A crossword puzzle, says Aristotle, or Coleridge, or somebody, should create its own alternative world, one in which, though people may not behave as expected, they nonetheless follow an internal logic of their own. I have tried, in my humble way, to obey these strictures, nowhere more than in this present offering.
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I’m afraid the relation of the title to the puzzle is arguably just a little bit strained here, requiring both a parsing and an unlikely abbreviation. Normally I am all too scrupulous in making titles that simply and exactly delineate the nature of the puzzles to which they are attached. I make an exception today in order to give myself an excuse to haul in another painting by the great Atkinson Grimshaw. Maybe somewhere there’s an alternate art world, into which (if we’re good) we will pass when this earthly life is over—a world in which the fame of Grimshaw is choired by angels, and Picasso is unknown.
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Why say in one word what you can just as well say in two, or three, or four, especially if you can thereby come up with 15-letter grid-spanning phrases?
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What Darwinian purpose does hair serve? How are the odds of human survival increased by its plentiful presence on the top of the head? Maybe it provides protection from sun and rain and snow? But if so, why do so many men who are deprived of this protection after their first youth successfully breed other men who will be similarly deprived? And why do they meanwhile retain the facial hair that just gets in their food?
Well—it’s another of life’s unsoluble riddles. Crosswords, by contrast, provide only soluble riddles, so console yourself with this one.
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Is it permissible to alter a certain letter in a crossword theme phrase, and yet allow that letter to remain unaltered elsewhere in that very phrase? Will it, as I’ve heard more than once, confuse the solver? Maybe so, if the solver is a primitive computer capable of processing only the simplest “if-then” algorithms and immune to humor. I construct my crosswords, however, for genuine, warm-blooded, passionate human beings! I’m not saying that, if you object to what you think is my inconsistency in the matter of theme-answer-letter alteration, you’re not fully human—but it’s a possibility worth considering.
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“Oh goodness infinite, goodness immense!,/That all this good of evil shall produce,/And evil turn to good!” you will exclaim, “replete with joy and wonder,” after you finish this puzzle. (See John Milton, Paradise Lost, XII.468-71)
We owe 32 Across to my test-solver, proofreader, and sometime editor “Bob Kerfuffle,” who has also spared me the embarrassment and you the annoyance of many errors of all kinds. He will not permit me to use his real name, preferring to “do good by stealth.” (See Alexander Pope, Epilogue to the Satires of Horace, Dialogue I, l.136)
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058-Accentuate-the-Positive.puz
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Tomorrow I will publish a Sunday crossword in The New York Times. The success has gone to my head.
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057-The-Worst-Crossword-Puzzle-Ever-Made.puz
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That’s this week’s crossword she’s got there. Judging from the position of her pen and the expression on her face, she’s at 52 Across, and trying desperately to remember what exactly a “ratite” is. She’s seen the word before, maybe in another crossword—but what does it mean? It’s nothing to do with rodents, or rodent-followers, but it is some kind of animal, isn’t it? A “gnu” maybe?
If you attended last August’s Lollapuzzoola tournament, you may have picked up a promotional copy of this very puzzle, which was distributed there on my behalf by my test-solver, editor, and promoter, the inexplicably generous “Bob Kerfuffle.” I was not myself in attendance, as I prefer to cultivate an air of reclusive genius—in the hope of being revered as the J.D. Salinger, the Emily Dickinson of crosswords. Do please try to play along with me in this.
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I never construct a puzzle without exhaustive research of its origins and implications. For this puzzle I looked up the etymology of the word “monkey” in the OED. Apparently it derives either from “monk,” on the theory that the unknown coiners of the word found some satirical resemblance between the animal and the religious community member, or from “Moneke,” the name of the son of Martin the Ape in the 1498 Middle Low German classic version of “Reynard the Fox.” Next time you find yourself at a dinner party at which conversation falters, mention these two possibilities: lively debate is certain to ensue.
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For a learned account of the phenomenon on which this puzzle is based, see the Wikipedia article on “Inland Northern American English.” I was born and raised in Kansas City, where English is spoken in its purest form; and so, when fate relocated me to Chicago for awhile, my ears were often offended by wrong vowels. If you yourself use these wrong vowels, I know I can trust you to train yourself to stop.
