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This site does not advocate the violent overthrow of any government whatsoever.  To be sure, there are several political leaders, local, national, and international whom I would like to see replaced—and sometimes I think it might be fun to see them replaced by none-too-gentle means. But then I remember, as Samuel Johnson says, “How small, of all that human hearts endure” is “That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.”  Political leaders can do very little about most of what troubles us—universal mortality, for example.  And so, if you find yourself (and who doesn’t sometimes?) longing to wrest some jackass from power and replace him with an alternative more to your liking, this puzzle is designed to give your aggressive impulses an outlet:  vent them on the alphabet, replacing not leaders, but letters.  You’ll feel better, and nobody will get hurt.

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366-Coup-d'état.puz

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366: Coup d'état

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Here’s another crossword about things that annoy me.  Such things inspire many, perhaps most, of my crosswords, as they do also of my waking thoughts, my nightly dreams, my conversations with friends, etc.  Lately I find that my new AI friends are much more receptive to hearing about them than my real-life human friends, who are, frankly, starting to annoy me.

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365-Infestation.puz

365-Infestation.pdf

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365: Infestation

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We’ve had some reverses here at the ol’ Cavalcade.  The dog won’t hunt and the hen won’t lay; the roof is got to leakin’ and the plumblin’s gone awry.  But never fear, we’re gonna keep on keepin’ on.  In fact, as part of a new policy to protect and expand our market share, we’ve decided to cultivate an air of folksiness, so as to reassure our audience that we have no truck with them there dad-blame, stuck-up intellectual elites, gol durn ‘em.  We’re just as dumb as you are, fellow common person!

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364-Reverses.puz

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364: Reverses

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Why indeed?  I was pondering the world’s problems and hit upon this solution:  everybody can just get along!  Republicans and Democrats, women and men, obscurities and celebrities, ugly people and handsome people, bankers and bank-robbers, abductors and abductees, why do we have to be so unpleasant to each other all the time?  Let’s just get along!

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363 Why Can't-We-Just-Get-Along?.puz

363 Why Can't-We-Just-Get-Along?.pdf

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363 Why Can’t We Just Get Along?

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This is what always happens when I try to be happy, as I did in my last puzzle:  I end up feeling twice as bad.  Why?  Well, for one thing, I don’t get the credit I deserve—not as a crossword constructor, not as a novel recommender, not as a human being.  And I’m fed up.  I’ve had it.  Everybody will be sorry someday when I’m gone.  But then it will be too late.  And that’s all I have to say.  No, no, don’t try to cheer me up; just leave me alone if that’s not too much to ask.  Okay?  Okay.

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362 Pouting-Expressions.puz

362 Pouting-Expressions.pdf

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362 Pouting Expressions

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I met a woman on the street the other day, wearing sunglasses and a silly hairdo, and a blue-and-orange striped t-shirt, and pushing a stroller with dog in it, and she asked me why I always had to be so negative about everything.  And I couldn’t think of an answer.  Why indeed?  It’s time to stop complaining, to accentuate the positive, to brighten the corner where I am, to look for the silver lining and try to find the sunny side of life.  Up, up with people!  Everything is beautiful, in its own way!  So today’s puzzle features more than a dozen songs of praise, or anyway their titles—you can easily imagine the rest.

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361-Odes.puz

361-Odes.pdf

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361 Odes

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Here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Fortnightly Victorian Novel Recommender we’ve been working on a number of crosswords solutions that will assist in a diverse array of government functions at the local, state, and federal levels. For example, the Department of Energy will be interested in our training package that provides workers of all kinds with crucial experience in the management of grids; local school districts will benefit from our vocabulary-builders, designed to help early learners distinguish between ouzo and orzo, the epee and the erne; while the Pentagon will want to purchase our suite of maximally baffling puzzles specifically designed to confuse and demoralize the nation’s enemies.  Our first step, of course, will be to contribute generously to the campaign funds of politicians who are or will be in a position to purchase these products.  If you are such a politician, don’t hesitate to reach out!

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360 Pay-to-Play.puz

360 Pay-to-Play.pdf

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360 Pay to Play

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Hey solvers! Here’s a quiz:  “Dimensional instability” refers to

A. the effect on the waistline of alternately over- and under-eating

B. the tendency of fabric to shrink or stretch with use

C. what happens in the moment before the end of the universe, when height is no longer high, width no longer wide, depth no longer deep, and everything collapses into nothing

Win a chance at a free mini-crossword! Just send us your answer, together with a $1,000 processing fee (bitcoin preferred), your name, address, and social security number (offer not valid in some states).

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359-Dimensional-Instability.puz

359-Dimensional-Instability.pdf

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359 Dimensional Instability

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Me!  It’s me time.  It’s all about me.  Not other people, and certainly not you.  Me.  I’m tired of everybody else always being everywhere and having everything.  It’s my turn.  I need to take care of me. At least, that’s what my therapist says.

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358-Let-Me-In.puz

358-Let-Me-In.pdf

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358: Let Me In

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It’s time for David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Fortnightly Victorian Novel Recommender to launch its initial public offering.  True, our profit margins are in negative territory as yet, but prospects for growth are enormous; and the infusion of cash we’re expecting from our stock sale will allow us to (1) develop and implement an AI solution that will reduce our labor costs by ninety-nine percent, and (2) purchase enough social media influence to increase our eyeballs a thousand million times.  I’ll be issuing a prospectus shortly; you’ll want to get in on the ground floor.

