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Forbes
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Today's NYT Mini Crossword Clues And Answers For Tuesday, June 10th
In case you missed Monday's NYT Mini Crossword puzzle, you can find the answers here: Welcome back, Crosswordlers, to yet another Mini Crossword guide. It's Tuesday and the weather is just fine. You really can't beat June when it comes to weather, especially here in the mountains with all the rain we've been getting. It's been just right. But before we enjoy that, let's solve this puzzle shall we? The NYT Mini is a smaller, quicker, more digestible, bite-sized version of the larger and more challenging NYT Crossword, and unlike its larger sibling, it's free-to-play without a subscription to The New York Times. You can play it on the web or the app, though you'll need the app to tackle the archive. Across 1A. Displays at a trailhead — starts with the first letter M 5A. Pulitzer-winning 2024 novel that reimagined "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" from the perspective of Jim — starts with the first letter J 6A. Invader in a sci-fi movie — starts with the first letter A 7A. Thin strands — starts with the first letter W 8A. 'Tude — starts with the first letter S Down 1D. One of Michelle Obama's daughters — starts with the first letter M 2D. A little out of whack — starts with the first letter A 3D. Marshmallow treats in Easter baskets — starts with the first letter P 4D. I.R.S. IDs — starts with the first letter S 5D. 1975 film with a 25-foot animatronic shark — starts with the first letter J Across 1A. Displays at a trailhead — MAPS 5A. Pulitzer-winning 2024 novel that reimagined "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" from the perspective of Jim — JAMES 6A. Invader in a sci-fi movie — ALIEN 7A. Thin strands — WISPS 8A. 'Tude — SASS Down 1D. One of Michelle Obama's daughters — MALIA 2D. A little out of whack — ASKew 3D. Marshmallow treats in Easter baskets — PEEPS 4D. I.R.S. IDs — SSNS FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder 5D. 1975 film with a 25-foot animatronic shark — JAWS Today's Mini Screenshot: Erik Kain The reason this took me 1:56 is I started plugging in the correct answers in the wrong spot. I did this twice, because apparently my brain isn't working or something. I put JAWS into 4-Down and AMISS into 3-Down and then had to backtrack and fix everything. Overall, though, if you're not plugging in the words into the wrong boxes, this wasn't a terribly challenging Mini! How did you do? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. If you also play Wordle, I write guides about that as well. You can find those and all my TV guides, reviews and much more here on my blog. Thanks for reading!
Time Out
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Out
The best animal movies for kids
Willie would rather keep in nose buried in Huckleberry Finn than mingle with the other kids, especially the bullies who make his life torturous. That's when his mother decides it's time for a four-legged friend, much to her husband's dismay. When Willie and his new beagle skip form a friendship, things take a turn in a positive direction for the young boy. But don't leave the tissues too far away—there are moments that'll make you tear up and reach for your furry best friend. Rated PG.
Chicago Tribune
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Renovation at former Holiday movie theater in Park Forest to-do box
Two years ago, at a villagewide workshop that evolved into a master plan for Park Forest, numerous residents had their say about the future of the downtown area: what to build, what to tear down and what to save. The dormant Holiday movie theater on Main Street was on the keep list. And why not? For more than a generation, the cinema dominated the bustling outdoor plaza. The 1,050-seat theater opened Oct. 28,1950, as part of the Park Forest Shoppers Plaza. Should you ask, 'Tight Little Island,' 'Huckleberry Finn' and 'The Red Shoes' were the first films shown. The Holiday featured a fireplace, a beamed ceiling and a cry room catering to fussy toddlers. It was also a social center for the mushrooming community. Many first dates at the movie house later blossomed into marriage. Sunday morning church services were once held for what was to become the Faith United Protestant Church, and at one time Saturday morning services for the Reform Jewish Congregation Beth Shalom also took place there. In the late 1980s it was converted into a three-screen movie emporium, including a screen in the balcony. By 1993, two more screens were added. Alas, by then movie houses played a bad second fiddle to television and tapes. Owners came and left. Cook County began gobbling up more taxes. In 2008 new owners changed the name to Holiday Star Theater, but the venue shuttered for good in 2013. All that remained of the site, along with the dust and mold, were the memories, and that, we suspect, is what led to a 'save the Holiday' sentiment among those who once cared. It will cost a large dollar to clean up, patch up, fix up and rehab the facility, and in a year in which Park Forest is committed to spending up to $5 million to rehab the crumbling infrastructure of the Aqua Center, any plans for the old movie house must be shipped into the 'to be done later' inbox. The biggest question is, if renovated, what kind of structure will it become? The theater site is part of a large commercial footprint in the downtown area, bounded by Main Street, Founders Way, Liberty Drive and Cunningham Lane. Although short of ongoing ventures, two new businesses plan to move into that portion of downtown. The Good Times Gaming Cafe plans to open at the corner of Liberty and Founders Way, taking over from a similar operation on Founders Way, according to the agenda for Monday night's Village Board meeting. The Royal Styles Restaurant will renovate a large space in the center. Other changes are taking place. Those 44 apartments under private construction at the corner of Indianwood Boulevard and Orchard Drive will probably be finished before the first snow. The desperately needed overhaul of Forest Boulevard and Forest Boulevard will eliminate those pock-marked craters. That project is being done with $480,00 from Cook County piggy bank. Everything takes time. The Holiday must wait its turn, if there is one. The last time we met, there was a discussion about the conflict between the sparrow and the wren competing for the same space in our backyard gourd, how the sparrow would build the nest and the wren would come along and start dismantling it. It was written that the wren won, but the sparrow was never notified. One day after publication, the sparrow took over, barging in and, as many a squatter does, taking over the property. The wren shrugged its wings, in an avian 'oh well' and flew off. There are a number of wrens in our backyard. All birds look alike, thus preventing me from spotting the disenfranchised creature.
