Crossword 143: PR Issues

 
John Everett Millais, The Twins, Portrait of Kate Edith and Grace Maud Hoare

John Everett Millais, The Twins, Portrait of Kate Edith and Grace Maud Hoare

 

One theme per puzzle—that’s always been the rule of themed crosswords. But I find myself asking—why? Why adhere blindly to the worn-out conventions of the past? Why thwart human progress with hidebound rules of unity and order? So what if a few reactionary members of the bourgeoisie are shocked or confused? Did that keep Wagner from sonic discord and narrative incoherence? Picasso from crudity and distortion? The Bauhaus from faceless rectangularity? Let the Philistines be shocked; let them be confused! So much the better! Let a crossword have not just one theme, but two!!

Download this week’s crossword:

143-PR-Issues.puz

143-PR-Issues.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

143 PR Issues

Crossword 140: Beaten Down

 
Edward John Poynter, The Champion Swimmer

Edward John Poynter, The Champion Swimmer

 

If you wait till tomorrow, you’ll find the answer to 24 Down in the title of my crossword in the Los Angeles Times, to which this one serves as a sort of prequel.  Meanwhile, here’s a painting that—while not very clearly related to either puzzle—may at any rate provide a little imaginary relief from this summer’s weather, by which so many of us find ourselves mercilessly beaten down.

Download this week’s crossword:

140-Beaten-Down.puz

140-Beaten-Down.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

140 Beaten Down

Pointing Hand.png

A crossword of mine appears tomorrow, July 26, and another Thursday, July 30, in Universal Crossword. Another crossword of mine also appears tomorrow, July 26, and yet another Friday, July 31, in the Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile, on Thursday, July 30, another crossword of mine appears in

the Wall Street Journal.

Crossword 137: Decease

 
Evelyn de Morgan, The Angel of Death

Evelyn de Morgan, The Angel of Death

 

This is the third and final installment of the trilogy—hence the “cease” of “decease.”  Some critics may think I’ve got the order wrong, as “Defeat,” “Decease,” and “Decomposition” are, in a sense, the final three chapters of anyone’s biography.  

But the more subtly observant puzzle connoisseur will notice that the first pun of the first of the series returns as the final pun of the last of the series, giving the whole a pleasingly cyclical form that, in the face of decline and decay and despair, hints hopefully at renewal.

Download this week’s crossword:

137-Decease.puz

137-Decease.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

137 Decease

Pointing Hand in Reverse.png

A crossword of mine appeared yesterday, July 3, in the Los Angeles Times

Crossword 133: Literal Stem-Winding

 
George Elgar Hicks, A girl listening to the ticking of a pocketwatch while sitting on her mother's lap

George Elgar Hicks, A girl listening to the ticking of a pocketwatch while sitting on her mother’s lap

 

As the attached note informs you, to appreciate this puzzle properly you must fill it entirely with lower-case letters, as though you were e.e. cummings.  I’m thinking of taking up the lower case myself and insisting that the world refer to me as “david alfred bywaters.”  The combination of apparent humility (no big letters for itty-bitty little me!) with actual ostentation (I’m not like everybody else!) should prove irresistible.

Download this week’s puzzle:

133-Literal-Stem-Winding.puz

133-Literal-Stem-Winding.pdf

Solve this week’s puzzle online:

133 Literal Stem-Winding

Crossword 132: Crossed Words

 
Albert Joseph Moore, Waiting to Cross

Albert Joseph Moore, Waiting to Cross

 

Here’s another crossword title that would do for any crossword whatsoever.  It’s the second in a groundbreaking series I began with Crossword 113: “Can You Fill This Out?”  I’m planning several sequels, including “Numbered Clues with Corresponding Answers,” “Across and Down,” and “It's Puzzling!”  And all these titles are, of course, available for use with my blessing to novice constructors. It’s my way of making a contribution to the common good.

Download this week’s crossword:

132-Crossed-Words.puz

132-Crossed-Words.pdf

Solve this weeks’s crossword online:

132 Crossed Words

Pointing Hand.png

A crossword of mine will appear today, May 30, in the Wall Street Journal.


Crossword 125: E Emotion

 
Walter Langley, Silent Sorrow

Walter Langley, Silent Sorrow

 

Here’s another crossword which, though made like all my crosswords to endure forever, is nonetheless at the same time keenly focused on the present moment.  A few weeks ago I made a puzzle on the topic of the general retreat (by those who can afford it) from the pandemic onto the internet; now here’s another, on that trend’s darker emotional consequences.

Are you indignant at the obscurity of this crossword’s base phrases? at the randomness of its substitutions? Are you tempted to compose an angry complaint? There’s no need! This crossword includes within itself its own outraged response! The 15 letters involved in its substitutions (either as replacing or replaced) can be anagrammatically rearranged into the terse but telling phrase, “Hate E Emotion Gag!”

Download this week’s crossword:

125-E-Emotion.puz

125-E-Emotion.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

125 E Emotion

Crossword 120: Whirled Piece

 
James Jacques Joseph Tissot, At the Rifle Range

James Jacques Joseph Tissot, At the Rifle Range

 

I’ve got a thirty-eight special, and a Colt forty-five, and a thirty-two-twenty, and a Winchester seventy-three, and a hard-shooting pistol just as long as my right arm, but, I don’t know, somehow I just don’t feel safe. . . .

Actually——that’s a joke!  I’ve never used  a gun.  All right, I admit it, I’ve used STEN and UZI once or twice in a puzzle, and I used NRA (as Will Nediger points out) just last week. But if any of you solvers out there have purchased a submachine gun, or joined the NRA, because you found these things mentioned in my puzzles, please, for your own sake as well as mine, return the gun, cancel the membership, and—why not?—donate the refund, or your next round of dues, to this website!

Guns bother me.  They’re useful neither for self-protection (since the proverbial “bad guy with a gun” always enjoys the crucial advantage of surprise) nor for restraining undue government power (the US military has us all outgunned).  So, as part of my world-improvement program (and a sort of sequel to Crossword 116) I’ve here turned them (or anyway the letters that compose their names) to more benign uses.

Download this week’s crossword:

120-Whirled-Piece.puz

120-Whirled-Piece.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

120 Whirled Piece