by David Astle
‘So this is what you do now?’ he said, glancing round the room.
‘This and crosswords. I’m into scripts at the moment.’
‘Plays, you mean?’
‘Dramas. Black comedies. Not a Gaelic verb in sight.’ John’s eyes lit up. ‘You still remember them?’
‘Gae, hae, kae – scary, eh?’
‘You’d be welcome back any time. Melbourne has a very active Scrabble scene.’
‘Nae,’ I smiled, ‘but thanks. It’s great to see you.’
Juanita survived, by the way, and Snowtown was pipped by Ronald Ryan, the last man hanged in Australia. Once the ambulance arrived, Glenda won her contestus interruptus by a comfortable margin, though Holgate and his compatriots seized the trophy, 179 wins to 108. Zingers played across the weekend included MEGAVOLT and HAZINESS, not to mention the usual suspects of WAE, VUG, CWM and DZO.
TOURNEYS WITH A TWIST – crossword slamdowns and Lollapuzzoola
Scrabble is not the only word-game to inspire its own tournament. When Holgate and I first locked horns in the Hakoah Soccer Club, back in 1978, playing JO and QI till the KINE came home, a man named Will Shortz saw a gap in crossword culture.
Shortz of course would go on to edit crosswords for the New York Times in 1993, but his passion for puzzles is lifelong. He’s the only known person to hold a degree in enigmatology, a course he helped construct at Indiana University in the early 1970s, studying the ageless appeal of conundrums. After graduating, Shortz wore several puzzle hats, chiefly on magazines, and then came the dream of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, or ACPT.
When the word went out, Shortz had no inkling how many might attend. But on that first chilly morning in February, 1978, the mercury nudging zero, some 149 diehards appeared with pencils and registration forms. Thirty years later the ACPT draws 700 competitors, the event so big it’s recently been forced to shift from Stamford to Brooklyn.
Now in his fifties, dapper as ever, Shortz still hosts the gig, explaining the ordeal to competitors: they do six crosswords in the first day, then there’s a championship play-off on Sunday – across three divisions – to see who wears the chequered tiaras. Tyler Hinman is the boy most likely, bagging his first of five Open titles when just 20. To see this guy attack a grid is to watch a house being built in time lapse, every last piece thrown into place. (In 2006, the movie Wordplay captured this feat, as well as shadowing three other super-solvers.) Tyler has an IT degree and now works as a Google programmer. To quote Will Shortz, ‘Not all smart people solve crosswords, but all crossword solvers are smart.’
Yet ACPT is not the only tournament on the radar. We’ve already read about the Telegraph showdown, while The Times of London has sporadically run a tournament since 1970. Roy Dean, the first winner, not only won a silver cup but an ongoing job as compiler.
Yet the joker in the pack has to be Lollapuzzoola, a US event first staged in 2008. The newborn contest doesn’t just boast a remarkable link to Scrabble, but also to Twister, the game suggested by our current Master clue.
Ryan Hecht and Brian Cimmet are ‘two nerds with microphones’. They produce an indie podcast called Fill Me In, a weekly look at the New York Times crossword. Ryan is an actor and Brian a pianist. Each has two cats plus an understanding wife. And a few years back, they hatched a thing called Lollapuzzoola, a crossword tournament with a dash of lunacy. The event is held in a retrofit church in Queens, New York, a sacred site to anyone with a love of words.
The Community Methodist Church on 35th Avenue is where Alfred Mosher Butts invented Lexiko in the 1930s. If that means nothing to you, consider that the game was later renamed Criss-Crosswords, before being christened Scrabble in 1948. Remarkably, Alfred’s old Scrabble club still congregates in a room off the nave. The street itself is nicknamed Scrabble Avenue, while the actual sign reads like a homage: 35 t1h4A1v4e1n1u1e1.
The maiden Lollapuzzoola featured a crossword by Barry C. Silk that dwelt on the Scrabble theme, with MAGAZINE RACK and ROOFING TILES referencing the church’s history. Another challenge required an organist to play snatches of tunes, with LA BAMBA and SEND IN THE CLOWNS serving as central answers. Yet Mike Nothnagel had the craziest idea, making a puzzle called Compromising Positions.
