google.com, pub-2774194725043577, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 L.A.Times Crossword Corner: Sunday November 12, 2023 Lynn K. Watson & Will Nediger

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Nov 12, 2023

Sunday November 12, 2023 Lynn K. Watson & Will Nediger

Theme: "Wardrobe Makeover" - Circled letters are anagrams of clothing items.

23. 1977 Top 10 hit for Styx: COME SAIL AWAY. Camisole.

32. Problem-solve: TROUBLESHOOT. Blouse.

49. Instigators: PROVOCATEURS. Overcoat.

84. "Have our plans changed?": ARE WE STILL ON. Sweater.

96. Act like a chicken?: CROSS THE ROAD. Shorts.

112. Collectibles with baseball stars, e.g.: TRADING CARDS. Cardigan.

Reveal:

65. Switching outfits, and what can be found in this puzzle's circled letters: CHANGING CLOTHES

This is the third LAT collaboration between Lynn and Will, but Lynn's first Sunday. Congrats, Lynn! 

We don't often see one-word theme entries, but often there are just no workable phrases to hide those key letters, hence the exceptions here. All those clothing items have at least 6 letters. Amazing.

Across:

1. Happens again: RECURS.

7. Stares in wonder: GAPES.

12. Promising player in the minors: PROSPECT. Boomer bought a ton of these Mauer and Morneau Prospects cards.


20. Asimov classic: I ROBOT.

21. Catherine of "Schitt's Creek": O'HARA.

22. Sci-fi vehicle: HOVER CAR.

25. Even, as odds: ONE-TO-ONE.

26. Sixth sense letters: ESP.

27. "Belfast" Oscar nominee Ciarán: HINDS. Irish actor.


28. Pickle serving: SPEAR.

30. Secrecy contract, for short: NDA.

31. Impressionist Édouard: MANET. 53. NYC home of 31-Across's "Two Roses": MOMA.

36. Elite squad: A TEAM.

39. Comics dog: ODIE.

41. Adjust an entry on a time sheet, say: RE-DATE.

42. Topiary target: SHRUB.


43. Deceptive estimate: LOW BALL.

45. Root vegetable: TURNIP. Pickled with beets.

51. Tax agcy.: IRS.

54. Secret language: CODE.

55. Theater worker: USHER.

56. Comment made while dusting off one's hands, perhaps: DONE.

58. Industry giant: TITAN.

59. Wow: AWE.

60. "Blast from the past" hashtag: TBT. Throwback Thursday.

61. Fluffy scarf: BOA.

63. "Let's do this!": IT'S GO TIME.

68. "Big Five" film festival held in Germany: BERLINALE.  OK, according to Wikipedia, the "Big Five" film festivals are considered to be Venice, Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance."


71. Granola morsel: OAT.

72. Lip balm brand: EOS.

73. "The Bachelorette" network: ABC.

76. "Didn't we just have this?": AGAIN.

77. Gloom: MURK.

79. Nobel-winning Swedish poet Tranströmer: TOMAS. We had him a while ago.


81. Sportswear brand founded in Italy: FILA.

82. Wet weather: RAIN.

83. Wooden pin: PEG.

87. Purplish blue: INDIGO.

89. With a firm tone: STERNLY.

90. Ad infinitum: NO END.

91. Big name in convertibles: CASTRO.  I never heard of this brand.


94. Spanish kiss: BESO.

95. Build-A-Bear creation: TEDDY.

100. Art forms?: NUDES. Ha.

103. Corruption, metaphorically: ROT.

104. Indiana NBA player: PACER. 116. Places for Penguins and Ducks: ICE RINKS.

105. Baseball flub: ERROR.

106. Domino dot: PIP.

109. Solo: ACT ALONE.

117. Cut off from escape: HEM IN.

118. Early Ford: MODEL A.

119. Lacking intelligence, in British English: GORMLESS. Also new to me. I presume "gorm" means "intelligence" then.

120. Made a choice: OPTED.

121. Wows: AMAZES.

Down:

1. Basmati __: RICE.

2. Mythical matchmaker: EROS.

3. Provide for free: COMP.

4. Purple yam: UBE. Meaning "tuber" in Tagalog. Our Asian store only carries the purple sweet potatoes.

5. Rock, Paper, Scissors: ROSHAMBO.

6. OxiClean target: STAIN.

7. Shiny dental prosthesis: GOLD TOOTH.

8. Cries of epiphany: AHAS.

9. Bear foot: PAW.

10. Phase of an artist's career: ERA. Like Taylor Swift's eras. 

11. Authority: SAY SO.

12. "Fleabag" star Waller-Bridge: PHOEBE.



