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I conclude this website’s third year, as I did previous years, by providing you, first, with large 21x21 puzzles, and, second, with an opportunity to donate.  Not that I need the money—but you, gentle solver, need an outlet for those impulses of gratitude that fill your generous soul, and I am willing to provide one.

As usual, there are four donation levels.  Donate $12 and receive a 15x15 crossword which employs only words current during the Victorian era (and, of course, still current today), and which refers nostalgically to a simpler era of food packaging.  Donate $13.50 and receive a large, 21x21 crossword, a sequel to last week’s puzzle with an added twist.  Donate $15 and receive both.  Be the first to donate $10,000,000 and the website will be renamed in your honor, so that if your name is, say, Jeff Bezos, the name of the website will be “Jeff Bezos Presents David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender.”

(By the way, careful solvers will notice that this puzzle’s 6 Down makes a return appearance after its debut as 16 Across in Crossword 039—but with an even more hilarious clue!)

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155-Pull-Out-All-the-Stops.puz

155-Pull-Out-All-the-Stops.pdf

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155 Pull Out All the Stops

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Today’s puzzle has a sequel, involving a further twist, which I’ll make available next week as a bonus.  Meanwhile, here’s another painting by the great Atkinson Grimshaw, this one suitable for Halloweens with full moons.

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154-Nicknames.puz

154-Nicknames.pdf

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154 Nicknames

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It strikes me that this is my third attire-related theme this month.  Should I try for a fourth?  “Dressing Up,” maybe, where words like CROSS and RANCH and WINDOW and SURGICAL might be found backwards, from down to up, within phrases that seem funny from up to down?  Let’s see, CROSS gives us HOLINESS ORCHIDS: “Megachurch’s incense substitutes?”—great!  RANCH gives us SWITCH NARCOTICS: “Give up heroin for fentanyl?”—hilarious!  But WINDOW? What about TWO-D NIWA?  The Niwa clan, as Wikipedia tells us, was a “retainer clan of the Oda clan during the Sengoku period of Japan.”  So “Flattened Sengoku-period clan member”—Get it?  Hmm.   And SURGICAL?—GUERRILLA CIG RUSE: “That old trick in which the irregular military opponents of an occupying power distract enemy attention with a tobacco product, informally”?  Oh never mind.

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153-Clothes-Down.puz

153-Clothes-Down.pdf

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153 Clothes Down

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So many of the crossword themes in the best, or anyway the best-paying, crossword venues seem to me, well, boring.  “Here are some common phrases with words that can join another word to make other common phrases!”  “Here are some common phrases that hide words in a certain category!”  “Here are some names of celebrities that happen to share a linguistic feature!”  “ Here are some  common phrases that share some pattern or other!” “Here are some common phrases placed on the grid in some pattern or other!”  “Here are some common phrases consisting of two words each of which starts with the same two letters!”  “Here are some celebrities whose first and last names each start with the same two letters!”  “Here are some celebrities who all wrote the same kind of book!”  “Here are some words and phrases that actually mean the same thing!”

I don’t understand the appeal.  But who am I to fight a prevailing trend?  I can’t beat  ’em, so darn it, I’m going to join ’em.  Today’s crossword has the most boring theme ever to appear in any crossword anywhere.  It’s going to put me on the map!

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152-What-a-Boring-Theme!.puz

152-What-a-Boring-Theme!.pdf

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152 What a Boring Theme!

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This puzzle is modeled on the upper-class Victorian habit of changing into special clothes at dinner-time—not, as you might expect, special food-repellant clothes, that might be difficult to stain and easy to clean—but extra-fancy clothes.

The process of adapting this custom to the crossword form required a good deal of punning.  Now, the ability to enjoy unlikely puns is something you’re born with or not.  No doubt it results from a long-ago genetic mutation; probably it confers some survival advantage—though it also exposes its carrier to unique risks.  Anyway, if you don’t have such an ability, you might want to spare yourself this week’s puzzle.

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151-Changing-for-Dinner.puz

151-Changing-for-Dinner.pdf

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151 Changing for Dinner

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Some people seem to think that, just because they never leave the house anymore, they need take no trouble about their dress—that they can sit around all day in sweatpants and  t-shirts,  or other sartorial atrocities named for bodily fluids or letters of the alphabet, and suffer no debilitating moral effects in consequence.

Not I! When I made this puzzle, I wore a three-piece Oxford-gray vicuna-wool suit trimmed in gold thread, a hand-stitched mulberry-silk shirt of deepest burgundy, a powder-blue diamond-plated necktie, and Belgian linen underwear lined with mink.  I trust that when you solve it you also will  array yourself no less richly.

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150-Richly Arrayed.puz

150-Richly Arrayed.pdf

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150: Richly Arrayed

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This is a crossword version of one of those eerie paintings the eyes of which follow you around wherever you go.

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148-Eye-Movement.puz

148-Eye-Movement.pdf

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148: Eye Movement

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Everybody in the world seems to be misperceiving everybody else of late, with predictably rageful consequences.  Why should I miss out on the fun?  Here’s my own contribution to the global confusion.

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147-International-Misunderstanding.puz

147-International-Misunderstanding.pdf

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147 International Misunderstanding

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Since I intend my puzzles to last forever, I will add an explanation of this one, for the benefit of the solver of the future.

PPO, then, future solver, once stood for “Preferred Provider Organization.”  Years ago, health care was arranged rather to maximize the profits of private industry than to promote public health.  If you expected ever to need health care, you were advised to buy “insurance” from a private entity:  you would pay this entity a monthly fee, and in return it would pay a percentage of your doctor’s fees—over a certain fixed “deductible” amount.

