Puzzled
Page 9
Waiting for trains, I felt like saying, but this was zero hour, and Meredith had 200 mouths to feed, a charity gala with all the nobs of high society. ‘As soon as those soups are done, I need you to perform.’
Maynard could see the problem. Just relax, he said. ‘The more you ‘assle the more you’ll screw it up.’ Which wasn’t the balm I needed but the voice did wonders, the familiar lilt of Family Steptoe in my ear, or maybe I was drawing on the comfort of crosswords, since cryptics rely on the East End habit of H-dropping as a handy device when it comes to trimming words. To Maynard the zoo would be full of ‘ippos and ‘owler monkeys, whereas Meredith was an ‘ag, an ‘orror, or she was in my eyes. From the kitchen door you could hear the final slurps. Next on the à la carte was trout from the upland streams of Cumbria, poached and silver-served onto your plate.
‘Ow did it go? In a word, ‘opeless. The trout was so soft it sagged like wet paper. As soon as I betrayed my accent the diners were more simpatico, knowing a colonial would hardly have the politesse to manoeuvre silverware, but the mood of the table took a dive when I tried to convey one trout to a gentleman’s plate, the animal’s head falling loose, landing with an intimate thud on his ladyship’s pumpkin. Meredith moved in. I was marched to the kitchen, banished to water duties. Predictably, my first evening at Regents Park was also my last, the whole charade coming apart at the seams much like my rental jacket. I said goodbye to Maynard, knowing this Ghana giant had tried his best to save me, and he just beamed back, ‘Take it easy, awright – ‘appy travels.’
WHITE ON BLACK – race versus racism
Where Cockney heartland begins and ends is a matter of debate but as a rule of thumb the term applies to the working-class hubs of East London. Think Fagin and the Artful Dodger.
The Cockney device can appear in most clue types, turning hedge into edge, harrow into arrow, hairline into airline. See if you can solve these two Cockneyisms:
Cockney control of nightmarish street (3)
Mother of Cockney pet in The Netherlands? (9)
Once you find your inner Eliza Doolittle, you should be able to hear ELM and AMSTERDAM, being reductions of helm and hamster dam. (Dam – when not a weir – is a pastoral word for mother.)
Note, too, that not every setter will flag the device with the word Cockney but may opt for other ways to suggest this special patch of London. These next two stem from The Times:
Snag commonly an irritation (4)
Scoundrel in Albert Square a slippery type (3)
The answers are ITCH and EEL, paring back hitch and heel. Commonly, the adverb, is a dig at the raffish associations of Cockney, the coarse voice of Tom, Dick and ‘Arry. Albert Square, meanwhile, is Cockney territory. Other nudges to note are East End, Eastender, Cheapside or Whitechapel – Jack the Ripper’s turf.
It’s handy to remember that whenever you see the Cockney code, you generally know that the target word begins with H, and that the H will be dropped. Our current clue, for example, opens with the phrase Cockney chaos. So what chaos synonym begins with H? That’s the canny way to think.
Importantly, the H can only be the initial and nowhere else in the word. A Cockney chook, for example, doesn’t mean a COOK, nor will Cockney Irish equal IRIS. Think of the trout fiasco, where only the head is lost. Setters know this category in general as a deletion clue, which gets its own chapter around the corner, but for now let’s return to the idea of race. When, in Puzzleville, is it kosher to refer to a person’s ethnicity? Is kosher, for instance, a kosher word to use in this regard, or does that demean the Jewish tradition? If Cockney warrants its own subgenre of clues, what other ethnic groups may be enlisted?
Fewer than before, put it that way. Once upon a time, back in the baby boom, a pet trick of several Herald compilers went by the dubious banner of Orientalisms, or the Flied Lice Loutine. Here ROCK would turn into LOCK, or RAFTER into LAUGHTER (soundwise), the cheap trick a reference to Asians reputedly struggling to pronounce their Rs.
Like passé sexism, the notion of labelling one group of people has fast lost currency. Now and then Kiwis (people known to say trek for trick) or Brooklynites (boyd for bird) will be implicated, but this is tame compared to the racism of the past. Let’s take a look at two notable jaw-droppers.
