Home & Garden

RED AND GREEN— (continued) he was born with a heart that was “two sizes too small.” The first film adaptation was a 1966 television special, in which the

Grinch was voiced by famous horror film actor Boris Karloff. • The Minnesota Valley Canning Company opened in Le Sueur, Minnesota in 1903, using the brand name “Le Sueur Z” for its canned vegetables. In 1925, they first used the brand name “Green Giant,” but it was three years before the company incorporated the figure of a giant into their advertising dressed in a bearskin. Ten years later, the giant’s garb was changed to a leafy suit, he was given a big smile, and became the “Jolly Green Giant.”

Television advertising added the familiar

“Ho ho, ho” in 1961, and the Giant’s sidekick, Little

Green Sprout, debuted in 1972. Sixty miles south of the cannery lies the city of Blue Earth, Minnesota, where in 1978, a 55-foot (17 m) fiberglass statue of the Jolly Green Giant was erected. When the interstate was routed to bypass Blue

Earth, a local radio station owner rallied local business owners to contribute to the construction of the four-ton figure to attract tourists to their community. It took just a week for the $50,000 in necessary funds to be raised. About 10,000 folks visit the statue each year. WONDERFUL WORDS: CLOTHING ITEMS Even a fashionista might have trouble recognizing all of these clothing items. Follow along as Tidbits “dresses up.” • Members of several religious orders wear habits as an outward sign of their undertaking of the religious life. The word has its origins in the Latin word “habitus,” meaning an acquired discipline. There are several parts of the habit, beginning with the coif, a cap-like head covering the hair.

The coif is topped by the wimple, which encircles the neck and covers the chin.

The white guimpe lies on the shoulders and covers the shoulders and the lower part of the neck. The tunic, a loose pleated cloak drapes over the torso, flowing to the ground. The long scapular sits on the shoulders and covers the wearer’s front and back down to the knees. • You may have seen folks wearing

Lederhosen at your local Oktoberfest festival. Although it may sound like stockings, Lederhosen are actually short or kneelength breeches, made popular by Alpine men in Bavaria,

Austria, and Switzerland. The word comes from the German language, translating into

English as “leather breeches.”

Traditional Lederhosen are made from leather because they easier to clean after a day of strenuous labor. • During the early days of cattle drives, cowboys needed a coat that would protect their clothing from the dust of the trail. The full-length duster was designed with a slit up the back to the hip to accommodate riding on horseback. Originally made from light-colored canvas, they were modified to oilcloth or waxed cotton as a safeguard against prairie rainstorms. Dusters became known as part of the uniform for the early Texas Rangers. When open automobiles came along at the turn of the 20th century, both men and women wore them to protect clothing from the dusty dirt roads. • Are you old enough to remember the Nehru jacket? This hip-length tailored jacket features a narrow stand-up collar and no lapels. The close-fitted single-breasted garment has one row of buttons up the front. It’s named for the first Prime Minister of India, who became the leader when

India achieved independence from Great

Britain in 1947. Jawaharial Nehru was pictured on the cover of Vogue magazine in 1964 in his traditional jacket. Once the

Beatles adopted the look, a new fashion trend was born. • Another Indian ruler, Rao Jodha, founded the city of Jodhpur in northwestern India in 1459. His name now refers to riding breeches, or jodhpurs, which are cut full over the hips and taper from the knees to a tight fit at a cuffed ankle. The term also refers to the short riding boots worn by riders. • Back in the first half of the 19th century, ladies wore crinolines under their dresses. These were stiff petticoats made from “crin,” the French word for “horsehair” and added “pouf” to their garments. Around 1850, the horsehair was replaced by a frame of cane or whalebone and they were referred to as “caged crinolines” or “hoop skirts.”

