Ring Lardner Tonight: Can you guess who wrote these three "Talk of the Town" items about Ring?

Well, sure, you know which way we run the bases in this country, but what if you were a boy from Niles, Michigan, who learned your baseball in England?

by Ken

The combination of Ring's wit and his singular ability to wring confusion out of order, or what passed for order, made him eminently, er, citable. For tonight I've plucked three "Talk of the Town" items out of The New Yorker's archives, and in addition to being entertained, you get to guess who wrote them. (Of course until the Tina Brown era "Talk" items were always published unsigned, but one of the neat things about the extremely neat New Yorker index is that authorship of many originally unsigned pieces is revealed and fully indexed. I assume that many unsigned pieces remain unattributed, since the format of unattributed authorship allowed for multiple and/or "compound" authorship. "Talk" pieces, for example, were frequently reported by a staff reporter and written by a staff editor.)

Answers appear at the end, with scoring instructions.


FOR TONIGHT'S RING LARDNER-THEMED
"TALK OF THE TOWN" ITEMS, CLICK HERE


SUNDAY IN THURBER TONIGHT: Part 1 of "The Greatest Man in the World"


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, and JEAN SHEPHERD TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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