The key missing clue here is that it was eventually set to music and recorded in the 1970's by the Starland Vocal Band as "Afternoon Delight."

Orgasm? (or "skyrockets in flight")

"The Aristocrats"?

Or barring that, and this may reveal just a little too much about my own marriage, the rules for cribbage.

Sex Manual?

"Chopsticks"?

Publishing, publishing, always with the publishing.

Um, a TV Guide?

Where's the ranting spot this week?

The Lockhorns?

oral sex

either that or how to nag

We don't play cribbage. We play Scrabble.

sexy Scrabble?

I, for one, googled the answer when I realized I couldn't rant, and I say unto you all: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Mr. Bradlee's version was titled "The Schoolmaster." It's very familiar indeed, although no one knows it by that name.

I'd say we are literally without a clue.

Mozart and Haydn (and reportedly Beethoven and Elgar) have used it in their compositions.

Mozart's version, in fact, picks up the original title of the piece as it appears in Bouin's Les Amusements d'une Heure et Demy, which is "Ah! Vous Dirai-Je, Maman" ("Shall I Tell You, Mother?") In the case of the others, it was more seamlessly incorporated into larger works, such as Haydn's Symphony No. 91.

I'm just baffled. "Yankee Doodle Dandy"?

Only one guess per post, kioji.

I google-bailed, too, just before I had to leave on Friday afternoon. I will say, that though it is seemingly a stumper, there isn't very much easier than this.

There is somewhat of a compositional tie-in with the Jackson Five, too.

Please forgive, head 'batsman, if too broadly I do hint.

Kioji and his um, "guesses" have been removed (though I won't be able to do the full blacklist ban-n-scour until I get home. I'm getting really fed up with the extent to which the comment spam is engineered to get around the blacklist. I may have to switch to something other than MT...or follow Rory's advice about monkeying with the naming of the comment directories etc. But I'm likely to mess that up.)

Now, on to clues. Hm... I really can't think of anything that would spell out how elementary the answer is.

If I read these clues correctly, it's The Alphabet Song, which is very funny.

I thought of guessing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," but couldn't figure out what it had to do with relations between men and women.

Never let it be said that Gavin doesn't know his ABCs. "The Schoolmaster" set the alphabet to this melody. At some roughly contemporaneous point, the lyrics to Jane Taylor's 1806 poem "The Star" (what we now call "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star") were also matched up with this tune. Apologies if the original clue was too recondite -- it was a tough one to construct a question for that didn't give it all away.

Scraps: come on over any time and receive the Reward for your Decembral victory. It awaits you.

And not long after, Lewis Carroll wrote another set of lyrics: "Twinkle, twinkle, little bat, how I wonder where you're at."

Awesome! We are settled in the new place and finally aren't dead broke, so leaving the cardboard-lined confines of our apartment should be possible now.