Henry Stacey Marks, Where Is It?
I don’t know. . . . I’m completely at a loss. . . . I’m pretty sure I was about to say something—something pretty important, too—but I just can’t remember what it was.
Crossword 182: Extraordinary Cooperation
Charles Robert Leslie, Children Playing at Coach and Horses
Why can’t we all just get along? What’s wrong with people, that they’re always fighting about one thing or another? I blame irresponsible crossword constructors. How many times have you, gentle solver, awakened in the morning full of warm, happy feelings about the entire human race, and then, in the course of solving your daily crosswords, encountered some word that made you hate everybody? I can’t be sure I haven’t included such a word in the puzzle below (it’s hard to predict just what might set a person off—for me, it’s “alii”), but if I have, I hope to have counteracted the effect with my theme, which fosters a whole new kind of cooperation.
Download this week’s crossword:
182-Extraordinary-Cooperation.puz
182-Extraordinary-Cooperation.pdf
Solve this week’s crossword online:
A crossword of mine appears Thursday, May 20, in Universal Crossword
Crossword 181: Digital Waste
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Beautiful Hand
Are you aware that, in the course of a lifetime, the average American adult discards enough ones and zeros to fill seven virtual football stadiums? It’s just one more way that technology is making our world into a dystopian hellscape. I’m thinking of doing my part to reverse this trend by etching my crosswords in stone the old-fashioned way and delivering them by ox-drawn carts. Subscription fees may rise, of course, but won’t it be worth it? What can equal the sound, the smell, the tactile thrill, of entering your answers in granite, with a chisel?
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
Crossword 179: Midwestern-State-Sponsored Terror
George Caleb Bingham, Landscape with Fisherman
I have already mentioned on this site that my crosswords promote human betterment by mentioning those things we ought to pursue (“good,” for example, has appeared in six of my puzzles) and those other things we ought to shun (“evil” has appeared in eight).
But lately I’ve been exploring the crossword form as a vehicle for soul-searching confessional autobiography. So this is the second puzzle based on U.S. States in which I have lived (see Crossword 128). Like much autobiography, it’s designed not just to indulge the writer but to give a voice to others with similar life experiences—in this case, to solvers who have lived in one or more U.S. States. They will, I’m sure, “relate,” and feel gratifyingly “validated” in consequence.
Download this week’s crossword:
179-Midwestern-State-Sponsored-Terror.puz
179-Midwestern-State-Sponsored-Terror.pdf
Solve this week’s crossword online:
A crossword of mine appears tomorrow, April 25, in Universal Crossword. (The usual link is not operable; you may download an Across Lite version here.)
Crossword 178: That’s Thats
George Frederick Watts, Echo
This puzzle celebrates the versatility in English of the terminal “s”—which can indicated plurality, possession (either singular or plural, depending on apostrophe placement), or nothing in particular (as in the name “Bywaters”). It can also (with an apostrophe) indicate an elided version of the common word “is,” but I'm saving that for another puzzle, in which I’ll celebrate the versatility of the English apostrophe.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
Crossword 177: Coming In Last
Thomas Benjamin Kennington, Serena, Found of Savages
Among the many human proclivities that baffle me is the love of racing—of doing a thing, or of watching somebody or something do a thing, faster than some other body or thing. It honors the tyranny of Time, that inexorable force which impels us all helplessly towards apparent annihilation. It upsets the restful calm for which we ought all to strive, as both an aesthetic and a moral ideal. Rather than be in a hurry, I’m happy to come in last.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
A crossword of mine appears Wednesday, April 14, in Universal Crossword
Crossword 176: Parliamentary Divisions
John Atkinson Grimshaw, Reflections on the Thames, Westminster
Though the inspiration for this puzzle was 64 Across (see my remarks on “The Star Spangled Banner” accompanying Crosswords 032 and 033), I’m proudest of 38 Across, which I recommend to any statistics-compiling social scientist stuck for a topic.
Download this week’s crossword:
176-Parliamentary-Divisions.puz
176-Parliamentary-Divisions.pdf
Solve this week’s crossword online:
A crossword of mine will appear Friday, April 9, in the Los Angeles Times.
Crossword 174: Is It In Or Isn't It?
William Shayer Senior, A Halt at the Inn
Like other hip crossword constructors of today, I ask myself that question over and over again, as I decide on each word: not “will it be known to the average solver?” but “is it in?” Only the hottest new celebrities, the coolest TV shows, the freshest slang, will do. To be sure, the French painter in today’s puzzle died in 1665, and its “mild oath” was in use as early as 1815: but they’re fadding—wait, I mean trending—now!
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
Crossword 173: Faulty Instrument Panel
Arthur Hughes, A Music Party
This week I continue my ongoing attempt to render in crossword form the lighter side of all possible human afflictions. Next week I might try to take the sting out of intake manifold runner control system malfunctions, unless something better occurs to me in the meantime.
