s a pretty good book for explaining a complex conversation to the general public. Here’s the quote:
Galileo did not have the sophisticated experimental devices we have today. He timed the swinging of a pendulum by counting his heartbeats, and measured the effects of gravity by dropping objects off the Tower of Pisa.
I certainly wouldn’t time anything by counting my heartbeats.
I hate product names like iPhone in puzzles with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns.
Do the Welsh have word puzzles?
I saw a bumper sticker in my mind’s eye saying “PROMOTE EVOLUTION: MUTATE!”
Did you bite on “Russian” as “Native of Moscow?” I didn’t, because a two letter word starting with s didn’t seem to fit in the quote.
I knew Thisbe from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” but I thought Shakespeare just made her up as an excuse for a play within a play. I learned something.
Poe seems to be hanging around word puzzles a lot these days. His poem “Lenore” was mentioned in the Sunday NYT crossword two weeks ago, and now a work of Poe is being quoted in the acrostic.
It’s a rather snarky quote, and apparently Marginalia contained quite a few of them. An Amazon reviewer writes:
this is a lot of fun, it’s been ages since I read it. but he sometimes has nice things to say, often tears apart peoples’ writings and gets into all manner of topics, analysis of plagiarism and it’s morphology among the most memorable…
Here’s the quote:
I can never hear an Italian opera without fancying myself at Athens, listening to that particular tragedy of Sophocles, in which he introduces a full chorus of turkeys who set about bewailing the death of Meleager.
My first guess for the word that would be turkeys was lurkers. Meleager was a Greek hero, and the Sophocles tragedy to which Poe is referring is also called Meleager.
I don’t like “Container that’s pig Latin for its type of contents” as a clue for ashtray
Hollywood has made feature-length movies like The Accidental Tourist, and movies for television such as Breathing Lessons and Earthly Possessions from her stories. I don’t know who is speaking in the quote in this acrostic by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon: it could either be uptight travel writer Macon Leary, or non-uptight dog-lover Muriel Pritchett.
I’ve always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals. I mean, a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless?
The Macon Leary I know wouldn’t notice that, so I’m thinking this is something Muriel said. If I’m wrong, please let me know. No, I haven’t read the book, but I might. The quote isn’t in the movie script. I started watching the movie a number of years ago, and I stopped watching when Macon moved in with Muriel. I was already mourning the breakup of Macon and Sarah’s marriage after the death of their son. I totally didn’t get the point. The point was that Macon was anesthetizing himself with his work, and that Muriel was a good influence on him by helping him be more alive. I thought that Muriel should have minded her own business and stayed out of Macon’s life. It takes every kind of people, to make the world go ’round, don’t it?
I have a bone to pick with Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon for cluing travelog as “Che’s ‘Motorcycle Diaries,’ e.g.” Che Guevara was an international terrorist and mass murderer, and I bitterly resent his presence in an acrostic. There are many other authors one could use for cluing travelog.