Telegraph
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Mark Twain's bizarre obsession with ‘killing' Shakespeare
When Mark Twain was convinced of something, he seldom brooked disagreement. Over the two dozen books he wrote, he showed an exceptional level of intellectual vigour, commitment and acuity. Yet he used those mental powers to advance one particular unusual belief: that William Shakespeare had never written the plays attributed to him, and that credit probably belonged to Francis Bacon. Such was Twain's zeal on the subject, wrote his secretary Isabel Lyon, that one would have thought he 'had Shakespeare by the throat righteously strangling him for some hideous crime'. For two months, from January until March 1909, Twain beavered away at what would become his final published book, Is Shakespeare Dead? He had a bullheaded certainty. 'I know that Shakespeare did not write those plays, and I have reason to believe he did not touch the text in any way,' he told his friend and authorised biographer Albert Paine. 'It is the great discovery of the age.' Twain, it should be noted, cherished Shakespeare's plays, and saw them often. In the 1870s, he and his wife, Livy, had visited Stratford-upon-Avon, and Twain, in these early days, backed the creation of a Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. He had researched Shakespeare while preparing his novel The Prince and the Pauper (1881), and in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the King and Duke try to palm themselves off as Shakespearean actors, offering hilariously garbled versions of the Bard to backwoods audiences. But Twain had always questioned the authorship of Shakespeare 's oeuvre. His 50-year faith in Bacon dated back to his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, when fellow pilot George Ealer, 'an idolater of Shakespeare', read the plays aloud to him and bashed Bacon supporters royally. Twain begged to differ. After going to see one performance of Romeo and Juliet, Twain even told a companion, 'That's one of the greatest things Bacon ever wrote.' Why did Twain attack Shakespeare with such gusto? Partly it stemmed from his extreme disillusionment with people, which only grew in his later years: his belief that the planet was chock-full of fools and frauds such as the Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy: 'I think he [Shakespeare] & Mother Eddy are just about a pair – a pair of humbugs.' The Shakespeare cult, as Twain saw it, proved that people were merely sheep who followed a herd instinct and echoed what they heard. Twain's error was using his own career as a frame of reference. In his final years, he had devoted enormous time to his autobiographical dictations, which by this point amounted to 450,000 words: he simply couldn't believe that Shakespeare had left behind no manuscripts or letters. With an extreme paucity of original documentation, Shakespeare biographers had relied on a handful of mouldy anecdotes about the man, many recorded long after he was gone. Twain compared his own literary fame to the glaring emptiness of Shakespeare's record. Had Shakespeare been truly famous in his own time, Twain argued, 'his notoriety would have lasted as long as mine has lasted in my own village [Hannibal] out in Missouri... a really celebrated person cannot be forgotten in his village in the short space of 60 years'. He mentioned his Hannibal schoolfriends, who regularly retailed legends about him to reporters. Yet the comparison was odd: Twain lived in a very different media environment, one in which a thriving American newspaper industry published features, profiles and interviews, and in which celebrity culture had already taken root. Like many Shakespeare deniers, Twain also observed that the playwright was curiously well versed in law courts and legal proceedings. Nobody, thought Twain, could master 'the argot of a trade at which he has not personally served'. Some scholars have speculated that Shakespeare clerked in a law office before starting his theatre career in London, but Twain was convinced that Shakespeare plays betray knowledge that only a highly educated person such as Bacon might have known. Yet Twain failed to confront many obvious objections to his theory. How could Bacon's imposture have remained hidden during his lifetime and after? Did he confide in no one? How did he make necessary changes to plays during rehearsals? Or did Shakespeare, the man under whose name all this work was disguised, rush to Bacon's home each night for secret revisions? What about cases such as The Two Noble Kinsmen, in which we know that Shakespeare collaborated with other authors? Twain never dealt with the problem of the First Folio: the fact that Elizabethan actors thought so highly of William Shakespeare that they assembled this legacy for posterity only seven years after the playwright had died. It should further be noted that this wasn't for Twain a unique situation: he had also identified John Milton, not John Bunyan, as the true author of The Pilgrim's Progress. Even Twain's heartiest admirers, Paine and Lyon, appealed to him not to publish Is Shakespeare Dead? Colonel Harvey, his editor and publisher at Harper & Brothers, agreed that it would be ill-advised, both showing intellectual slippage on Twain's part and dealing another blow to his image as America's leading humorist. But Twain was hell-bent on publishing it; worse, he was desperate to beat into print another book, Some Acrostic Signatures of Francis Bacon by William Stone Booth, which aimed