Tuesday, March 22, 2022, Adam Wagner

Who doesn't love a MAGNET? I don't think it makes us all SHEEPLE if we GUFFAW the first time we see its magic pull. Some of my favorite games as a child involved magnets. We had one called "Wooly Willy" that was a face under plastic, and you could manipulate IRONFILINGs with a little wand to change the hair, add a beard, or whatever. And there was another called "Tickle Bee" where you dragged a metal bee through a maze, again with a magnetic wand. And there was a large board suspended on legs with a city plan on it, and by moving magnets underneath, you could move cars or people around on the streets or sidewalks. Then, of course, there was this thing -

Man, I spent hours flipping that thing up and down. I can still hear the sound it made. Good times.

And that, kids, is what life was like before the internet.

So, as you see, I found this an attractive theme. Although you'd need a pretty strong magnet to pick up a WAFFLEIRON or an IRONMAIDEN... And it's funny to have it show up the day after I read a lot about iron mining in the U.S.

In the fill, I like FATBOYSLIM (Oxyoronic stage name for the D.J. Norman Cook), PERFUME (Fragrance), and the trivia in ELMIRA (New York city where Mark Twain is buried). HERHONOR is timely, what with the confirmation hearings underway today. I hope Ms. Jackson is confirmed, but even if she is, I fear she will be among the DISSENTERS for the next few years, at least. Sigh. 

HIDALGO (Gentleman: Sp.) seems like something I should have known, but didn't until today, and ULTIMA (Final syllable of a word, in linguistics), despite my love of languages, words, and linguistics, took several crosses.

Still, it was a fun Tuesday. Unusual theme, but unusual is usually welcome.

- Horace