Crossword 301: Alternative Medicine

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On March 26, 1665, Samuel Pepys, the great English diarist, recorded that he had lately enjoyed an unusually long spell of good health and wondered what had caused it.  Three possibilities occurred to him:  the possession of a rabbit’s foot (an excellent “preservative against wind”), the avoidance of sleeping on his back (which tended to make his “water the next morning . . . very hot”), or the “taking of a pill of turpentine every morning.”  Now, as a confirmed disbeliever in conventional medicine, as in all things based on reason and logic, I’ve tried each of these remedies myself, without however noticing much good effect, though the last of them may have had something to do with the state of mind in which I thought up today’s puzzle.

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301 Alternative Medicine

Crossword 300: CCC(-)entering

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Three hundred!  It’s an important number.  There are three hundred days in the year, if you don’t count the other sixty-five or so.  There were three hundred Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae.  Three hundred years ago today, J.S. Bach’s St. John’s Passion had its debut.  In 300 A.D., Micheon (as Wikipedia informs us) became the ruler of the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo, and Li Shou, future emperor of the Cheng Han dynasty, was born.  And so today, in honor of Li Shou, and Micheon, and St. John, and J.S. Bach, and all those fearless Spartans,  I post my 300th crossword.

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300 CCC(-)entering

Crossword 299: Six-Pack

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Here’s another six-pack of heady, refreshing theme entries, cold-filtered and beechwood-aged as usual.  Given their intoxicating wit, you might want to share them with a friend, or space their consumption over two or three days, just to be safe.

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299 Six-Pack

Crossword 297: Chill Out

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That’s right, relax!  Take it easy!  Keep your shirt on!  Cool off!  Kick back!  Lighten up!  Simmer down!  We’re just crossin’ some words and keepin’ it real!  God forbid anyone should suppose that, because of our proclivity for making complex linguistic structures, we mean thereby to pretend to some off-putting level of literary or intellectual proficiency. We’re just chillin’.

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297 Chill Out

Crossword 296: R & B

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I was going to use this title for one of those fun puzzles in which the theme answers are two-word phrases, each word of which begins with each of two letters—but they’re so hard to make!  After hours of meditation, I managed to think of “rubber bullet,” “rex begonia,” “retail banking,” and “rock bottom.”  But then I couldn’t think of a fifth, and it turned out these four were all different lengths, so that I couldn’t fit them in a grid.  So I just gave up and made this puzzle instead.

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296 R&B

Crossword 295: The Secret Garden

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As I’ve said before, we grow all our own food here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Fortnightly Victorian Novel Recommender, and we grow it organically, using locally-sourced, handmade tools.  How, you wonder, do we keep the pests away without pesticides?  It’s simple.  Following a hint from Frances Hodgson Burnett, we hide our plants in a secret garden, where the pests can’t find them.  It’s one of this website’s many world-improving innovations, which we offer, like our crosswords and our novel recommendations, free of charge.

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295 The Secret Garden

Crossword 294: Mixed Doubles

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Have you ever tried to play “tennis,” gentle solver?  I did once, in an eighth-grade gym class.  Apparently you’re supposed to chase after a small bouncing ball, and when you reach it, you’re supposed, with a tool made of a mesh stretched tightly across an oval frame and attached to a handle, a “racket,” to hit that ball at an angle and with a force that will direct it across a net into a defined space, from which an opposing player may hit it back to you.  I tried to do this not just once but several times, but I was never able to make the racket and the ball meet in the same location in space and time, much less direct the ball anywhere at all.  And yet I have seen people who seem otherwise to enjoy no exceptional physical abilities engaged in this game.  Some even indulge in a variant called “mixed doubles,” in which, while chasing and hitting the ball, you are simultaneously called upon not to collide with someone else who shares your side of the net.

I’d like to conclude here, as a profound insight, that “mixed doubles” is somehow an apt metaphor for life.  But in fact I can’t see much resemblance.  If life resembles any sort of ball game, it’s the one where you sit on a platform above a tank of water, until someone throws a ball that activates a lever releasing the platform and sending you into the tank.  Except, if it were truly like life, the platform would be automatically activated at random intervals, and the tank would be full of sharks.

