Puzzled

by David Astle

  That said, not every solver will want your guts for garters over a mental-health allusion. Or so I must presume if one Herald letter is any guide. My crossword that week must have been extra-twisted, inspiring a solver to submit his thoughts: ‘Having contemplated DA’s cryptic crossword of last Friday, I am yet again uncertain whether he is a genius or a schizophrenic.’

  RECIPE PRECIS: HIDDENS

  The hidden signal infers inclusion, or a smuggled entity, though the most frequent signal is some. (See other possibles below.) As an added hint, the fodder holding your hidden answer can often betray itself by an air of strangeness, like Chicago gold storing agog or select rice, electric.

  accommodating, amid, among, bear, contribute to, harbour, inside, integral to, keep, lodgers, nurse, part, partly, protects, sandwich, stowaway, tenants, within

  REVERSE HIDDENS

  As with most other clue types, such as charades and containers, the reversal element can spice the recipe. (We look at pure reversal clues in Chapter 25.) Here are two reverse hiddens from my own kitbag. Notice the dual signposts of inclusion as well as backspin:

  Some footnotes wrote up western sidekick = TONTO

  Catch retro Op Art near lodging = ENTRAP

  QUIZLING 11.1

  What classic musical holds the word IN four times in its title?

  QUIZLING 11.2

  Hidden in the sound-grab below are two whole names from the one pursuit. Namely?

  ‘When it comes to Tassie salmon, I case less than 50 kilos,’ utters the fishmonger. ‘Mind you, I expect albacore fillets, which rise vertically in sales over the winter, to increase tenfold in volume.’

  QUIZLING 11.3

  If SLANG hides within TEEN’S LANGUAGE, can you compose a terse definition of each word or name below that also embodies the consecutive letters of each example? BALSAM (6,6), say, could lead to HERBAL SAMPLE.

  CALLAS (7,4)

  TALC (5,8)

  CREDO (6,5)

  EVIL (4,4)

  STORM (7,2,7)

  IMMERSING (8,7)

  CHAPTER 12

  Partial set closer?! (3.)

  ‘My smmr hols wr a CWOT. B4, we used 2g02 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :-0 kids FTF. ILNY, its a gr8 plc.’

  That’s how a London teen began her English essay in 2003. No further details of the school or girl’s ID were provided, which makes most journos suspect an urban myth. But the snippet was posted (and translated) on the BBC website, only to be picked up by other news services across the globe.

  For text newbies, here’s a translation: ‘My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend and their three screaming kids face to face. I love New York. It’s a great place.’

  Great yarn too, no matter the veracity, since anyone over thirty seems to fear the rise of text-speak. John Humphrys, a British broadcaster, compares texters to so many Genghis Khans. ‘They are destroying [our language]: pillaging our punctuation, savaging our sentences, raping our vocabulary.’

  John Sutherland, a London professor of Modern English Lit, has observed that text derives from ‘tissue’ in Latin, making textese like ‘writing on Kleenex. One blow, then throw. Snot-talk …’.

  Luddites turn to the same old rhetoric. Since when did BAG mean busting a gut, they ask. Or JAM mean just a minute? Texting, they despair, is 2M2H (too much to handle).

  BSF – but seriously folks – English has a history of mutation. For an ancient corpus the dear old girl is remarkably limber. Textese is not another language, but proof of our language’s adaptability. Contriving a cluster like L8RG8R for ‘later gator’ is not the end of the world, but dizzying invention, and IABF.

  Steady on – what does IABF mean exactly? I’m A Big Fan, of course. LHID, you say. Like Hell It Does. And here we have the crux of txt. LME: Let Me Explain.

  Ironically, all this talk of reduction is exaggerated. Skimming txt glossaries you’ll come upon logograms (clusters using symbols and letters – like L8RG8R), acronyms (LOL) and initialisms (like OMG, where the abbreviation – for Oh My God – doesn’t offer a pronounceable entity). Weirder entries include NALOPKT (‘not a lot of people know that’) and BOSMKL (‘bending over, smacking my knee, laughing’), which seem cool yet have as much chance of reaching the next decade as a typewriter.

