by McSweeney's
EXCESSIVELY DIFFICULT CROSSWORD
ACROSS
1. Leaning Tower town mentioned in “The Sixth Borough”
5. Businesses: Abbr.
8. Scarlett of Gone With the Wind
13. Biblical garden
14. Tweety Bird’s retreat
15. Place where some letters are sent
16. The ____ Piper of Hamelin
17. Employ
18. Literary device used in “Monster” by calling the monster’s voice “a dead tree full of bees”
19. Type of club the main characters belong to in “Sunbird”
22. Like eggs on Easter
23. In the past
24. Agreement at sea
26. Canoes and kayaks, e.g.
29. Final sentence in “Monster”
34. Guided trips
35. This book has 208.
36. Number of people who could jump from Manhattan to the Sixth Borough before it began moving
37. Election Day task
38. Helpers
39. Substances the kids in “Monster” get their feet stuck in
40. From ____ Z
41. Signed with a pen
42. Button at a bowling lane
43. Like Champina’s football team, after each game
45. Loathes
46. “What ____, chopped liver?”
47. Nitrogen or helium
48. Lars Farf keeps his family in these
51. Martin Alonzo’s find at the 14th St. playground
57. Not ____ out of place
59. Circle
60. It “causes Fear,” according to the Farf Hypothesis
62. Bottle of soda, maybe
63. Don’t go
64. End in ____ (draw even)
65. Flies high
66. Best guess: Abbr.
67. Tripped
DOWN
1. Energy
2. “And if ____ before I wake …”
3. Ooze
4. “… ____ do not regret eating it” (from “Sunbird”)
5. African city where Suntown is located
6. Seymour’s mother is one
7. “How can you not ____ whole country on a map?” (from “Small Country”)
8. Choose
9. They’re purple in James Kochalka’s cartoon
10. About____ (a Nick Hornby book)
11. Material used by Wally in “The Contests at Cowlick”
12. Cut down, as a tree
14. Does more than just sip
20. 1,138 belonging to Mrs. Seymour
21. Spandy-3, Hogbone, and Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy, e.g.
25. What Grimble learns “oui” means in French class
26. Crawcrustle colleague in “Sunbird”
27. Words before luck or sight
28. “You ____ Here”
29. Worn out
30. Got older
31. Wake up
32. Mountains that Grimble’s parents may have seen while in Peru
33. Bird’s abode
34. One of many referenced in “Each Sold Separately”
35. Fish with a long snout
38. Playful prank
39. Was introduced to
41. Stefan’s mother’s response when asked “So who’s the President of Champina?”
42. Poison ivy reaction
44. Less difficult
45. Gwen Farf, upon seeing her dad again
47. Brag
48. James Lorbick lacks them at camp
49. Where Terence’s girlfriend is from in “Monster”
50. Floppy disk contents
52. “So what ____ is new?”
53. Many
54. Count ____ of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
55. One of many left for Grimble to read
56. Lars Farf’s Reformed ____ Marauders
58. Four spaces on a Monopoly board: Abbr.
61. Conger or moray
—David Levinson Wilk
WRITERS & ILLUSTRATORS
Barry Blitt has illustrated twenty covers for The New Yorker. He has also illustrated several books, including Baby’s First Tattoo.
Juliette Borda is an illustrator known for her small-scale gouache paintings; the subjects of her illustrations range from corporate scandal to head lice.
Peter de Sève’s credits range from frequent contributor of The New Yorker to creator of the characters in the animated film Ice Age. In 2002 he was given the Hamil ton King Award by the Society of Illustrators.
Shelley Dick is an artist from Winnipeg who is currently enjoying life in New York City
Henrik Drescher is an illustrator whose work regularly appears in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone. He has also written and illustrated a number of books for children and adults, including Turbulence.
Jeanne DuPrau is the author of The City of Ember and its sequel, The People of Sparks. She has worked as a writer, teacher, and editor, and currently lives in California.
Marcel Dzama’s books include The Berlin Years and Drawings for Dante. He illustrated the book Bed, Bed, Bed, written by They Might Be Giants.
Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the novel Everything Is Illuminated, which won numerous awards, including the Guardian First Book Prize, and recently became a film. His second book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, was published in early 2005.
Clement Freud is the author of “Grimble,” which debuted on BBC’s Jackanory in 1968 and garnered the attention of 23,500 letter-writers. He is not only a writer and journalist, but also a restaurateur, politician, and a knight.