13. President after Jimmy: RONALD.

14. Ignores feelings of fullness, perhaps: OVEREATS. 70. Midnight trip to the fridge: RAID.

15. Gel: SET.

16. Big leaguer: PRO.

17. Word in budget-friendly brands: ECONO.

18. __ attitude: CAN DO.

19. Pay for everyone: TREAT.

24. Having four sharps: IN E.

29. Knitting stitch: PURL.

31. Violet kin: MAUVE.

32. Bay Area town whose name means "shark" in Spanish: TIBURON. Learning moment for me.


33. Bring up: REAR.

34. Pro wrestling patriarch Hart: STU.

35. Company boycotters?: HERMITS. 57. Crudely built places?: OIL TOWNS. And 58. Ten below?: TOES. Love those clues.

36. Pet rescue org.: ASPCA.

37. Lose on purpose: THROW.

38. Gradually wear away: ERODE.

40. More of a nerd: DWEEBIER. Spellcheck does not like it.

43. Application entry: LAST NAME.

44. Acid rock's acid: LSD.

46. "Moi? Never!": NOT I.

47. Islamic leader: IMAM.

48. Glazier's unit: PANE.

50. Caribbean native: CUBAN.

51. Gaga over: INTO.

52. "Relax, it's under control": REST EASY.

60. Svelte: THIN.

62. Past: AGO.

64. Secondary image: GHOST. I had to google: ghost image.

65. Treatment centers: CLINICS.

66. Guzzling sound: GLUG.

67. Like most wedding receptions: CATERED.

68. Italian port on the Adriatic: BARI.

69. Pulitzer-winning novelist Jennifer: EGAN.

73. Wasn't feeling 100%: AILED. I just told sumdaze that this bent elbow thing in freestyle just does not feel natural to me. My left arm recovery feels jammed, then I try to rotate my body more to the right to compensate, then it feels like I'm rolling over.

74. Light-haired: BLOND.

75. Sweet stuff: CANDY.

78. Actress Dennings: KAT.

80. Fruit discard in a compost bin: MELON RIND. Love these Korean melons.


81. Ocean sheets: FLOES.

83. Table: POSTPONE.

85. "Not That Fancy" singer McEntire: REBA.

86. Office buzzer: INTERCOM.

88. Argon or xenon: GAS.

89. Really ticked: SORE.

92. "I owe you one!": THANKS.

93. Intermission: RECESS.

96. Bond player Daniel: CRAIG. Oh, oh, Splynter would have linked a nice one for me.

97. Cookbook author DiSpirito: ROCCO.



98. Mudbank frolicker: OTTER.

99. Weed B-Gon maker: ORTHO.

101. Large planter: URN.

102. Matter taken on faith: DOGMA.

105. Actress Falco: EDIE.

106. Chief exec: PREZ.

107. Inactive: IDLE.

108. Awareness-raising ads: PSAS.

110. Shirt part: ARM.

111. Wee, for short: LIL.

113. Wear the merch of, say: REP.

114. Qty.: AMT.

115. "__ Twist, Scientist": animated series based on a bestselling picture book: ADA.

Happy Birthday to Rich Norris, the constructor for yesterday's themeless and the crossword editor for the L.A. Times before Patti. I'm thinking we'll have a Rich Norris themeless treat on November 9, 2024.

Rich and his wife Kim

Happy birthday also to Lemonade's beautiful wife Oo. This is a picture from their 2017 trip to Thailand. Lemonade and Oo just spent the October in Thailand again.

 

33 comments:

Subgenius said...