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054-Northern-Cities-Vowel-Shift.puz
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Hearty Thanksgiving Greeting
Thursday was Thanksgiving. I was thankful for you; and you, I’m willing to suppose, were thankful for me. But now we have these turkey parts all over the place. Like so many of my puzzles, this week’s holds a mirror up to nature, showing the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.
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If you’ve done more than a few crosswords, you know that some relatively rare words and phrases appear in them with annoying frequency. The crossword constructor’s life is one long wearisome battle against these. “Does nothing fit here but Caesar’s last words crossed with the founder of Yale? Oh, why was I born to suffer?” asks the sorrowing crossword constructor. This week, however, I’m just giving up and letting them in. In fact, I’ve made an especially large 21 x 21 puzzle to accommodate them.
And so I conclude this website’s first year—with this puzzle, and with a second and final solicitation for support. Donate $12 and get a free bonus crossword: either a 15 x 15 puzzle made entirely of words and phrases current in the Victorian era, or a 21 x 21 puzzle made of the usual stuff. Donate $15 and get both. Just click this button:
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052-Crosswordese-Cavalcade.puz
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John Collier, The Beggar Man
I’ve now given you fifty 15 x 15 crossword puzzles. Because I love you and want you to be happy, I will conclude my website’s first year by giving you two extra-large 21 x 21 puzzles. Are you wondering what to do with the overflowing sense of gratitude you can’t help but feel in response to all this? Wonder no longer—because now you can donate money to this site! Just click the button below and follow instructions. Donate $12, and I'll send you either another 21 x 21 puzzle, or a 15 x 15 Victorian crossword puzzle (that is, a puzzle that uses only words and phrases current in the Victorian era)! Donate $15 and I’ll send you both!
And that’s not all! I have a special bonus for the first person who donates $10,000,000 or more: not only will I send you both puzzles, but also I’ll rename this website in your honor! So if your name is, say, Bill Gates, after your donation the website will be known as "Bill Gates Presents David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Victorian Novel Recommender." But act fast—because, again, only the first donor at the $10,000,000 level will be eligible for this bonus.
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Most 15x15 crosswords have just four or five theme answers. This puzzle has ten theme answers! Ten!! That’s twice the usual complement!!! Are you grateful? Are you wondering how to let me know how grateful you are?? Watch this space!!!! Next week I’ll tell you how.
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Beware! On the outside you’ll find pleasant phrases about this and that (Biblical dogs, dairy farmers, Hibernian patriots, luxury homes, intoxicated birds) but oh! what lurks within? Your spine will tingle, your flesh will creep; it will be weeks before you again dare to work a crossword alone.
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This puzzle contains only 72 words. I think that’s fewer than any other on this site. It has 5 theme entries, which account for 51 of its 191 letters. 34 blocks take up the remainder of its 225 squares. I’ll leave you to calculate its merit on the basis of these statistics.
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It seems only yesterday we were celebrating the spring with horrible puns; here we are already celebrating the fall with hidden words in nonsense phrases. Nothing makes time’s winged chariot hurry faster than Victorian novels and language-torturing crosswords.
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This puzzle was inspired by 31 Across, which came to me as an airline ticket locator code. Was this the hand of a benevolent Providence reaching down to interfere directly in human affairs?
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I once made a cd for a friend with 24 distinct recorded versions of the song on which this puzzle is based. He hasn’t spoken to me in years. Do you think there’s a connection?
The original title of this puzzle—which almost no one understood—was “Put on the Skillet! Put on the Lid!” The final, much superior, title was the inspiration of Ralph Bunker, who, along with a man who prefers to be called “Bob Kerfuffle,” has been test-solving my puzzles for months. I’ll take this occasion to express my profound gratitude to both. Would you also like to test-solve my puzzles? Send me an email! The qualifications are minimal: an unerring sense of which Roman numerals correspond to which Arabic numerals would do (I find myself surprisingly shaky on this subject). The compensation, however, is even more minimal: nothing whatsoever!
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045-No-Matter-How-You-Slice-It.puz
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045 No Matter How You Slice It
The great John Atkinson Grimshaw and the famous Paul Cézanne were almost exact contemporaries. I would wager that anyone uncorrupted by a course of art history or a habit of gallery visiting would prefer the moodily atmospheric genius of Grimshaw to the blotchy dullness of Cézanne, if presented with samples of each. Yet Cézanne is celebrated, Grimshaw obscure. It’s rigged no doubt—but by whom, and for what purpose?
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