Ben Bass and Beyond

Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting

2012-01-25T18:00:00.005-06:00

I quite enjoyed Lookingglass Theatre's Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting, a lively piece of historical fiction in which Brooklyn Dodgers boss Branch Rickey seeks the approval of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Joe Louis and Paul Robeson before calling up Jackie Robinson to break the major leagues' color line.

To its credit, Mr. Rickey doesn't sermonize, exploring the tensions even among those with a shared vision of an integrated postwar America. The show is attracting a lot of positive attention and its Michigan Avenue engagement only runs through February 19, so grab your tickets now. It's a perfect evening's entertainment for hot stove season.

My Flavorpill preview is here.
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Anatomy of a snowstorm

2012-01-22T10:00:00.006-06:00

That's gotta hurt.

My car has a snowhawk.

Hello

2012-01-18T08:00:00.001-06:00

Puzzlemaster, solve thyself

2012-01-14T08:00:00.017-06:00

Although best known as a friend of this blog, Will Shortz is also the puzzle editor of the New York Times and the puzzlemaster of NPR Weekend Edition Sunday.

But he's not the only FOBB&B working as a public radio quiz show host in the American Northeast. Mike Nothnagel, math professor extraordinaire and constructor of some of the most elegant crosswords in the NYT, hosts his own puzzle segment entitled "Any Questions?" on station WAMC.

It was probably inevitable that Mike would put Will in the hot seat, as he did a few weeks ago. Just as inevitably, Will passed the puzzle test with flying colors.

You can listen to Will and Mike on "Any Questions?" here.

Predictive text

2012-01-11T00:30:00.000-06:00

As the great Jordan Rubin points out, this "predictive text" nonsense has gone too far.

Beware Ben Bass

2011-12-31T16:00:00.065-06:00

Texas A&M led the nation this year with 44 sacks thanks in part to my favorite Aggie, the 6'5", 295 lb. senior defensive end Ben Bass. At approximately the same height and weight give or take a hundred pounds, we're basically identical twins. The guy even has the right middle initial, J.

True to form, the blue-chip pass rusher out of Plano West High School sacked my law school alma mater Northwestern's elite quarterback Dan Persa in the first quarter of today's Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas in Houston. Good old #90 and his crew were up in Persa's grille all day.

Although I support all Ben Basses on principle, I wasn't too excited about the fierce game he played. Neither were my hundreds of fellow purple-clad Northwestern fans in a jammed North Side bar, a boisterous crowd including former quarterback C.J. Bacher (still protected by his teammates on the O-line) and former university president and basketball junkie Henry Bienen.

Above is a screenshot of my namesake in today's game, complete with not just Bass but "B. Bass" on the jersey because his brother Justin Bass is a freshman on the team (not to be confused with my brother Justin Bass). I'd have liked to get the "and Beyond" on there but I couldn't reach the Aggies' equipment manager before game time to offer a generous bribe.

With today's loss, Northwestern ran its unfortunate streak to 9 straight bowl game losses since beating Cal in the Rose Bowl after the 1948 season. On the plus side, NU has made it to postseason play 9 times in the past 17 seasons, including the past 4 in a row.

Strictly personal

2011-12-30T11:00:00.001-06:00

Happy 70th birthday, Mom!

Elsewhere in badass geopolitical hip-hop...

2011-12-23T08:00:00.002-06:00

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North Korea Warns South to Show 'Respect' for Kim Jong-il
[NYT]

'Tis the season

2011-12-21T19:00:00.000-06:00

The Allegro Handbell Ensemble plays a noontime concert of holiday favorites in the lobby of 131 S. Dearborn, Chicago.

Day 7: One that got away

2011-12-21T08:00:00.006-06:00

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On Match Day 7, for the first time, I let one slip away.

1. Homer's Iliad ends with the burial of what Trojan prince and warrior?

I've read The Odyssey but not The Iliad. Knew Odysseus was a Greek hero and strained to think of his counterpart Trojan warriors; the best I could do was to think of various USC (Trojan) Heisman Trophy winners. Finally I went with Ajax, who might have been a good guess had he not been a Greek warrior himself. I should have guessed his archrival and Trojan counterpart, Hector.

2. Identify the two largest businesses -- both London-based -- of the type that also includes Dorotheum, Bonhams, Phillips de Pury, Lyon & Turnbull, and MacDougall's.

None of the given business names meant a thing to me; they could have been clothing stores, casinos, gas (I mean petrol) stations, fast food places, department stores, insurance companies or china shops. But the names said upscale to me, so I figured they weren’t, for example, fast food places. My first thought was insurance companies, as Lloyd’s of London was obviously a London-based business, but I couldn’t think of another one, and although Lloyd's was old I didn't know it to be one of the two largest insurers.

All I could do was try to think of a classy, high-end industry whose two leading players were British. Rather than make a bad knee-jerk guess, as I had repeatedly over the previous Match Days (Blake Edwards, The Clapper, Olivetti, Robben Island, West Bank), I mulled it over for a while. Before long I thought of the auction world, where Sotheby’s and Christie’s were the two major names, and felt reasonably confident they were both British. The other given names seemed British or otherwise European, which made sense to me since those countries are so much older than ours; they’ve probably been auctioning art, antiquities and rarities for centuries. And try as I might I couldn’t come up with anything else. So I said Sotheby’s and Christie’s and it was correct.

3. What is the common name for the scalinata that connects the Piazza di Spagna with the Piazza Trinità dei Monti in Rome?

Another one I had to grind out. I’ve been to Rome but I didn’t know the two Piazzas and none of the given Italian words meant much to me. What might connect two piazzas (plazas, town squares) in Rome? My first thought was a road or a bridge, but I couldn’t think of anything, so I thought further. They were asking for a common name of a functional part of the physical plant of the city, one well enough to be known around the world and have its own nickname. And it had to be in modern-day Rome, not what remains of ancient Rome. I kept thinking of the Trevi Fountain, which is in a piazza, but I needed something more connective and less destinational. The Roman Road was more likely a road into and out of the city than within its borders, if it even still existed.

Suddenly it occurred to me: the Spanish Steps, one of the famous landmarks in the city, might connect two piazzas. I didn’t think of them as doing so, but who knew? I'd visited the Spanish Steps 14 years ago and remembered the steps themselves better than whatever was around them. I seemed to recall the bottom of the staircase was a major pedestrian artery, not a piazza, but it could have been both, i.e. a piazza along a roadway.

Rereading the question confirmed that my guess was solid. I don’t speak Italian but I speak French, and scalinata worked as a staircase since escalier means staircase in French (and both were something you scale). That was good enough for me. I guessed the Spanish Steps and it was correct. I didn’t even notice a second clue hiding in the question: the Piazza di Spagna was named for Spain.

4. What were the first names of the co-hosts of the 1960s/70s sketch comedy television series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In?

I suffered a brain freeze on this question that cost me a tie in the match.

Knowledge is complicated; there are shades of gray. In this league, for example, there’s knowing the answer and confidently providing it; not knowing the answer and scoring with a well-reasoned educated guess; not knowing the answer and making a lucky random guess; and not knowing the answer and proving it with a wrong guess, an unfilled answer blank, or the capitulation of not even answering the question but instead trying to be funny.

The ugliest shade of gray is knowing the answer but not being able to say it, and that was my lot on this question. I’ve said it before, and it sounds like an excuse, but if you had shown me a list of 20 possible answers I’d have easily selected the correct one. It was on the tip of my tongue and I just couldn’t spit it out.

I think the “same first letter” thing screwed me up. I kept thinking “Dick Rowan and who, Dick Rowan and who,” when the answer was in fact Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. The crazy thing was I had just been thinking about these two guys’ names in the previous month or so, maybe in reference to Goldie Hawn or something. In any event, the harder I thought about it, the more I didn’t come up with the answer. Eventually I gave up and guessed Dick and Allen in frustration knowing it was wrong, and it was.

5. Of the chemical elements known as the noble gases, which is the only one that has only radioactive isotopes (and is in fact responsible for the majority of public exposure to radiation)?

This felt like the gimme of the day. I knew from both my career in real estate and as a casual follower of the news that radon gas was an ongoing issue in home inspections and buildings around the country. I also knew from having taken chemistry and AP Chem in high school that radon was a noble gas. Another element I knew offhand was a noble gas, neon, was also in widespread proximity to the public, but I’d never heard of a health threat due to leaky or aging neon signs. I thought xenon might be a noble gas but I couldn’t think of its general application other than maybe in high-end auto headlights, nor did I think of it as a threat. So I guessed radon and it was correct.

6. Named after a character from an obscure 1953 film, this stock sound effect has appeared in hundreds of instances across various media (including all Star Wars and Quentin Tarantino films). What is the effect known as?

You either knew this or you didn’t, and I didn’t. I guessed Screamy Joe. The answer was the Wilhelm Scream.

Defense: I gave my opponent 1 2 1 2 0 3 and he gave me 2 2 1 3 0 1 (boldface are correct answers), so I lost 6(4)-3(3).

This one should have been a tie. We both knew, played identical defense on, and canceled each other out on three of the easier (to us at least) questions. He knew the one I thought was hardest, the Wilhelm Scream, and earned a 3; I knew the one he thought was hardest, Rowan and Martin, but I couldn't manage to spit out the correct answer to earn a 3.

So what would have been a tie was instead a painful loss. But it was still early in the season, and I was surely not the only player with a hard-luck anecdote.

Day 6: Playing like a player

2011-12-19T06:00:00.017-06:00

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Another pretty good day at the office:

1. This is the work of what contemporary American artist?

I got past the momentary distraction of the word Red, which made me think of Mark Rothko due to John Logan’s Broadway hit that recently played the Goodman Theatre here in Chicago. The contemporary timeframe worked but the painting itself didn’t much resemble Rothko’s work. I wasn’t familiar with the canvas in question but the splotchy motif reminded me of Jasper Johns’ flag and target paintings. I used to have a print of his Green Target in my office, for example, and the weathered look was reminiscent; his American Flag could also plausibly share a creator with the mystery painting. And words painted in colors different from the colors the words themselves represented, shared a playful quality with targets consisting of identically colored concentric circles and alternate takes on the American flag. So although I knew little about his other work I guessed Jasper Johns and it was correct.

2. The West Indian (but not Caribbean) Lucayan Archipelago consists of the Turks and Caicos Islands, along with what nation?

On this question I made the best educated guess of my LearnedLeague career to date. I had never heard the word Lucayan in my life, so all I could go on was the other given information. The two keys, pun unintentional, were “(but not Caribbean)” and the fact that the answer was one of two nations in an archipelago. So I was looking for, possibly an island nation, but more likely a nation that was itself an archipelago, since I was hard-pressed to think of an island nation adjacent to a nation that was a group of islands, like Australia just south of Indonesia (or for that matter the Philippines), but somewhere near the Caribbean.

My knowledge of geography in general is pretty shaky. About all I could confidently say about the island geography of the greater Caribbean region was that Haiti and the Dominican Republic are the two modern nations that share the island that was once called Hispaniola. So I started thinking about what “(but not Caribbean)” could mean. To me that meant somewhere that was generally thought of as Caribbean, but technically wasn’t.

I vaguely remembered that the Bahamas and maybe Jamaica were southeasterlyish from Miami, close enough to visit by a short flight or boat ride. Maybe they weren’t exactly in the Caribbean since they were on the Atlantic side. Lacking a better guess, I decided to go with one of those. I wasn’t sure whether Jamaica had more than one island to its name, but the Bahamas clearly did. So I went with the Bahamas and it was correct.

3. The television station S4C, based out of Cardiff, was the first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speaking audience, and now broadcasts exclusively in that language. The S stands for Sianel (Welsh for channel); what does the C stand for?

