Puzzled

by David Astle

  AMAZINGLY FEW DISCOTHEQUES PROVIDE JUKEBOXES. (40)

  SIX BOYS GUZZLING RAW PLUM VODKA QUITE JOYFULLY. (40)

  JAIL ZESTY VIXEN WHO GRABBED PAY FROM QUACK. (36)

  QUICK WAXY BUGS JUMP THE FROZEN VELDT. (31)

  Constructors pay similar heed when making grids. You won’t be able to squeeze every letter into a puzzle, but SQUEEZE and PUZZLE sure help. That’s why I jumped at VENEZUELA. The homophone idea was fun, and as a solver I value any grid that lobs a few high-scorers (using the Scrabble term) into critical junctions.

  Nothing worse, wrestling with a puzzle, to run into SENSELESS and TSE-TSE at every turn, timid words built entirely of soft vowels and consonants. The music analogy is the songwriter who can’t escape the cosiness of you/blue and me/see.

  Amy Reynaldo, the Crossword Fiend blogger, labels the richest alphabetical specimens as Scrabbly, an adjective I’m happy to spread. In fact, with a bit of luck, Scrabbly may end up being the word Amy endows to English, a country mile ahead of qerlams.

  RECIPE PRECIS: EXOTICS

  The exotic clue presumes you have a modest grasp of other languages: just the very basics, really, with the various articles (LA, EL, LE, DAS, DER, DIE) as well as other staples, such as JA, OUI, SI and un poco más. While not a recipe, exotic clues will state their target language, sometimes more subtly by naming a city rather than a nationality. Beyond this etiquette, any other foreign word is de trop.

  HALL OF FAME: EXOTICS

  An idée (not fixe) about epic (6) [Cinephile, FT]

  Inaugurate church with articles in Le Figaro (6) [Times 8595]

  Rallying but get a drug for pain? (8) [Alberich, FT]

  Genius taken for a mug in his native land (8) [Sesame crossword, May 2005]

  Here in Paris models posed around homes (9) [Cincinnus]

  Picture the White House for Latinos (10) [Paul, Guardian]

  SOLUTIONS: Aeneid, launch, baguette, Einstein, domiciles, Casablanca

  QUIZLING 21.1

  Israelis know the game as Mapolet – or avalanche. On the other hand, Danes prefer Klodsmajot, alias klutz. In Rio de Janeiro the same game’s nickname translates as earthquaketower, while you and I know it as the Swahili word for build. What game?

  QUIZLING 21.2

  Hip to a new era, the Vatican has converted modern words to old Latin. Can you link apathy, casino, dancing, flirt, gateau and shampoo to their translations below?

  aleatorium, amor levis, capitilavium, ludus saltatorius, placenta farta, voluntatis defectio

  QUIZLING 21.3

  Can you place an Asian currency beside an Asian hardwood to sound out an Indonesian word adopted into English?

  Manipulations

  CHAPTER 22

  Dope doubled his $500 in seven

  days (4)

  Crossword-making is as lucrative as dog-walking. Next time you drive through South Kensington, admiring the homes of the rich and famous, know that puns and homophones didn’t secure the collateral.

  I live in a Californian bungalow, a world away from California, with three bedrooms, two kids, a Labrador cross and a wife whose annual salary, most years, puts my revenue in the shade. Are we happy? Last time I checked. Are we rich? Put it this way: does your house need painting?

  It’s only natural then, that money-making opportunities tend to catch my eye. In finance terms, I’m the dope in our Master clue, a chump aspiring to double his dough in a week, and usually seeing his efforts backfire. Over the years my list has extended to include: teacher, copywriter, deckhand, columnist, mango picker, book reviewer, journalist, proofreader, Tarzanagram.

  It’d be nice if we could tiptoe past that last one, pretend I never mentioned it, but this chapter’s themes of idiocy, money and manipulation insist we go there.

  Say what you like about a puzzle income, but the job has catered to my gypsy disposition. Nowadays the Web has erased the need to be fixed in one spot, though crosswording has enjoyed that bonus for years. If I gathered no moss for most of my twenties, at least I could glean a wage.