The first comes courtesy of A. F. Ritchie, the post-war maestro and senior Anglican minister. This clue occurs in Afrit’s own anthology, Armchair Crosswords, published in 1949:
What do happen, Mose, if our gals lose deir heads? Oh, den you find de ways out! (8)
The answer is EGRESSES, as the so-called gals of Mose were deemed to be NEGRESSES. Losing their heads, they become exits, or ways out. Blasphemy in this day and age, but Afrit was a setter of his epoch.
Some 30 years after Afrit’s book, a second clue tested public mores, this time in the Herald. For reasons to become apparent I’ll omit the setter’s name, a colleague no longer among our number. His clue:
Blackman goes walkabout in NSW town (9)
The indigenous people of Australia have suffered a legion of hateful labels, all of them taboo in modern vernacular. One is ABO, which some English puzzles have only recently eschewed and US setters clue more wisely as Blood classifications (namely A, B and O). Another no-no is COON, borrowed from America where it’s a shortening of raccoon. Here the town is COONAMBLE, and aptly the Herald took decisive action, telling the culprit to take a hike.
The message was clear. Lindsey Browne (or LB) might have peddled Jap drink in 1971 (the answer being NIP), but those days were history. Naughtiness and racism were separate modes. Clues could refer to ethnicity – an observation about place or cultural background – but using pejorative names or mocking accents went against the grain.
As do slurs aimed at exotic food, or so you’d hope. Now and then lapses occur. One compiler, the late Bob Smithies, alias Bunthorne, trundled out this clue in 2006:
Ruthless order to setter on Korean diet? = DOG EAT DOG
But what about those ‘apless Cockneys, you ask. Seems some racial affronts are more affronting than others. Even Aussies have been spoofed. Most notably, in 2009, American Richard Silvestri built a crossword for the LA Times entitled Heard Down Under. The puzzle ribbed the Aussie habit of lengthening vowels (turning Purple Rain into PURPLE RHINE, and brainstorm into BRINE STORM). Did the paper suffer an Aussie jihad? On the contrary, the theme was applauded as a fresh piece of ‘entertinement’.
Measure this against the furore of 1993, when Hasbro, the licence-holders of Scrabble, received a letter of enquiry from Judith Grad of Virginia. According to Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis, Grad objected to the racist terms condoned by the game’s official wordlist. JEW, she discovered, meant to haggle, and therefore could be played on the board with impunity, as could JEWING or JEWED. NIGGER was also there, along with SPIC, MICK, KIKE and DAGO. Grad alerted Milton Bradley, of Hasbro’s game division, prompting Dave Wilson, the company’s president, to send a sympathetic reply. He described the listed words as abhorrent, but argued they existed under the rules of the game. Frederick C. Mish, the editor-in-chief of the Merriam-Webster dictionary, took a similar view. ‘Such slurs are part of the language,’ he wrote.
Not happy, Grad enlisted the NAACP (or the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) in league with several Jewish alliances to have the terms ousted from the game. Eventually, after nine years, the game’s overseers identified 205 words as being vulgar, racist and/or derogatory. Nowadays any tournament has the option of playing or ditching the divisive set, from ABO to YID, and the fury has eased.
Mind you, here in Australia, Jewish campaigners were stirred into action in the late 1980s, thanks to a freakish Herald crossword. This time the offence lay in the grid itself.
Current puzzle-checker Lynne Cairncross recalls the episode: ‘When I was head of Daily Events, my excellent crossword editor, Deb Shaw, let through a grid with a swastika on it … and so did I when I signed off the page. The compiler, a marvellous, philanthropic fe
llow, was horrified.’
Squinting, the pattern resembled a Third Reich flag: a regrettable fluke of the squares. Cold comfort to the Jewish readers that contacted the Herald on the morning of publication. Just as quickly the mishap’s main players apologised, the matter regarded as both vile and accidental. Working so close to the grid, setters and their editors can sometimes fail to see the black for the white.
MAYHEM MAYHEM – tautologies and tautonyms
So, has the ha’penny dropped? You’re looking for a word meaning chaos that starts with H, then pretending Maynard is pronouncing it for you. (‘Jeez Dave, your trout ‘ead caused one ‘elluva ‘oop-la.’) Let’s consider 19-Down with this hint in mind:
Cockney chaos going to stir green (7)
Seasoned solvers will know that the front end holds the wordplay for a couple of reasons. First, the Cockney mention is a giveaway. Second, Cockney chaos has no distinct meaning in isolation.