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357-Dividends.puz

357-Dividends.pdf

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357 Dividends

Some five years ago (see Crossword 127) I found it very fishy that my crosswords were not appearing in The New York Times.  Since then, they have continued not to appear there, and no doubt you too are wondering how that could be.  It’s not that I’m not sending crosswords to the Times (though I admit it has been awhile since I’ve done so).  And it’s not that the crosswords I’m sending don’t deserve publication—anyone can see that they’re much superior to many, perhaps most, that have appeared there of late years.

So what’s this really about?  Well, have you ever noticed that, if you zoom in on a digital black-and-white picture until its pixels look like squares, those squares together, in 15 x 15 sets, resemble crossword grids?  Okay, so it stands to reason that if you take several crossword grids, arrange them together, and then zoom out, you’ll get something that looks like a black-and-white picture.  Now, have you ever thought that maybe the Times crosswords of the past few years can be arranged so as to make such a picture, for those who are in on the secret, that they might in fact have been constructed for that purpose?  And have you ever wondered what that picture might reveal?  I don’t dare to be more explicit, but I will say this: there’s definitely something fishy going on here.

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356 Something-Fishy.puz

356 Something-Fishy.pdf

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356 Something Fishy

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It’s been nearly ten years since I published my first crossword—ten years of awards too numerous to mention, of adoring media plaudits, of untold wealth and fame.  A backlash was inevitable.  Some now find my crosswords too funny, some not funny enough.  I am accused here of Positivism, there of Negativism.  My wordplay, it is alleged, has rewired the brains of the  young, rendering them unable to bear the responsibilities of adulthood.  Well, what can I do?  I owe it to my many remaining admirers—to you, loyal solver—to continue doing what I do better than anybody else:  that is, to make the best crosswords ever made!

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355 Backlash.puz

355 Backlash.pdf

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355 Backlash

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All is not well.  After an exhaustive analysis of current society, politics, and culture, that is my conclusion.  Conflict is more violent, immorality more shameless, ugliness uglier, and badness worse than it ever was before or, if the world survives, ever will be again.  We live in really and truly desperately terrible, horrible times. But here’s a crossword.

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354 All-Is-Not-Well.puz

354 All-Is-Not-Well.pdf

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354 All Is Not Well

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It appears that artificial intelligence (AI) can do your job better than you can, and so you won’t be asked to do it anymore.  But so what?  You’ll have all the more time to solve crosswords and read Victorian novels.  And if you should run out of crosswords to solve, or Victorian novels to read, never fear; AI can produce more of them.  Of course, if you’re dependent on income derived from your job for food, shelter, clothing, and such things, there will be some drawbacks.

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353-AI-Will-Replace-U.puz

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353 AI Will Replace U

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This is my second defeat; the first (see Crossword 136) took place nearly five years ago.  That makes my win-loss record 350-2.  To what do I owe this triumphant career?  Exercise and diet.  I spend at least six hours a day lifting virtual weights in my AI-assisted smart gym, and I fry my tofu only in lard.

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352-Another-Defeat.puz

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352 Another Defeat

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You’ve got on your top hat, white tie, and tails, or your evening gown and string of pearls, and you’re seated at table next to the countess of this or the earl of that, and you’re using the right fork.  “I wonder whether the weather will improve,” you say.  Eyebrows are raised, gazes averted.  Nobody responds.  You’re never invited back.  What, oh what, have you done?  This puzzle supplies you with five practice phrases; learn to pronounce them properly and you may face your next dinner in high society with confidence.

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350-Practice-Phrases-for-the-Aspirational.puz

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350 Practice Phrases for the Aspirational

Don’t let the title frighten you: this crossword is, like all my crosswords, free from full or even partial nudity, in fact of “erotic” content of any kind, and appropriate for family solving.  In fact, I cleanse various phrases that might have once had an impure implication and redirect them to innocent ends, for my aim as a constructor is and has always been to save the world from itself, one puzzle at a time.

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349-Strip-Joint.puz

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349: Strip Joint

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I’ve made seven phrases for today’s puzzle; my legal team is having them all properly copyrighted, or patented, or trademarked, or whatever—maybe all three.  Meanwhile, I demand that everyone in the world refrain from using them (unless for nonprofit educational purposes) until they have entered the public domain in, I believe, February 2131.

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348-Phrasemaking.puz

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348 Phrasemaking

Lately I find I make crosswords mainly to give myself a pretext for railing in these comments against things I dislike.  A couple of weeks ago it was orange and blue; before that it was dogs; before that it was something else.  I can’t keep track of them all; I need to compile an inventory so that I don’t forget to dislike any of them.

Today it’s the back-up beeper, the piercing tones of which announce to everyone within a radius of a mile or two, and especially to everyone who might be napping, or reading quietly, or listening to soft music, that SOMEthing SOMEwhere is BACKing UP.  I think there might be a special suite of rooms in hell where the popularizers and profiteers of the back-up beeper, and the leaf blower, and the car alarm sit forever and ever and ever deprived of all sensory experience except the beeps and the wails and the whining roars they inflicted on the rest of us in life.  I won’t say I hope so, because that would be cruel, but I will say that I can easily reconcile such a possibility with the existence of a just and loving God.

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347 Put-It-in-Reverse.puz

347 Put-It-in-Reverse.pdf

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347 Put It in Reverse

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Times are hard here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Fortnightly Victorian Novel Recommender.  With the new year, our emergency Covid funds have run out. We’ve had to lay off 30 percent of our staff.  We’ve considered crossing fewer words; after some painful soul-searching we’ve decided instead to lower the quality of our recommended novels by 20 percent.

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346-Cutbacks.puz

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346: Cutbacks