No clue. I would have been fine if they were asking how to refer to Finland in its native dialect (Suomi), but they weren’t. I don’t know the first thing about the Welsh tongue; had you told me the Welsh traditionally spoke Old English, I’d have believed you. I guessed Cardiff on the thin hope that it was a trick question with the answer in the given information, even though I knew that was not the league’s style. The answer was Cymru, a word apparently familiar to viewers of BBC programming such as Doctor Who that originates in Wales.

4. The derivative of the equation 3x³ + 4x² + 6x + 2, when plotted, is what geometric figure?

Mike Markovich and I sat in the last row of calculus our senior year of high school and quietly cracked jokes back and forth the entire school year, so I might have learned more about “The Calculus of a Single Variable something something,” as our textbook's title put it, had we not found each other and ourselves so hilarious. But I did know that the given math term was not an equation, it was an expression; that with the implied y= it would indeed be an equation; and that the answer was a parabola.

5. While the kilogram is the International System of Units (SI) base unit for mass, what is the SI derived unit for weight?

Probably should have gotten this one. I also took physics in high school and had I thought about this in physics terms I might have remembered the newton, a shockingly common standard unit in physics circles considering how it pretty much never comes up anywhere else. Looking for a non-metric equivalent to the kg I said the pound, ignoring the SI (which should have implied physics to me) at my peril.

6. What is the name of the meadow, along side the River Thames in the Royal County of Berkshire, where King John of England sealed the Magna Carta in 1215?

Like Cymru, you either knew this one or you didn’t, and I didn’t. Inspired by Hogsmeade, the town nearest Hogwarts Castle, I tried to picture a bucolic meadow along the banks of a river. I guessed Sheepsmeade, not a bad guess in light of the answer: Runnymede.

So I went 3 for 6 thanks to two good guesses. Playing defense, I gave my opponent 2 2 1 1 0 3 and he gave me a very similar 2 1 2 1 0 3. Unfortunately for him he went 0 for 6, so I won 4(3)-0(0). The victory gave me a 4-2 record and lifted me to 13th place of 44 on our still tightly packed division ladder.

Sign of the times

2011-12-18T08:00:00.000-06:00

Day 5: Keeping it going

2011-12-16T06:00:00.062-06:00

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Filled with newfound confidence, I had another decent trip around the bases on Match Day 5.

1. The term dog days (as in dog days of summer) originated in ancient Greece, and came from the belief that the hot weather was associated with, and caused by, what star (please provide proper name)?

Like so many LearnedLeague questions, this one was replete with ways to get the answer. Put more simply, the question here was “Which star is nicknamed the Dog Star?” Careful readers of the Harry Potter books might recall that Sirius Black can transform into a dog (summer 1999 spoiler alert!). And the logo of Sirius satellite radio is a dog with a star for an eye. As I knew, and was reassured by those supporting facts, the answer was Sirius.

2. Moon River, the Johnny Mercer/Henry Mancini-penned Academy Award winner for Best Original Song for 1961, was first sung in what film?

Have never seen the movie, but I'm familiar with its basic facts. Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, George Peppard, Truman Capote wrote the book, Moon River, Henry Mancini, regrettable performance by Mickey Rooney. And the movie is: Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

3. The individual depicted in this painting is named Dora Maar, but the painting itself is better known by what accurately descriptive name?

No clue. It was pretty obvious who painted it, and I assumed (correctly, as it turned out) that she was one of his mistresses, but I certainly couldn’t name the painting. I said “Woman with a Veil,” but the correct answer makes sense if you’re looking at the image properly: “Weeping Woman.”

4. Provide the two words that fill in the blank from Section 1 of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on December 6, 1865: Neither slavery nor _____ _______, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Having studied the Constitution, though not particularly the Reconstruction Amendments, in law school, I should probably have gotten this one. My problem was the numeration of spaces in the answer blanks: 5, 7. This fit perfectly with the phrase “human bondage,” which worked as a synonym to slavery. Maybe I was led astray by Somerset Maugham (yet again!). The correct answer was involuntary servitude.

5. In the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, the letter B is assigned the codeword Bravo, and the letter Y is Yankee. Using the codewords of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, spell the word cat.

Argh. I couldn’t think of the C word. I guess that’s because I am such a PG-rated kind of guy. I guessed Conga Alpha Tango, but the correct answer was Charlie Alpha Tango.

6. Who is the father of the child in this picture?

Perhaps due to the intimation of extramarital intrigue, I thought the woman looked kind of tabloidy-mistressy, so I guessed John Edwards. And I was right!

Defense: I gave my opponent 0 1 3 1 2 2; he gave me 2 3 2 1 1 0 (boldface are correct answers).

Interestingly, I thought Sirius was a 0 (the easiest question), and John Edwards was a 2; my opponent, vice versa. We each got both of them right. Thanks to his feeling that Breakfast at Tiffany's was the hardest question, I won by the narrowest of margins, 5(3)-4(3).

The victory gave me a 3-2 record and moved me up to 20th place in my 44-player rookie division, or "Rundle." I was one of 10 players tied with 6 points in the standings (like NHL hockey, you get 2 for a win and 1 for a tie; unlike the NHL, you also get -1 for a forfeit). But I was 9th of those 10 due to my poor performance in the tiebreaker, with only 1 more match point than my collective opposition.

Still, after two pretty good days in a row I was on my first winning streak. The best part was, win or lose, I was enjoying the experience.

Day 4: Finding my mojo

2011-12-15T06:00:00.048-06:00

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On my fourth day in LearnedLeague trivia, I finally got it going.

1. What was the stage name of Dutch exotic dancer Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, who died of a gunshot wound at age 41 on October 15, 1917?

A wartime femme fatale who wasn’t Tokyo Rose? Had to be Mata Hari. And it was.

2. Journalists Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper, Norah O'Donnell, Jessica Yellin, Peter Baker, Carol Lee, and Don Gonyea all serve in what specific position for their respective news organizations?

A gimme thanks to Jake Tapper’s ongoing tenure as White House correspondent for ABC News. I'm not much of a TV news watcher but I'm also dimly aware of Norah O’Donnell. Even though I haven’t heard of several of these people, and even though Brit Hume’s no longer covering the White House (also for ABC News), the familiar names on the list made this question pretty straightforward.

3. Name the man, one of the earliest and most influential professional rock critics, who served from 1974 to 2006 as music editor for The Village Voice.

Not too many people in the league knew this one but I did: Robert Christgau. I’ve always appreciated the analysis of insightful critics and observers. I’d just as soon read Posnanski or watch Costas interview Feller as actually watch a baseball game. In the world of rock journalism, Christgau’s one of the key figures. You’ve got your gonzo genius Lester Bangs, who died too young; Robert Hilburn, late of the L.A. Times; Cameron Crowe, boy wonder of Rolling Stone; Richard Meltzer, whose A Whore Like All The Rest I’ve given as a gift; the professorial Greil Marcus. More recently, Nick Tosches, Michael Azerrad, Bill Wyman (not that Bill Wyman), Neil Strauss. The pioneering, prolific Christgau made the most of his bully pulpit during his long tenure at the Voice.

4. Tiny Robben Island, notorious today for its legacy as an island prison, lies 4.3 miles (7 km) off the coast of what nation?

On the flip side of Christgau, most of the people in the league got this one but I didn’t. Had I thought about a legendary spiritual leader who was imprisoned offshore for decades on specious political charges, only to be freed to universal acclaim, I might have guessed South Africa. I guessed Ireland, perhaps thinking instead of self-important rock stars who hied to kiss his ring and bask in his halo.

5. It is commonly held that deep-dish Chicago-style pizza was invented in 1943 by Ike Sewell at what restaurant, where he was a co-founder?

Knew this one in my soul. I’ve lived in and around Chicago pretty much my entire life, and Pizzeria Uno is iconic. I used to stop by there on the way home from Bears games when I was in high school to pick up deep-dish pies. Had they asked for the intersection, I would have said Wabash and Ohio.

6. An April 15, 1985, middleweight championship boxing match, known today simply as the The War, is considered one of the most thrilling matches in history, pitting the incumbent undisputed champion against a challenger who was junior middleweight champion at the time. Identify either of the two combatants in this historic bout.

No clue. To me, “1980s middleweight” says “Sugar Ray Leonard,” so that was my guess. The actual boxers were Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns.

Defense: I gave my opponent 1 0 3 2 1 2; he gave me 1 2 1 0 2 3 (boldface are correct answers). So I won 6(4)-3(3).

For the first time I felt like I acquitted myself fairly well on a full set of questions. Probably should have sussed out Mandela, but made a respectable guess on the boxing question.

Winning with four correct answers was a much-needed shot of confidence as I improved to a .500 record and got back up to the middle of my division in 23rd place of 44. Life was good.

Day 3: Sliding into oblivion

2011-12-14T06:00:00.180-06:00

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As I entered Match Day 3 of my rookie season in the LearnedLeague trivia contest, my confidence was low after two shaky efforts. Unfortunately my third go-round did little to right the ship.

1. What is the specific common name for the government of France that existed from 1870, upon the collapse of the Second French Empire, until 1940, and the Nazi invasion and subsequent Vichy regime?

This was one of those topics I faintly remembered from a long-ago world history class in high school. Unfortunately we studied the French Revolution at great length and pretty much glossed over the post-Napoleonic era; it was all Robespierre, all the time. I speak French and spent the summer in La Rochelle, France when I was 16, but those weren't doing much for me either. I guessed “parlement” with little confidence, and sure enough, the correct answer was the French Third Republic. It sounded vaguely familiar.

2. During the third verse of the R.E.M. song It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine), the instruments stop abruptly and briefly while the band shouts the name of what man?

The good news was that I knew the answer. The bad news was that so does everyone else: Mstislav Rostropovich. There are few questions about R.E.M. they could have reasonably asked that I wouldn’t have known in my sleep, but they flattened it out so much they erased any Stipe-based advantage I might have enjoyed. As you know, the answer is actually “Leonard Bernstein! (Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs, birthday party cheesecake jellybean boom.)” At least my knowledge of Lester Bangs and his fellow grandees of rock criticism would soon pay dividends.

3. Identify the tabloid-style German newspaper whose name translates to English as Picture, and which is -- by far -- the largest circulation newspaper in Europe (and in fact the largest outside Japan). Its policy of showcasing a topless woman on every front page may have some effect.

I didn't know there were topless women in any European tabloids outside of England; maybe that's not why the U.K. sat out of the whole euro thing. I knew that the German word Spiegel means mirror, not picture, and I knew Der Spiegel was a German magazine, not a tabloid newspaper. But I didn’t know the word for picture or the names of any other German periodicals, nor did I have a plausible guess, so I guessed Der Spiegel in honor of my buddy Matt Spiegel. The answer was Bild, which seems like a somewhat prosaic name (“Picture”) for a publication that features words and pictures.

4. There are two generally established classifications in French cuisine for clear soups: bouillon (simple broth), and what other, which is essentially clarified bouillon?

Continuing the French theme, much like the French Third Republic, I knew the correct answer would sound familiar when I heard it, but I also couldn’t think of it. I guessed bouillabaisse, a thick fish soup so far from bouillon I might as well have guessed the Beastie Boys. The correct answer was consommé.

5. The short films What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963), It's Not Just You, Murray! (1964), and The Big Shave (1967) are among the very early works of what Oscar-winning film director?

This one I regret because I could have made a much better educated guess. A few years ago I attended a screening of the first full-length feature by this filmmaker, Who’s That Knocking At My Door?, his senior film project at NYU film school from the mid-1960s. That would have been consistent with short films made in the previous few years, and also with a predilection for the use of questions as somewhat lengthy film titles. And, for that matter, with a director who burst into prominence in the ensuing decade. But I rushed through this one a little, not giving sufficient thought to any of those things. I focused only on the era in question and the fact that the shorts sounded more or less comedic, and guessed Blake Edwards pretty much knowing it was wrong. Sure enough, the answer was Martin Scorsese.

