Across
- 1. “One of the most extraordinary features of the American legal system is that it allows plaintiffs to sue people and enterprises only ____ connected to the alleged complaint,” (205). Definition: in a way that is only slightly related or relevant.
- 5. “Every rooftop and mailbox wears a ____ cap of snow for months on end,” (162). Definition: smartly trim, as clothing.
- 6. “The seats were comfy and, for a small boy, ____,” (239). Definition: ample or adequate for a particular purpose; spacious and convenient.
- 8. “What a strange, ____ misfortune that is, to come to the edge of perfection and then turn your back on it,” (141). Definition: incapable of being accounted for or explained.
- 10. “Perhaps it is because we live in a community where these matters are treated earnestly, but nearly every college-bound youth in our town goes off and looks at half a dozen or more ____ universities at enormous cost,” (130). Definition: potential, likely, or expected.
- 13. “Two years ago, I would have regarded this as a small ____, but now I find I’ve grown to like it,” (74). Definition: disrespectful behaviour or language; rudeness; insolence.
- 14. “It’s not easy being a baseball fan because baseball fans are a hopelessly sentimental bunch, and there is no room for sentiment in something as wildly ____ as an American sport,” (26). Definition: profitable; moneymaking; remunerative.
Down
- 2. “It happens that I had recently read an article on wordplay in the Smithsonian magazine in which the author asserted that some puckish soul had once sent a letter addressed, with playful ____, to HILL JOHN MASS and it had gotten there after the postal authorities had worked out that it was to be read as ‘John Underhill, Andover, Mass’,” (7). Definition: doubtfulness or uncertainty of meaning or intention.
- 3. “Now, however, if I wish to write ½, I have to bring down the font menu and call up a directory called ‘WP Characters,’ then hunt through a number on subdirectories until I remember, or more often blunder on, the particular one, ‘Typographic Symbols,’ in which hides the ____ ½ sign,” (40/41). Definition: stealthy; sly.
- 4. “For the benefit of those unacquainted with its ____, Thanksgiving commemorates the first harvest feast at which the pilgrims sat down with the Indians to thank them for all their help and to tell them ‘Oh, and by the way we’ve decided we want the whole country,’” (156). Definition: place or source of origin.
- 7. “By the time you have reached the fiftieth channel you have forgotten what was on the first, so you start the cycle again in the ____ hope that you might find something absorbing this time through,” (238). Definition: desolate or dreary; unhappy or miserable, as in feeling, condition, or appearance.
- 9. “We recently bought an electric iron that ____ us, among other things, not to use it in conjunction with explosive materials,” (36). Definition: cautioned or advised against something; warned.
- 11. “I am full of admiration for people who can talk knowledgeably about household wiring or ____ ratios on their car engines, but that’s not me, I’m afraid,” (198). Definition: something that produces or tends to produce torsion or rotation.
- 12. “Every year over ninety million lawsuits are filed in this extravagantly ____ country—that’s one for every two and a half people—and many of these are what might charitably be called ambitious,” (203). Definition: inclined to dispute or disagree; argumentative.
- 15. “I can make ____ observations about your driving skills, and the children can pass the time in back sticking each other with sharp objects,” (126). Definition: incisive or keen, as language or a person; caustic; cutting.