What about havoc? That could work. Do you know a word starting with AVOC? I bet you do. One is the avocet, a black-and-white wader which may well reside at London Zoo. The other is avocado, which wasn’t on the menu that night.
AVOCADO of course is defined by the clue’s end word – green – which is not to say the fruit is a vegetable, but a shade of green. The balance of the wordplay rests in the word stir, which isn’t a kitchen instruction, nor an anagram signpost, but more the muddle I created at Table Three, namely an ADO. The linking phrase – going to – captures the notion of transfer, how one half (AVOC) moves closer to the other (ADO).
Just like SPARROW, a bird doubtless free to roam London Zoo, AVOCADO has that rare quality of being two synonyms side by side, at least before a Cockney utters it: havoc + ado, à la spar + row.
Such rarities aren’t to be confused with orthodox tautologies (such as end result and new discovery) or zoological tautonyms, being those Regent’s Park residents who own such Latin names as Uncia uncia (the snow leopard), Lemmus lemmus (the Norwegian lemming) or Cricetus cricetus (which Sid Vicious, Eliza Doolittle and a handsome waiter called Maynard would know as your common ‘amster).
SPELLING TROUBLE
Eccentric spelling turns some names into booby traps. I had to undo an entire grid as a result of bungling Twilight’s creator STEPHENIE MEYER, falling for the Stephanie Trap. Beware these other names below:
Addams Family
Muhammad Ali
Jimi Hendrix
Condoleezza Rice
Scarlett Johansson
Axl Rose
Brigitte Bardot
Keystone Kops
Cybill Shepherd
Adrien Brody
Freddy Krueger
Ashlee Simpson
Stieg Larsson
Barbra Streisand
Nicolas Cage
Tobey Maguire
Kristen Stewart
Forest Whitaker
Willem Dafoe
Olive Oyl
Salley Vickers
HALL OF FAME: CHARADES
Quick run ending in wicket (5) [Paul, the Guardian]
Many revs make small car go (8) [Hendra, the Guardian]
Polish plants and animals (9) [Cincinnus, FT]
$100 springs doubled in disreputable garages (4,5) [Henry Hook, US]
Prisoner taking cellmate, perhaps, as wife? (10) [Times 8558]
Shades of Clementine, K-K-Katy etc? (10) [Orlando, the Guardian]
SOLUTIONS: fleet, ministry, buffaloes, chop shops, conjugally,
sunglasses
QUIZLING 8.1
Drop the first or second word’s initial H (in ‘earty Cockney
fashion) and you’ll create each clue’s answer. Abhor octet, for
example, is HATE EIGHT.
Toss aristocrat (4,4)
For an Irish gun? (6,7)
Dump journos (3,5)
Lance? (6,6)
Tougher love? (6,6)
Moorage urge (9,9)
QUIZLING 8.2
What singer answers this charade: fair + fashionable + lumber + tarn?
QUIZLING 8.3
If B + bird = dog (that is, B + EAGLE = BEAGLE), can you figure out the zoology below? No mixing is needed.
W + reptile = insect
F + mammal = mammal
F + bird = bird
B + mammal = fish
T + seabird = seabird
Containers
CHAPTER 9
Sucker pens article for website
guide (4,3)
Adam Ramona has paisley skin. He wears knee-high disco boots and purple mascara, and when he walks he prances like a marionette – clomp, clomp, clomp.
Usually he hangs out with Mashup and a guy called S1 Gausman. If you want to tell them apart, you’ll see that Mashup has the jet-black drainpipes, while Gausman prefers the platform soles. The trio loiter on ACVA Island, a grassy patch dotted with gum trees and a tower built of words.
Tall as the clouds, this tower grows non-stop, changing shape before your eyes. Blue letters, crossing the sky in flocks, approach the island all the time, linking to the tower like molecules to a chain. A lower-case ‘e’ hooks its tail around a G’s open hollow. Each letter turns to green as they rest, nesting like starlings in a growing steeple.
Known as Babelswarm, the tower is the world’s highest structure built of language, virtually speaking, and a project fostered by the Australian Centre of Virtual Art – or ACVA, the island’s sponsor.