  The Herald was good enough to tolerate my itchy feet. In those early Wordwit days, when Ted Validas held the chair, I recruited Mum as go-between. For a year or more, Heather Astle was Lee Starheath, typing my air-mailed clues and sending them to the puzzle department. Bear in mind that these were different times, when an electric Olivetti was the height of technology, and parents were selfless by definition. Of course Mum took a modest cut of salary, plus the perks of personal updates from her eldest boy, slapdash travelogues sandwiched between pangrams and spoonerisms.

  One such letter confessed to playing Tarzan. This was 1983. I was 21, a lunk with more muscles than sense, a fugitive from the European rugby tour. The rest of the team had flown back to Oz, leaving me to travel south to Torquay, the home of Fawlty Towers, to play a season with the town’s local side.

  The set-up was cosy: a new circle of friends, a bedsit with sea glimpses, the puzzle income, but after a while the heater began to swallow 5op coins like movie popcorn. Weekends of lager started to tear holes in the budget, and suddenly my knack for making riddles was not enough to keep the wolf from the door.

  Enter Tarzan. The telegram racket was run by a girl called Helen. Her dog was Lester, and the park where he ran doubled as Helen’s office. When I first responded to the ad in the paper I said I had a preference for gorillagrams, figuring it stood to be warmer. But when Helen insisted that my rugby frame was more in the Johnny Weissmuller mould, we settled on a 60 per cent cut, which was reasonable given that I had to drag my arse through the elements wearing nothing but two chamois as a costume.

  The job was casual in every sense. Periodic phone calls, maybe twice a month, told me where and when I needed to appear. Thankfully, I could keep my Speedos on underneath the loincloth, but in zero degrees, an icy wind blowing off the Channel, that was small comfort. Hence the manipulation. To every gig I took my lucky pair of woollen gloves. To get from A to B on a second-hand moped, I first wore the gloves to save my fingers from falling off. On reaching B, I rolled the gloves into a ball and stashed them down my jungle briefs to save face, so to speak. Zero degrees can take its toll on a man, even Tarzan. I felt obliged to maintain appearances on behalf of the hero’s franchise.

  My debut gig was for a woman called Pamela. All I knew was that she was turning forty, she was having dinner at the Teignmouth Hotel in Teignmouth and the whole thing was a surprise.

  Riding the moped, my plastic overalls keeping out the sleet, I started reviewing all the other idiotic schemes I’d attempted. Neck and neck with Tarzan would have to be an early TV appearance, a quiz show back in Australia. (That’s the other reason QUIZ is in the grid, but I was too embarrassed to tell you.) Sale of the Century in 1981, no question, was my lowest public moment.

  Getting selected was less about IQ than having an interesting job. Who cares if you don’t know the capital of Chad, you make crosswords, yeah? That’s quirky. Good fodder. So the audition staff found me a slot and I went home to memorise the wives of Henry VIII, only for disaster to strike.

  In ten years of playing contact sport I’d hardly suffered a scratch. But on the eve of my quiz appearance I copped a flying boot to the eye, requiring thirty stitches. I rang the producers first thing on Monday and told them I’d had a mishap but thought I was all right to appear. In hindsight that was optimistic.

  I gave the make-up girl a heart attack. She did her best to camouflage the surgical wire, slapping pancake on the Mercurochrome, using wax pencils to replace my missing eyebrow, but nothing in her bag of tricks could remove my concussion. Again, I was the dope trying to double his loot – and lost. My reflexes were shot. Those few times I managed to beat the buzzer I thought Jonas Salk created Peanuts and Jane Austen invented the pneumatic tyre. It was a nadir.

  Novelty telegrams, by comparison, ran a close second in the Stupidity Stakes. Huddled on the moped, the sleet getting thick, it dawned on me that I had no telegram to deliver. Apart from saying happy
birthday to a stranger, maybe leading the table in song, I was a messenger without a message. After the Tarzan yodel, what did I have? The panic set my crossword knack into overdrive. Think, apeman, think!

  On arrival, the publican led me to a backroom where I peeled off my slicks and clipped on the chamois. I rolled up the gloves and improved my contour. I coughed and warbled to lessen the panic, my mind racing through the pun reserves, trying to compose a piece of wordplay to see me escape this torment unscathed. Pamela, I was told, was in the bistro next door.

