What do I know? Sometimes less than I think I do.
I was working on Wordle:
Wordle 1,448 4/6
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 AROSE
⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ TULIP
🟨🟨🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
The third word I used was DEIGN. I was trying to remember the name of that Christian hymn that used that word, but I couldn’t recall it. So I Googled it, and it was “Beneath the Cross of Jesus,” a hymn I hadn’t sung in a good while. However, the word was FAIN; I totally misremember this.
Deign means to condescend reluctantly and with a strong sense of the affront to one’s superiority that is involved: stoop.
Fain, by contrast, means with pleasure, by preference. Here are the lyrics to the hymn and a recording. Oh, the Wordle word was EDIFY; this was an edifying experience.
model for Edna ‘E’ Mode
I was watching JEOPARDY Masters. The Jeopardy! Category Is… Costume Design With Paul Tazewell, the Tony winner and 2025 Tony nominee, joined the TV game show for an entire category of fashionable answers.
For $600: “In her 50+ year career, this person won a record eight Oscars for costume design.” She was pictured, but I could not remember her name. The animated film The Incredibles (2004) featured a character based on her. Maddening. Of course, it was Edith Head.
This is making me feel a little less savvy, but then I started at some of the recent regular JEOPARDY games from the first week in June. There were some questions on there that nobody got right, but I knew instantly.
Smooth Singers
A 1990s “SNL” sketch called “Coffee Talk” praised this singer for having a voice “like buttah”
Louis Armstrong’s rasp contrasted beautifully with her sweet honey sound, dueting on songs like “Cheek To Cheek” (pictured)
Women on Stamps
Thank you for being a friend—in March 2025, this beloved TV entertainer was honored on a stamp
Geographic nicknames
An abundance of sediment gives the Missouri River the nickname “Big” this
Reelin’ In The Years
5 guys get busted at the Watergate; Harrison Schmitt is one of 2 to be the last to walk on the Moon (but not to moonwalk)
Colleges and universities
Think your school’s got tradition? Thomas Aquinas got a degree & taught theology on the Left Bank at the U. of this city.
The same letter Three Times
Matthew 6:24 warns, “Ye cannot serve God and” this personification of wealth.
The article
A cousin of mine sent me this article from the New York Times from Ken Jennings: Trivia and ‘Jeopardy!’ Could Save Our Republic. “Facts may seem faintly old-timey in the 21st century, remnants of the rote learning style that went out of fashion in classrooms (and that the internet search made obsolete) decades ago. But societies are built on facts, as we can see more clearly when institutions built on knowledge teeter.
“Inaccurate facts make for less informed decisions. Less informed decisions make for bad policy. Garbage in, garbage out.” I was discussing this very issue with a librarian; Google is not always the answer. Some of the current “factoids” generated by an AI-like machine are often terrible, which Jennings addresses.
Working through my existential trauma, you could provide a salve if you would Ask Roger Anything. I intend to reply within the month. I work really hard to make sure it’s accurate; it may even be true!
You can leave your questions in the comments section of this blog or on my Facebook page (Roger Owen Green); always look for the duck.
Oh, the responses: Barbra Streisand; Ella Fitzgerald; Betty White (my wife purchased me a set of these stamps!); Big Muddy; 1972 (contestants guessed 1974 and 1973); Paris (a contestant guessed London); mammon.