After last week’s self-indulgence I try here to show a little humility.
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Crossword 007: Self Effacement
John Collier, Lady Godiva
Crossword 006: Oenology
John Collier, A Glass of Wine with Caesar Borgia
A common crossword genre is the hidden-word puzzle: some word or set of related words is enclosed in common phrases, “stale,” for example, in “first alert” (clue: “Smoke alarm brand”). Fun stuff. But I prefer to enclose words in startling new phrases created not to hide those words, but to tax my ingenuity for clues that make sense of them, “amusing,” for example, in “hippopotamus in-group” (clue: “Semi-aquatic jungle clique”). It’s a matter of taste. In this puzzle I may have gone too far, however.
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Crossword 005: A Minus
Talbot Hughes, A Nun Embroidering Fabric
Repetition is comforting.
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Crossword 004 Plutocratic Pastimes
William Holyoake, In the Front Row at the Opera
The rule-bound, rigidly symmetrical crossword form cries out, I think, for utter nonsense. This is a modest tribute to the nonsense poems of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll.
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Crossword 003: Broken Ranks
Jerry Barrett, Queen Victoria's First Visit to her Wounded Soldiers
Only corporal punishment could improve this puzzle.
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Crossword 002: One for Two
Alfons Mucha, Dance (1898)
This puzzle, though admittedly half-witted in its way, is also semi-autobiographical: it's the second I ever made. The picture illustrates 9 Down.
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Crossword 001: "It's an Upset!"
William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Bacchante (see 67 Across)
I post this puzzle, “It’s an Upset,” to celebrate the fact that my website is now “up.” Fitting, isn’t it? If you persevere in visiting my website, you will find that I am distinguished by nothing so much as my acute sense of the fitting—my command of nuance—my exquisite tact. Tell your friends!
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