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294 Mixed Doubles

Crossword 293: Change Holders

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I had this great idea for a puzzle called “Change Holders,”  featuring celebrity names with words like “cent” and “dime” and “nickel” and “quarter” hidden in the middle. So I found Dominick Elwes, the English portrait painter who eloped with an heiress in 1957, and Jacen Tan, the Singaporean film director, and Cristoforo di Messisbugo, the chef to the dukes of Ferrara, but then I began to have some doubts as to whether these particular celebrities, though household names in my household, were known to the hip young demographic I’m going for.  Also “quarter” had me stymied.  But I didn’t want to abandon the title, having gone to all the trouble of thinking it up, so I made this puzzle instead.

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293 Change Holders

Crossword 292: Xmas

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Hey solvers!  Xmas is almost here!  And then comes NYE, and after that MLK Day!  There’s no time to spll thgs out!  So hurry! Do this xword rght nw!

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292 Xmas

Crossword 291: Fed Up

Henry John Yeend King, Feeding Time

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That’s right—I’m fed up!  I’m fed up, for example, with politics, which is actually just an effect of tribalism, which is in turn just an effect of human nature, which is itself just an effect of nature in general, which is after all just an effect of whatever mysterious process created everything for whatever mysterious purpose.  So I’ll just do a crossword.

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291 Fed Up

Crossword 289: Cropped Tees

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Here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Fortnightly Victorian Novel Recommender we always conform our dress to the eternal and universal rules of etiquette.  We wear morning coats, evening gowns, dinner jackets, party frocks, top hats, white ties, and tails—whatever is appropriate to the time of day, the season of the year, the nature of the occasion, etc.  Never, ever do we wear “tees,” cropped or otherwise.  But our consumer research department advises us that we need to appeal to a broader demographic—to the vile habits, undeveloped tastes, uninformed opinions, and appalling manners of the vulgar multitude.  So today’s puzzle includes allusions not only to the informal dress but also to various of the other things—musical, literary, etc.—which that multitude is said to enjoy.

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289 Cropped Tees

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A crossword of mine appears Thursday, November 16, in Universal Crossword

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Crossword 288: Don’t Get Nosy

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Digital privacy is a matter of great public concern these days, and here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Fortnightly Victorian Novel Recommender we take it very seriously—both your privacy and our own.  No doubt various commercial entities would be bidding against each other for our web site data if we put it on the market—but we never have, and we never will.  If we happen to learn something about you, the solver, we instantly and completely forget it.  As for ourselves, if we need to buy something online, we set up a burner account and pay in crypto-currency; but mostly we buy things in person, using small bills and fake beards. And of course we operate under an assumed identity from an undisclosed location marked only by the electrified razor wire that surrounds it. 

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288 Don’t Get Nosy

Crossword 287: Double Letters

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Like most of my puzzles, this one began with a single phrase I thought amusing (in this case, 39 Across).  After finding four more phrases that followed the pattern of the first, and constructing and filling a grid, I discovered, to my dismay (through Matt Ginsberg’s sadly discontinued clue database, which I use to avoid forever replicating the same clues for the same answers), that one of my theme answers had already been clued not once but twice, in 2009 by Matt Jones, and in 2021 by Gary Larson.

Now, why must other people always be getting in my way? I used to enjoy doing crosswords; but ever since I took up constructing them, I find I can’t complete a themed puzzle without saying to myself either “What a bad theme, compared to the themes I produce at fortnightly intervals; what a shame!” or “What a good theme; I’m sure I’d have thought of it eventually and done it even better, but now here it is already done; what a shame!”

Anyway, though I replaced the shopworn theme answer with a bright new one, I cannot deny that two puzzles with roughly the same theme have preceded this one into the world. But what then? Was Michelangelo’s David preceded by no other statues of David? Was Raphael the first to paint a Madonna?

