If you do the daily New York Times crossword, stop reading right now until you have finished with today’s. The NYT Wordle and crossword usually fill part of my mornings. If I hadn’t written my blog post the night before, they often get done before I write in the morning. That is what happened today.

Not that there was anything special about today’s crossword. It was a typical Friday. I looked it over, decided it was beyond me, finally found one short entry I could make with some confidence, and then things began to fall into place. This one, IMHO, turned about to be challenging, but doable in a reasonable period of time.

After I finish a puzzle, I often go to see what Rex Parker (not his real name) thinks about it. (Rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com.) He called this one Easy-Medium.

Rex analyzes the puzzle, entry by entry, with a mix of erudition and humor. You will have to decide which this is:

This is St. Denis as he may have looked in the 3rd century after he was decapitated when he walked around Paris, head in hand, preaching to the masses. St. Denis is an answer in the puzzle.

Rex points out that his decapitation made St. Denis a cephelophone, a word I didn’t know. It also made him the patron saint of both Paris and France.

Moving on…

There was one other item in the puzzle that intrigued me. The answer is “cheese curls”, and the definition includes the words “junk food”. I know little about cheese curls, but my basic research this morning shows me that it is not a copyrighted name, but a name used by multiple food brands. Also, when you look up cheese curls, generically or individually, they are called a “snack food”, not a “junk food”.

That got me to ask Google AI to tell me what a junk food is. Google gave me a generic definition (you know, sugar, bad fats, salt, high in calories, and low in nutrients). It then goes on to give examples. It doesn’t specifically mention cheese curls, but cheese curls definitely fit the definition, but guess what it also included in what they mention? Burgers and fried chicken. Really?

Okay, did I take your mind of Donald Trump? Something has to. Unless you just want to go out in the street and yell and scream. I am thinking about his statement today that he will permanently pause any immigration from countries which are filled with people who, for their own safety, need to emigrate, whether or not they are qualified to enter this country. And that he is going to examine existing green cards and asylum determinations for everyone already in the U.S. who come from those countries. Yes, only White Europeans (or White residents of former British colonies), with perhaps an occasional Asian, will be allowed in and, of those, people with $1million or more to invest here will be favored.

There is a lot being written, of course, about Trump’s declining mental condition. Perhaps, it has declined enough that one could say that Trump has, in fact, lost his head.

This would make him our first cephelophone president. I asked ChatGPT to draw me a picture of a headless Trump carrying his head, and guess what? It refused.

What do you think of that?