6. What was the eventual name of the product which was first marketed in the UK as the Stowaway and in the US as the Soundabout?

I made a terrible guess here, not really thinking about the ramifications of the word Stowaway and instead trying to think of what a Soundabout might do. I guessed The Clapper, but the correct answer (which 65% of players leaguewide got, fully as many as Leonard Bernstein) was the Sony Walkman. In hindsight, this looks fairly guessable.

Another brutal 1 for 6 day. I was starting to dread being sent down to A ball, where I would be asked to name any two of the four Beatles.

As for defense, I gave my opponent 1 0 2 1 3 2 and he gave me 2 0 1 1 2 3. We both knew Leonard Bernstein and received 0 points for it. My opponent, living up to his Gallic-sounding surname, also knew the French Third Republic and consommé. So once again I played perfect defense, giving away the minimum number of points, but so did my opponent, and good defense can absolve ignorance only so far. In LL terminology, I lost 2(3)-0(1).

Now I was 1-2 and plummeting fast. In three days I'd dropped from the traditional Opening Day tie for first, to 32nd place in my 44-player division. It wasn't even clear yet who our better players were, but I wasn't looking like one of them.

What was clear was that I had little room for error. With just six questions per match, even one mistake or giveaway could be ruinous, and the LL seemed to go for the jugular every day with just one or two easy questions in the mix. Hell, even Jeopardy! starts with the simple stuff and only gradually turns up the heat. Few of their questions are this hard.

They were not asking things I felt confident about, and I'd squandered several chances to guess some crooked numbers onto the scoreboard. This was not going well. But as Robespierre said, it's always darkest before the dawn...

Day 2: Not in my wheelhouse

2011-12-13T06:00:00.050-06:00

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My strategy was better on Day 2, but the questions were harder and I took another psychological beatdown:

1. In soil science, this word refers to the stable and fully (or mostly) decomposed organic matter of soil, characteristically dark brown or black in appearance.

I could think of only mulch and compost, despite my sinking feeling that neither of these was scientific enough to be a word in "soil science," and guessed mulch. The answer was something I have not heard of, unless spelled differently in the context of a shawerma plate: humus.

2. What is the full name of the antiheroic protagonist of 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man', who also plays an important role in 'Ulysses' and serves in both novels as author James Joyce's literary alter ego?

Although I was an English lit major, I’ve never read either of these. I did faintly remember that the protagonist of Ulysses was Leopold Bloom, and only thought of that name after (w)racking my brain to unearth it. Good old Leopold didn't feel like the right answer because he was more than just "an important role" in Ulysses, he was the guy, but that was all I had so that was my guess. Unfortunately, the answer was Stephen Dedalus, who I assume was the father of Stephen Icarus.

3. Identify this woman.

She looked vaguely familiar, but I’d have needed a few Castrol and STP logos on her outfit to place Danica Patrick. I wrongly figured a photo of a generically pretty, presumably famous woman in a sleeveless dress was probably a paparazzi shot of an actress at an event, so I guessed Anna Kendrick even though it only looked a little like her. They didn’t even give me partial credit despite the existence of a NASCAR racing team called Hendrick Motorsports. That sort of sounds like Kendrick.

4. Alejandro Jodorowsky is perhaps today best known for directing and starring in what 1970 Spanish-language cult film, whose title translates to English as The Mole?

NAFC. The closest I could get to this question was that I once met Stephen Tobolowsky. Plus I speak French and not Spanish. I did know that Boca Raton translated to Mouth of the Rat, so I extrapolated to a smaller (?) animal and went with El Ratonito. Incredibly, this was not correct. The answer was El Topo.

5. The Renaissance in Italy was fostered by the patronage of a small number of familial dynasties, including the House of Gonzaga in Mantua, the House of Este in Ferrara, Sforza in Milan, and Montefeltro in Urbino. Most prominent of all was the House of Medici, in what city?

Figured this had to be Florence, but given the difficulty of the other questions it seemed too straightforward. I started wondering whether the Famiglia Medici were associated with Florence despite being actually based somewhere else. But eventually I just guessed Florence and it was correct. For this, my only correct answer of the day, my opponent showered me with zero points.

6. The catchphrase 'Bazinga!' was first popularized on what television sitcom (and, as a result, subsequently trademarked by Warner Bros. Entertainment)?

NAFC. I guessed It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. The correct answer was The Big Bang Theory, a show that I have yet to watch despite actor Jim Parsons’ two consecutive Emmy awards.

So my strategy was better than Day 1, but the questions were harder (to me at least) and I dropped from two correct answers to one. My opponent also had just one correct, Danica Patrick, but I gave her a 2 for it so she won the match. Maybe I should have given her a 1 for it, but I usually know my celebs and I figured if I didn't know it, it might be kind of difficult. In any case there was no way Florence wasn't going to be my 0, so I was doomed.

In order, I assigned my opponent 1 2 2 3 0 1; she in turn gave me 2 1 1 3 0 2. She didn't know Florence but to her credit she knew I would know it. And unlike most of my opposition, whom I'd never heard of before the season began and still haven't met, we happen to be friends outside of the trivia league; if I have to lose a match, it might as well be to an official follower of this blog.

With just three correct answers in the first two days, I was lucky to have a 1-1 record. At least I was starting to put more thought into my answers before submitting them. Now that I was getting the hang of it I was all, can we please get some baseball, Shakespeare and pop music trivia up in here?

Day 1: Off to a bad start

2011-12-12T06:00:00.045-06:00

_
My first day of warfare on the LearnedLeague trivia battlefield was far from my best effort.

1. The Italian corporation known today officially as Olivetti S.p.A. was founded in 1908 as a manufacturer of what?

I spectacularly blew this question.

First of all, I felt like I knew the answer. I couldn't think of it, but I'd definitely seen Olivetti products over the years and with enough time I might remember what they were. Some LL players use the "KGN" metric (Know/Guess/No Idea) to describe how much they know about the six questions they play each day. On this one, give me a K-. I knew the answer, but it wouldn't come to me. If you'd shown me a list of 20 possible answers, I would have picked out the right one.

There's no shame in not being able to spit out a fact you know, and in any case I can't always do it. (I had fairly instant recall of even the most random things I knew into maybe my late 20s, but those days are gone.) But it is a shame when you have a 24-hour window to answer a question, which is how this league works, and you just knee-jerk a half-assed answer first thing in the morning without giving yourself a chance. Even worse, there was a huge hint in the question I foolishly ignored, that the company no longer makes what it was once known for.

My horrible guess was tires, even though I knew I was thinking of Pirelli and not Olivetti. The correct answer was typewriters, which I knew was right when I saw it, as I've seen old Olivettis (and their American equivalent, old Underwoods) over the years. And it totally makes sense as a product eventually rendered obsolete.

A rookie mistake, or more accurately a first-day mistake.

2. This culinary term, which is specifically a particular type of miniature lobster, has evolved etymologically into a style of preparation, which involves sautéeing the entrée in garlic butter and white wine (and often, topping with bread crumbs).

All I could think of was scampi, since the preparation style sounded a lot like shrimp scampi, and sure enough, scampi it was.

3. What nation won the 2011 Rugby World Cup, outlasting France 8-7 in the final on October 23?

NAFC, as they say in LearnedLeague circles. Not A F-ing Clue. I only read the newspaper intermittently, and even then it's often just NYT headlines on my BlackBerry. I didn't know the traditional powers in this sport, and I sure missed the recent Rugby World Cup headline if indeed there even was one. I figured England would be good at rugby but that seemed too obvious, and briefly considered guessing the USA. Then I thought, isn't Australian rules football kind of like rugby? So I guessed Australia. I should have guessed something nearby, New Zealand.

4. In human anatomy, the 'supraspinatus', 'infraspinatus', 'teres minor', and 'subscapularis' muscles, along with their connecting tendons, are known collectively as what?

I was stubbornly locked into trying to name a specific body part even though the question pretty much indicated that it was a more general term, and overlooked that guidance at my peril. I knew the scapula was the shoulder blade, so not knowing what the spinatus was (something spinal?), I guessed shoulder. The correct answer, which like any baseball fan I have heard of a thousand times, was the rotator cuff.

This was getting ugly.

5. What is the common name for the area highlighted in red here?

Another strikeout after a 3-0 count. Like Olivetti, I made a guess I knew for a fact was wrong. I guessed the West Bank, even though I knew the West Bank was further south on the map (on the, duh, western bank of the Dead Sea). I felt like the correct answer had to be the Negev or the Golan Heights, but for some reason I just didn't want to believe the league would be asking for less frequently newsworthy parts of the nation of Israel.

Not only was there no reason to believe that—I'd already gathered that the league trades in and thrives on far more obscure trivia than this—I knew for a fact I was guessing a wrong answer, indeed the only Israeli region I knew could not be the right answer. Other than that, I was all over this one. The correct answer was in fact the Golan Heights, so I'd have had a 1 in 2 chance if I'd listened to my instincts.

6. The television network VH1 Classic declared and celebrated November 11, 2011, as National Metal Day, a date selected in indirect and implicit honor of what 1984 film?

I salvaged a small measure of my pride with this gimme, This Is Spinal Tap. "This one goes to eleven," as Nigel Tufnel proudly explained to Marty DiBergi. "Eleven... eleven... eleven."

So I got just 2 out of 6, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I had reasonable shots at 3 of the other 4 questions and didn't even give myself any time to think about them and make educated guesses. (Chalk it up to first-day jitters and a still unrefined sense of how to play my best game. It was already becoming clear on the first day that when you don't know the answer, you have to take what the question gives you and let the murky answers you used to know bubble slowly to the surface.)

Happily for me, my opponent also had a rough go of it, answering only Spinal Tap correctly. I gave him a 0 for that question, and though he too played perfect defense, my 1 point for scampi gave me the ugly victory.

Knowing is (just) half the battle

2011-12-10T11:00:00.000-06:00

I was recently invited to play in an online trivia contest called the LearnedLeague.

You play a six-question head-to-head match against a different opponent every day in a season comprising 25 such matches. After each season, depending upon performance, players may be promoted or relegated to higher or lower divisions, and at the highest rank, an overall league champion is crowned.

The unique element of LearnedLeague is that a match includes both offense and defense. The offense part is straightforward: you try to score points by answering the questions correctly.

The defense part is both elegant and strategic: you assign points to the questions for your opponent to earn (or preferably not earn). Each day you distribute a 3, 2, 2, 1, 1 and 0 based upon what you think your opponent will know. You'd give your opponent 0 on a gimme, and 3 where you're sure they won't know it.

It works like this:

Defense can and often does decide matches. It's routine to get the same number of answers correct but lose a match, or get one more correct and tie; also possible to get one more correct and lose; and even possible, although rare, to get two more answers correct and still lose due to catastrophically bad defense (known as "Bucknering" a match). On the offense side, answering all six questions correctly is known as "drinking the beer," i.e. scoring a six-pack.

My rookie season started several weeks ago and I've been having myself a time playing it, so I've decided to write about the daily ups and downs in this space for three reasons:

A, it's interesting, at least to me;

2, it gives me something to write about, which turns out to be a big thing for people who would attempt to write regularly. Hell, Hemingway moved to Europe, with its bullfights, moveable feasts and café expatriacy, so he'd have something more interesting to write about than Oak Park, Illinois, the hometown whose "broad lawns and narrow minds" he derided.