  Sound FX: Tarzan howl

  [Crossword-maker in loincloth enters crowded bar. He has no idea what Pamela looks like. He asks the barman, who points to a table by the window. The crossword-maker beats chest, wails to ceiling.]

  Crossword-maker (in Cro-Magnon voice): Me Tarzan, you Pamela. Me swing on vines all day, you divine. Tarzan live in jungle, Pamela tree-mendous. Me created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan digs Pamela …

  It was a train wreck, with three cheers to finish. I gathered my cash, my rags, and didn’t think hanging around for a Guinness was the smartest idea. Besides, the rain was getting heavier, my sniffle was worsening, and I had a crossword to make.

  IS THIS YOUR CARD? – manipulation clues

  Manipulation is a subtle recipe, sneaky, evasive. In showbiz terms, the formula is close magic, the sleight-of-hand stuff you need to see in slo-mo before you can figure out how it works.

  We’ve talked about deletions, where BASIL may lose heart to become BAIL, or a RABBIT can run short to be RABBI. By the same token, containers embrace the idea of insertion, such as GUESS gaining INN to reveal GUINNESS. And soon we’ll enter the reversal realm where words change direction. Yet falling between all these is manipulation. Neither pure anagram nor straight deletion, manipulation is more a tweak, a shuffle of the shells to make you lose the pea.

  The clearest way to explain how this recipe works is to divide the subtle operation into two types – the switch and the swap. At first glance, they may sound like synonyms, but these next two subsections will help you set the styles apart.

  The switch

  Neo in the Financial Times made the first manipulation switch, and the second clue was crafted by a retired Tarzanagram:

  Prison caused change of heart – that’s the aim (4)

  Row ending early for depleted foursome? (4)

  These two are twins, not just in answer lengths, but also in how they operate. For British solvers at least, prison is GAOL. After a change of heart – not with new letters, but a flip-flop of the vowels – you’ll create GOAL, meaning aim.

  The next switch deals with a heteronym. Remember them? Does DOES, say, equal female deer or hairstyles? Here the booby trap is row. I want you to think of the aquatic kind, boosting the deceit by involving a foursome, a common boat quota, but the truth is more about uproar – a RIOT in fact.

  So what does the wordplay tell you? The key phrase is ending early. The ending of RIOT is T. Make that T appear earlier and hey presto: RIOT turns into TRIO.

  Big deal – that’s just an anagram. True, but manipulations are suaver in their moves. Instead of getting you to scramble, they advise you to slide a letter. Or a few letters, like this dark gem from Alberich, also of the Financial Times:

  Cautious and vigilant when leaders advance (9)

  Most readers won’t crack this clue, not cold anyway. It’s hard but beautiful, and worth a look to see the guile of manipulations.

  Leaders advance, the phrase, whispers the idea of nudging two or more letters deeper within a word. The MA in MANOR, say, could advance in line to make NORMA. But what’s the word here that undergoes this change? Well, it’s nine letters long and probably means vigilant.

  That word is ATTENTIVE, though not your final answer. Don’t neglect cautious at the start of the clue, the likely definition. Advance the leaders of ATTENTIVE several slots and TENTATIVE emerges. Tough but beautiful. In fact, we really are paddling in the deep end here, so don’t panic if you can’t get to the bottom of these clue styles.

  Let’s recap. We’ve looked at a letter switch, then a switch of letters plural, leading us on to a third switch option – moving the order of whole words. These two samples will help you to see this wholesale approach, the first courtesy of Paul, the other of yours truly:

  Stand by for armed robbery? On the contrary (6)

  Where silks may embellish space romance? Vice versa (9)

  Treating words like freight cars, these manipulations are asking you to re-shunt the sequence. In both clues, the last two phrases – on the contrary and vice versa – are the signals for this switch. Armed robbery is a HOLD UP. Display the crime on the contrary and you make UPHOLD, or stand by.

  The treachery in the second example is silks. The material, right? Sorta. Here the material is slang for Queen’s Counsels, the highest order of barrister. And where do silks embellish? Try a COURTROOM, which vice versa becomes ROOM/COURT, or space romance, just as the White House can turn into the house white, or an offshoot can shoot off. Which brings us to the second manipulation style.