Rock, paper, scissors “Roshambo?” What in the world is that? Anyway, moving on to the rest of the puzzle, I knew the circled letters indicated anagrams, but I only got a couple of them until I came on this site. Nevertheless, all the themed answers were pretty easy to suss. FIR, so I’m happy.

Subgenius said...

Never mind, I LIU. Apparently, “Roshambo” is an alternate name for the game of “Rock, paper, scissors.” Live and learn!

desper-otto said...

Good morning!

What Subgenius said. Thought of Boomer with the TRADING CARDS. Finished quickly...and incorrectly. D-o had TIBERON/PROVOCATEERS. Stupid mistake. Thanx, Lynn, Will, and C.C.

Anonymous said...

What an awful awful cw. Circles and a pathetic word jumble all in one not to mention all the obscure proper names. Right in the trash with this garbage. If I wanted to do a word jumble I'd buy a 2 dollar book at the local dollar store

TTP said...

Good morning. Happy birthday to Rich Norris and Lemonade's wife OO.

Thank you Lynn and Will, and thank you C.C. (especially for pointing out the jumbles. Cardigan escaped me)

Well, nuts. Two one-cell failures in two days. Today it was not knowing the H in ROSHAMBO and HINDS.

I had CAmaRO before CASTRO. I've seen some pretty nice Camaro convertibles
Company boycotters (HERMITS) was funny.
Catherine O'HARA was so funny in her over-the-top character role on Schitt's Creek.
Ronnie before RONALD, slice before SPEAR along with loop before PURL, carrot before TURNIP
OTTER - did you hear about the guy in FL that got attacked by an otter a few weeks ago? It was rabid. He got 120 rabies shots.

CAN DO attitude - A trait exemplified by successful people. Winners. Leaders. They don't fault others. They encourage them. Losers are jealousy driven and hypercritical of others and their work. Sam Rayburn once said something to the effect of, "Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one."

KS said...

FIR, but not without a lot of WAG's.
Circles, yuk! Proper names as well? Neither belongs in a crossword.
This CW had some bite to it. I appreciate anagrams, but when they are easier to solve than the puzzle, something is very wrong.

Jinx in Norfolk said...

FIW. It wasn't a ROS coMBO, nor was it GiRMLESS. Perps let me down today.

Today is:
WORLD PNEUMONIA DAY (Got my Prevnar20 shot a couple of months ago)
NATIONAL CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL DAY (not the book, the actual soup)
NATIONAL FRENCH DIP DAY (love good ones, but some aren’t so good)
NATIONAL PIZZA WITH THE WORKS EXCEPT ANCHOVIES DAY (I’ll take your anchovies, please. Jalapenos too)

My programming capabilities peaked just before I took on Pascal recursion. I got the concept, but not the implementation. I could do the exercises in the book, but I knew I wasn't up to using it to solve real-life problems.

TBT means Tampa Bay Times to me. I don't hashtag much.


Thanks to CC for the fun review.

Anonymous said...

I agree with the previous comments regarding roshambo. Internet search indicates the term in the US is pretty much restricted to No. Cal. The crosses weren’t particularly kind either. (Ciarán Hinds – who?; Manet/Monet? – gotta learn those first names some day; in E? – OK I’m musically illiterate.) And it didn’t help that I didn’t quite know how to spell provocateur. For me, that section of the puzzle pretty much makes the Urban Dictionary definition of roshambo spot on. (NSFW). (Heck, I see even the spell-checker doesn't like roshambo.)

Irish Miss said...

Good Morning:

I unscrambled Blouse and then gave up due to jet lag exhaustion from going around the world:

Ireland (Hinds)
Germany (Berlinale)
Sweden (Tomas)
Italy (FILA, Bari)
Spain (Beso, Tiburon)
England (Gormless)
Caribbean (Cuban)
Asia (Basmati, Ube)

I finished w/o help, in normal Sunday time, but I can't say I enjoyed the solve. The theme was evident immediately, especially with the give-away title and reveal clue, and the circles made it easy to parse the clothing items, that is if you still had the curiosity to do so. EOS, TBT, Roshambo, Dweebier, etc., plus many of the foreign entries detracted from the solve, IMO.

