Sunday June 19: Cleopatra

This acrostic appeared to be a real-stumper.  The first pass through the clues only yielded  Flash Flood for a canyon camping danger.  The image is horrifying.  We’re always thinking about how a clue’s answer may relate to the puzzle quote; not sure this fits in.

 With a moment’s thought, we realize that an imaginary plane slicing through the center of the earth, cuts a great circle on the sphere’s surface.  The ball itself is cut in half, hence Hemisphere.

With little to go by from the clues, the only hope is aggressive guesses in the quote.  That led to the simplification of Transylvania to its country: Romania.   Thinking that Stoker wrote Dracula at the turn of the century, we first thought Rumania, but later corrected this.  

Idle Gossip (Fruitless product of a grapevine) was the most amusing clue on the board, and it was a welcome addition to our arsenal of answers. With our minds already on pane et vino from “ Wine sometimes mistaken for pinot blanc” it was a late grid-in. Our one complaint (minor!) was that the word play should have led to question-mark. Teakettle (singer when it’s hot) also showed characteristic acrostic cleverness, though it too avoided question form.  Clearly our friends Em and Hen felt in a declarative mood this week! Lucky we overcame this obstacle through our commitment to Academia (Way of life devoted to study).

Filling in the quote with ample guessing always leads to some surprises, but when our first full words to find were “Elizabeth Taylor” we couldn’t imagine what she was doing here; and we then wondered what something could be as what? as her.

Saying the clue “Said with an accent” made us realize that we were emphasizing the last word and the answer fell quickly into place.  When we finally convinced ourselves that chardonnay has two n’s, it was only a matter of time.  We knew we could arm wrestle this stumper to completion.

Years ago I was excited to win a baseball glove when I called in to the local radio station sports show with the correct answer to the quiz question.  Phone in to such broadcasts I haven’t done since.

As a sports fan, I thought the 1908 Giant clue would be easy, but my baseball memories just doesn’t extend back a century. To know Fred Merkle.  I did know Tinkers, Evers, and Chance from the Frederick Adams poem.  There is great irony here, because in fact Evers was involved in the play that gained Merkle his nickname of “Bonehead”  and eventually led to the Tinker-Evers-Chance Chicago Cubs beating out Merkle’s Giants for the National league pennant. The refrain of the Adams poem, speaks to a different outcome:

 “Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,

Tinker and Evers and Chance.

Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,

Making a Giant hit into a double –

Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:

 "Tinker to Evers to Chance."

So of course, Elizabeth Taylor is Egyptian.  Nice quote!

Well, it’s now early in the morning after working through this puzzler, time for a pogonotomy.