So say you paid this entity $2000/month, in exchange for which it agreed to cover 80% of your medical costs after a $1000 annual deductible.  Say that, after 30 years of this,  you got a disease and had to go to the hospital for a week.  And say the hospital charged you $101,000 for your treatment.  Lucky you!—you paid only $21,000 (your deductible plus 20% of your costs); your insurer covered the remaining $80,0000!  And lucky insurer—having collected $720,000 from you over your 30 years of participation, it still got to keep $640,000!  It seems a little crazy now, future solver, but the theory was that everybody benefited.  The hospital got lots of money, the insurer got lots of money, and you didn’t die.

But there was a further little hitch, or snag, in the process.  Most insurers agreed to pay 80% of your fees only if you paid them to certain selected doctors, who had previously made a deal with those insurers.  Otherwise the insurers would pay only 60%, or 40% of your costs, or maybe even nothing at all.  These selected doctors were collectively known as a “Preferred Provider Organization” or PPO.

So, future solver, however bleak things may seem at the moment, don’t forget to remind yourself—at least it’s not 2020.

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146-PPO.puz

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146 PPO

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There seems to be a trend nowadays of including more proper names in crosswords, on the theory that it’s fun to allude to cool stuff that fun, cool people like us like.  I haven’t joined this trend, possibly for selfish reasons:  my favorite Victorian novelists almost never show up in crosswords, whereas every other puzzle seems to include at least one Star Wars reference, however gratuitous: THE, for example, clued “Jabba ___ Hutt” or “Use ___ force, Luke!”

So I try to keep proper names out of my fill and also, especially, my themes.  I sigh, more in sorrow than in anger, when I encounter yet another puzzle where the theme turns out to be a set of actors whose last names are also the names of dog breeds, or whatever.

This time, however, I’ve compromised my standards: half the theme answers contain proper names.  But at least they’re reasonably passé proper names—a vice-president whose term ended in 2000, a children’s cartoon that premiered the same year, and a 1939 movie based on a 1900 novel.

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145-And-There's-More!.puz

145-And-There's-More!.pdf

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145 And There’s More!

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I’m afraid I took up the catchy-sounding phrase that supplies today’s puzzle’s title without any clear idea of what it meant.  Something to do with airplane seating policies?  Corporate layoffs?  Is it a terse statement of the cultural truism that, when the worst things grow popular, the best are neglected?

According to Wikipedia, it is most commonly used to describe an accounting method designed to evade taxes in times of inflation.  Oh well.  It makes a good crossword title anyway.

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144-Last-In,-First-Out.puz

144-Last-In,-First-Out.pdf

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144 Last In, First Out

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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!!

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143-PR-Issues.puz

143-PR-Issues.pdf

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143 PR Issues

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Those other, Brand-X constructors fill their crosswords with stuff—memes, actors, athletes, movie characters—that arose yesterday and will be forgotten tomorrow.  Mine are designed, as the title of this one implies, to grow more rich and satisfying as the years pass.

To be sure, if it’s 2050, and you’re savoring this crossword along with your well-aged 2020 bottle of Lafite-Rothschild, you may be mildly puzzled by 50 Across—but, when you review the historical context, you’ll be able to congratulate  yourself and your peers on the  advances in rationality and humanity your country has made in the last thirty years.

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142-Like-Fine-Wine.puz

142-Like-Fine-Wine.pdf

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142 Like Fine Wine

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Oh the poor middle class!  Not only is its wealth increasingly appropriated by billionaires, but for well over a century it has been routinely derided in high culture.  Hipsters everywhere decry its foolish tastes, activists its mistaken values.  No matter the authenticity of your own non-bourgeois (proletarian? aristocratic?) credentials—pronounce a thing "bourgie" and your title to sophistication is assured.

Well, though I will here and now claim (why not?) to have myself no connection whatsoever with the middle class, I feel sorry for it sometimes.  I hope this crossword tribute will make it feel a little better.

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141-Middle-Class.puz

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141 Middle Class

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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.

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140-Beaten-Down.puz

140-Beaten-Down.pdf

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140 Beaten Down

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This puzzle provides, as a bonus, a little lesson in astronomy.  If, like me, you tend to forget how the solar system is organized, its theme answers can help: repeated in order of appearance, they make up a catchy 9-word, 60-letter mnemonic!

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139-Inner-Planets.puz

139-Inner-Planets.pdf

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139 Inner Planets

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So you’ve never heard Fats Domino's 1957 recording of “What Will ___ My Heart?” (44 Across)?  Correct that omission right away.  Then try the 1936 version by Andy Kirk and forgotten crooner Elmer “Pha” Terrell.  Then try Dinah Washington’s version, from 1956.  Has your rage against my long partials and obscure cluing turned to gratitude?

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138-Fowl-Fill.puz

138-Fowl-Fill.pdf

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138 Fowl Fill

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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.

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137-Decease.puz

137-Decease.pdf

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137 Decease

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Get up, everybody!  The judge is coming!  And being judged is, after all, the point of everything!  The world is one great courtroom! life is a trial! and the judge is coming!

Oh dear.  I think I need a nap.

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134-Order-in-the-Court.puz

134-Order-in-the-Court.pdf

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134 Order in the Court

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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.

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133-Literal-Stem-Winding.puz

133-Literal-Stem-Winding.pdf

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133 Literal Stem-Winding