Thanks, Lynn and Will, and thanks, CC, for the commentary and insight.

Happy Birthday, Rich, we miss you! 🎂🎉🎈🎁🎊

Happy Birthday, Oo, hope Lemony made your day special. 🎂🎊🎁🎉🎈

Have a great day.

billocohoes said...

CASTRO is the only convertible bed company I know of - is it regional?

I've heard ROSHAMBO for RPS, but always assumed it was spelled ROcHAMBeau for the French general in the American Revolution.

Circles were unnecessary for the solve, and I didn't bother to see what they rearranged to.

Bob Lee said...

I loved the answer to acting like a chicken: Cross the Road

Totally disliked the jumble aspect. Too long would take too much effort and didn't help.

LOL total guess on the BE for BErlinale. Guessed right!

Thank you Castro Convertibles for the scar at the bottom of my chin. When I was a tot their TV commercial showed a little girl (his 4-year-old daughter) bouncing on the bed. So I would do it too on my folk's Castro convertible. Then I went up on the backrest to jump. Boing, boing, off the end into a corner table. A couple of stitches. Still remember the incident (my oldest memory) plus their song: Who's the first to conquer living space, it's incontrovertible...

Lucina said...

Hola!

Finished this in good time and had to come here for the reveal. I'm still too tired to think.

The first time I ever saw the name PHOEBE was in one of the Louisa May Alcott's books.

I've never heard of CASTRO convertibles.

This puzzle is notable for the few names. Congratulations to the constructors for that!

Yesterday I went to a wedding shower, but it was not CATERED. The finger foods were all made by the hostess. Later my daughter and her family came for dinner and my son-in-law made hamburgers for us. Luckily I had enough in the freezer and I just had to buy more buns.

I was thinking of Edgar Allan Poe when I saw GOLD TOOTH but then I recalled it was The Gold Bug that he wrote.

I's GO TIME for me. Later. Have a wonderful day, everyone! Happy birthday, Rich!


Monkey said...

ROSHAMBO and HINDS got me. But I got all the anagrams and the theme pretty quickly, however lots of head-scratching over some of the perpped answers like TBT, MURK as clued, UBE, ADU. CASTRO as clued.

I agree with CC on the fun clues like HERMITS, OIL TOWNS and TOES.

CC’s TURNIPS, look like beets.


Happy birthdays to Rich and Lemonade’s wife.

Husker Gary said...

Musings
-Flag on the play for unsportsmanlike RAS_AMBO/_INDS/M_NET. I luckily got it but still…
-BERLINALE, EGAN, ROCCO, that PHOEBE and GORMLESS pleasantly took care of themselves
-No SWEATER today, we may set a record high for this date
-Do you still see USHERS in movie theaters today?
-Saying, “Didn’t we just have this?” has an obvious response
-INDIGO in Roy G Biv really doesn’t exist unlike what I told kids for years. I recently found out that Newton just loved the number 7
-Into many puzzles a little DWEEBIER must fall
-GHOST images were part of our early TV sets that had rooftop antennas

Anonymous said...

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I liked it

CrossEyedDave said...

Except for the shorts, I had trouble recognizing any of these clothes. (I don't wear blouses ... :)
just some friendly advice...

Happy birthday Rich & Oo, visit the Blog and I'll link you a cake!

Never heard of Roshambo, but the research was interesting. I.E.: the revolutionary French General who supposedly won the game to leave the room where the surrender was signed last... I think the story is in here, somewhere... if not, adding fire and water to the game is interesting. Or, if you really want to complicate things,
try adding lizard, Spock...

Name of the SanFran town? I was trying to remember Oakland, when Tiburon perped in...
For goodness sake! I can't believe I already forgot the name of the town we stayed in just this October!
Here is DW & I relaxing at the hotel.
It's called Waters Edge, and has 3 gas fireplaces on the back deck, plus a fireplace in every room with a free 3 hour log and a lighter. more info here.
The only negative is that twice a day, once in each direction, you get a one hour traffic jam on the only road thru town...

Here is the view from our dinner table at the Claremont Hotel on my birthday...

Anonymous said...