Solvers initially struggled to connect the entries – KNOT THEORY and HIT THE SPOT. But then they noticed the smaller words sprinkled in the flanks, words like BLUE, LEFT, HAND and GREEN. Sound familiar? As Ryan Hecht explains, ‘We used those terms as starting positions for the Twister game. The top three finishers of the puzzle got to play for a chance to win one hundred bonus points.’
According to one eyewitness, Michael Smith, alias Philly-Solver in cyberspace, ‘Some nimble minds were not as nimble of body.’ Crosswords may merit their reputation for keeping our brains in shape, but there’s nothing like gardening, swimming, yoga or Twister to maintain all our other parts.
To stretch the segue, and turn back to puns, be aware that this recipe may yet make the greatest demands on your agility. Where most clues bend letters, the pun contorts whole concepts. If I say BOXER, do you think pug or pugilist? Maybe the answer is otherwise. A boxer could mean a packer (one who boxes), an undertaker, a trifecta punter, a comic-strip artist, even a crossword-maker, such is the formula’s elasticity.
Then to push you further, as you can see from our current clue, is the mystery of the ellipsis, that line of dots connecting our Twister conundrum to the previous 29-Across. How do the dots work? I’ll explain …
TWISTED THINKING – puns and the ellipsis …
There’s a fail-safe way to separate the tyro solver from the pro, and it boils down to what question comes up when crosswords are discussed. Here are the five tells:
What bloody language are they written in? (non-solver)
Is every clue an anagram? (non-solver with potential)
How can you pick the definition and the other bit? (promising beginner)
My favourite clue was XYZ. What’s yours? (steady achiever)
How do those three dots work at the end of a clue? (experienced achiever with aspirations)
Of course, other questions will get asked. Among the FAQs are these perennials, my standard answer attached:
Which comes first – the words in the grid or the clues? (‘Either/or, usually words then clues.’)
How long does it take to make a crossword? (‘An hour to interlock, then a few more hours to fine-tune the clues. Themed grids usually take longer.’)
How the hell did you get into the whole business? (‘Gae, hae, kae … sorry, what did you say?’)
To return to that curious string of dots, what editors call an ellipsis, I have a simple message. Relax – the dots are overrated. They loom too large in the mind of many anxious solvers. Tim Moorey, author of How to Master the Times Crossword, puts it in plain English. The ellipsis, he writes, ‘is merely a way of connecting two clues (sometimes more) to present a longer than normal clue sentence.’
Hence the pair of dotted clues in our Master Puzzle, 29-Across and 30-Across, can be dovetailed to read: A weir worker set Twister for openers? But since we’ve already solved that same charade for ADAMANT, it’s safe to say that each linked fragment can be tackled on its lonesome.
Usually. That’s the unstated qualification to Moorey’s simple message, since two clues can be joined for other reasons. In the Master example the link is purely grammatical. For ADAMANT, we have a clue that seems to invite more info: A weir worker set. Set what, you ask. The clue is ripe to be extended, and 30-Across can oblige, as the pun is lean and can finish what 29-Across began, completing the sentence that ADAMANT started.
Elsewhere, the link may be an overlap, where a definition element might be shared. Here’s a pair from my own swag:
Issue shocking female … (5)
… setter, objective on the outside (4)
The first clue is a basic anagram made scarier by the dots. SUSIE is the answer, with the word female the definition. Importantly, this same wor
d flows into the succeeding clue. So here we need to read this clue as Female setter, objective on the outside. ENID is the female we seek, since setter is I (the crossword-setter) enclosed in END, or objective. This way, the word female serves two clues as definition.
Tim Moorey, then, is right. The ellipsis marries two partclues into a whole, but this union can be based on grammar, or mutual definition. Or, as our next examples show, a mutual slice of wordplay:
Sterile noble discussed … (6)
… business party with right man in bull market? (7)
Here homophones get a call-up, with BARREN your first solution, an echo of BARON, or noble. The audio signpost, discussed, then serves the second clue where we need to utter a synonym of business (MATTER). The rest comes from party (a frequent indicator of DO), plus R (right), which gives us MATADOR, or man in bull market.
