Puzzled

by David Astle

  Nonetheless the question remains. How does a famous person differ from an oh-yeah-that-guy-in-the-TV-show person? While Sally Heath has rich potential as a container clue, she does fall short on celebrity.

  Jimmy Barnes is another matter. The singer is fair game for puzzling, in Australia at least. To up the temptation, his surname has solid container credentials, being R in BANES, or N in BARES. Jane Mahoney, on the other hand, is even better (HONE in MAY) but her profile can’t rival that of her hubby’s. So when it comes to names as puzzle fodder, what’s the minimal score on the Fame Index? Where does Cosimo end and my Uncle Les, who dabbled in watercolours, begin? And what about the beautiful people themselves? How do they feel being trapped inside the chequered square? We can’t ask Cosimo, but we can consult a guy like Shane Morgan.

  THE V OF VIP – fame factor and career highlights

  Nick Hornby is a well-known writer. About A Boy was a hit film, in league with High Fidelity, and that’s just for kick-off. In puzzle circles, the English writer is A-list, whereas Shane Morgan is off-off-Broadway.

  The difference between the two men – one a best-selling writer from Surrey, the other a battling actor from Sydney – was driven home by a puzzle in 2006. Omega is a jumbo grid blending trivia with current affairs. Arrayed below the puzzle is a picture gallery of seven faces, each one tied to a clue. Photo A, say, may be Nicolas Sarkozy, or Imelda Marcos, or SpongeBob SquarePants, and the solver has to ID the portrait to fill in the answer.

  Fine when the faces are famous, but imagine Shane Morgan’s shock when he opened the paper to see himself as Nick Hornby in Picture E. The gaffe was forgivable when you consider that Morgan was gearing up for a return season of Nipple Jesus, the play adapted from a Hornby short story. Somehow the notable author’s photo had been replaced with the flyer image of the less notable actor who plays Dave the bouncer in the famous one’s play. Mind you, Morgan didn’t begrudge the mix-up, as he wrote to the Herald:

  I had people calling me saying you look nothing like Nick Hornby. I’ve only got slightly more hair than him. But it’s absolutely fantastic – I’m right between Sandra Bullock and the robot from Perfect Match. I’m a couple down from Robert de Niro, so I’m in good company.

  Mistaken ID is one sin. Yet a far greater lapse in the eyes of solvers is the use of almost-celebrities. For Guardian solvers the final straw was FI GLOVER, a broadcaster on Radio 4. Her name appeared in a puzzle composed by Enigmatist, who couldn’t resist the luscious charade of FIG-LOVER. In fact his clue was quite funny if rather long:

  On the evidence of her dietary preferences, she should be a regular broadcaster (2,6)

  As a container clue, LOG chopped in FIVER is another lush choice. But wordplay aside, the gripe among Guardian readers was Fi’s low score on the Star-O-Meter.

  The Times avoids this scenario by recruiting only dead people as answers. Tempting as LEVEL CROSSING may seem to the Times setter, being LESSING outside VELCRO, the container trick is on ice until the Nobel Prize-winning Doris Lessing, born in 1919, pens her last sentence.

  The Herald and most US papers have more elastic limits. American puzzles thrive on the now, throwing astronauts alongside Cosmo Kramer. Veteran actor Rip Torn is realistic about the lifeline his curious name has provided puzzle-makers. As two synonyms of varying tense, Rip Torn is also a tidy length, and thus gets a regular airing amid US clues. ‘Crossword puzzles,’ he once joked in the press. ‘[They] kept my name alive for years!’

  The Australian singer Sarah Blasko is famous in indie circles, a winner of multiple awards and maker of three best-selling albums. But was her profile high enough to warrant a puzzle berth?

  I faced that dilemma in 2008, shaping a grid around the Three Little Pigs. Owing to the offbeat theme, and my four long theme-entries – STICKS AND STONES, STANLEY KUBRICK, STRAWBERRY MARKS, plus YOUR PLACE OR MINE – I had limited scope with the cross-running answers. Trapped in one corner, the best entry to promise escape was BLASKO.