I tend to be one of those people who have a lot to say, and yet I wouldn't presume to blog most of it. There are a great many blogs on specific topics (sports, crossword puzzles, politics, border collies, public transportation, restaurants; insert your list here) and I have always felt a measure of envy toward those bloggers for whom the world supplies an unending supply of new fodder. Those of us in the unfashionable category of general interest blogs are left with our wits, thoughts and such parts of our lives as we wish to share (insert up to three jokes here) to fill the white space. Writing about a daily trivia league provides a small but fresh measure of new grist for the mill each day;

and C, as regular readers will have noticed, there has been a marked decline of late in the frequency with which I update this blog. After four years of dedicated banging away, I've been feeling increasingly burned out over the past few months, and my annual fall busy season at work has been more than reason enough to take a break. Now that things are quieting down and I've had a little time off, I'm ready to get back on the stick.

And so—with apologies to FOBB&B Eric Berlin, who has been blogging about the daily LearnedLeague experience for some time, and to any other LLer who has been doing likewise unbeknownst to me—I now undertake to do the same.

Bublieve it

2011-12-07T15:00:00.001-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T08:00:00.005-06:00

_

As we enter the back stretch of the holiday season — Slutty Nurse Night, Cranberry-Stained Detroit Lions Jersey Day, Crass Commercialism Month — I take a moment to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. We have a lot to be thankful for.

And in the spirit of the season, enjoy this.

11|11|11

2011-11-11T01:11:00.008-06:00

You may have noted the verticality of today's date, particularly when it's written with pipes rather than slashes or hyphens. Neither is it lost on a New York-based society of fabric aficionados known as the Corduroy Appreciation Club, a shadowy yet friendly social organization with the broad-minded slogan All Wales Welcome.

Its kinship for the "cloth of kings" is such that it meets twice each year: on January 11 and November 11, the dates that most resemble corduroy. Past meetings have included celebrity guest speakers known for wearing corduroy, poetry about corduroy, good-natured debate about vertical vs. horizontal corduroy, and, inevitably, food and drink that resemble corduroy.

As you might imagine, the centennial rarity of today's date has the C.A.C. all aflutter with cottony excitement. To celebrate the "date that most resembles corduroy, EVER," the club is throwing not merely its annual Grand Meeting, but a Grandest Meeting, in New York City. Highlights will include a keynote address by Amy Sedaris and the installation of a Corduroy Messiah, a child who turns eleven today.

The N.Y.C. throwdown is sold out, but the wave of corduroy excitement has spread like a comfortable fabric across the country to Washington, D.C.; Chicago; and, of course, Fromberg, Montana. Unlike the Grandest Meeting, tonight's celebrations in these cities are not ticketed events, so if you want to get your 'roy on, more information is here. While perhaps less elaborate than the Grandest Meeting, these gatherings promise to be as warm and cozy as an old pair of, well, you know.

Corduroy Appreciation Club meetings generally adhere to the Two Item Rule, i.e. that one must be wearing two corduroy items to be granted admission. Tonight's Grandest Meeting in New York will enforce a Three (or as it should probably be called, III) Item Rule.

The last word on this unparalleled yet quite paralleled occasion goes to the New York Times:

Corduroy Fans Prepare for the Fabric's Day of All Days
[NYT]
_

It really is YouTube

2011-11-06T08:00:00.004-06:00

I've never had a YouTube account. My inclination to shoot video is so negligible that, for example, the game-changing Flip camera was released, became insanely popular, gradually cooled off, and was eventually discontinued — all before I ever thought about getting one.

I recently felt like posting a comment on someone else's video, which required me to register a username on the site. I tried to choose the name "benbass" and here's what happened:

As you can see, YouTube replied that the name "benbass" was unavailable, surely due to my many imitators, but suggested various other options:

MsBenbass: Do they know something about me that I don't?
benbassful: I suppose I am if anyone is, but is that something I want to make into an Internet username? (On a related note, Megan F. and Maria K. in the 3212 Clifton Crew used to refer to me as "benbasstic.")
benbassify and benbassification: Although I am generally in favor of the benbassification of this country (and, indeed, world), all right-thinking people vehemently disagree with me. Again, who would go this route when choosing a YouTube username?
SuperBenbass: Thanks for the compliment, but the shameless suckupery is off-putting, and even among people vain enough to name blogs after themselves, this seems obnoxious and preposterous to the extreme.

Apparently, YouTube really is all about you.

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T08:00:00.003-05:00

Start spreading the oleo

2011-10-25T20:00:00.018-05:00

_
Frank Sinatra was into crossword puzzles.

After his name appeared in the New York Times crossword in the early 1980s he wrote a thank-you note to puzzle editor Eugene T. Maleska, starting a friendship that lasted for many years.

Here's a letter he wrote to Maleska about his first brush with crosswords as a Hoboken teenager:

[Letters of Note]
_

Carrie Fisher speaks

2011-10-20T16:00:00.035-05:00

I mean, sure, she does that throughout her autobiographical one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, because that's what you do in an autobiographical one-woman show. What I'm referring to is a post-show Q&A session in which she generously participated after a press performance I caught the other night.

Of course, it may not have been entirely altruistic in that the assembled Qers were (a few) journalists and (a lot of) bloggers in a position to promote the show to a wide audience. Attending on behalf of both Flavorpill Chicago and this blog, I wore both hats.

Far be it from me to criticize, but my fellow scribes roundly failed to make the most of the opportunity. Forget asking questions that might evoke interesting responses; they barely asked questions at all, instead attempting to impress Carrie Fisher with racy or "funny" stories about themselves. And at least two of those who did ask questions, offered variations on the decidedly nonjournalistic theme of "Can I please get an autograph [for my husband who likes Star Wars / on my breast / etc.]?"

It was all rather embarrassing, and the uninspired, amateurish discourse is presumably why the Broadway In Chicago staff abruptly cut things short.

Before they did, I dutifully asked Ms. Fisher about her experience filming The Blues Brothers in the great city of Chicago. The first thing she said was the somewhat telling remembrance, 30 years later, that the wardrobe assistant was the cast's go-to person for mescaline. She also tossed in the interesting nugget that Dan Aykroyd asked her to marry him.

My frustration with my fellow bloggers took me off my game a little bit, so I failed to satisfy my curiosity as to whether Ms. Fisher knew the official name of Princess Leia's cinnamon buns hairdo.

Yes, there was one: "star puffs."

Makes sense to me

2011-10-17T18:00:00.000-05:00

The match game

2011-10-12T10:00:00.000-05:00

Calling all meteorologists

2011-10-11T10:00:00.002-05:00

Can someone tell me what temperature "NaN degrees" is? Because I have a big tennis match this afternoon and I should probably figure out whether sodium nitrate will be falling from the sky.

Thought of the day

2011-10-09T08:00:00.001-05:00

Maybe it's the coffee talking, but perk perk bubble I was grown in a field in Colombia.

And speaking of Star Wars...

2011-10-06T16:00:00.020-05:00

Last night I attended the Broadway In Chicago press opening for Carrie Fisher's autobiographical one-woman show Wishful Drinking.

The lively, entertaining story of her eventful life plays the Bank of America (née Shubert) Theatre on Monroe Street through October 16.

My Flavorpill Chicago preview is here.

Speaking of the 'book...

2011-10-05T08:00:00.001-05:00

Post of the week goes to FOBB&B Stephen T. of Silver Spring, Md.:

My 7-year-old just asked my 10-year-old, "Will you carry my bag like a chump?" His reply: "No. Unlike Dad, I have dignity." Yep, both mine!

Scary

2011-10-03T18:00:00.000-05:00

The Lord of the Rings: Two takes

2011-09-28T16:00:00.042-05:00

The Lord of the Rings is like the Civil War, the Boston Red Sox, and Bob Dylan. There's so much to it that even if you don't take a personal interest, you have to respect the many who do.

Their enthusiasm, in turn, can take many forms. Chief among these are the pious, as in graphic artist J.T. Fridsma's painstaking visualization of the intersecting courses charted by the individual members of the Fellowship of the Ring:

...and the silly, as in this video from the popular parody site "How It Should Have Ended":

I shot the moon

2011-09-22T08:00:00.001-05:00

View east from LaSalle Street bridge, Chicago, Illinois

Old school cool

2011-09-19T20:00:00.005-05:00

There's Gmail (the best) and there's every other free email service (the rest). Yet some of my favorite people — my brother Justin, an old improv pal, a lawyer buddy, Will Shortz — remain loyal to their old AOL email addresses.

Is it satisfaction with something good enough, old habits dying hard, or retro hip?

AOL email as status symbol
[Politico]
_

America: Made in India

2011-09-14T08:00:00.001-05:00

My wallet happens to be made by Perry Ellis America. I just noticed that the cloth tag, which is folded in half and sewn into the lining, reads "Perry Ellis" on one side and "America" on the other.

And thus did the manufacturer send the inadvertently political message "America: Made in India."

Guess my number!

2011-09-09T08:00:00.000-05:00

What is the Internet?

2011-09-07T06:00:00.003-05:00

The chuckling point

2011-09-06T06:00:00.000-05:00

Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator

Chicago in the house

2011-09-03T14:00:00.002-05:00

Former world #1 junior and Windy City native Donald Young celebrates his fifth-set tiebreak victory over 14th-ranked Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland. He's headed to the third round of the U.S. Open.

Ask an expert

2011-09-02T06:00:00.000-05:00

This blog doesn't just tell you how to enjoy the U.S. Open, its friends tell you why players are dropping out of it.

In an article yesterday on Venus Williams' abrupt departure from the nation's largest tennis tournament, Karen Crouse of the New York Times quoted the brilliant ophthalmologist and FOBB&B Joanne Shen of the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. Nice one, Joanne!

An Ailing Venus Williams Exits
[NYT]

How to enjoy the U.S. Open

2011-08-31T20:00:00.012-05:00

A friend of mine who lives in New York City but doesn't often attend the tennis U.S. Open decided to hit the tournament this week. Knowing I'm a regular at Flushing Meadows, he emailed me for some advice. With his permission, I'll reprint our exchange here.

He emailed:

Hi Ben,

I watched Nadal's match yesterday. Can't remember ever seeing a match with so many breaks in it.... a strange match.

So I'll be at the US Open tomorrow! This is exciting!

I found this page on about.com as a guide:

http://queens.about.com/od/usopen/tp/usopen_tips.htm -- have a look at it. The thing about not bringing ANY kind of bag is a bit alarming. Please feel free to elaborate on/contradict/etc. any of the points they raise.

I guess I would like to know about the draw tomorrow -- who's good, who's fun, who's exciting, and all that. A timed schedule would be fine (your third match, around 4pm, should be X vs. Y.....), but if you're in an expansive mood, I'm eager for details too. So do tell me stuff about the players I might not know.

Beyond that, anything else about the experience and avoiding hassles (as far as you can remember) would be terrific.

Thanks so much and hope you're doing well!

Martin

Sent from Staten Island, NY.

I replied:

In general, I agree with most of the points made in this article, with the exception of the thing about not being a rube. From the top of the Court 7 stands, e.g., you can look down onto a number of other courts. Although this is something I would be more likely to do between matches or during changeovers, I wouldn't rule it out altogether if I happened to be at a dull match and I wanted a look at players or practice sessions on nearby courts, which might also help me decide where to go next. I don't think the players are too concerned with what people are quietly doing 350 feet away. It's your money, the day goes by fast, you can't always get thru the crowds, watch what you want. Of course, I'm a rube.

But that's the tail wagging the dog. The big picture is that you want to max out your day at the tennis without wasting a lot of time in lines. That is why I actually second their point about not bringing a bag. What I would do, and DID do last year twice, is NOT bring a bag, but instead pack the handful of things I want to carry into the pockets of a pair of cargo shorts. In my case this was sunglasses, sunblock, a camera, and an apple. So you have all your stuff but speed right thru onto the grounds when the gates open. This saved me from waiting in a lengthy bag check line. (Emily was stuck in that line for 20-30 min. while I sailed right thru the gates in 30 seconds and ran into my parents on Court 13; my dad and I knew to hit the same excellent doubles match.) Most of the stuff people carry around they don't really need for just one day so if you can figure a way to go bagless, great. You can also buy a T-shirt or keychain on the grounds and presto, now you have a bag, if you'd rather empty your pockets.