  The key to survival is handiness. Txt will see the clumsier stuff die out and the neater novelties flourish. LOL is a lock-in, now listed in the Oxford Dictionary. But the minute that BOSMKL requires a footnote, or loses sizzle, it’s toast.

  English may seem ravaged by all this thumb-talk, but the mother tongue has long been riddled with abbreviations and spelling deviations. Starting this chapter, your hackles may have risen when reading of the girl’s ‘smmr hols’, but was your fury matched by my mention of the BBC, journos or ID? Less likely, I’m thinking. So how do you cope with the diminutive terms exam and pram, vet and fridge? And if you’re still taking a puritan stance, have you ever fallen for the moral filth of RSVP or BYO? Anglo speakers have been crafty since the year dot, quick to find new means of moulding language. If pianoforte is unwieldy, then let’s agree on piano, and the band plays on.

  Or maybe your anguish is less about shrinkage and more to do with the poverty of a texter’s vocab. Sorry, vocabulary. If so, chillax. A study mounted by Coventry Uni in 2006 discovered that a texting talent reveals a positive link to literacy among young learners. In Melbourne, a kindred study in the same year found SMS can also boost the language skills of less literate students. In other words, U need to have a solid grasp of English in order 2 play with it.

  Noah Webster, the editor of America’s first comprehensive dictionary, in 1825, was a texter before his time. His driving goal was to make spelling logical. In a stroke, Webster turned DIALOGUE into DIALOG and MOULD into MOLD, etc. (OK, so Noah didn’t get his wish with TUNG for TONGUE, or SOOP for SOUP, but he tried.)

  Telegrams were delivering equal havoc around the time of Webster’s death in 1843. (It’s only natural that as soon as word tally became a matter of dollars, the message tended to shrink.) Resourceful Scrooges jammed their words together – like tomorrownight – or boiled them down – like sd for said – to minimise the bottom line.

  In many ways, last century’s telegrams are this century’s text messages – and language will weather both storms. Before too long we’ll see which ‘textonyms’ deserve to survive and which will RIP.

  Crossword-makers play a minor part too, choosing the abbreviations to warrant a place in a clue. Mag in our last container seemed a fair card to play, just as our current answer, another abbreviation, is familiar to everyone. You can tell the answer is a shrunken term by the numbering (3.), the full stop flagging the reduction. Would it help if I said the answer’s already appeared in this chapter, minus the optional full stop? Or maybe we should first sound out what the clue’s other punctuation is doing. In short, WTF is ‘?!’ all about?!

  SHORT IS SWEET – ? & ! and &lit clues

  Twitter. Haiku. Slogan. Txt. The common thread is brevity, distilling a message to its gist. You’ll recall those prototype clues from our last chapter, the tall tales of damsels and knights. Each sample owned over ten words, a modern mouthful. With shades of the old-time cable sender, the current clue-setter works on the principle that short is sweet.

  The longest clue in the whole Master Puzzle has just nine words, while nine others own four words or fewer. Such numbers highlight a cryptic law – be succinct. Which isn’t the same as be bleeding obvious. Where telegraphers slashed words to save pennies, they did so at the risk of ambiguity. We compilers embrace a similar discipline, cutting the waffle, yet all the while pursuing ambiguity.

  If I say autopsy chopping and you think anagram, rather than a hidey-hole for PSYCHO, then my job is done. Gemini in the Guardian composed a stylish hidden in early 2008, writing:

  Worth reading – gripping yarn (6)

  Four words only and the surface sense sublime. Mis
leading too, as I spent an age mentally browsing airport novels, wondering which blockbuster was the answer. None was. Gripping, of course, is the hidden signpost, and THREAD the hidden answer.

  So what about 17-Down? The one with ?! for an ending? What’s that all about? Let’s take it one mark at a time.

  Remember, a chapter back, how we found a question mark tailing the CHIN clue: Hitchcock’s memorable double feature?

  In this clue the punctuation signals a fresh perspective. Forget films – focus on flab. Often a question mark equates to the vaudevillian wink, a pun alert directed at the audience. Take this clue for HERB GARDEN: Place to make a mint?

  Question marks can also suggest a playfulness in the definition, asking the solver to give that element greater leeway. Here’s an example:

  British celebs George and Peter made hot cakes? (11)

  The celebs in question for this charade recipe are stars of the 1960s, namely George Best and Peter Sellers, or BEST + SELLERS = hot cakes.