  I tried alternatives, of course. GLASCO is a town in New York State. GLOSSO is a prefix for tongue. Then there was BLASTO, an obsolete arcade game, or PLASMO, a claymation alien from the planet of Monjotroldeclipdoc (I had to look that up), all of which firmed my preference for Sarah B. If her clue was a container it might have read like this:

  Songwriter Sarah to request endless blog coverage (6)

  Or ASK in BLO spells BLASKO. The day the puzzle went to press I anticipated the usual whines about overblown fame, but instead I received an email sent by singer and songwriter Darren Hanlon, a mate of Sarah’s, who wrote:

  On the very day Sarah became immortalised in cluedom it was my phone that was all abuzz with text messages urging me to buy the paper and do the crossword. Until then I had no idea how extensive this indie-rock cryptic society was.

  Though the BLASKO in question had no idea of her inclusion – not yet. Darren’s email told the story:

  Sarah was in a meeting and couldn’t be contacted for hours and when I finally got through she told me to calm down and I said ‘you won’t believe this!’ We met at a cafe to see it for ourselves … I then explained that although she’d already played the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony, gone platinum, programmed RAGE, shook Cate Blanchett’s hand etc. that this was her career pinnacle. She should bask in the moment.

  HALL OF FAME: CONTAINERS

  Face rival carrying flag (6) [Taupi, the Guardian]

  Gun sure to grab attention (7) [Paul, the Guardian]

  Square seen circling square, sort of square (7) [Paul again]

  Cook in boiling water (8) [Rover, the Guardian]

  Stop old leftovers blocking sink (9) [Mass, the Independent]

  Bone from a fish found in tin? (10) [Times 8562]

  SOLUTIONS: visage, firearm, sixteen, irrigate, forestall, metacarpal

  QUIZLING 10.1

  What four colours, three within the spectrum’s red band, each carry the word CAR inside their letters?

  QUIZLING 10.2

  MALTA, the nation, can sit inside FORD to create two adjacent words – formal/tad. What three countries can separately sit inside TOM to create paired words on each occasion?

  QUIZLING 10.3

  Can you ‘isolate’ each Scottish island below within an English word? Arran, say, may lie in arrant, though warrant or rearrange are sounder, since they both encircle the island entirely.

  Iona

  Cara

  Tiree

  Vaila

  Cava

  Barra

  Unst

  Lamba

  Islay

  Danna

  Hiddens

  CHAPTER 11

  Creepy film absorbed in autopsy

  chopping (6)

  Seven FBI trainees, one observer, one island, nine deaths – or maybe I lost count between the drowning and the beheading. When deaths outnumber the ad breaks, the census tends to falter.

  Released in 2002, Mindhunters revives the spirit of Agatha Christie, with steel-shafted arrows replacing arsenic and lace. The reason these ‘seven little Indians’ are stranded on the island in the first place is to solve a mock crime committed by a make-believe scumbag nicknamed the Puppeteer. The weekend is a test of nerve, a simulation that soon turns into the real McCoy.

  In the psycho tradition, each death is accompanied by a broken wristwatch to predict the killing time of the next trainee. Of course, no spree is complete without a prime suspect, a role played by LL Cool J, the eighth member of the party; a Philadelphia detective and former navy SEAL, he’s been assigned to observe how the junior profilers cope with the strain. Older and wiser than his fellow castaways, Lieutenant Gabe Jensen passes the time by tut-tutting the newbies, or solving crosswords.

  So how did the critics cope? One reviewer called the movie a perfect waste of six good watches. From a crossword angle, however, Gabe is good for some solid advice.

  When not chewing a pencil, the cop delivers two zingers. The first is just bad-funny (‘Eeny-meeny-miny
-mo, who’s the next motherfucker to go?’) while the other is the catchphrase of our next two chapters: ‘What is the trap? Where is the trap?’

  For now we enter a maze of traps, where every string of words can hold your answer – or undoing. The hidden clue is a misnomer in some respects, since the answer itself is as plain as day, if only you have the eyes to see it. A trained solver will spot CINEMA sitting in medicine man, but the rookie will need more time in the field. Sir Peter Ustinov and Sophia Loren may be old-time stars in your eyes, but to me they cradle RUST and PHIAL.