And that, judging by your groan, is a pun. Keeping to the mantra of simple connection, let’s treat our current ellipsis as the bridge in a halved sentence, rather than as a signal of any word overlapping. Ditching the dots from our mind then, we’re faced with the clue:
Twister for openers? (8)
The question mark, we know, points to mischief, as much as the Twister arrow will get your body stretching. So what twists? What opens? Pun clues should provoke those questions. Don’t get trapped by tunnel vision. Think outside the box. If BOXER can be CRATER, or SHUTTER a gate, so can TWISTER be a DOORKNOB, and soon you’ll find whole new hatches opening within. Knock-knock.
HALL OF FAME: PUNS
Candy eaten after chin-ups? (3) [Ben Tausig, US]
Punishment that’s capital to a point (8) [Paul, Guardian]
Cultivated swimmers are spotted here (5,4) [Times 8530]
The entertainment here is taking off (5,4) [Alberich, FT]
Sluggish transport? On the contrary! (6,5) [Times 7940]
Ashes held in this? (4–7) [Times 8133]
SOLUTIONS: Pez, sentence, trout farm, strip club, bullet train, tree-hugging
QUIZLING 24.1
Each line combines two definitions of the same word. One points to the straight version, the other the pun version that needs to be said aloud. No room for pigs to suppress = STIFLE (STY-FUL). Be careful – the straight clue can come first or last.
Prohibit blue cradle? (7)
Greek god minus ‘omburg (5)
Genuine goose spin (10)
Newsreader’s guide to traffic jam (7)
Pub ghost examiner (9)
Spotted seabird wine (8)
Trivial broth umpire (11)
QUIZLING 24.2
If the surfie is wiped out, and the baker pie-eyed, how drunk did these other four get at the gala? Some have more than one answer (as indicated in parentheses). You may well create your own fitting descriptions.
Meteorologist (1) Panel beater (3) Taxidermist (2) Soldier (3)
QUIZLING 24.3
Can you reconnect these 14 fragments to spell a pun-ful cosmological question? No mixing is needed.
AN CH DZ EC EL EN HM
IA IC NS TO TR UL WO
Reversals
CHAPTER 25
Snub regressive outcast (5)
Till now we’ve been dealing in English and the secret language of words – anagrams, codes and the rest. But in these next two chapters we’ll be talking in a tongue called Hsilgne, flipping everything we know and seeing what words reveal in reverse.
Spun around, words can declare wonders. WOMBATS, say, must need their claws to STAB and MOW. Two more animals, ELK and CAT, can U-turn to spell TACKLE, while LAPTOPS are popular with dogs, since SPOT, a common mutt, lies tail-to-nose with PAL, a popular pooch food.
That connection was captured by an Australian racehorse called SIR LAPFONAC, which managed to run a few events at country tracks before stewards woke to the reverse logic and demanded a name change. And some years back, in the same vein, a greyhound did the rounds of Florida with the faux-Aztec name of CILOHOCLA.
Without a stick of proof, I firmly believe that C. S. Lewis coined his mystic kingdom NARNIA owing to the realm nestling in a reversed MOUNTAIN RANGE.
In the Greek alphabet, OMEGA is a paradox, pairing as it does AGE with MO, an eternity sleeping beside a nanosecond. Meanwhile IOTA, a word that also means a tiny piece, can swap initials to be become the equally small ATOM in the rear-view mirror.
Felons, be warned. If running from the law, don’t run backwards. BAN, a word for outlaw, only offers NAB, a word for arrest. Later, feeling loveless in GAOL, you’ll find cold comfort in forfeiting love (or O) and reflecting on LAG, a vernacular word for prisoner. Appeal against your sentence and you may be NULLIFIED OR REVOKED (which cradles OVERRODE, a third synonym, in reverse).
What was your crime, by the way? Did you try to sneak past the GATEMAN with a bogus NAMETAG, or SCAM MACS at a swap meet? Are you a YOB BOY with a DAB of BAD, or do you LIVE EVIL? Perhaps you secreted ACID, the illegal drug, inside the legal version, MEDICATION? Maybe you chanced on the drug-lab formula, where POT can be switched to make a harder drug:
POT reversed = TOP
TOP = first-class
First class = CRACK
No less bizarre, PAT can change its central vowel to morph into PET, a synonym. Or take a spin, becoming TAP, a second synonym.
