ADS-L/NTY synergy

[Laurence Horn]

In yesterday's Sunday New York Times we find

(1) on p. 11 of the Book Review, a review of a new biography of the
great general and "solid, above-average, historically mistreated
president" is entitled

"Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb?"

Neither Groucho nor his duck are mentioned.

(2) in the acrostic, on p.  114 of the Magazine, clue J reads
"Source, colloquially, of the unexpected (2 wds.)".  The answer (I
hope I'm not spoiling the puzzle for anyone; just in case, I'll
provide an official spoiler here) is...


























LEFTFIELD

(3)  Not really connected with any current or past threads, but I
thought it might be worth mentioning that William Safire, in his "On
Language" column (p. 26 of the Magazine), reveals that he doesn't
know his umlaut from his diaeresis.  He describes the umlaut as an
indication that a vowel is to be fronted (correct, of course) and
that it "also separates the sound of a vowel form the
different-sounding vowel that follows, as in reënter."  That's with
two dots over the second "e", in case it didn't survive the software
conversion, but the latter diacritic, according to all that's holy,
is no umlaut, even though it looks like one--it's a di(a)eresis.  I'm
a bit surprised--this is just the sort of trivial piece of
grammatical arcana I'd have expected Safire to know.

larry