Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Today's time: 9:37.

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This puzzle, by Jules P. Markey, has a pun theme.  Certain phrases have words circles within them: DRIVE RECKLESSLY has RIVER, IT'S NO WONDER has SNOW, GIVES PERMISSION has SPERM, and SOLD AT A LOSS has DATA.  All of these circled words have what in common?  Phrases with "bank," so the capper of the theme is BREAK UP THE BANKS.  See, the words that form types of banks are "broken up" in the phrases.  Now that's wordplay!

Pelvic bones!  ILIA.  The ilium is the largest part of the hip bone.

For some reason I often get batiking mixed up with scrimshaw.  For "batiking need" I was thinking, "whale bone?"  It is DYE.  Batik is a process of wax-resistant dyeing on cloth.

LSD is referenced in The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness, a book by Alan Watts (foreword by Timothy Leary).

Bashar al-ASSAD has been the president of Syria for 17 years.

SOYA ("source of protein in veggie burgers") is a fancy way of saying soy.

Hal ASHBY was the director of Shampoo, but much more importantly, Being There and Harold and Maude.

I had not heard of the ASPEN Institute ("nonpartisan DC think tank").  It has a very interesting daily feature called The Five Best Ideas of the Day.  I'm a believer!

So I did not find very much at all that was new to me.  I was familiar with AGA, IAMB, LATKE, IN ESSE, ROXIE, EMU, the Eurythmics as a DUO, etc.  So why did it take so long??

Life's a mystery.  ALE just have to work harder.