  The first clue I ever solved, as you may recall from the Intro, was a hidden: Follow in green suede. Look within and there’s ENSUE, a match for follow. The recipe dates back to the Jazz Age, when English cryptics were testing the unwritten rules. Back then, the hidden clue required neither brevity nor definition, meaning a setter could waffle at length, stashing the answer en route. Check out this clunker from the Daily Telegraph of 1928:

  ‘Thou rebel damsel, do me the favour of tying this turban,’ quoth the knight (hidden) (6)

  Alas, with no hint of meaning, the clue carries several eligible stowaways. With six letters in mind, you could snaffle BELDAM (a woman of advanced years), or SELDOM, or BANQUO (the ghost in Macbeth). Which is right? For the record, the answer was SELDOM. For the good of cryptics, the hidden art has since improved, losing its flab, and gaining definition – in both senses.

  Once their category is revealed, though, hiddens don’t stay hidden for long. Ask any profiler: the brain-strain comes with recognising your suspect. The moment you realise that the killer is the sexy Latina or the crossword dude with the sharp tongue, your chase is over. Okay then, here’s the evidence:

  Creepy film absorbed in autopsy chopping (6)

  To stick with the creep-show concept, let’s say that finding the solution to a hidden means looking out for snipers. To save your neck you need to examine the layout carefully. Lurking behind the furniture is a six-letter word that lazy eyes will miss at first sweep. So step warily.

  Avoid false leads too. If you’re new to the game you may see a word like chopping and suspect the anagram formula. Bang, you’re dead. Wrong move.

  In the same vein, the word absorbed could hint at a container clue. Bang, two shots. Dead twice over.

  What is the trap? Where is the trap?

  Diligence is needed. If you can’t isolate the definition, then unpick the letters. Laborious, yes, but you’d rather be methodical than maggot bait. Gullible souls will glance at Soviet names etc – thinking of Krushchev or Kiev – and fail to notice VIETNAMESE hunched in ambush. You need that savvy to survive this jungle exercise.

  Anagram clues, we know, require a signpost of change. Containers – a signal to protect or inject. Hidden clues are no different, though their pointers are more versatile, with three possible signpost approaches.

  First, the idea of fragmentation. (Keep your eyes peeled for signposts such as some, sample, part or slice.) Here’s a sample:

  Cheese chunk in apricot tart = RICOTTA

  Second, think confinement, akin to one breed of container clue. (For this approach, look out for words like nurse, bound, holding or stocking.) Like this one:

  Monster trapped in filthy drain = HYDRA

  Last, the hidden will play with the idea of clustering. (Watch out for words like sequence, string, train or bunch.) Or something like slab (a clump), as here:

  Drop dolomite slab = OMIT

  With a three-way bet you can see why hiddens are lethal – despite how simple they end up being once you suss out the category. You can spend five minutes staring at a clue, while the whole time the answer’s staring back.

  So what style of hidden is the Master clue? Creepy film absorbed in autopsy chopping. This one clue offers three possible signposts, namely absorbed, absorbed in, or just plain in. Whichever is the right command, look twice at the less familiar phrases. Which is clunkier: creepy film or autopsy chopping? Tucked away in the latter is Hitchcock’s black-and-white classic, ready to join your black-and-white square.

  But wait a minute. PSYCHO may be the answer, the clue works, the letters fit, but what about that cadaver image, all those gory CSI vibes? If solvers want blood and guts, then solvers can rent Mindhunters, right? This argument underpins a famous rule in Clueville. To go there, we need to set the breakfast table.

  SEEMLY MUESLI – public taste and the S-word

  What is the form of diarrhoea in which the food is discharged undigested? (8)

  Hope you weren’t eating. The quick clue above came from a Sunday Age crossword published in 2008 and the answer is the medical obscurity known as LIENTERY. Puzzle-solvers are always thirsting to learn new vocab, yet a clue like this confirms that our thirst isn’t (sorry) bottomless.

  Margaret Farrar, the iconic New York editor, called it the Sunday Breakfast Test. Nobody in their right mind wants to deal with FAECES over porridge. LEUKAEMIA and SODOMY can be added to the list. AUSCHWITZ and AUTOPSY CHOPPING.

  Among the personal papers of Merl Reagle, the only crossword-maker to appear on The Simpsons – more of that later – is a message from Margaret Farrar, dated 1966: ‘Crosswords are an entertainment. Avoid things like death, disease, war and taxes – the subway solver gets enough of that in the rest of the paper.’