I live on the west coast and never heard of Castro convertibles until driving around NYC and seeing the billboards. I thought maybe an open top car owned by Fidel?

waseeley said...

Thank you Lynn and Will for the FASHION show. Got all the fill and got 5 of the themers unscrambled, but had to call on Teri (my JUMBLE expert) to undress CAMISOLE.

And thank you C.C. for thoroughly DISROBING all the 100A's in this puzzle! -)

There was lots of GLAMOROUS fill and here are some of my favorites ...

31A MANET/53A MOMA. Two Roses.

87A INDIGO. The INDIGO GIRLS are among several prominent solvers featured in the documentary WordPlay.

119A GORMLESS. It's British, but by way of Old Norse.

121A AMAZES. This puzzle 121A me.

4D COMP. Shorthand for COMPLEMENTARY.

5D ROSHAMBO. ESP. It is rumored, but apparently not completely true, that this slang name for the game was derived, among other possibilities from the name for a French Revolutionary War hero. TL;DR.

29D PURL. Not PERL ("Practical Eclectic Rubbish Lister") the programming language.

32D TIBURON. ESP.

35D HERMITS. Favorite clue.

74D BLOND. I resemble that remark -- and my sisters have always been jealous.

115D ADA. Another programming language, this one named for Lady ADA Lovelace, the world's first programmer.

Cheers,
Bill

HBDs Rich and OO! 🎂🎊🎁🎉🎈

FLN

DNF Rich's puzzle, but loved it. The thing I liked the most was his ability to lead you down a garden path right into a dead end.

I didn't post because I got a last minute call from my DIL asking if I could take one of my granddaughters to a music rehearsal at a local senior living facility -- one of the violinists had a 4 month old baby that needed holding while she was playing. So I dropped what I as doing and took her to the rehearsal. It turned out to be an incredible experience sitting right next to 10 virtuoso string players shaping a performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Most of the time I had no idea what they were talking about, but it was a wonderful!

Anonymous T said...

Sunday Lurk say...

I know TIBURON! DW's Aunt* lives there. We visited last year for Thanksgiving and will go again this year after Christmas.

Ray-O: The thing about implementing recursion is look for base-case at the top of the function and exit when you get it.
i.e.:
F(n) {
If (n <=1) {
return n;
} else {
return F(n-1) + F(n-2)};
}
//bonus point for recognizing what I just psudo-coded (C and/or PERL Waseeley :-))

CED - that final photo made me think of Blues Image.

Happy Birthday Rich & Oo!

Cheers, -T
*do not pronounce it 'ant' - she's from Boston ;-)
DW's Aunt is a hoot. She stewardess'd Pan-Am back in the heyday of flight and has stories of Nixon on the way to China, dancing w/ Moroccan princes, and other tales that are unbelievable but true.

Prof M said...

I don't care for the this type of puzzle either; just not as strongly as Anonymous 1.

inanehiker said...

Today I had the same thing that happened a few months ago - my paper had a puzzle called "Change the Subject" by Susan Gelfand & Katie Hale instead of the one you all had. The last time that happened, the puzzle I had was in the paper a few weeks later.

Anonymous said...

I still don't get the circled answers. What the.......

Lucina said...

To me a puzzle is a puzzle is a puzzle and I will solve it at all costs no matter how long it takes me. (I'm still working on yesterday's) This one was not as much of a challenge as some others we've had. So, thank you to Lynn K. Watson and Will Nediger.

No, I have not seen an USHER in the theater for decades. Too bad. It used to be a good job for teenagers and if they were our friends, they led us to good seats. Even the concession stand has fewer people these days.

I loved touring the MOMA on one of my trips to NY.

Ha, ha, ha, ha at "ten below". At first, I was thinking of temperature.



Big Easy said...

I'm surprised I almost FIR with all the unknowns. And even with filling CHANGING CLOTHES I only unscrambled BLOUSE and SHORTS. I've never heard of ROSHAMBO and I guessed MONEY instead of MANET. So it was a FIW. There was a slew of others that I somehow managed to fill but really didn't know.

