Heaneyland!

Cross, part 3

Continuing with my comments on chapter 2 of Crossworld. We're up to page 40.

The crossword puzzle was simply nuts to a populace seeking distraction from the task of hauling their loot to the bank every Monday morning...

Is this a usage of "nuts" I don't know?

In his brilliant book about the New York banking industry, Where Are the Customer's Yachts? or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street, the humorist and (I hope) inveterate crossworder Fred Schwed Jr. tells the tale of the bowl of nickels placed by the exit of a club car bearing sundry millionaires to Pennsylvania Station in 1929; it was there for the convenience of the nabobs, who were thus spared the necessity of having to reach into their pockets for the subway fare downtown.

I quote this merely because of that parenthetical "I hope". I guess I should be pleased that he's being so open about completely making shit up. "It is a little-known fact (because I am inventing it even now) that Emperor Hirohito did not surrender in WWII because the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb; he had become so enamored of crosswords (well, it seems plausible, doesn't it? I mean, he probably knew English) that he could no longer do battle with the country responsible for their creation."

Jon Delfin played some [crossword songs] by way of Saturday-night entertainment at the 2003 Stamford [tournament], and the 500-odd participants (an easy crowd, granted) roared their approval.

Jon didn't do this in 2003 that he recalls, although, he says, he may have done so in a video that was shown that year. He and Leslie Billig did perform a selection of crossword songs at the tournament, but that was in 1995.

Regarding a puzzle whose grid contained the phrase SUPERBOWLLXXXVI:

Any non-American who happened to solve enough cross-clues to yield the string LXXXVI would tear his hair out wondering what on earth word or phrase could contain it, and soon rip the puzzle to shreds.

This seems, oh, I don't know, like a...stupid thing to say? I think most British people have at least a passing familiarity with Roman numerals. And I have heard of the World Cup, so it doesn't seem implausible that they might have heard about the Super Bowl in passing.

In pointing out that British-style crosswords are nigh-impossible to solve for an American who isn't familiar with their rules, he overreaches considerably in suggesting that the converse is true, and that handing a NY Times crossword to someone from the UK would stymie them utterly.

...American-style puzzles require that every letter appearing in them has to be connected to at least two others, while British-style puzzles allow -- in fact they prefer -- there to be as many unchecked letters as possible.

Firstly, that's a crappy description of checked letters. A letter has to be connected to at least two other letters? If the middle letter of a three-letter word is unchecked, it's still connected to the letters at the beginning and end of the word. (He means that each letter must be used in two words: one going across and one going down.) And saying that British puzzles prefer as many unchecked letters as possible is kind of a crazy statement. I don't know how strict UK puzzles are, but over here, at least half the letters in every word in a cryptic grid must be checked. If they prefer as few checked letters as possible, why even construct a grid? Why not just have a bunch of clues to solve?

For his 2003 book about cryptics, Sandy Balfour chose as a title the phrase "Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose" for very good reason. Once you've applied your store of cryptic know-how to that clue, you get REBELLED -- because "crimson rose" can be "red" and a synonym for "pretty girl" can be "belle", so if you place the latter within the former, "rebelled" is what you come up with.

In the margin of my book, I have written "DOLT!" This shows a complete misunderstanding of how cryptic clues get solved; for those of you that don't know, a cryptic clue includes both a straight definition of the answer and wordplay that leads you to it, with no indication of where the break is. So "Puff up insane general" would be a clue for ENLARGE ("insane" indicates that you should anagram the letters in "general", and "puff up" is a synonym for "enlarge").

Anyway, this clue does in fact indicate that you should put BELLE (pretty girl) inside RED (crimson), but "rose" is a definition of the answer -- it's a synonym for "rebelled".

And now I must go get ready for work. More later.

Posted by Francis at 08:05 AM