Speaking of lines, you can walk around the most unassuming courts whenever you want like at a baseball game, but there may be lines to enter the larger stands. Entry there is limited to somewhat rushed one-minute changeovers every other game on the odd total scores in a given set (2-1, 5-2, etc. -- after games 3, 5, 7, 9, 11) and longer two-minute breaks between sets when a lot of people come and go. Sets at the U.S. Open go to tiebreakers (first to 7, win by 2) at 6 games all.

Wear a baseball cap or other hat; you'll be in the sun for most of the day. Bring a portable radio with earphones if you want to hear the live TV commentary. They beam it over the grounds. You can also get a temporary radio at an AmEx booth if you show an American Express card.

And I like that tip about avoiding the long entry lines at the subway gate, I've done that. Like they said, you can walk around to the other gate. Speaking of the subway, the LIRR is only a 15-minute trip from Penn Station and more comfortable, but the 7 train is more widely catchable including from Grand Central Stn., cheaper, and generally a part of the experience for many. Just allow enough time for a lengthy ride out there.

You mentioned the other day you were getting grounds passes. These get you in to every court except the ginormous and frankly too big for tennis Arthur Ashe Stadium. The best seats in the second stadium, Louis Armstrong Stadium, are also reserved, but there are plenty of general admission seats in there too and you might even end up in a box if you make the right friends.

It's hard to say "see this player at this time, see that player at time," because the third match on Court 8 might start at 3pm or 5pm. I would say get there when the gates open and as soon as you enter the grounds, buy the daily program guide. You don't need the fancy glossy magazine, just the daily order of play for $4 or whatever. There's a well-written preview in there every day by a guy who knows his stuff, which will help set the mood and guide you thru your day. Use the scoreboards posted around the grounds, most notably in the central fountain plaza south of Ashe, to track the progress of matches and decide when to go where. You can try to get a good seat before a match starts or to catch the fifth set of a thrill ride.

I happen to have certain players I like to see, but tastes vary. There was one guy who was a can't miss, Fabrice Santoro (aka "The Magician") of France who would unleash a dazzling array of spins, slices and trick shots, but he retired a year or two ago. The biggest and most familiar names are likely to play in the Ashe stadium, so go on word of mouth, or who you've just read about in the NYT on the subway. For example, check out 2011 NCAA champion Steve Johnson of USC or an American junior champion like Jack Sock or Lauren Davis. You might even choose what to watch based on the scores. If a men's singles match on a nearby court is in the fourth set after three close ones, it could be a great battle. Also, on some outside courts, you can stand between two courts and keep an eye on two matches at once.

If I were to give one piece of advice as to what to see, it would be: watch doubles. It isn't shown much on TV as the networks tend to slavishly show big names playing singles. They will show Venus Williams killing someone for an hour in a mostly empty stadium where everyone including the players looks bored, and not even show two seconds of a highly entertaining doubles match thrilling a capacity crowd two courts over. At the pro level the doubles game is so much fun to watch, particularly at the highest level, so look for top-seeded teams. Split-second reactions, remarkable gets, weird formations, hand signals between partners, more interesting strategy than singles. You get these amazing points with all four players at the net: boom-boom-boom-boom-boom.

Try to see the Bryan brothers, the American identical twins who are the winningest doubles team ever with a freakishly syncopated style as covered on 60 Minutes and in a lengthy New Yorker profile. They read each other's minds on court and do everything at the same time. They don't do as many midair chest bumps as they did in their Stanford and young touring pro days, but they still bust out that move every once in a while. I've seen them on three continents and they're always a highlight. Other top doubles specialists I enjoy: Max Mirnyi, Leander Paes, Nenad Zimonjic, Mahesh Bhupathi, Daniel Nestor. There are a lot of them. You might also see some mixed doubles if that draw is underway by Thu. Cara Black and Lisa Raymond are two of the top ladies on the doubles scene. Venus and Serena sometimes play together, not sure about this year. If they're playing it might be on Armstrong, check that out. I saw them at Wimbledon overpowering some unfortunate duo.

Two courts I would recommend visiting:

The Grandstand Court is the best-kept secret at the Open. Tucked under the eastern eaves of the Louis Armstrong stadium, it's a TV show court like the two larger stadiums, but there are no reserved seats. So you can literally sit right behind the players 20 feet away without a $400 ticket as you'd need in Ashe stadium. Speaking of which, I would try to sit behind the baseline (the TV camera view) whenever possible, which you can do on this court and on a handful of the outside courts such as Court 13 that have two rows of seats along the north baseline. Not just because I don't like turning my head back and forth all day, but because every point is a story that unfolds over time and if you're sitting near the net you get a bad translation. You can take in the narrative so much better from the end of the court, where you can clearly see the shots, spins and strategy. In fact, if you're not sure which of two matches to see next, go for the one where you can sit behind the baseline.

Court 17 is a new television show court this year located behind the indoor tennis building (which during the tournament houses the Smash Zone novelty tennis areas that you might enjoy, plus it's a shady oasis). It's a sunken court they built by digging down 7 feet below ground level to create an intimate, dramatic little arena. You can sit behind the baseline in there. There are 2200 seats there this year and after they finish building it there will be 3000 next year.

You can also watch players on the practice courts toward the west end of the grounds. You might be one of 20 people watching, or caught in a 1000-person Andre Agassi teenybopper lovefest as I was one year when I watched then-coach Brad Gilbert drilling serves at A.A. from close range. Some of the practice courts are more accessible than others, but in general you can watch pros working on their game, talking with their coaches, wearing casual clothes, trying different things, not on stage but just on their own schedule. Sometimes they'll talk with the fans or give autographs to kids after they're done hitting. It's an interesting break from watching matches and you never know whom you'll run into -- maybe even Federer, Nadal or Djokovic, though they will probably practice in a more secluded area.

I generally avoid the overpriced food on the grounds. If you want to splurge on one big meal, there is an elegant restaurant called the U.S. Open Club in the eastern side of the Ashe stadium. It's like a nice country club dining room with an extensive buffet lunch of everything you could want catered by Levy Restaurants. You can also sneak a couple of pieces of fruit with you on your way out to enjoy later. Plus it's indoors and there are TVs showing the live action on the big courts. It's like $40-45 a person and a better option than spending $20 on something fried and not very good. Not sure if you need reserved-seat tennis tix to get in but we've been welcomed over the years, some days we had the tix, others we didn't. Act like you belong there and they probably won't give you a hard time (which is how I plan to go to the Oscars). But if you have to talk your way in you probably can. The place is usually half-empty, they're there to sell food and you're buying.

That's off the top of my head... have fun!

He replied:

Ben,

You are a dream. You exceeded even my stratospheric expectations for this. I'll be sure to report back.

Thanks!

Martin

Sent from Staten Island, NY.
_

Memo to ESPN

2011-08-31T08:00:00.002-05:00

You could say Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova was "ousted" in the first round of the U.S. Open. You could also say she was "out." But preferably not simultaneously.

Man from Chicago here

2011-08-30T08:00:00.004-05:00

Occasionally links to this blog pop up in unexpected places. An example is a blog called Panther Red, which called me a "man from Chicago who admires cleverness."

That is extremely true.

Yankees hit three grand slams

2011-08-26T08:00:00.007-05:00

Baseball is weird. One minute you're trailing 7-1 in a dreary, rain-delayed ballgame, the next minute you've scored 22 runs and set an all-time record.

After nearly 200,000 major league baseball games played over the past 136 years, the New York Yankees did something yesterday no big league team had ever done when they hit three grand slams in one game. And that's not even counting Derek Jeter's four trips to the plate with the bases loaded, in which he drove in a total of just one run; it was Robinson Cano, Russell Martin and MVP candidate / University of Illinois at Chicago product Curtis Granderson who slammed the 4-RBI HRs.

Pretty impressive. And yet they still suck.

Yankees hit record 3 grand slams in rout of A's
[ESPN]

A Walk in the Woods

2011-08-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I attended a press opening of TimeLine Theater Company's new production of A Walk in the Woods, Lee Blessing's Pulitzer-nominated 1988 drama about nuclear arms reduction talks between the Americans and the Soviets. I found it intelligent and thought-provoking.

My Flavorpill preview is here.

Whee!

2011-08-24T08:00:00.002-05:00

Triplegangers

2011-08-21T16:00:00.003-05:00

Just had lunch at the Publican, chef Paul Kahan's popular Fulton Street pork-and-beer-itorium. As many people have noticed, there's a waiter there who's the spitting image of the actor Adrian Grenier, best known as Vinnie Chase on HBO's "Entourage." Like, so much so that Chicago magazine has written about it. We saw the guy from across the restaurant and briefly talked about it.

The odd part was that our waiter was a dead ringer for another actor I know, one with less fame but more acting chops than Adrian Grenier: Alex Fendrich of IO Theater and The Second City. Even odder, when I mentioned this to him, he actually knew Alex because he's an aspiring actor and improviser who took Alex's improv class at IO. Everyone there called him "Baby Fendrich."

These things tend to come in threes, and sure enough, on my "L" ride home I sat opposite a beautiful young woman, pale with strawberry blonde hair and freckles, who looked exactly and I mean exactly like a "Mean Girls"-era Lindsay Lohan. I asked her if anyone ever told her, etc., and she replied, "Every day."

Where do I click "Like"?

2011-08-21T07:30:00.001-05:00

Federer asks Hingis about Olympics mixed doubles

[SI]

The extra clue

2011-08-21T07:00:00.001-05:00

If you've followed a link at Rex Parker's blog, this is what I'm talking about.

And speaking of social media...

2011-08-19T12:00:00.000-05:00

Someone named "georgecarlin" just followed me on Twitter. This would be considerably more exciting if it weren't for the fact that, well, you know.

Facebook security alert!

2011-08-19T06:00:00.001-05:00

Apparently some of your Facebook friends actually know you personally. This is an outrage!

Interesting

2011-08-16T08:00:00.001-05:00

There’s no rhyme or reason to anything that I do. It’s whatever seems right at the time. I’ve never once in my life seen any film of mine after I put it out. Ever. I haven’t seen “Take the Money and Run” since 1968. I haven’t seen “Annie Hall” or “Manhattan” or any film I’ve made afterward. If I’m on the treadmill and I’m scooting through the channels, and I come across one of them, I go right past it instantly, because I feel it could only depress me. I would only feel, “Oh God, this is so awful, if I could only do that again.”

Woody Allen

[NYT]

Like this

2011-08-13T08:00:00.000-05:00

Telling tales

2011-08-11T10:00:00.019-05:00

Attention Chicagoans who enjoy the live storytelling of The Moth:

Tomorrow evening at the Chicago History Museum, The Moth will present a FREE evening of storytelling from teenage Chicago Public School students who have crafted true stories under the tutelage of Moth staff as part of the MothSHOP cultural enrichment program.

It's hard to beat the combination of worthwhile and highly entertaining. If you're free Friday evening, check it out! Admission is FREE but RSVP is required.

My Flavorpill preview is here.

Roger Federer is 30

2011-08-08T06:00:00.002-05:00

Happy 30th birthday to Roger Federer, the greatest tennis player of all time except for the one guy who consistently beats him and that other guy who keeps beating both of them.

Beyond his astonishing talent, Federer is sportsmanlike, charitable, intelligent and widely admired by his peers. The rare top-tier athlete who answers interview questions not in cliches but with substantive, interesting replies, Federer speaks five languages and exudes class in all of them. He is a credit to his sport, to his native Switzerland, to his species.

At an age when many top players have peaked or even retired—McEnroe and Borg, for example, never won a major after age 25—Federer still has the fire and remains a contender for top titles. Although he hasn't won a major tournament since the 2010 Australian Open, and must therefore win the upcoming U.S. Open in order to stave off his first Slam-less year since 2002, he's still playing at a high level as a solid No. 3 in the world.