The island itself is closer than you think, locked inside a universe called Second Life, a parallel world where anything is possible. If real life can’t accommodate a spire like Babelswarm, then Second Life can. A popular MUVE, or multi-user virtual environment, Second Life is a cosmos unto itself, complete with day and night, launderette and forests, currency and market pressure. Much like Babelswarm, Second Life is shaped and enriched by its residents – or signed-up users.
The world was created by San Francisco think tank Linden Lab. Rather than car-jacking or alien-shooting, Second Life, from its launch in 2003, offered a different kind of gaming. Or is it a game? Among the 70,000 concurrent Residents worldwide – that’s this world I mean – Second Life represents a chance to push your imagination, to interact with the likes of Mashup and Gausman and all the other avatars.
Off-screen, Mashup is Christopher Dodds. He lives a few blocks from my place in suburban Melbourne. We met at a barbecue, our kids attending the same school. We kicked around the usual topics of suburban males – sport and news – when Christopher asked, ‘So what are you into?’
‘Words,’ I said.
‘Yeah?’ Chris raised his eyebrows above his sunglasses. ‘What do you do with them?’
‘Put them in boxes. I mix them up and make clues. What about you?’
‘I’m building a tower,’ he said.
Not that Christopher – or Mashup – is doing all the making. Every syllable joining the tower comes from the passing crowd – that’s the crux of Babelswarm: the structure is built by the online observer. Just like the original Tower of Babel, the monument embodies the hubbub of multiple languages uttered within earshot. As soon as Adam blew his chances in Eden, the paradise of one tongue divided into a hell of many. Poet John Milton imagines Babel as a place of hideous gabble, but as a puzzler looking for new ways to see old words, the blah-blah verges on musical.
Mashup and his virtual mates are composers of a kind. Or decomposers, breaking language down into letters and then rebuilding. Or maybe they’re just plain posers – those disco boots, for starters. But the architecture is staggering.
Nine to five, the artist in Dodds earns his keep as a graphic designer. Gausman is Dr Justin Clemens, a lecturer in English at Melbourne University, while the paisley freak in boots is 3-D artist Adam Nash. To build their spire the team relied on a start-up fund they won in 2007, a creative grant from the Australia Council for $20,000, the country’s maiden sum dedicated to establishing a virtual artwork.
Is it art? What’s art?
Is it a game? You tell me.
A new direction for wordplay? That’s a resounding yes.
French thinker Roger Caillois once put games into four boxes. Crosswords, for example, belong in the Agon box, where games of competition go. (Your opponent in this case is the puzzle’s setter. You strive, you agonise, and hopefully you triumph.) Other games, said Caillois, match the labels of mimicry (games of expression, like charades, or Second Life), alea (games of chance) and ilinx (games of giddiness – which include rolling downhill and bungee jumping). I don’t know how long Caillois took to draft this natural order, but the universe pretty much turned upside down a decade after he died in 1978, when the world of websites and avatars and MUVEs moved the goalposts forever. Instead of Go Fish or tennis or Space Invaders there’s a new habitat alive with risk, thrill, struggle: a meta-game, as eggheads call Second Life. Or as Clemens/Gausman prefers, ‘The game itself forces you to decide about what sort of game it is.’ And that’s just a corner of cyberspace, one microcosm inside the new cosmos. In the world of puzzling, the changes have been equally profound. The rise of ‘crogs’ (or ‘crossword blogs’) alone has turned the black-and-white art into Technicolor.
FEEDBACK LOOPS – blogosphere and containers
When Michael Sharp started a blog back in 2006 he didn’t know what a blog was. Talking to the New York Times, he confessed, ‘It sounded like something that might be cool to develop in relation to a comics course I was teaching.’
Sharp also teaches noir fiction and seventeenth-century literature at New York’s Binghamton University, and, just like S1 Gausman, this hip academic plumped for an alias when braving the new frontier, going with the hardboiled-sounding alias of Rex Parker just in case the online caper floundered. No danger there. After five years, Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle scores 10,000 hits a day, with as many people coming to enjoy the Sharp humour as to peek at an answer. In pre-web days, the major dilemma was pen versus pencil; now, that question is more about brain versus Google. If you need to crack that final clue – do you go surfing? Hundreds do, if Rex’s hit rate is any guide. A great many of his first-time callers have stumbled on the site by virtue of a clue-search. Going by traffic patterns, the seekers clearly liked what they found.