Crossword 213: Yes

 
John Everett Millais, Yes

John Everett Millais, Yes

 

Why is the English word signifying assent so ugly?  “Si” sounds helpful, “oui” cute, “ja” endearingly goofy, but “yes,” with its growling short “e” and sibilant conclusion, seems just hostile.  When people say it while making that ugly pulled-down-fist motion—often with the implication, “Yes, my enemies lie slaughtered before me!”—they’re only realizing the sound’s potential.  


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213-Yes.puz

213-Yes.pdf

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213 Yes

Novel 212: Annie Edwardes, A Vagabond Heroine (1873)

 
Henry Woods, Young Couple Dancing With Castanets

Henry Woods, Young Couple Dancing With Castanets

 

In a remote French seaside town, a neglected girl resists her vain stepmother’s control.


Here is another novel by Edwardes (see Novel 158), featuring another attractively rebellious heroine.

“A most amusing tale.” Athenaeum, April 19, 1873

“It is humorous, vivid, rapid, lavish, and yet brief; unconventional almost to dash, and yet in no sense immoral in its tendency. . . .  There is a flavour of something like true genius about A Vagabond Heroine.” Spectator, July 5, 1873

A contrasting view:

“We wish our lady writers would leave off drawing these queer, unlikely, and unlovable heroines.  Murderesses and gamins, idiots and adventuresses, seraphs bred in the mire and angels fashioned out of the dirtiest clay—we are tired of them all.  They are fantastic caricatures of human nature rather than sober and life-like portraits. . . .  All these unnatural and impossible heroines are as little like the women of real life as are the six-handed and three-headed goddesses who may serve as emblems, but are absurd as artistic representations.” Saturday Review, September 27, 1873

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https://books.google.com/books?id=6j4tLQ0fFXAC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=edwardes%20vagabond%20heroine&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q=edwardes%20vagabond%20heroine&f=false

Crossword 211: Processed Food

 

George Lance, Still Life with Fruits and Parrot

 

Some weeks ago (see Crossword 193) I was boasting of the wholesome food consumed by the skilled artisans here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender.  This week, I’m afraid some of it got tangled up in the crossword-making machinery.  We salvaged what we could.


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211-Processed-Food.puz

211-Processed-Food.pdf

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211 Processed Food

Crossword 208: Cavalcade of Crosswordese IV

 
James Jacques Joseph Tissot, Reading the News

James Jacques Joseph Tissot, Reading the News

 

I conclude this web site’s fourth year with a fourth “Cavalcade of Crosswordese” (see Crosswords 052, 104, 156). And this time, in order to ensure that I’m using only the freshest stale entries available, I’ve drawn them all from recent New York Times themeless puzzles, on the assumption that the most prestigious crossword venue in its most unconstrained format would surely allow only the very best crosswordese that can be had! It’s just another of my tireless labors on your behalf.

Grateful? All you have to do is click on that “Donate” button below and give me some money! (You may also donate through PayPal or Venmo using my email address.) $12 will get you a bonus 15 x 15 “Victorian” puzzle filled only with words in use before 1901; $13.50, a bonus 21 x 21 puzzle; $15, both of these; and $10,000,000, your name on the website.

Ungrateful? Oh well. I won’t bother you again until next year.


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208-Cavalcade-of-Crosswordese-IV.puz

208-Cavalcade-of-Crosswordese-IV.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

208 Cavalcade of Crosswordese IV


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A crossword of mine appears today in the Wall Street Journal.


Novel 208: Anne Beale, Fay Arlington (1875)

 
Hubert von Herkomer, A Young Girl and Her Dog

Hubert von Herkomer, A Young Girl and Her Dog

 

An impecunious baronet takes in a difficult French orphan girl reputed to be his hostile neighbor’s niece.


For Beale, see Novel 60.  The first two volumes of this novel are excellent, with striking characters, especially the French girl heroine, placed in dramatic situations—excellent enough to make up for the third, which loses itself in idiotic lovers’ misunderstandings and tedious sentimental fantasy.

“Fay is not an unattractive heroine . . . and her freaks as a child are amusing.” Graphic, October 23, 1875

A novel with “really fine studies, drawn to the life, and from beginning to end full of vitality and individuality.” Spectator, January 2, 1892 (the novel was then republished).

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004B8E8#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=6&xywh=-71%2C-1%2C2605%2C1996

v.2 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004B8EE#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=6&xywh=-85%2C-131%2C2806%2C2149

v.3 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004B2D6#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=6&xywh=-44%2C-1%2C2659%2C2037

Crossword 204: Afterthoughts

 
John William Godward, Idle Thoughts

John William Godward, Idle Thoughts

 

This week’s puzzle has a theme no one has ever tried before—at least so far as I know—in which added letters, and parsing, and synonyms, and puns, are all daringly combined in no fewer than six original nonsense phrases!  I’m a little worried that releasing it into the universe will result in the creation of a semantic black hole from which meaning can never escape, and that then nothing will ever make sense again.  But I’m going to chance it!


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204-Afterthoughts.puz

204-Afterthoughts.pdf

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204 Afterthoughts