Here's to you, Roger.
_

Thought of the day

2011-08-04T06:00:00.001-05:00

Let's all just refer to Twitter by its most prominent feature: Celebrity Typos.

Dusty wings

2011-08-03T08:00:00.010-05:00

Congratulations to FOBB&B Jenifer Hixson and her whole crew from The Moth on another sold-out evening of high-quality storytelling, live onstage last night at Park West.

Peter Sagal of NPR's "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" once again played host to an evening of ten raconteurs, each a winner of a recent monthly storytelling contest, this lineup including four-time New Yorker cartoon caption contest winner Lawrence Wood. They were as entertaining as you might expect.

Way to go, Moths.

With no Penn there...

2011-08-02T06:23:00.003-05:00

The other side

2011-08-01T22:00:00.001-05:00

Tonight I put together my tennis club's first-ever Southpaw Invitational, an all-lefty doubles game. Not only was it four strong players, each playing excellent tennis, but the teams were extremely close. We split two sets, 6-4, 4-6, then my team won a tiebreak 7-5. Everyone had a great time despite the sauna-like conditions. It was better than all right.

Strictly personal

2011-07-31T15:00:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to FOBB&B Steve Hendershot and his band, The Spares. Having already earned a national songwriting award, their song "Mexico" will get more coast-to-coast exposure when it's featured on tonight's episode of "True Blood" on HBO.

It all goes together: great guy, great band, great song. Way to go, Steve!

Wow

2011-07-31T09:00:00.001-05:00

From today's New York Times Headlines email:

QUOTATION OF THE DAY
"We are all human. God created us from one dirt. Why can we not marry each other, or love each other?"
HALIMA MOHAMMEDI, an Afghan teenager whose love for another teenager, Rafi Mohammed, set off a riot by flouting their village's tradition of arranged marriages.
"What we would ask is that the government should kill both of them."
KHER MOHAMMED, her father.

Sports corner

2011-07-27T19:26:00.000-05:00

The Chicago Cubs just put together their first three-game win streak of the season. It was the second-longest they've ever taken to win three straight. Now all they have to do is win about 40 in a row and they'll be fine.

Where there's a Will...

2011-07-26T14:00:00.007-05:00

... is the Today show.

Tomorrow morning, NBC's Today will air a feature segment on NPR puzzlemaster, New York Times puzzle editor and (most importantly) friend of this blog Will Shortz. Correspondent Jenna Bush (!) recently interviewed Will at his home in suburban New York City after stopping by the National Puzzlers' League convention in Providence, R.I. a few weeks ago to shoot some B-roll. Apparently Ms. Bush is bright, personable and a decent Scrabble player. (Insert political jibe here.)

Will is a terrific guy with a highly interesting career, so I'm sure the interview will be worth watching. Set your DVR!

When Tiger was a cub

2011-07-25T20:00:00.002-05:00

Not timely but still interesting.

Forecast: funny

2011-07-21T22:00:00.001-05:00

Second City e.t.c. just premiered a new sketch comedy show entitled Sky's the Limit (Weather Permitting).

Here's a link to my Flavorpill Chicago preview.

Staying creative

2011-07-20T08:00:00.004-05:00

~~30. Blogposting a cool list that someone else wrote.~~

Sky's the Limit (Weather Permitting)

2011-07-18T18:00:00.006-05:00

Last night I attended a press opening for the Second City e.t.c.'s 35th sketch comedy revue, Sky's the Limit (Weather Permitting), which I found lighthearted and entertaining. My Flavorpill preview is forthcoming.

A puzzling weekend

2011-07-13T22:00:00.077-05:00

I spent the weekend in Providence, Rhode Island at the 172nd convention of the National Puzzlers' League, the country's oldest puzzle organization (founded 1883).

Having written a fairly comprehensive report after last year's convention, and with fellow attendees such as puzzlemaker and author Eric Berlin having already neatly summarized this year's model, I'll dispense with an exhaustive writeup of this year's throwdown in favor of a few personal highlights. Spoiler alert: I discuss various convention, NPR, and upcoming New York Times puzzles below.

Every summer the NPL convenes in a different city to spend a weekend solving word puzzles, staging Jeopardy-type trivia games, ferreting out hidden contests, and conducting de facto experiments on the combined effects of sleep deprivation and pretzel M&Ms on the human body. I had more than enough fun at my first NPL convention in Seattle last year to return for another go-round.

There was one more thing I was thinking about doing in Rhode Island this weekend: hitting Newport to visit the International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum. I enjoyed the fine museum on the grounds of the Wimbledon tournament two years ago and had heard good things about the American version, plus I only get to Rhode Island once every twenty years, so this seemed like the time to check it out.

Friday was a free day at the convention. Some people visited the Providence Zoo; others tackled group puzzle hunts at the Rhode Island School of Design art museum (which I did on Thursday) or around the Brown University campus; many hung around the hotel catching up with their friends and working on the dozens of cryptic crosswords and other puzzles that fellow NPL members had composed for the convention.

Although there had been some pre-convention talk of a group excursion to Newport 30 miles away, I found only faint interest among NPLers in braving the iffy weather to head down there as I walked around the Providence Downtown Marriott on Friday morning. Even fewer people seemed curious about the Tennis Hall of Fame.

The latter came as little surprise. In my experience the average NPLer is profoundly well-informed about most subjects, with particular strength in scholarly areas. (Although I was lucky enough to attend a private law school on a "Trebek scholarship," I've grown accustomed to my fellow members' frequent ability to trounce me in trivia games. Puzzle people know their stuff.)

Many puzzlers are equally omniscient about popular culture and sports, but some emphatically aren't. I was the only player in a 12-person Jeopardy game able to identify the NBA Hall of Fame center known as "the Admiral" who starred for the San Antonio Spurs in the early 1990s. I later found myself fruitlessly babbling hints at a Celebrity Get A Clue partner who, while clearly exceptionally bright, did not know who Matt Damon was. I found this gap in his knowledge base surprising, endearing, and generally kind of awesome.

I didn't feel like going down to Newport by myself so I had just about abandoned the idea when, during my final spin around the place, I walked out the front door of the hotel and ran into NPL historian and New York Times puzzle editor Will Shortz sitting alone reading his iPad. I know Will from attending his crossword tournaments in Brooklyn and Westchester, plus over the past few years I've contributed to his weekly puzzle segment on Weekend Edition Sunday.

By coincidence, "the Puzzlemaster" was about to head over to the local National Public Radio affiliate to record his radio quiz game, which he tapes each Friday for broadcast the following Sunday morning. He generously agreed to let me tag along and we embarked on foot across downtown Providence.

We got to station WRNI about 30 minutes before the taping, too late to grab lunch beforehand but in plenty of time for Will to playtest this week's on-air puzzle on me. Given the roughly one thousand correct respondents each week it's nearly impossible to get chosen to play with Will on the air, so this was probably as close as I'll ever get. Then again, playing along with the Puzzlemaster off the air in a radio studio was, as an Irish poet said, even better than the real thing.

This week's puzzle required the player (and radio audience) to add the letter F to given words and phrases and anagram the results into new words ending in F. After cruising through the simpler examples like FLUB + F = BLUFF and ACED + F = DECAF and keeping pace on longer items like TILES + F = ITSELF and FAT SLOB + F = BLASTOFF, I eventually had to swallow my pride and grab a pen to solve the final two, HELICES + F = ICE SHELF and BARE TOES + F = ROAST BEEF.

The playtesting proved beneficial because at one point Will gave me what sounded like ASH + F, but he meant it in the Arthur ASHE sense, with the intended answer SHEAF. (Will did spell ASHE to me, but I was so busy trying solve with ASH that I didn't catch it at first.) He made it clearer for the on-air contestant by saying something like "ASHE as in Arthur Ashe, A-S-H-E." This turned out to be as close as I would get to visiting the Tennis Hall of Fame.

Having listened to Will's puzzle segment hundreds of times over the years, I observed the radio taping with great interest. The station engineer gave me a headset to listen in and after some minutes of backstage chatter among radio production staffers, eventually Weekend Edition Sunday interim host Linda Wertheimer and the on-air contestant joined Will over NPR's satellite and/or ISDN links.

As usual the show was recorded "live on tape" from several locations as if the participants were in the same room. Will conducted his conversation with the host from a typed script, supplementing it with handwritten notes for the puzzle itself and his explanation about being in Providence for the NPL convention.

The taping took maybe 15 minutes but after various retakes, tangents and long pauses during solving were edited out, the on-air version was a lean six-plus minutes. You can listen to it here or read a transcript here.

From time to time Will uses puzzles I submit as his weekly listener challenges. As it happened I'd just given him my latest puzzle a week earlier and he'd emailed me that he liked it. Of course, this wasn't a guarantee of anything; some puzzles he's praised haven't made it to the air. Others have taken a few weeks to see the light of day, an inevitability given the many puzzles he receives.

During the walk over to the station I'd asked Will whether this week's listener challenge was his creation or a listener submission, and he'd replied that it was a submitted puzzle. I didn't have the temerity to ask whether it was mine, so I was pleasantly surprised during the taping when Will announced that this week's challenge came from listener Ben Bass of Chicago. He knew I'd just had a big birthday and by keeping it secret he gave me a cool present in typically smooth Shortz style.

Once the taping was completed, two young WRNI reporters named Megan Hall and Bradley Campbell entered the studio to say hello and take photos with Will. Megan ended up interviewing him about his trip to Providence and later aired a short piece inviting interested locals to check out the NPL convention. He also gave Megan and her listeners two puzzles to solve.

When Will gave Bradley and Megan copies of the convention program, they were understandably confused by its listing nicknames rather than full names for the people involved. Will explained the use of noms de plume or "noms" in the National Puzzlers' League, a longstanding tradition that adds an air of playfulness to the group and levels the social playing field among distinguished older members and younger recruits.

NPLers choose their own noms, often using wordplay or lighthearted humor to select a handle. Will's is WILLz because it's literally a rewrite of his name: "Will short z." For obvious reasons, mine is Beyond. Will explained that one NPLer was Manx because he's a mysterious figure ("man x"); Megan correctly guessed that Sue++ works with computers.

I told Bradley Campbell that because his surname divided into two parts, it could provide a basis for an NPL nom. One member named Dave Shukan is known as Tinhorn because of compound terms that include the syllables in his last name (tin can, shoehorn). I came up with an example for Campbell, "Liberty Fire," not as good as Tinhorn because the nom doesn't make a familiar phrase. "Summer Weather" works better (summer camp, bellwether) but it's still cumbersome.

Megan Hall asked us to suggest a nom for her. Despite our best efforts, Will and I struggled to rearrange the letters in her name into something memorable; she had good vowels but a tough mix of letters. Over lunch afterward at the brewpub around the corner, we used an anagramming website to come up with a decent nom for Megan Hall, "Hang 'Em All," which Will emailed to her.

Saturday afternoon at NPL conventions is pencil-and-paper puzzle time. The first was an entertaining game by Brooklyn's Adam Cohen in which we filled consonants into blanks to form familiar words and phrases. The vowels were provided, each used exactly once with no Ys involved. (Adam later told me phrases of this type are known as "supervocalics," not to be confused with "univocalics" such as BANANARAMA and PETER SELLERS.)

Thus _ U _ _ A _ _ I O E _ became MUSTACHIOED, _ U _ _ A _ O _ I _ _ E _ became BUFFALO NICKEL, _ U _ _ O E _ A I _ _ became SUBPOENAING, etc. To help solvers along, there were clue definitions in random order at the bottom of the page.