Download this week’s crossword:
173-Faulty-Instrument-Panel.puz
173-Faulty-Instrument-Panel.pdf
Solve this week’s crossword online:
Crossword 170: Beastly Puns
John William Waterhouse, Circe
When I test-solved this puzzle, I found I’d clued 35 Across “Jacob’s brother” and 55 Across “Seth’s son.” This seemed like too many Biblical relatives, so I substituted two “hidden-in” clues, which are more fun anyway—not that modified homonym cliché-based animal pun phrases aren’t already more fun than anybody ought to be trusted with.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
Crossword 169: Triple Play
William Etty, The Three Graces
Today’s crossword sets records for this site, in number of entries (80), number of 3-letter entries (39), and number of black squares (54) for a 15 x 15 puzzle. Maybe you’ll agree that the dazzlingly unusual theme is worth it all. Maybe you won’t. In either case, it’s too late to do anything about it now.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
Two crosswords of mine will appear Thursday, February 18, one in the Los Angeles Times, the other in Universal Crossword
Crossword 168: MP5
Margaret Sarah Carpenter, Mrs John Marshall, MP
You’ve heard of MP3, a format for compressing recorded music files to a convenient size, and MP4, a format for compressing movies to a convenient size. Now here’s MP5! It isn’t a format, and it doesn’t compress anything to a convenient size. It’s just a crossword puzzle. Nevertheless, in its quiet, unassuming way, it makes its own tiny contribution to the sum of human achievement.
Crossword 167: Power Plugs
Lord Frederic Leighton, The Arts of Industry as Applied to Peace
In this puzzle I interrogate our society’s underlying structures of power, as part of my ongoing critique of post-modern, late-capitalist cultural hegemony.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
A crossword of mine appeared last Thursday, January 28th, in the Wall Street Journal.
Crossword 166: The Latest Reports
Evelyn de Morgan, Port After Stormy Seas
I encourage you, gentle solver, to admire the painting above and its title while you recall the reports of the past week (especially of Wednesday around noon), and only then, with a calm soul and clear head, to open this week’s puzzle—which, I am pleased to report, has nothing to do with anything.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
Crossword 165: Last in Line
Albert Goodwin, A Day’s End
Can this be the end? Is this the last puzzle I’ll post to this website? Have I finally turned in disgust from an ungrateful world, resolved never to cross words again? Or is this just another punning reference to my theme? Come back next week and find out!
(NB: The clue to 23 Across, once the weakest, now the strongest, of the puzzle’s theme clues, is in fact the inspiration of Canadian test-solver Kevin Walker.)
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
A crossword of mine appears today in the Wall Street Journal.
Crossword 163: P-p-puns
George Dunlop Leslie, Sweet Peas
Now and then, in the major crossword venues, one finds a puzzle in which the theme answers consist of common two-word phrases that start with the same one or two letters. POISONPILL PINGPONG PARCELPOST POLOPONY—voilà. That theme took me just sixty seconds to produce. No doubt a competent programmer with access to a phrase database could make a computer produce sixty such puzzles in sixty seconds. And they would be just as much fun to solve as they were to make.
Why is such a theme acceptable? Does anyone know? I don’t get it. Anyway, today’s puzzle represents my effort to improve on it.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
Crossword 162: Editorial Changes
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Comparisons
Does any artist in any field face such ruthless editorial tinkering as the poor crossword constructor? You shape and carve and etch and hone and polish your little gem till it shines and sparkles and glistens and glows, and (if you’re lucky enough to have it accepted) it appears in print lopped and maimed and marred and scratched and sullied. Your reference to a favorite musician has turned into a reference to a TV actor you’ve never heard of. Two of your answers have been tortured into a cross-referenced phrase. The wit of a favorite theme clue has evaporated in the unwelcoming atmosphere of somebody’s dubious assumptions. Now and then, to be sure, you find a real improvement—but that only wounds your authorial vanity all the more.
Well, here’s a puzzle where I made all the editorial changes my own self.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
A crossword of mine appears on Wednesday, December 30, in the Wall Street Journal.
Crossword 161: Noels
Henry John Yeend King,’Twas the Night Before Christmas
If you think this week’s puzzle involves Christmas carols—and are in consequence either thankful (you actually know what it is that King Wenceslas does after he looks out on the feast of Stephen!) or resentful (you can’t stand the damned things coming around every year!)—you haven’t been paying attention.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
Crossword 160: OLÉ
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, An Oleander
Have no fear: this puzzle has nothing to do with bullfighting, or soccer, or anything that requires you to watch people kill animals or run around on a rectangular surface. I put an accent over the "e" just for the look of the thing.
A crossword of mine appears tomorrow, December 13, in Universal Crossword
Crossword 158: Can You Reframe the Question?
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Ask Me No More
So many of those other crossword constructors think they have all the answers! I, in contrast, retain the questioning mind of a curious child, open to experience, hungering insatiably for new knowledge. Someday I mean to make a puzzle filled only with open-ended answers, prompted by welcoming, non-restrictive clues like “Stuff” and “Thing.” Meanwhile here’s another one for which I do have all the answers—78 of them.
Download this week’s crossword:
158 Can-You-Reframe-the-Question?.puz
158 Can-You-Reframe-the-Question?.pdf
Solve this week’s crossword online:
A crossword of mine appears on Monday, November 30, in Universal Crossword, and another on Wednesday, December 2, in the Wall Street Journal.