Trivia

Scorekeepers in a long-gone era cut little nicks in sticks to keep count. A last-moment score naturally was “a nick in time.” Out of which came “just in the nick of time.” Or so reports one phrase tracer.

Personal computers outsold TV sets in the United States last year.

Knights wore good old snaggly coat-of-mail for centuries before that newfangled shining armor came along. Heavy. Clumsy. And too uppity. A seasoned coat-of-mail veteran knew full well he could take an armor hotshot anytime. Besides, the armor didn’t cover everything on the knight. Not the part that met the horse.

Item No. 1651B in our Love and War man’s files is the word “gynotikolobomassophile,” defined as “one who likes to nibble on a woman’s ear lobe.”

Q. When was Alcatraz abandoned as a federal pen?

A. In 1963. The year John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Q. Wasn’t actor Walter Matthau’s father a Catholic priest?

A. Of Eastern Rite in Czarist Russia, yes.