Although all that excess fabric was a sign of wealth, hoop skirts were also dangerous, and their popularity faded out in the late 1860s. • What do Dolman, raglan, and gauntlet have in common? These terms all refer to types of sleeves. Dolman is very wide at the armhole and tight at the wrist, taking its name from a Turkish robe known as a dolama. A raglan sleeve has a slanted diagonal seam from the underarm to the collarbone, such as you’d find on a baseball jersey. It’s named for Lord Raglan, a British

Army officer who lost his arm in the Battle of Waterloo, and had a coat designed to give him greater mobility. The gauntlet sleeve is pointed in a V shape on the back of the hand, named for the glove worn as part of medieval armor. CROSSWORD PUZZLES Get a clue! National Crossword Day is December 21, and Tidbits is across and down with these facts. • A New York City journalist, Arthur Wynne, is credited with the first true crossword

Continued on Page 5

RED AND GREEN— (continued) puzzle, published in the “New York World” in December, 1913. Previous word puzzles with a square grid had been printed in an

Italian magazine over 20 years earlier, but not in the familiar horizontal and vertical line pattern, introduced by Wynne. Wynne debuted his puzzle under the name

“Word-Cross,” but a few weeks later, a typesetting error resulted in the puzzle being called a “Cross-Word,” and the name stuck. • Puzzle fans know that the “New York

Times” is perhaps the most famous crossword. Yet the well-known newspaper was the last to join the pack of puzzle publishers. In fact, one of their writers derided crosswords in his column, calling them a “sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words” and “a primitive form of mental exercise…irrelevant to mental development.” Although most New York papers joined in publishing puzzles by 1920, the “Times” continued to call it a “colossal waste of time and nothing but a fad.” • It took the Japanese bombing of Pearl

Harbor to change the opinion of the “New

York Times.” The Sunday editor insisted that a crossword would help Americans relax and take their minds off the tragedy,

and maintained that readers might need an activity to busy themselves during blackouts. In February, 1942, the “Times” published its first crossword puzzle. • The daily “Times” puzzle measures 15 squares x 15 squares. The Sunday is larger at 21 x 21. The puzzle is designed to become gradually more difficult as the week progresses, with the easiest puzzle on

Monday. • In 1996, Mr. Stanley Newman set a record for solving a “New York Times” crossword, completing it in 2 minutes, 14 seconds. • In 1924, a brand-new publishing company,

Simon & Schuster, released the first crossword puzzle book, and continues to lead the pack in the U.S. for similar books. Crosswords became so popular that architect Alfred Mosher Butt created the crossword board game Scrabble in 1930. • There’s a special name for crossword devotees – cruciverbalists. There’s also a term for those who create them – enigmatologists. Will Shortz, the editor of the “New York Times” puzzle since 1993, claims he’s the only person with a college degree in enigmatology.

Captivated by crossword puzzles at a young age, Shortz sold his first one at age 14. He convinced Indiana University to allow him to create a degree because no other school offered that field. Although Shortz also has a law degree from the University of Virginia, he prefers his first love. He’s also the founder and director of the annual

American Crossword Puzzle Tournament that began in 1978. • The Guinness Book of Records hails the largest crossword puzzle as measuring 7 ft. x 7 ft., (2.13 m) with 91,000 squares and 28,000 clues, with no repeats. Available for purchase, it has its own accompanying 100page clue book, and folds for those who enjoy working the puzzle in their lap.

Wishing Well®

1. The main Christmas story about the birth of Jesus is paraphrased from what two New Testament books? Mark/John,

Acts/Romans, Matthew/Luke, Jude/

Revelation 2. Approximately how old was Jesus when the wise men (Magi) arrived with their gifts? 1 day, 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years 3. Where did the angel Gabriel appear to

Mary, saying, “Blessed art thou among women”? Nazareth, Tyre, Ninevah, Gazi 4. How many times does the word

“Christmas” appear in the Bible (KJV)?

Zero, 1, 2, 7 5. In what city of Judaea was Jesus born?

Damascus, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Gezer 6. Who plotted to kill the baby Jesus?

Archelaus, Herod, Pontius Pilot, Caesar

Augustus ANSWERS: 1) Matthew/Luke; 2) 2 years; 3) Nazareth; 4) Zero; 5) Bethlehem; 6) Herod

“Test Your Bible Knowledge,” a book with 1,206 multiple-choice questions by columnist Wilson Casey, is available in stores and online.

(c) 2021 King Features Synd., Inc.