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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Some things are the wrong color. The blue once associated politically with Toryism and the red with Communism have now become, by a process I don’t understand, the colors of Democrats and Republicans. The screamingly orange subway benches on some New York City lines make sudden violence seem probable and even appropriate. And orange should never under any circumstances be juxtaposed with blue, in logos, in school colors, in textiles, or anywhere else. FedEx, and the University of Illinois, and certain Scottish clans, please take note.
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Attentive solvers will recall that, 183 crosswords ago, I posted a puzzle called “Noels” (see Crossword 161), so this puzzle is not, they will suppose, my first “noel.” In fact, however, this is the prequel to Crossword 161, the second part of a projected “noel” trilogy, which will in turn form the first part of a trilogy of trilogies all exploring my “noel” universe, and all of which should appear, if not by the end of the century, early in the next. So stay tuned!
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True happiness comes, I have found, not from riches or love or power, but simply from the ability to endure calmly the many affronts—to common sense, to simple morality, to good taste—that the world forces upon us every day. This puzzle is designed to give you practice in cultivating that invaluable skill.
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This title is, of course, tautological. All puns are stupid. Words that sound the same have different meanings. So what? Who cares? Why fill a crossword with such stuff when you can fill it instead with actors, or athletes, or other celebrities who embody your tastes, or values, or identity, or whatever? Alas, having vowed to read every Victorian novel, I have no time for television, or movies, or social media; and so, not knowing the names of any celebrities, I’m left to embody my tastes, and values, and identity all by myself, and to fill my crosswords with stupid puns.
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The arc of history bends towards today’s crossword.
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Things are getting tense here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Fortnightly Victorian Novel Recommender. The homophone faction is no longer on speaking terms with the homonym faction, while the parsing faction is threatening to break off and start its own site. Meanwhile, on the novel side, the female-novelist recommenders have made common cause against the male-novelist recommenders, each side rejecting out of hand my calls for mutual civility and reasoned debate, on the grounds that the bigotry motivating the other side deserves no consideration. We have, in short, devolved into a state of hopeless partisan rancor. How has this happened? I blame social media, artificial intelligence, online pornography, capitalism, forever chemicals, digital currency, and food dyes.
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340-Things-Are-Getting-Tense.puz
340-Things-Are-Getting-Tense.pdf
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I’d been wondering— Why is my every move being recorded by a network of hidden cameras? Why have all my writings, however private, been uploaded to secure online databases? Why are my innermost thoughts being monitored in underground laboratories? And then, the other day, while solving a crossword, and finding that, yet again, a word was clued exactly as I had clued it in an unposted crossword I had made not a week before, it struck me: an international cabal of crossword publishers, unwilling to give me proper credit either in money or in fame, was secretly tapping into my mind for crossword content. It all adds up! If you find yourself admiring a feature of somebody else’s crossword somewhere, you would do well to remind yourself that in fact it’s probably actually something I thought up already.
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I’ve been so busy! Everybody wants me to do everything, because I’m so good at it! So, finding myself short of time for this fortnight’s crossword, I’ve had to settle for just some assorted answers, an untitled painting, and no more interesting introductory comment than this one.
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I meant to have this ready in time for Charles III’s coronation, back in May, 2023, but I felt it needed a couple years’ more polishing. So now its dedication is up for grabs. Perhaps you, reader, are heir-apparent to a monarchy, or know somebody who is? If so, drop me a line, and we can make a deal; I’ll settle for any minor position at the court (except groom of the stole).
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Have you ever noticed how certain words or phrases sound more or less the same—sometimes are even spelled the same—and yet have entirely different meanings? This phenomenon was recently brought to my attention, and I had a thought: what if one were to base a crossword on it?
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I used to have a dog. I loved him, and he loved me. But since he left this sad world, I’ve found dogs annoying: the little yappy dogs next door yapping their little yaps all the yappy day, the muscle-y dogs lunging at me on the sidewalks, the sweatered and bootee-ed stroller dogs that complicate my efforts to regard their owners with the respect I try to confer on all humankind—they annoy me. Now, my old dog had his bad habits. He would leave his scent everywhere. He would shed all the time. He would try to kill the plumber. But he had a deep, rich voice, respected pedestrians, would have scorned to wear bootees—was, in short, just a better dog than the dogs of other people nowadays. This puzzle is dedicated to his memory.
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This puzzle comes with an important disclaimer: the “shrift” it provides is not effective as a means of remitting sin or conferring absolution. If that’s what you want, you need a priest.
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Are you feeling unhappy? Do you wonder whether you’re missing out on life? Do you fear you’ve failed to reach your full potential? Plentiful examples in film and fiction have a solution for you: get divorced! If you’re single, get married, then get divorced! If you’re divorced, get remarried, then get redivorced! Try again and again until you’ve divorced the right person. Then you’ll be happy.
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It has lately come to my attention that the Internet is infested with a great many people who have wrong opinions and do bad things. And I have to ask myself—and invite you, dear solver, to ask yourself as well—does not our use of the Internet render us complicit with these wrongheaded people and responsible for these bad things? I fear it does. So I’ve decided that if the Internet does not remove these people within a reasonable amount of time, I will withdraw from it myself and invite you to do the same. Reform, Internet, or else!
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Some time ago (see Crossword 317) I promised a series of crosswords honoring the Periodic Table of Elements. So today I give you “SB,” the chemical symbol for antimony. But SB can mean many other things as well, according to Wikipedia: San Bernardino and Santa Barbara, the Solomon Islands and South Burlington, Vermont, the Statistic Bureau of Japan, and St. Bonaventure. Any solver who understands Wikipedia and is able to add to this list “A crossword puzzle by David Alfred Bywaters” may apply to me for an autographed copy of this puzzle, suitable for framing.
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The purpose of this website, like that of all great modern art, is to bring about a radical rethinking of the human condition, of its meaning and purpose, its origin and end. When refined people see abstract painting or hear atonal music, their very sense of reality is challenged; they come away changed, ennobled, completed. Of course, there are those, not so refined, who see only smudges and hear only noise. And so it is with my crosswords. While I interrogate the unstable relationship between signifier and signified, with the aim of leading the refined solver to rethink the very meaning of meaning, there are those who just think, “Oh here’s another stupid pun.” But I do not cross my words for them.
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Do you ever find yourself suddenly wondering whether everything you think and do is just wrong? This happens to me from time to time. For example, recently I found myself wondering whether posting crossword puzzles and Victorian novel recommendations for free on the internet every fortnight might not be the best use I could find for my time. Crazy stuff! But there’s no limit to the human mind’s potential for self-delusion.
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What would we do without padding? Everywhere—in the pages of student essays and of Victorian novels, through hours upon hours of concept albums and superhero movies, on the chests of women and the shoulders of men, in the résumés of politicians and the expense accounts of executives, on the knees of skateboarders and the walls of maniacs—padding enhances and protects us! And yet how often is it mindlessly maligned! Today’s puzzle offers in contrast a humble tribute.
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We like to keep up with the fashions here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Fortnightly Victorian Novel Recommender. When people started wearing their hats backwards, we wore our hats backwards. And then when people started wearing them forwards again, so did we. This helps us feel like we’re a part of something bigger and stronger than our sad individual selves crawling around a comfortless world pointlessly and alone. Have you seen our new polo shirts?
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