GORMLESS, TBT, BERLINALE, HINDS, UBE, CASTRO, ROCCO, ADA Twist, EOS balm, MURK, TOMAS, TIBURON, BARI, PHOEBE, STU, GHOST, -got 'em but didn't know 'em. But there was a Castro link- CUBAN.

RE-DATE- going out a second time with an old flame. Changing a date on a time sheet can lead to trouble.

GOLD TOOTH-none in my mouth; just a gold plate that bridges where I had a dead tooth pulled over 50 years ago. But gold was $32.00/oz back then. I told DW if I end up dead to get some vise-grips and rip it out before the undertaker takes it out and sells it. It's about $2,000/oz these days.

Jinx- World Pneumonia Day? DW came down with it last weekend. Pulmonologist has her taking prednisone, Tessalon, and Levaquin (levofloxin).

Jayce said...

I really liked CED's photos.

Acesaroundagain said...

I enjoyed the recap CC. I can't believe I've never heard of Roshambo. Yorktown is only 45 miles from me. Interesting that the game was played by Washington and Rochambeau after the peace treaty was signed in Yorktown. Like others the H got me in Roshambo and Hinds. Never heard of Gormless. The theme was not a bit of help in solving the puzzle. Just a Jumble in which I got them all except Camisole. My favorite clue was "ten below". GC

sumdaze said...

Thanks Lynn & Will for giving me a very good reason to sit after running in my local 1/2 marathon this morning! I had no objection to taking the extra time to sort out the jumbles before reading C.C.'s delightful blog.
I had a 2-box FIW but FAVs were COME SAIL AWAY, Ten below?, CAN DO, and the clue for CROSS THE ROAD.

I have used RockPaperScissors interchangeably with Rochambeau my whole life. Who's going to get off their horse and open the gate? "Rochambeau". I did not realize it was a regional thing. Like others said, I thought it was because of the French general during the revolutionary War. Anonymous@9:14 says it's a NorCal thing. That fits.

I laughed at how C.C. paired OVEREATS with RAID. I also love those Korean melons. The fruit is sweetest near the seeds. Unfortunately they are difficult to find around here.

Nic pic, CED!

Happy birthday to Oo and Rich!

Grumpy Granny. I only see you posting on Sunday. I hope you see this and know that I wish you well on your upcoming eye surgery!

sumdaze said...

More on Rochambeau....
When I lived in Japan, I noticed this came was very popular there. They call it Janken (じゃん拳). I once when to a holiday party where they played it with the emcee vs. all the guests. If the emcee beat you, you sat down. Eventually it was between the emcee and one guest.

Also, does anyone else sometimes play "dynamite rules"? The dynamite blows up the rock and paper but the scissors can cut the fuse. You might think, "Why not always throw 'scissors'?" Well, then the meta kicks in an 'rock' seems like a good strategy....

Picard said...

Not sure if anyone will see this so late in the day.

I actually did get all of the theme answers and successfully did the CHANGING into CLOTHES unscrambles. The fill, not so much. I did the correct WAG at unknown ROSHAMBO/HINDS. But I had ITS SO TIME, TOMAR and SHORT, which all seemed as good. I figured a SHORT film is a SECONDARY IMAGE.

Also found the SW utterly unfair with those proper names and ??RMLESS.

Learning moment about ROSHAMBO. Yes, it was named for the French general Rochambeau. Growing up in DC I remember the "14th Street Bridge" was named for him. But that bizarre spelling was unrecognizable.

I remember the CASTRO CONVERTIBLE ads on the radio growing up back East. The final line has the same tune as the Spaghetti-O ad song. Definitely regional. Hard to imagine how LA Times readers would know it. And they went out of business long ago. Supposedly recently revived.

Here is the CASTRO CONVERTIBLE catchy tune on NYC radio WABC.

30 years ago I did a very long bike ride from SF to TIBURON with a friend. But I have no good photos there from that ride. But I was back 20 years ago visiting another friend at a medical conference in TIBURON. I was the subject of study.

Here in TIBURON I witnessed a waterfall... of fog!

I have some excellent photos from that visit, but the waterfall of fog is what I remember. Sorry for the poor quality of video from that era, but I hope you get the idea.

Vidwan827 said...