I happened to be seated next to a brilliant young puzzle solver from Connecticut named Jeffrey Harris. He and I had thrown around a few NPR-style puzzles over breakfast that morning with Dave Shukan, Todd Etter and others. (I won't repeat their nifty stuff here because some of it might end up on the radio.)

At last year's convention Jeffrey had made such quick work of a different Adam Cohen puzzle that Will had included his improbably fast time in the New York Times Magazine a few weeks later when he ran it as a variety puzzle accompanying the Sunday crossword. Newspaper readers wrote in to Will protesting that it was impossible for anyone to solve the puzzle that fast, but they were wrong.

This year Jeffrey put on another virtuoso performance, blowing through the puzzle at lightning speed. Sitting next to him I wasn't looking at his paper, but I could hear his pencil moving so fast that it sounded like he was going to start a fire. (He later told me, only because I asked, that he'd solved 27 of the 30 phrases without even using the hints.) Jeffrey wrapped it up in a ridiculous three and a half minutes.

There might be no one alive who could have solved it sooner, not just because Jeffrey was going about as fast as humanly possible, but because many of the leading contenders were already present. In any other room MIT math professor Kiran Kedlaya, one of the leading minds of his generation, would have finished in a strong first place, but he was positively poky by comparison at an also dazzling four minutes and change.

Adam's word game was entitled "Genius At Work," which not only fit the theme of the puzzle but more than applied to this gathering. And this one's also headed for the New York Times Magazine, so Will should expect more mail.

Jeffrey's blitzkrieg inadvertently helped me get through the puzzle. It was so obvious from his pace that he wasn't bothering to match the clues to the answers that I stopped trying to do that, instead filling in whichever ones I could and then using the clues to wrap things up.

When time ran out I still had two blanks unfilled including SUBPOENAING; despite my legal career I don't issue subpoenas and rarely hear the verb form of the word. Staying up until dawn the night before hadn't helped much either; I felt like I was in first gear the whole time. But it was worth it because the impromptu after-hours trivia contests and untelevised game shows at an NPL convention are so good.

The next event was a pairs crossword solving competition written by Will Shortz. Jeffrey politely turned to me and asked whether I would like to work together. I was flattered by the invitation but knew I was outclassed; although I've solved a crossword puzzle or two, Jeffrey is in another league. My only goal was not to slow him up too badly.

Will's puzzle was a twist on a traditional crossword requiring solvers to find the two halves of each clue on a lengthy list, then write in the answer in the square whose number was the sum of the two clues' numbers. Thus "17. Daughter of a" and "56. King" might combine to clue answer 73, PRINCESS.

Jeffrey once again destroyed everything in front of him and I tried to keep up. I did get my share of answers but it generally felt like I was holding onto Superman's cape as he flew around. The biggest mistake I made was to spend a lot of time transcribing his many correct answers onto my copy of the puzzle; it would have been more efficient to work on the same sheets. Jeffrey and I finished in a respectable second place, but considering how fast he'd finished the first puzzle I felt like my nom should be changed to something like "Albatross" or "The Anvil."

Every Saturday evening program at an NPL convention is a team puzzle hunt known as "the extravaganza." This interconnected suite of puzzles is generally written by one or more rock stars in the profession; none is more esteemed than this year's solo constructor, the aforementioned Manx, better known as Wall Street Journal puzzle editor and Puzzability co-founder Mike Shenk.

The theme of this year's extravaganza was board games. Entitled "Big Game Hunt," it featured puzzles based on Monopoly, Clue, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, Boggle, Battleship, Connect Four, and a few dozen other old favorites. Mike's work was gorgeous in every way that mattered: presentation, playability, variety, overall elegance. It was a privilege to take part.

Incredibly, not only did Mike write the whole thing himself, he was only asked to do so about two months ago. He finished it in six weeks, then recruited some fellow puzzlers to playtest it and work out the kinks before he printed and hand-cornered the full-color, beautifully designed materials. Did I mention this thing was amazing?

After opting into either "runner" (trying to finish fast, might not get to do all the puzzles) or "stroller" (just want to see the sights) status, participants were randomly separated into four-person teams. Even the selection mechanism fit the theme: each of us chose a folded-up Risk territory out of a cup, then found our teammates at our territory's designated table somewhere in the hotel ballroom.

My squad was a murderer's row of puzzle geniuses, plus for some reason myself. In no particular order, beyond Beyond, Team China included Will Shortz (the guy is everywhere); three-time American Crossword Puzzle Tournament champion, world-class Scrabble player, and professional puzzlemaker Trip Payne; and a gentleman by the name of Noam Elkies.

All he ever did, according to Wikipedia, was graduate Columbia University with a degree in music and mathematics (summa, valedictorian) at age 18, earn a Harvard Ph.D. at 20, then become a tenured Harvard professor at the age of 26. This broke the record formerly held by Larry Summers and Alan Dershowitz, who were made full professors at 28. He also writes wordplay-based poetry puzzles for the NPL even though it's not clear that English is his first language. What a slacker.

Even on such an all-star team, collaboration is not only possible but at times necessary. At one point I was co-solving a 15-by-15 Scrabble-themed diagramless crossword with Trip, which probably made him feel like Secretariat pulling a small child in a hay cart. It wasn't long before I let him do his thing unencumbered and turned to my personal catnip, a series of Trivial Pursuit cards packed with mostly batting practice-level questions.

The beauty part was that we needed each other's help to finish our puzzles. Not only did Trip (who is also a nuclear weapon on a trivia team) know some of the trivia answers I didn't, he explained to me that the correct answers formed overlapping letter chains that would fill in blanks below each Trivial Pursuit card. Sure enough, it worked perfectly once I reworded several answers to conform to Mike Shenk's intended response.

Likewise, after Trip had blown through the Scrabble diagramless, he had trouble finding the puzzle's overall meta answer. The eight letters in the red Triple Word Score squares around the perimeter, TSKNACIP, almost spelled the word SNAKEPIT, but they didn't. And even if they did, every meta answer was a well-known game and none of us had ever heard of that one. I looked at the twelve blue Triple Letter Score squares and found a game I'd never heard of, SCOTLAND YARD, hiding in plain sight.

Despite its firepower, our team didn't exactly set the curve. In fact, we made a few stroller teams look like runners. We did move pretty quickly though, finishing in about two and a half hours. As in so many other NPL convention activities, three things held true: there was no shame in losing to such skilled competition, the results were secondary to the fact that everyone had an excellent time, and the game itself was exemplary.

There's no concise way to give props to all the good stuff packed into a National Puzzlers' League convention. The Jeopardy games alone were like a fireworks show:

Greg Pliska and Guy Jacobson's brilliantly written Providence Jeopardy, not just a highly entertaining game centered in every conceivable way (wordplay, history, literature, geography) around Providence and Rhode Island but one they cohosted in character as famous locals Roger Williams and H.P. Lovecraft in a hilarious two-man comedy attack?
Jeffrey Schwartz's Jeopardy game, once again intelligently crafted, packed with great trivia and professional-looking to boot?
Adam Cohen's coolly authoritative model, a straight-up trivia test for the serious player?
Thomas Gazzola's Doubles Jeopardy, played in pairs and won with shared trivia knowledge (both partners had to contribute) and wacky stunts; for example, players had to answer a category full of trivia questions, find the answers on a colorful diagram of Jelly Belly jellybeans, find the proper bean in a plastic baggie, put said bean in their partner's mouths, then the partners raced to ring a buzzer and correctly identify the flavor?

Played 'em all, loved 'em all.

It was a lot of that. And if it sounds like something you might enjoy, join the NPL (the cost is nominal) and head out to Portland, Oregon next summer for the 2012 convention.

NPL writeup forthcoming

2011-07-12T11:44:00.000-05:00

For those who have expressed interest, I'm going to post a trip report from the National Puzzlers' League convention as soon as I can finish it.

Radio active

2011-07-09T14:57:00.001-05:00

Thanks to NPR puzzlemaster and FOBB&B Will Shortz for once again using one of my puzzles as this week's Weekend Edition Sunday listener challenge. Tune in to National Public Radio tomorrow morning (around 9:35 a.m., at least in Chicago) to check it out.

Lost in the clouds

2011-07-06T22:30:00.003-05:00

City of Chicago, shrouded by fog
_

A Girl With Sun in Her Eyes

2011-07-01T08:00:00.019-05:00

Last night I attended the opening of Pine Box Theater Company's world premiere play, A Girl With Sun in Her Eyes, the story of two Chicago cops investigating a fellow officer's disappearance hours earlier. It's a gripping mystery-drama, written with a confident hand by Joshua Rollins and well executed by a veteran cast. My Flavorpill preview is here.

Pine Box Theater Company is a group of artists who met at The School at Steppenwolf in 2004. They've done some fine work around the city. I caught their production of Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth in its summer 2007 remount at Theater on the Lake; it mesmerized me.

They've been inactive for the past three years as ensemble members have moved on to other cities, so it's good to see them return with a solid new show. Check it out.

Headline of the week

2011-06-28T20:00:00.006-05:00

_
Russian woman dies at her own funeral
[New York Daily News]
_

Cellmates

2011-06-27T14:45:00.001-05:00

Thanks, y'all

2011-06-24T16:00:00.000-05:00

40 is the new 60

2011-06-23T05:45:00.001-05:00

Dept. of Corrigenda

2011-06-22T16:00:00.009-05:00

Avec ou sans definite article: either way is fine, but pick a lane.
_

Just For Laughs: The closer

2011-06-20T06:00:00.006-05:00

Steve Martin and Martin Short lit up the Chicago Theater last night for two hours to close out the Just For Laughs comedy festival, but one of the best lines came from a guy who wasn't even there.

Recounting the best ad libs he's ever heard, Steve Martin offered up the following: "The year Alec Baldwin and I hosted the Oscars, I went to the Vanity Fair party afterward. It was a lot of fun, but around 1 a.m. it was time to leave. As I was heading for the door, Russell Brand was just arriving. I enjoy his work and would have liked to talk to him, but it was so loud in there you couldn't hear anyone, so I just said to him, 'I'm making my way out as you're making your way in,' and he said, 'It's a metaphor.' "

Just For Laughs: Bits

2011-06-19T12:00:00.063-05:00

The Just For Laughs Chicago comedy festival wraps up tonight with a sold-out Chicago Theater show featuring two up-and-coming young comedians named Steve Martin and Martin Short. It's the first time the two have performed a stage show together.

Yesterday I talked to a Just For Laughs producer, in town from the festival's home base in Montreal, who'd just finished going over the running order of tonight's show. He told me it was going to be amazing. Quelle surprise!

I've had the good fortune of catching some choice shows over the past few days, dutifully recording for this blog a few of the hundreds of jokes that have been washing over me in a hilarious deluge.

Jeffrey Ross flew in from the Newark airport—which he described as "the Newark of airports"—to "roast Chicago" at the Vic Theatre, taking the starch out of every local celebrity, sports team, and in about ten cases, audience member. At one point he welcomed to the stage Ryan Dempster, the next day's starting pitcher for the Chicago Cubs against the New York Yankees at Wrigley Field. "Ryan has won 107 games at the major league level," Ross told the crowd to wild applause. Then: "He's also lost 107 games. That's like saying you have $8 million in the bank but you owe $8 million to American Express."

Opening for "Saturday Night Live" Weekend Update anchor Seth Meyers, "Chappelle's Show" co-creator Neal Brennan argued that our current president gets a lot of unfair criticism: "Obama is just another brother in the wrong place at the wrong time. When the cops show up he's like, 'It was George Bush and Alan Greenspan. They just left.' "

Meyers, in turn, delivered a confident hour to a fired-up crowd that cheered his every move. He mentioned that he used to live in Amsterdam, "but not for the reason you think. It was because weed is legal there."

