46A: The Theme to this Puzzle

Am I cracked for wanting to go and find the Glenn Gould recordings of the Mozart sonatas where he basically butchers them and then sings along more audibly than usual?

Speaking of cracked, I have discovered that, among the NPR streams available, there's the Piano Puzzler from Performance Today, in which composer Bruce Adolphe takes a well known song, usually from the Great American Songbook, and rewrites it in the style of a well-known classical composer. The phone-in caller then has to identify the composer and the original song. I'll spoil this week's, it's Everything's Coming Up Roses given a dark, brooding Chopin-esque treatment. There are archives back into July. This is the sort of thing I really like.

Speaking of NPR puzzlers, this week's puzzle from Will Shortz (of NYT Crossword fame) is a wonderful (albeit maddening) puzzle. The challenge is to make a 3x3 word square (each row and column is a word) using chemical element symbols. So it's ultimately a 6x6 word square with very limited letter entries. Just coming up with six-letter words from chemical elements is a good challenge. Making them fit a word square...

Speaking of Will Shortz, I'm strongly tempted to get the $34.95 annual subscription to the NYT Crossword, so that I can download and print each day's puzzle and take it for the train/lunch/as long as it takes me. I'm tempted to do this because Tuesday's Times found it's way into the house, and it's much nicer to do a real puzzle compared to, say, the Inquirer or, even worse, the Metro.

Something like 62D: Boris Gudenov, e.g.

( 4 Letters )

(no subject)

Did I miss a memo? Basically, it seems like every where I go these days, I see people with only the top or middle button of a suit jacket buttoned. Am I the only one who thinks this looks terrible? You have a closed suit, which is good, but then there's a little triangle of tie and shirt sticking out at the bottom. Is this fashionable these days, or am I just perpetually surrounded by people who don't have a clue? Last I checked, you were supposed to button the suit from the bottom up and never button all of the buttons.