  Consult any dictionary and you won’t find bestseller defined as hot cake. Here the question mark acts as a kind of idiom-alarm. Punctuation underlines the setter’s licence.

  Exclamation marks, on the other hand, declare a different mischief. And here we get our first peek at the ‘&lit’ clue, an odd label for a rare achievement. The term was coined by Ximenes, drafter of the first cryptic rule book, and applies to any clue where the wordplay not only suggests the answers but also defines the answer, literally. Here’s an exquisite &lit from US master Henry Hook:

  Insane Roman! (4)

  Despite its brevity, this is a hidden &lit where the camouflage doubles as definition. Look in -sane Roman and you’ll uncover NERO, the insane Roman. Dovetailing the signpost – in – with the hidden fodder – sane Roman – is inspired, an embedded style of signposting. The exclamation mark is etiquette, warning solvers of the trickery. Whenever you see an exclamation mark, especially tagging a terse clue, consider the likelihood that words serve both demands of the cryptic clue, wordplay and definition all rolled into one. Not always, of course – but the chance is there. Here’s another &lit hidden, drawn from my own archive:

  He’s smart in a mischievous vein! (6,4)

  Vein here alludes to a sequence of letters, such as a vein of gold. Chip away the excess and you’ll hit MARTIN AMIS, the smart and mischievous writer.

  As top of the cryptic pyramid, &lits deserve their own chapter at least. But right now it’s more important to make the quick intro, and warn you against treating &lit as a recipe unto itself. The tag is better viewed as an ideal, with any recipe capable of being involved. In this chapter we have the hidden &lit. A glance at the Master’s unsolved clues, and seeing three more exclamation marks in waiting, suggests we have more &lit recipes looming – perhaps. With that treat in mind let’s return to the clue at hand:

  Partial set closer?! (3.)

  Partial is a nimble word, meaning both biased and incomplete: the perfect guise for a hidden signpost. Partial payment, the phrase, could hint at MEN, lying inside payment, just as GIST may result from partial magistrates. So what part do we need to extract to solve 17-Down, the linchpin holding the pattern together? To find the answer, you’ll need nerve and know-how, etc.

  Because ETC is exactly that – a partial set closer. An abbreviation of the longer Latin phrase, the word is partial for being shortened, just as you’re likely to borrow the term as a rambling set closer. And there it is, ETC, enveloped by its own definition, with partial wearing two cryptic hats: signpost and accomplice in the answer’s definition.

  Txters could well admire the clue’s brevity, while the answer itself is the king of space-savers. In this expanding universe of abbreviation, ETC is da bomb, that shortened phrase made to keep any list from exceeding its measure. In the spirit of ETC, let’s quit this chapter early.

  EXTERNAL HIDDENS

  We’ve met orthodox hiddens, and reverse hiddens. The third member of the clan is the external hidden, where the answer lies on the edges of the fodder phrase – much in the vein of a MAD magazine’s fold-in. Hardly common, but still a formula you may encounter. Below are two from my own archive. Notice how both rely on a signpost (fringes, bordering on) that encourages you to look on the edges of things:

  Glad social fringes are moving slowly = GLACIAL

  Reserve bordering on Timorese validity? = TIMIDITY

  HALL OF FAME: HIDDEN

  Some want it left? Right! (5) [Neo, FT]

  Shy bride holds cross (6) [Henry Hook, US]

  Some medicines supplied for cold (7) [Henry Hook again]

  One more helping of tea (not herbal) (7) [Flimsy, FT]

  Sign used by vendors everywhere (7) [Times 8531]

  Rubric ‘abracadabra’ revealing old curiosities (4–1-4) [Brendan, Guardian]

  SOLUTIONS: title, hybrid, iciness, another, endorse, bric-a-brac

  QUIZLING 12.1

  And on the subject of texting, what two eight-letter words of the opposite meaning share the text combo 7–3-5–3-2–8-3–3?

  QUIZLING 12.2

  In cryptic terms, what major ice-cream chain can be said to have a hidden AGENDA?

  QUIZLING 12.3

  If 2/1 = seduce,

  7/3 = contest,

  9/2 = clear,

  does 3/4 = gold, knot or coral?