Louis C.K., widely considered the best standup in the business, headlined two sold-out shows at the 3400-seat Chicago Theatre. Incredibly, the prolific C.K. throws out his entire act every year and comes up with an entire new hour of material. He scored with a very funny bit about how he frequently flies first class—then as an aside, "Who am I kidding? I always do. I don't need to try to relate to you people. I haven't flown coach in the past three years"—and sees soldiers on his plane returning from Afghanistan. The soldiers are never in first class, even the colonels.

He told how he often thinks it would be a nice move to give a soldier his first-class seat and sit in coach, but he never does it. "I've thought this literally hundreds of times, but I've never even come close to doing it. But I still think what a great guy I am. I give myself the credit as if I actually did it. Then I look around at the other people in first class and think, 'Look at these jerks. They didn't even think of doing it.' "

He tries to play Chicago only once a year, so he was reluctant to perform in this festival since he was just here last October. "They gave me a ton of money to produce this show myself and said I could make it different from the last one by hiring anyone I wanted to open for me. Their idea was like an all-star show. My idea was more like, I'm going to find the three lousiest guys I can who will work for nothing, then I'll just keep all the money."

What he did do was to bring in three big-name headliners to do about 10 minutes each. The show was billed as "Louis C.K. and Three Special Guests," the identities of which were a closely guarded secret. Each time he introduced one of them—in turn, Jake Johannsen, Richard Lewis and Steven Wright—the crowd went insane.

Of course, the secret was out by the time the 7:30 show was over. At the top of the 10:30 show, Louis admonished the crowd, "Do me a favor. Stay off of Twitter and Facebook so you don't find out who's opening this show. Don't ruin it for the people around you. Try to live your actual life for once, not the one on your iPhone. Look up here at the real world. The resolution is amazing. A lot more megapixels."

All four comics played to a huge response, the three openers also receiving warm introductions from Louis C.K. extolling them as formative influences. Particularly moving was Louis' description of a horrible show he played early in his career at a Boston comedy club in the mid-1980s. He was supposed to perform six minutes but made it only four because the show was a complete disaster: no one laughed, the crowd hated him, he couldn't figure out how to stop drowning, and he slunk off the stage in abject defeat.

Louis was so demoralized that he started to consider giving up comedy altogether. Then someone came up behind him said, "Good job." He turned around to find his idol and the evening's headliner, Steven Wright. The compliment was enough to keep him at it for another two years.

Wright still stands as comedy's mind-bending poetic genius, and on this night he served up his umpteenth crowd-pleasing performance. Among his dozens of gems: "I got a new camera. It's so advanced, you don't even need it."

Just For Laughs: Saturday

2011-06-18T08:00:00.010-05:00

The Just For Laughs Chicago comedy festival wakes up today hung over, looks around in vain for a clean shirt, squints groggily into the bathroom mirror, shrugs at the stubble and missing tooth, and rolls up its sleeves for another nonstop night of comedy performance.

Here are my Saturday picks from Flavorpill Chicago:

Seth Meyers, 7:30pm at the Vic
Alone: Chicago's Best Solo Acts, 10pm at the Playground Theater

True comedy aficionados might have already caught Seth Meyers' surprise appearance Thursday night at his fellow SNL writer Michael Patrick O'Brien's midnight showcase at iO Theater. In a like vein, O'Brien's 8pm show tonight at the Annoyance Theater—variously promoted as either Misled (his acclaimed two-man sketch attack with Peter Grosz) or T.J. & Pat O'Brien (improvisation with fellow master T.J. Jagodowski)—promises to be the sleeper show of the festival.

Just For Laughs: Friday

2011-06-17T07:00:00.002-05:00

The Just For Laughs comedy festival continues tonight with a broad slate of mostly standup and improv shows. Here are my Friday picks as previewed in Flavorpill Chicago:

Jeffrey Ross Roasts Chicago, 7:30pm at the Vic
Alone: Chicago's Best Solo Acts, 10pm at the Playground Theater

Another show deserves a mention, The Chris Gethard Show at the iO Theater at 11:59pm. Chris is a stalwart member of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City, a leading bastion of improvisation and sketch, where he appears in the all-star ASSSCAT show on Sunday nights. You might have also caught him with fellow UCB veterans Horatio Sanz and Chris Parnell in Comedy Central's "Big Lake." He is an excellent improviser, a winning monologuist and well worth seeing.

Just For Laughs: Thursday

2011-06-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

Just For Laughs Chicago, this city's arguably biggest and inarguably best-funded annual comedy festival, rolls on.

Here are links to my Thursday picks as featured in Flavorpill Chicago:

Whitney Cummings, 7:30pm at The Vic
4 Square, 8pm at iO Theater
The POB Show, 11:59pm at iO Theater

Just For Laughs: Wednesday

2011-06-15T08:00:00.017-05:00

The Just For Laughs Chicago comedy festival kicks into high gear today with a full slate of standup, improv, solo and film presentation.

My pick of the day is 4 Square, a four-man improvisation master class. You might know Dan Bakkedahl from "The Daily Show," Rob Janas from The Second City, Peter Grosz from "The Colbert Report," and "Saturday Night Live" writer John Lutz as the creatively named Lutz on "30 Rock."

You might also remember them as four of the best improvisers in the city, back before they went coastal as comedy careers so often require. Tonight they're back in Chicago to revive the excellent improvisation show they performed in their old ImprovOlympic days. I highly recommend it.

My Flavorpill preview is here.

Just For Laughs Chicago

2011-06-14T18:00:00.004-05:00

The third annual Just For Laughs Chicago comedy festival kicks off tonight with three shows, quickly accelerates to a frenzied blur of simultaneous hilarity with a dazzling array of local and national acts from Wednesday through Saturday, then eases to an A-list denouement on Sunday evening as Steve Martin and Martin Short take the stage together at the Chicago Theatre. (There's a third funny Martin in the mix too: Demetri.)

As usual I'll be covering the festival for Flavorpill Chicago, the city's only going-out guide, and posting links to my picks in this space throughout the week.

Meanwhile you can check out the official festival website here. Get out there, see something new, support live comedy and have fun!

Mike Reiss

2011-06-09T08:00:00.012-05:00

The current NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle is by FOBB&B Mike Reiss, one of the six or eight funniest people alive.

Although he concocts great puzzles for both Will Shortz's radio show and the National Puzzlers' League, he's best known for his long career as a brilliant comedy writer for The Simpsons.

Here's Mike delivering some A+ material at his Harvard College 25-year reunion:

You don't say

2011-06-08T12:00:00.002-05:00

"Please be aware that monthly payments of interest only will not reduce the principal owed on your loan."

Headline of the week

2011-06-07T10:00:00.008-05:00

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Stranger on phone: 'The person you were talking to has just been shot'
[Chicago Tribune]
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A farewell note

2011-06-04T10:00:00.004-05:00

Now that the Oprah hype is finally dying down — and, I have it on good authority from a friend at Harpo, the Big O is currently unwinding on a yacht bound for points unknown — let's mark the Oprah Winfrey Show's finale with a memorable live performance from its Chicago studio.

From 2009, here's Charice Pempengco:

Hmm

2011-06-03T06:00:00.005-05:00

During a recent interview, NBC's Jimmy Fallon told Tina Fey her bestselling new memoir Bossypants is so omnipresent around New York City that it's "the Harry Potter of books."

Tantan

2011-06-02T06:00:00.000-05:00

The death of irony

2011-05-27T07:00:00.001-05:00

It's not rain, on my brother's wedding day
It's a free ride on a trolley (except for whoever booked it) to take some wedding photos
The brief ceremony will be outdoors but I'm not worried about black flies and don't know if they're even serving Chardonnay
The only death row prisoners I've met were the wrongly convicted men whose cases I worked on as a law student; they were all exonerated in courtrooms, not executed or pardoned too late, and anyway I don't think they know my brother or are invited to the wedding
Afraid to fly or otherwise, everyone who flew here for the wedding is here now. As their planes touched down without incident, they thought, "Well isn't this nice."

It isn't ironic, don't you think?

Aces

2011-05-24T06:00:00.001-05:00

Do you like Vegas stories? Small-time crooks? Locally produced and written theater?

Then check out the new play Aces, now playing at the Signal Ensemble Theatre through June 18.

My Flavorpill preview is here.

One way to do it

2011-05-21T10:00:00.001-05:00

Op-ed corner

2011-05-19T08:00:00.001-05:00

Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to be Maria Shriver's husband in the worst way, and that is exactly what he did.

Area Article Enjoyed

2011-05-18T18:00:00.000-05:00

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18,000 People Cheer Thing Going Through Thing
[The Onion]

Gibson with two onions

2011-05-16T18:00:00.018-05:00

Here's a quick basketball quiz.

Watch this video from last night's Game 1 of the Bulls-Heat playoff series:

The question is, which guy is all-NBA superstar and Chicago native Dwyane Wade and which is little-known Chicago Bulls power forward Taj Gibson?

Of course, as the YouTube title (not to mention mine) suggests, that was Gibson posterizing the poster boy.

He also threw down this one at the end of the game just so everyone knew the first one was no fluke:

This is how we do it

2011-05-15T10:00:00.009-05:00

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Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Dead, Vader Says
[The Galactic Empire Times]

Amusing parody of the NYT's coverage of President Obama's bin Laden announcement. Don't miss the comment posts.

Justice

2011-05-13T08:00:00.006-05:00

At today's graduation ceremonies for the Northwestern University School of Law, the guest of honor addressing his newly minted fellow alumni will be the Hon. John Paul Stevens '47, former associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Justice Stevens served in World War II as a Navy codebreaker in Hawaii before graduating in 1947, magna cum laude, from Northwestern Law. He served as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1970 through 1975. Nominated to the Supreme Court by President Gerald Ford, he took his seat on that court on December 19, 1975. After 35 years of service under three Chief Justices, Justice Stevens retired in June 2010 as the third-longest-serving justice in the Supreme Court’s history.

Yesterday afternoon at the law school, Justice Stevens appeared at a question-and-answer session conducted by two fellow alums, one a frequent advocate before the high court and the other his recent law clerk. He also took questions from members of the law school community.

A current law student asked, "Justice Stevens, did you ever wish you could go back and rewrite one of your majority opinions? Like in the years afterward, when you see how your case was applied by other courts, did you ever wish you could have a chance to change something?"

Justice Stevens replied, "No."

The original Grease

2011-05-10T08:00:00.008-05:00

Recently attended a press opening of Grease co-creator Jim Jacobs' remounting of the rarely seen, R-rated, Chicago-centric original version of his iconic musical.

I saw the play on the 40th anniversary of its first-ever performance. Also in attendance were Mr. Jacobs and several of his original cast members including Chicagoan Marilu Henner, all of whom reminisced about the show at a festive gathering after the performance. For the trivia file, Ms. Henner and Jeff Conaway were cast in "Taxi" after being discovered in the national touring cast of Grease.

I highly recommend this show, the buzz for which is growing so loud that the entire run is close to selling out. (An extension is inevitable and an eventual move to another theater is a distinct possibility.)

As I wrote for Flavorpill Chicago:

“Sure, you've watched the movie. Maybe you played Betty Rizzo in your high school's version or caught Brooke Shields or Rosie O'Donnell doing likewise on Broadway. But you've almost certainly never had the chance to see the original version of Grease that played Chicago's old Kingston Mines Theater on Lincoln Avenue in 1971 — until now, that is. Co-creator Jim Jacobs is remounting his most famous play old-school, and the pre-Travolta Grease turns out to be as gritty and real as the movie is light and frothy. The action centers around Chicago's Taft High School (later whitewashed into generic Rydell High for a national audience), with the boy-meets-girl bubblegum of Sandy and Danny just a small part of the clear-eyed depiction of working-class teen life in the late 1950s. Just when you think it's time for "Summer Nights" you get "Foster Beach" and know you're not at the multiplex anymore.”

More information and a ticket link in my Flavorpill preview here.