  For Will Shortz, Farrar’s eventual successor in the New York chair, the diktat still holds good. In a Q&A with puzzle fans back in 2008, Shortz admitted that, ‘It’s true that URINE has never appeared in a New York Times crossword …’. Public taste has loosened to some degree, though; a 2009 puzzle revelled in a toilet theme, including such entries as LITTLE JOHN and ROYAL FLUSH.

  Going with the flow, I ran with CHAMBER POT in 2007, barely giving the phrase a second thought. Swine flu may be racking Mexico, wars raging in four corners, but invoke the notion of wee-wee or poo-poo in a crossword and you’ll invite a furious letter like my CHAMBER POT harangue. The angry note ended in a kind of haiku:

  ‘Shame, shame, shame.

  Friday’s Herald is now being cancelled.

  Yours in disgust …’

  This was a blip compared to the day in 2006 when Shortz green-lighted a seven-letter word starting with S. Ooh, what word, you’re thinking. Must be SHITFUL or SEXBOMB, or maybe a dosage of grim news like SCABIES or SUICIDE. None of the above. In fact, just to test your breakfast reflexes, I put the S-word in this chapter’s opening page. If the word passed your gaze, then you’re at one with the majority of New Yorkers who saw no reason to complain. But a vociferous few made up for them, decrying the filth of SCUMBAG.

  To most Gen-Xers, a scumbag is a scoundrel, which is how Lynne Lempel clued her entry. For older solvers, the slang refers to a used condom, with scum a quainter synonym of semen. Hardly the trinket you want in your Froot Loops, and Shortz was understandably contrite. In the blogosphere, Lempel herself confessed, ‘I’m dumbfounded – and also just plain dumb, I guess. I was totally ignorant of its vulgar side.’

  Etymology, of course, can be its own booby trap. ORCHID, did you know, derives its name from the testicle, in the same vein as AVOCADO, a previous answer in the mix. As enough time passes, or the root language fades, the potential for offence recedes.

  War, disease, the naughty bits – don’t go there. Not at the breakfast table. Advice ignored by our next three clues, all culled from British sources that had best remain nameless. In recipe order, you’re looking at anagram, container and hidden:

  Incest with boy could be this = OBSCENITY

  Bodily fluid left inside granny, perhaps = PLASMA

  Some fancy stitches employed in pouch=CYST

  Even Alfred Hitchcock, our Psycho director, has suffered low digs at the hands of compilers. This insolent pun was made by Crux in the Financial Times:

  Hitchcock’s memorable double feature? = CHIN

  Going from blue language to grey cells, and staying with the Psycho theme, the moment seems right to visit another taboo. To finish off, let’s meet some vigilantes
, and appreciate the difference between one person’s psycho and another’s Froot Loop.

  LOOSE SCREWS – SANE and mental health

  David Plomley is not a malicious man. This civil engineer is as civil as they come. But not if you ask the good people at SANE. According to this Australian media watchdog, thanks to a crossword in 2008 this DP-person is a prize ratbag.

  SANE is an organisation dedicated to the cause of improving the lot of people affected by mental illness. Speaking as someone with a friend who suffers from a personality disorder, I applaud SANE and its equivalent bodies around the world. There’s no place for derision or discrimination in the realm of mental illness. David Plomley struck that truth head-on when opting for insanity as a crossword theme.

  In 2010, DP ran such entries as troppo, crackers, a screw loose. But the fun wasn’t appreciated by SANE’s media sweep. On their website, the compiler was rebuked under the banner of Crass Crossword, the outrage added to a so-called Stigma File, with office bearers later expressing the group’s disappointment to the editor.

  You can only wonder whether similar groups in the UK made an equal stink when these two anagram clues popped up in the British press:

  Can’t use bananas for fruitcake = NUTCASE

  Loonies entrust doctors = NUTTERS

  Separate from the Sunday Breakfast Test, this is the issue of playing loose with a serious matter, in the same way that PSYCHO (both word and movie) can be overused to the point where fewer people can properly grasp the term. On the SANE website: ‘Media reports frequently confuse “psychosis” (which refers to psychotic mental illness) and “psychopath” (which relates to extreme violence and anti-social behaviour, not mental illness).’ My advice to setters: if you have a splendid clue for BONKERS (and the mind does boggle), I’d suggest BENDERS, BANGERS or BONNETS could fit the grid as snugly.