  Double

  Meanings

  CHAPTER 13

  Giant flower shop online (6)

  For a good part of 1988 I knew warfare backwards. Over spring, I caught the train to Canberra a few times and spent my weekend cooped up in the Australian War Museum, poring over medals and photos, xeroxing telegrams.

  My job description was Fact-checker and Caption Writer for a series entitled Australians at War. Stretching from Gallipoli to Vietnam, the books were a Time-Life project packaged by John Ferguson, a publishing house occupying a reborn terrace on Foveaux Street, near Sydney’s Central Station.

  John had published Marzipan Plan, my first novel, back in 1986. I’m not sure why. Fiction was hardly his forte. Marzipan sold modest numbers and somehow made the national shortlist for the Miles Franklin Award. Six months later a film offer appeared, and fell over.

  Moral of the story? You can’t build an empire on almond paste. Fresh off campus, I deemed myself a novelist when really I was a puzzle-maker with a bent for storytelling. Read the small print on my BA Communications and you’ll guess that majors in journalism, creative writing and Samuel Beckett were hardly geared to pull an executive salary. After a brush with drama teaching, my sole income for most of that period came from crosswords, which kicked off in 1983 at the Herald, followed by the daily Wordwit puzzle a few years later. That was it. No mortgage, no car, but enough to finance a meander round Europe, then later South America. Thanks to wordplay I’d become a professional bum, inventing puzzles at the Gare du Nord, revising clues on Amazon ferries, writing short stories in Patagonia. Three wild years, only to return to Sydney with no career, no address, no money, a sputtering relationship, a deepening recession and a single novel about a mirror maze. At 28 I needed a real job.

  ‘What do you know about war?’ asked John.

  ‘Which war?’

  ‘Take your pick. We need someone who can write.’

  Real experts wrote the manuscripts, yet often the text needed a delousing for jargon. Lay readers might know an F18 from a B52, yet not everyone will be able to distinguish an AK47 from its spot-welded cousin, the AK74. So I went to Canberra; I haunted the armoury; I spoke to top brass at Duntroon Academy. And in between captions I gossiped.

  At least that was the accusation from the team’s production manager. A true believer in books and efficiency, Tracy O’Shaughnessy had no truck for idle chatter, especially when the Battle of Long Tan was two days overdue. ‘Are those captions ready yet?’ she asked, not warmly either, and I told her some guff about clarifying artilleries, and she looked straight through me like the former radiographer she was.

  We couldn’t stan
d each other. I treated John Ferguson Ltd as a playground, a place to exchange one-liners with Julian, a closet librettist. Or I’d flirt with the barista downstairs, or relive great novels with Lesley, the associate publisher who also shared the alcove. Make jokes, not war. My work ethic, after years of sleeping in Latin fleapits, was too mañana for Tracy’s blood. She regularly stomped to my desk with a range of scowls to ask after my copy, which invariably was missing in action.

  ‘Never knew the Nazis were Irish,’ I whispered to Julian.

  ‘Eva O’Braun,’ he said to me, and we chuckled into our coffees.

  On reflection I have no idea what position Julian actually held in the office except to sit beside me and better my gags.

  Anyhow, Saigon fell and the Paris Peace Accords were signed, meaning I was demobbed to a life of crosswords. That’s when Lesley the book-lover asked a favour. Her farm in the Hunter Valley needed a caretaker. ‘Ever used creosote before?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s always a first time.’

  So November was a month of low-key farm work, painting a fence near Wollombi and spraying Zero on blackberry thickets. Two weeks later, Lesley and Tracy arrived, both women on their way to Armidale, four hours further north. Lesley was off to see her daughter, a boarder at the Armidale School, while Tracy was aiming to see her boyfriend, who worked at the same town’s hospital. Tellingly, this overnight stay was the first time that Tracy and I had coexisted outside the office, not a deadline in sight, and we found ourselves talking freely. We argued why saffron was overrated, or how ‘fun run’ was an oxymoron. My own legs were giving me murder thanks to a day of mountain biking. My skin was burnt, and welted with insect bites. While Lesley was engrossed in a long-distance call, Tracy volunteered to scour my calves for ticks, lassoing their heads with a cotton strand and pulling the varmints out.