Thank You Lynn Watson and Will Nediger, for a long and challenging puzzle for a Sunday. I completed it, with some lookups (!), early on, this morning, but I lost two posts, I had diligently composed, ... on my iPhone, and gave up in disgust ...

... and then other matters intervened and I had to go on to an hour's worth of Zoom, for work, and then visit a Sikh temple ( I am not a Sikh ... ) ... long story ... lost my way, to the temple, there, and in the process, ... most of my Sunday afternoon and evening ...

Thank You CC, for your explanatory blog.

Waseely, before I forget, 4D COMP ... I'm sure you meant COMPLIMENTARY rather than COMPLEMENTARY. ... the former is favorable, or sometimes, free ... the latter is adding to the qualities of, or increasingly favorable to... something else...

I didn't know that Bernard Castro, of the Covertible(s) fame, was not Cuban, by any means, but an Italian immigrant... I have two other convertibles, ( in my basement -version of an alternate living room ),( which I have had the occasion to use, about 20 years ago, ) .... but they are not Castros. I have been given to understand that they are very comfortable, by some guests who stayed overnight,... and who had an opportunity to use them ...

Not familiar with TBT - Throw back Thursday... Some of these hashtags and social media slang are completely out of my wheelhouse and way past my pay bracket ...




******************************


Finally, thanks to HuskerGary,.... Newton may have made up the name, INDIGO, the color, because he liked the number 7, in the colors of the rainbow, but ... in the 19th century, that name became ... the name of a very important dye from an 'Indigo' plant, which was grown and farmed extensively, by poor farmers, ... under ruthless ... colonial British debt and pressure, in India, ... especially in an eastern state of Bihar ... in the 1850's ....

When a German chemical scientist, a prodigy, Adolf von Baeyer, ( Nobel Prize winner - ) in around late 1860's, ... discovered the molecular formula of Indole and Indigotin, a by-product, for the Indigo dye ....

... and the process of manufacturing the indigo dye from coal tar distillation residues, ... thus, Baeyer could make, in one small half acre factory plant in the Ruhr, ... 20 times the amount of dye .... more than could be made in an annual production, in all of India ... and he and his company, inadvertently, caused a famine in Bihar that took over fifty thousand lives. Wikipedia has many more details.

Ironically, Baeyer also discovered a whole branch of coal tar dyes - like the famous Aniline dyestuffs .... like Phthalo-cyanine Blue...

Fast forward to the end of World War I, all German companies, like Baeyer and BASF SE, ....

.... and the giant, ....I G Farben -industrie AG ( ..-- manufacturer of Zyklon B gas of the Holocaust fame, er, notoriety ... in WW II ... ) .... lost All their patents in war in WW One reparations ... to the victorious Allies...

.... and particularly in the manufacture of Nitric Acid, Sulfuric Acid and all the dyestuff patents ... and this allowed many companies around the world, at that time, and also in India, to start manufacturing Phthalo -cyanine Blue - a kind of "naval officer" blazer sea blue, much prized in the world even today...

BTW, .... BASF SE is still the largest chemical company in the world, by assets, revenue and profitability, as of 2022.... not, any American company ....


TMI !!!

Have a great week, all you folks.



Lucina said...

Picard
Never fear, some of us are always around beyond midnight. Sometimes that is when I get around to reading the comments. But since it is so late that is all I'm going to say.

Anonymous said...

Rumor is, “ro-sham-bo” is related somehow to Count Rochambeau. In Japan, children call the game “jan-ken-pon”, played in a sing-song manner, and in Indonesia “ji-gu-pa”. Seems to be a pretty universal game!

Anonymous said...

Oh-kay-eee…it took me until CHANGINGCLOTHES to “get” this theme (maybe that’s why it’s called “the reveal”, hmm? 🤣). Not particularly tough except in a few spots, but at least I ended up FIR.

Best grin for me came from CROSSTHEROAD (I wonder if the chickens played ROSHAMBO before crossing said road…). Having had many Japanese friends growing up, I was very good at Jan-Ken-Po; there is an actual strategy to the moves!

Anyway, a good brain-twister from one of the masters; Happy Birthday, sir!

====> Darren / L.A.