Word: crackly
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Cracking the Code. Their big problem was to crack Michigan's defense code-a highly complex system of interrelated maneuvers which football savants describe by such terms as "angles," "loops," "converging" and "dealing in." If Army could unscramble the pattern so as to sense, a few seconds in advance, what combinations Michigan was likely to use in certain situations, it would give the team a priceless edge. Blaik cracked the code thoroughly enough to devote most of spring and autumn practice to drilling his boys in Michiganisms...
...movie trade lingo, a sureseater is a small "art" theater specializing in upperbrow films for upperbrow audiences. The word was originally used to suggest that every seat is sure to be filled. A skeptical Hollywood crack favors another interpretation: whenever you go, you are sure to get a seat. Last week the Hollywood joke rang hollow; having grown in a year from 226 to 270, U.S. sureseaters were booming. Symptoms...
Deficit Financing. In Dallas, caught redhanded trying to crack a safe, Delbert A. Bowers told the cops: "I'm going on trial tomorrow [for armed robbery] and I needed some money...
...like a human-fly act. The mountaineer reaches two feet above his head and pulls himself up by his fingertips; he stands with one foot on an inch-wide ledge looking for another-inch-wide ledge; he jams his fist into a crack for a hold fast. From the top of the cliff another mountaineer, who has gone up the sane way, "belays" the climber with nylon rope in case he should fall. From the bottom of the cliff the rest of the party offers verbal encouragement...
...there won't be any belay from above and there isn't any choice of easy routes. When they reach this stage, they will travel in pairs tied together by a rope. One man will tie himself to the cliff wall by wedging a "piton" or spike into a crack, while the other man climbs. Sometimes mountain-climbers have to drill holes in the rock and screw in expansion bolts to conquer a difficult cliff...