Good morning. Oxford spent 71 years making a dictionary and still needed an update, an Egyptian staircase turned out to be an unusually promising fixer-upper, and the Karate Kid is 65. National Candy Day has also arrived, presumably because Halloween left you dangerously under-supplied.
The Big Story
Oxford Takes 71 Years to Finish Dictionary, Discovers English Has Continued Without Permission
Most unfinished projects sit in a garage until someone moves. The Oxford English Dictionary required generations of readers, millions of paper slips, and a sustained willingness to treat “we’re still working on it” as a respectable institutional identity.
The project’s beginnings date to 1857, when the Philological Society set in motion what became an enormous historical dictionary. This was not simply an effort to tell people how to spell things more smugly. The ambition was to trace words through time: their origins, changing meanings, and actual appearances in published writing. A dictionary entry would become a miniature biography, supported by evidence. Unfortunately, English had already been doing quite a lot of talking.
Volunteer readers searched books and other publications, copying useful quotations onto slips of paper and recording where they came from. Editors and assistants sorted that evidence, worked out meanings, and prepared entries. Oxford University Press’s archive holds more than five million slips from the first edition alone. Under James Murray, appointed editor in 1879, this scholarly operation included the famous Scriptorium, an iron outbuilding fitted with storage for its growing paper population. Before anyone could search a database, someone had to be the database, preferably while wearing several layers.
Publication began in installments in 1884. The first reached only from A to “ant,” an alphabetical achievement that makes clearing your inbox look positively heroic. The first edition finally reached completion in 1928, 71 years after the project’s inception. By then, its earliest published sections were 44 years old. English, displaying an appalling lack of professional courtesy, had kept acquiring words and meanings throughout production. A supplement followed in 1933. The essential lesson is that a historical dictionary records the language; it does not freeze it. Next time somebody insists a word cannot exist because their old dictionary lacks it, ask whether their atlas also settles international borders permanently.
The Tie-Breaker Cheat Sheet
- Project beginnings: 1857
- James Murray became editor: 1879
- First published installment: 1884, A to “ant”
- First edition completed: 1928
- Supplement: 1933
This Day in History
Archaeologists Find a Staircase, Suddenly Everyone Has Opinions About a Curse
On November 4, 1922, Howard Carter’s excavation team uncovered the first step leading down to Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. One hundred four years ago today, a step in the ground became a very substantial improvement to archaeology’s public-relations department.
Here is the detail worth keeping straight: November 4 marks the discovery of the stairway, not Carter peering into a room full of treasures. The first sealed doorway was uncovered on November 5. His famous first look into the antechamber came on November 26.
The discovery depended on a working excavation team, including Egyptian laborers, not a solitary British adventurer wandering around until a soundtrack started. Keep the workers in the story. They were rather important to the part involving actually finding things.
The Tie-Breaker Cheat Sheet
- Stairway discovered: November 4, 1922
- Location: Valley of the Kings, Egypt
- Archaeologist leading the excavation: Howard Carter
- First look into the antechamber: November 26, 1922
Birthday Bragging Rights
Ralph Macchio Turns 65, Continues Making “Kid” Do Unreasonable Amounts of Work
Ralph Macchio was born on November 4, 1961, in Huntington, New York. Today he turns 65. The Karate Kid is now old enough to make the phrase “back in my day” a technically defensible combat technique.
He was 22 when the original The Karate Kid opened in 1984. That means the teenager being coached through adolescence was already an adult. Hollywood has always maintained a flexible relationship with the age printed on a school enrollment form.
Before Daniel LaRusso, Macchio played Johnny Cade in the 1983 film The Outsiders. His early career offered a fairly wide emotional range between “stay gold” and “please stop making me do your household maintenance.”
Birthday Question: Who wrote the novel The Outsiders, which became the film featuring Macchio?
A) Judy Blume
B) S. E. Hinton
C) Beverly Cleary
Answers await at The Answer Desk. Waxing your phone screen will not reveal them.
Today’s Observance
National Candy Day Arrives Four Days After Halloween, Bravely Addresses No Known Shortage
November 4 is National Candy Day, an unofficial food-calendar observance. It is not a federal holiday, and your employer remains free to reject “nougat emergency” as a reason for missing a meeting.
For a useful piece of wrapper-adjacent trivia, consider Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. H. B. Reese introduced them around 1928 as part of an assortment, not as the sole product of a company born fully formed in an orange package. During wartime rationing in 1942, the business stopped its other product lines and concentrated on the popular cups.
Reese had previously worked for Hershey, which supplied the chocolate coating. His sons sold the company to Hershey in 1963. In other words, the name on your candy belongs to an actual person, and the business history is more interesting than “two foods accidentally bumped into each other.”
Observance Question: What did H. B. stand for in H. B. Reese’s name?
A) Henry Benjamin
B) Harold Bennett
C) Harry Burnett
Smug, Smugger and Smuggest
Today’s Theme: Indoor-Weather Art Snobbery
November is an excellent time to wander into a gallery and become mildly difficult.
SMUG: Chiaroscuro literally means “light-dark” in Italian. It concerns light and shade, particularly the way contrast helps give forms dimension. “That’s moody” remains acceptable, but now you can invoice it as criticism.
SMUGGER: Trompe-l’oeil means “trick the eye” in French. The point is to make painted things look convincingly real. A painted letter apparently pinned to a painted board is not just good drawing. It is a small administrative deception.
SMUGGEST: Sfumato describes soft, smoky transitions of tone without harsh outlines, famously associated with Leonardo da Vinci. Not every blurry picture qualifies. Sometimes the photographer simply missed.
Daily Smug Test
Three questions. No reference desk. No rummaging through five million slips.
1. Seasonal Employment: Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons consists of concertos featuring which solo instrument?
A) Flute
B) Violin
C) Harpsichord
2. Extremely Selective Wildlife: What is Scotland’s national animal?
A) Red deer
B) Golden eagle
C) Unicorn
3. Size Matters: Excluding continental landmasses such as Australia, what is the world’s largest island?
A) Greenland
B) Madagascar
C) Borneo
Lock in your answers. An authoritative tone is not a substitute for geography.
The Answer Desk
Birthday Bragging Rights: B) S. E. Hinton. Macchio plays Johnny Cade in the film adaptation of her novel. Daniel LaRusso is a different teenager with a different set of problems.
Today’s Observance: C) Harry Burnett. The cups carry Reese’s surname. Those initials did not stand for “Hershey’s Business,” although the eventual corporate outcome makes that a respectable wrong guess.
1. Seasonal Employment: B) Violin. The Four Seasons is a set of four violin concertos. A surprisingly productive musical career for the weather.
2. Extremely Selective Wildlife: C) Unicorn. Scotland chose a mythological creature. Its national animal therefore has an unusually good record of avoiding embarrassing wildlife-camera footage.
3. Size Matters: A) Greenland. The continental distinction matters. Australia is normally treated as a continent rather than the answer to this island question. Trivia hosts enjoy that sentence more than anyone should.
Your Standing
3/3, Smuggest: Your first edition is already intimidating.
2/3, Smug: Strong work. A small supplement should handle the rest.
0 to 1/3, Humbled: Publication delayed. Research continues.
Put Your Smugness to Work
You can now explain why the dictionary was out of date before it was finished, distinguish a tomb’s staircase from its treasure reveal, and give your candy a founder’s biography.
Put that upgraded brain to work at City Games with daily puzzles and trivia, played directly in your browser. No downloads required.
Bring your knowledge. Try not to take 71 years.
Know more. Gloat responsibly.