  The swap

  Maybe the best analogy to help you grasp the difference between the two manipulation modes is to imagine that switches are internal, like two classmates exchanging seats for the school photo. Swaps, on the other hand, are external, where a classmate gives up her chair so that an outside student can join the lesson. Let’s take it back to Tarzan:

  Apeman dumping Liz, finally, for model material (6)

  In equation terms, the clue is saying TARZAN – Z (Liz finally) + T (as in Model T) = TARTAN. Keeping with the ape world:

  Ape altered face and ass (6)

  The equation: MONKEY – M + D = DONKEY.

  Never will you be expected to scramble a word that’s not presented in the clue. Such a sin is known as the indirect anagram. Elusive as manipulations can be, they give you clear pointers to the words you need, and a specific command on how to alter those words.

  That said, this swap style can test your mettle, asking you to intuit the missing word (TARZAN or MONKEY) and then make an external trade. Your latest Master clue does just that:

  Dope doubled his $500 in seven days (4)

  With no cross-letters to build on, this clue is not one you’d readily consider. However, that familiar phrase of seven days can only mean WEEK. Is that the answer? As it happens, yes. But why?

  Cryptic clues are sprinkled with words suggesting letters. T, we’ve just discovered, can be denoted by model, as well as time or bone (T-bone), temperature or tonne. Don’t forget shirt too, as in T-shirt, or junction (T-junction) and true. In our Master clue the shorthand relates to numbers.

  Roman numerals are a clue-maker’s bonanza. Thanks to Caesar and co., a girl like LIV is permanently 54, while MAGNETISM is ‘seating’ rearranged within 2000 (or MM). So what is our fool doing in the Master clue? He has $500, or D. Double that and you get M, the Roman thousand. So how does WEEK play out? Or has the maths lesson fooled you?

  Dope is more than just a ninny. The word is also slang for marijuana. Can you think of another synonym ending in D? (The WEEK theory should help here.) That’s right, WEED. But WEEM is not the solution, let alone a word, so how does that K bob up? The answer lies in business slang, as seen in this sentence: Puzzle making pulls in some 26k per annum, explaining why some compilers need to teach, or write books, or dress up in chamois occasionally.

  RECIPE PRECIS: MANIPULATIONS

  Manipulation clues rely on one of two tricks – the switch or swap. The switch sees one letter changing places, so to speak. If IRAN’s leader is demoted, then RAIN may be the result. No external letter is enlisted; unlike in the other trick, known as the swap, where a letter in a keyword is traded for an outside letter in order to spell the answer. Again, if IRAN has a leadership change, then anything from BRAN to GRAN is a possible outcome. Look for signs to suggest either action – rearranging within, or borrowing from without.

  HALL OF FAME: MANIPULATIONS

>   Child the result had this couple married much earlier (4) [Times 8587]

  External path, first to last (5) [Times 8611]

  Horse and cart back to front? It’s monstrous (5) [Puck, Guardian]

  Canadian province with idiot president, degree going to head (8) [Paul, Guardian]

  Singer from Switzerland replacing German in Bond movie (9) [Cincinnus, FT]

  Acquire site and relocate a pub (3,6) [Gemini, Guardian]

  SOLUTIONS: item, outer, hydra, Manitoba, goldfinch, gin palace

  QUIZLING 22.1

  What simple English word becomes its own past tense once its initial is transferred to the tail?

  QUIZLING 22.2

  Exchanging a letter per step, and mixing the new combination, can you progress from EMBRYO to FOETUS? But wait, there is a mild complication – you need to go via MOTHER. (Remarkably, our own five-step operation includes a slang for man, and ‘to rear a child’, with the other step inferring rest.)

  QUIZLING 22.3

  What four-letter word for layer

  Becomes another player

  In the laying art

  Once L’s the new heart?

  Puns

  CHAPTER 23

  Swinger’s bar for partner pickups? (7)

  Knock-knock.

  Who’s there?

  Sarah.

  Sarah who?

  Sarah reason you’re not laughing?

  Maybe because puns are the lowest form of wit. But if that’s true, doesn’t that make puns the foundation of all humour?