If we shift our focus to food and drink we’ll find that the onion guards an amazing truth. A member of the BULB family, this tear-jerker reveals BLUB on the rebound. A Chinese waiter, meanwhile, asking if you’d like the WONTON to be served, may well invite the soup in reverse – NOT NOW. And should you be drinking at table, as laudable an Australia winery as DRAYTONS may be, I’d be wary of its flipside, since a red or white may be rendered green.
For Bob Smithies, a young lad growing up in wartime Lancaster, a similar retro-moment took place in his local fish-and-chip shop. There, Bob was waiting for his haddock when he spotted GARTONS, the vinegar on the counter, and giggled. Dangerously, you’d have to say, since the impulse to manipulate words soon developed into Bob’s fixation, the boy growing up to become one of the trickier Guardian setters, a man known as Bunthorne.
As Orpheus can tell you, there’s a genuine risk in looking backwards. You may stumble on wonders and go seeking more. As a kid doing chemistry I loved the fact that TIN sits forwards in PLATINUM and backwards in NITROGEN. In geography, you can look at LEBANON and intuit Cain, since he was the NON-ABEL of the Eden story; or realise that a landscape as dry as the GOBI spells ‘one wetland’ when lying east to west. You can come to see that BALSA, which is light, can be flipped to be A SLAB, which isn’t.
Years later, living in Melbourne, I was riding on tram with a mate, both of us dressed in tuxedos, bound for a fund-raiser in the city. Maybe the novelty of the outfit sparked the question, my friend asking, ‘Seriously, what made you get into puzzles?’
By way of answer I pointed to the window. A decal was pasted across the glass, saying YARRA TRAMS. ‘Read that backwards and that’s what we’re wearing.’
DEN RUT – reversal clues
Dylan Thomas knew the charms of Hsilgne, creating the town of LLAREGGUB for his radio play Under Milk Wood. In the same year, 1954, jazz composer Sonny Rollins released a tune of fast samba patterns called Airegin. The retro-virus was in the air. Even Dracula, in a movie of similar vintage, opts for the alias of Count Alucard to put the villagers’ fears to rest.
If it’s good enough for poets and the undead, then it’s good enough for puzzle-makers. Already, by default, you’ve met half a dozen reversal signposts in the first section, all those words suggesting a direction switch. These include turn, spin, flip, and several combinations using back, like the opener in the batch below. The first two clues stem from my own puzzles, while the next two come from the desk of Bob Smithies (alias Bunthorne) and a setter named Cincinnus:
Corporal punishment goes back (5)
Monstrous female gets abstemious rule rejected? (6)
Dr Seuss is involved with raising children (6)
A bit of advice about depression (3)
To crack the first clue, you need to reverse PARTS (or goes) to make STRAP, the corporal punishment.
Once again, looking at the second clue, the reversal signpost (rejected) is planted last, casting suspicion on monstrous, or monstrous female, as the definition, while the middle section must be the fodder to switch.
Could OGRESS work? What about MEDUSA? Flipping the letters, ASUDEM feels warm, but still doesn’t reflect the wordplay – gets abstemious rule rejected …
GORGON any good? Spin it and there’s your breakthrough: NO GROG. The question mark is the customary warning of the extended leap, a whole phrase on the turn rather than a solo word.
So what is Bunthorne asking us to turn in the third example? Let’s take a closer look: Dr Seuss is involved with raising children (5).
Scan the clue and guess what word is signalling reversal? Raising seems the prime suspect, but how does raising denote backtracking? The answer lies in the vertical, as this was crafted to supply a Down solution, and the rules of reversal vary depending on whether a word is lying or standing in the gird.
Physically, it makes sense. If you consider a wordplay block as a caterpillar, lying right-to-left in the grid, then the bug needs to retreat, walk backwards or turn around, to become a fully-grown answer. Likewise, if the caterpillar is traipsing down the grid, then the bug has to head up, go north, scale or mount to metamorphose into your answer.
The second crucial point about Bunthorne’s clue is formula. Unlike the first two samples, this is a hybrid clue, blending the categories of reversal and hidden. Raising, you now know, alerts us to the idea of an upward reversal. Couple this with the clue’s central phrase – involved with – and the hidden mode enters the frame.