Neil Gaiman is the creator and writer of the DC Comics series Sandman, which won nine Will Eisner Comic Awards. His first children’s book, Coraline, was a New York Times bestseller. He lives in Minnesota and is currently working on Anansi Boys, the follow-up to his novel for adults, American Gods.
David Heatley is a cartoonist living in Queens. He publishes a series called Deadpan and has had his artwork featured in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, and the comics anthology Kramer’s Ergot.
Brett Helquist is best known as the illustrator for Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. His artwork has also appeared in Cricket magazine and The New York Times. He has also written a number of books, including Roger, the Jolly Pirate.
Nick Hornby is the author of a number of books, including Fever Pitch, About a Boy, and A Long Way Down. In 1999 he was the recipient of the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in London.
James Kochalka is best known for his graphic novel Monkey vs. Robot and his critically acclaimed Sketchbook Diaries. He currently lives in Burlington, Vermont with his wife Amy and his cat Spandy.
David Levinson Wilk’s crossword puzzles have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and thirty newsweeklies which run his self-syndicated puzzles. A collection of his work, Really Clever Crosswords, was published in 2004.
Kelly Link is the author of Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners, both published by Small Beer Press. Link’s stories have appeared in McSweeney’s and Conjunctions. She also edited the anthology Trampoline, which is a World Fantasy Award nominee.
George Saunders is the author of two collections of stories, Pastoralia and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. His writing has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker and Harper’s and has won him the National Magazine Award twice. He currently teaches in the creative writing department at Syracuse University.
Jon Scieszka is the author of Math Curse, The Stinky Cheese Man, The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs, and Squids Will Be Squids. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their two children.
Lane Smith has worked with Jon Scieszka on several books, including The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! and The Stinky Cheese Man. He also illustrated The Persistent Gappers of Frip, by George Saunders.
Lemony Snicket is the author of A Series of Unfor
tunate Events, which was adapted for a film of the same name. Mr. Snicket is an elusive character and often leaves the task of communicating with outsiders to his dear friend Daniel Handler.
Rachell Sumpter has worked as an illustrator for Harper Collins, InStyle, YM, and many others. Her paintings are frequently shown in galleries. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
Sam Swope’s children’s books include The Araboolies of Liberty Street, Gotta Go! Gotta Go!, and Jack and the Seven Deadly Giants, his first novel. He is also the author of I Am a Pencil, an account of the three years he spent teaching writing at a school in Queens.
Snicket starts. You finish.
Recently, while searching through a pile of papers in order to find out where that whimpering noise was coming from, I found the beginning of a story. It is only the very beginning, and scarcely anything interesting has happened—in fact, without some sort of interference, I feared the story might become quite tedious. Therefore I am inviting all interested parties to interfere and continue the story, but please do not do so in this book!
It was February, and five children, all of whom were more or less healthy, were sitting on the ground in a lazy circle. It was quite dark, and the children had to squint to see one another’s frowning faces.
“I wish we were ice skating,” said Robin.
“I wish we were eating Mexican food,” said Apu.
“I wish we were wearing boots,” said Alastair.
“I wish we were playing percussion instruments,” said Lillian.
Miranda sighed. She was the youngest of the five children, but nevertheless she was often the leader of the group. She tried not to be bossy about it, but it is difficult not to be bossy from time to time. “We can’t do any of those things,” she said. “We’re not at a skating rink, and we don’t have any skates. We’re not in Mexico, and there’s not an enchilada in sight. We’re not wearing boots, and there’s not a department store for miles around. And we’re not playing percussion instruments, because it wouldn’t be wise to make so much noise. After all, we’re in a puzzling and possibly dangerous situation. I know it’s difficult to believe, but we may have to face the fact that we’re on our own.”
“But how can that be?” Robin asked. “Just a few hours ago we were on a picnic with Madame Blatavsky, when all of a sudden
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 by McSweeney’s, 826NYC.
All stories and illustrations are copyright © 2005 by the individual contributors.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form in the United States by McSweeney’s Books, San Francisco, in 2005.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
“Grimble” was originally published by Collins in Great Britain in 1968.
Originally illustrated by Frank Francis. Copyright © 1968 Clement Freud.
“The Sixth Borough” appeared in a slightly different form in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Copyright © 2005 Jonathan Safran Foer.
Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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