to show that Shakespeare's work was shot through with coded messages pointing to Bacon's secret authorship. As a result of the rushed editing process, Twain's last published book appeared on April 8 1909, a mere month after the manuscript was completed. It was greeted with something less than acclaim: no one endorsed it, then or later, as 'the great discovery of the age'. And the haste landed Twain in an embarrassing imbroglio with another writer, George Greenwood, who claimed that Twain had quoted freely from Greenwood's similar book, The Shakespeare Problem Restated, without crediting him – an awkward position for Twain, a militant on copyright issues. The problem, in truth, was a rogue footnote, and Twain's apology ended the kerfuffle. But it may have contributed to the health problems that increasingly plagued him. The Greenwood controversy blew up in June 1909, as Twain travelled to Baltimore. On the day he checked into the Belvedere Hotel, one newspaper carried the incendiary headline 'Is Mark Twain a Plagiarist?' Feeling worn out, Twain shunned newspapermen who came to elicit his reaction, and lay down in the hotel room with a book. When he arose and paced the room, he suddenly paused with one hand clutching his chest. 'I have a curious pain in my breast,' he told Paine. 'It's a curious, sickening, deadly kind of pain. I never had anything just like it.' Twain's instincts were accurate: at 73, he was suffering from angina pectoris, with a reduced blood flow to the heart muscle producing sharp, frightening attacks. Twain rallied enough to address the graduates at St Timothy's School, in Catonsville, Maryland, a tiny, elite and very proper all-female boarding establishment. On his way to the graduation, he chomped on a cigar and glanced admiringly at the parade of Baltimore girls traipsing down the sidewalk. 'Pretty girls – and you almost have a monopoly of them here – are always an inspiration to me,' he told a reporter. In addressing the graduates, Twain's eyes sparkled, and he spiced his remarks with trademark mischief. He advised the girls not to smoke or drink to excess, then delivered his punchline: 'Don't marry – I mean, to excess.' It was to be the last speech of his 43-year lecturing career. In terms of health, Twain knew that he had passed a watershed. After the Baltimore trip, among many restrictions the doctor placed on the writer's activities the most onerous was an exhortation to cut down on smoking and try to heal his 'tobacco heart'. Since boyhood, Twain had remained defiant on this score – as defiant as his lifelong pro-Bacon stance. 'It isn't going to happen,' he insisted. 'I shan't diminish it by a single puff.' In the end, he did, slashing his consumption from 40 cigars per day to four. 'I don't care for death,' he wrote, '& I do care for smoking.' But this consummate American showman knew exactly what approached. 'I came in with Halley's comet in 1835,' Twain said. 'It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't.' After 75 years away, in April 1910 the comet returned, appearing above Twain's home in Redding, Connecticut. Twain, having suffered successive angina attacks, was heavily sedated and probably didn't know. On April 21, with the comet still in the sky, he breathed his last.
Wall Street Journal
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Mark Twain' Review: The Most American Writer
More than a century after his death, Mark Twain remains one of the most recognizable voices in American literature—the author of 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' (1876), 'Life on the Mississippi' (1883) and 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' (1884), the latter among the most consequential novels ever written in English and possibly (if you believe Ernest Hemingway) the source of American literature itself. That may be an exaggeration, but almost everything about Twain seems exaggerated as well as true. In his disapproval of Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, he called the president 'the most formidable disaster that has befallen the country since the Civil War,' a man 'always hunting for a chance to show off.' Before he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born in 1835 in Florida, Mo., before moving, at the age of 4, to nearby Hannibal—his beloved 'white town drowsing' on the banks of the Mississippi. A roistering, high-spirited boy, he was described by his 'very pretty' neighbor, Laura Hawkins (the model for Becky Thatcher in 'Tom Sawyer'), as a barefoot lad who 'came out of his home, opposite mine, and started showing off, turning handsprings and cutting capers.' The showing off continued until his death in 1910. In his biography of the famed satirist, Ron Chernow tracks, with patience and care, Twain's journey over nearly eight tumultuous decades. Mr. Chernow's tale is enlivened by blazing quotes from Twain's prodigious interviews, diaries and letters. This literary bounty, of course, poses a problem for all Twain biographers, from his rambling but indispensable first biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine (1912), through Van Wyck Brooks (1920), Justin Kaplan (1966) and Ron Powers (2005), among many others. The quotes tend to burn a hole in the page, and it's difficult for a biographer to recover. Mr. Chernow, whose lives of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Ulysses S. Grant are revered for their sound scholarship, clear writing and strong narrative drive, weaves Twain's sizzling remarks almost seamlessly into his own narrative.
