David Alfred Bywaters's Crossword Cavalcade & Fortnightly Victorian Novel Recommender. Every Saturday! Either a new language-torturing puzzle or an old novel by an unjustly neglected Victorian author. Why waste time on other amusements?

Crossword 257: Unqualified

Frederick Daniel Hardy,  An Anxious Time
Frederick Daniel Hardy, An Anxious Time

We’ve been having more labor trouble here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender.  The new hires are sadly unqualified.  One of them crossed the name of a little-known actor with the name of another little-known actor.  We had to “let him go.”  Another crossed a Star Wars character’s name with a Star Trek character’s name.  We fired her too.  But there’s only so much one scrappy little crossword maker can do.  The same kind of thing is happening everywhere.  Standards throughout the industry have grown ever more lax, degrading the entire crossword labor pool.

And meanwhile, what about the millions of desperate solvers who have turned to crosswords as a last resort—to stave off dementia, or addiction, or trauma, or boredom?  We cannot fail them!  We need national standards, a system of certification and licensure, and a well-trained enforcement arm, and we need them now!

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257-Unqualified.puz

257-Unqualified.pdf

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257 Unqualified