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287 Double Letters

Crossword 286: Senior Centers

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“Senior,” as a euphemism for “old,” has been around for many years—as least since the senior citizens of the present day were junior citizens.  Indeed, the very fact that the term hasn’t had an update in such a long time is, I suspect, a consequence of the unspoken ageism that permeates our society.  We need a new word or phrase that means “old,” but lacks the pejorative associations with wrinkles, hair loss, jowls, etc. that “senior” now inevitably evokes.  Unyoung?  Ripe? Temporally enriched?  Durable?  Not yet dead?  Well, I leave it to the online influencers whose coinages appear regularly in all the major crossword venues.  Meanwhile, before “senior” dies out, I hasten to post this puzzle.

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286 Senior Centers

Crossword 285: All the Wrong Places

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Do you find, disconsolate solver, that when you address yourself hopefully to a new crossword, expecting a little harmless recreation, perhaps some amusing wordplay, you are faced instead, whether you move down or across, with slang you’ve never used, movies you’ve never seen, brands you’ve never bought, songs you’ve never heard?  The problem is that you’ve been looking for crosswords in all the wrong places!  Here is where you belong, where the “wrong places” are really just silly, happy, friendly puns that just want the very best for you and yours.

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285 All the Wrong Places

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A crossword of mine appears today, and another will appear Wednesday, September 20, in The Wall Street Journal.

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Crossword 284: Meal Preparation

Solomon Joseph Solomon, The Breakfast Table

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Meal preparation!  Here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Fortnightly Victorian Novel Recommender, not only do we dress for dinner in correct evening attire, we also take care at every meal to provide ourselves only with nutritionally balanced dishes hand-crafted from organic ingredients gathered laboriously from our own fields.  All this takes so much time that we barely have any left in which to chew and swallow the stuff, much less to read novels and make crosswords.  So in this fortnight’s puzzle we’re combining our labors.

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284 Meal Preparation

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A crossword of mine will appear next Tuesday, August 29, in The Wall Street Journal.

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Crossword 283: All Will Be Well

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Are you worried, anxious solver?  Are you afraid that you won’t get there on time, that you won’t be welcome even if you do get there on time, that you won’t enjoy yourself even if you are welcome, that you won’t get back home safely even if you do enjoy yourself?  Well, worry no more!  This puzzle is here to show you that all will be well.

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283 All Will Be Well

Crossword 282: Oh, Why Bother?

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Why indeed?  Once we’ve met our basic needs, why bother to do anything?  Because the illusion of purpose, however ill-founded, is necessary to human contentment, that’s why.  We want to feel like we’re achieving  something.  We want to feel good about ourselves.  And if we don’t satisfy the impulse with something harmless, like the construction and solving of crosswords, we might be tempted to go around breaking things and hurting people.  If Genghis Khan, or Attila the Hun, had only had access to crosswords, what untold human suffering would the world have been spared!

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282 Oh, Why Bother?

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A crossword of mine will appear next Saturday, August 5, in The Wall Street Journal.

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Crossword 281: Bending Down

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Were you ever told, perhaps in a “physical education” class years ago, to bend down and touch your toes?  I was, and I still resent it: I found the operation not only painful but undignified; and it just didn’t seem worth doing—there are obviously much better ways of accessing one’s toes, if that’s what one wants to do.

Anyway, if you want for some reason to perform a “bending down” exercise but lack the strength, or the agility, or the will to do it with your body, this puzzle lets you do it, like a rational creature, with your mind.

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281 Bending Down

Crossword 279: Language Acquisition

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As I’ve said before, like all the best crossword constructors these days, I see my task as primarily one of social reform and human betterment.  And so, more than two years ago, in April 2020, I turned my attention to international affairs, with the purpose of promoting world peace (see Crossword 180).  But then I let the better part of a year go by without any further world-peace-promotion efforts, and in February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine.  I ask myself now—why didn’t I do more? Am I not partly to blame?  So today I’m doubling down with a two-part crossword (replacing the multi-part series of years past) promoting the cause of international communication. I just hope I’m not too late!

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279b Language Acquisition, Part 1

279b Language Acquisition, Part 2