EtheltoTillie

Oh, great to know you like Cluny too! This is a nice memory of Scrabble. My parents used to play all the time. They had an early (1950s) "fancy" set with plastic ivory-look tiles and tile holders with scorekeeping pegs (like a cribbage set).

Just thought of something for you, Bastet. Do you like the old Lubitsch movie Cluny Brown? They show it on TCM from time to time. It's about a gal (Jennifer Jones) who loves plumbing--and Charles Boyer. Hey, here's a YouTube link to the whole movie. First plumbing scene at 6 minutes.

Same here. I don't suck at Scrabble, but I don't do well at the strategy. It's a completely different animal from the crossword.

You mean not those veterans of the Yiddish theater?

Another fan of Another World here. I watched in the mid-80s. I follow Mary Page Keller and Thomas Ian Griffith on Twitter. They're still married in real life. They actually seem like a normal couple. I still watch Reba reruns on Hallmark.

@shapeshifter Do you regularly watch Wheel of Fortune in addition to Jeopardy?, since it's on right after. I don't usually watch 'cause I absolutely suck at it.

FWIW, the NB people who are using "they/them" pronouns use them as singulars. Not that this gives us an answer to your excellent question. BravX?

Fan of the good old newspaper Jumble puzzle here: that anagram question was half assed. Only four of the letters were anagrams. Not that I got the answer myself. I am not a big fan of the Spelling Bee puzzle and I certainly don’t get Queen Bee status.

At least I ran the category of legal abbreviations. It would have been embarrassing if I hadn't. The rest, not so much!

Oh next week is a doozy. Shirtless wet Nick was shown

Nick taking Danielle upstairs! Yuck.

Danielle wants to take it slow. Nick wants to schedule a sleepover posthaste.

What’s the gist of Unexpected? Teens?

Oops Danielle didn’t like hearing about the kiss.

Nick was taken aback at the revelation of Jasmine’s paganism. Because he’s all about the science and math

Coming up: nick reports on his pawing session.

Sarah was forced into “committing” and quickly ended before it started. All these couples are so overbearing.

Wow Nick really dove in for that kiss. Yuck. Also pawed her leg.

I can more easily control it on my iPad. If I watch the episode on TV using Roku, and I cannot get to the post episode chat, I switch to the iPad, where it is easier to use the slider and get to the right point after the credits roll.

Kayla is showing growth. She's less annoying and has actually started acting shrewdly. She is using her nepo status wisely. The showrunners even discussed this in one of the post-episode chats. PS: fie on Max with its annoying way of stopping the episode during the credits and making it difficult to stay tuned and watch the post episode discussion.

Same for me on Max captions. Seems to have been fixed.

I just finished Long Island, by Colm Toibin, the sequel to his novel Brooklyn (which I enjoyed and I also enjoyed the movie). This one is somewhat flawed. Maybe needed more time to marinate. It's not very long. Spoilers ahead: It is widely revealed that the trigger of the plot is main character Eilis learning that her Italian husband, Tony, has an out of wedlock baby on the way, with the wife of a plumbing client. It is 20 years after the events of Brooklyn. I get no feeling of what the marriage was like over the 20 years. The novel should really be called Ireland, because that's where most of the action takes place. Eilis is so pissed off with Tony and his meddling family she goes back to Ireland (with the excuse being her mother's 80th birthday). Now she resumes her affair with Jim, the guy she left behind 20 years ago. Jim, meanwhile, had agreed to marry widowed Nancy. (Nancy had been married to George. They used to hang out with Jim and Eilis.) Suddenly he wants to rekindle his old love but doesn't tell Nancy. So Jim is two timing both women. The ending is indeterminate! All of the characters do some bad things.

Oh, yeah, they're all by Mike Nichols. But he had other themes too. Such as Working Girl. The cancerous rot at the heart of American capitalism. LOL.

There were two times tonight where they went back and rescored. How does that work? In both cases, someone else had given the correct response, but they don't lose their points. I've never understood this. That last FJ was an easy theater question. I was surprised James did not know it. Too bad Victoria didn't bet more.

UO: I think it’s funny when Che does that.