Crossword 264: Where Did You Go?

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Where did you go?  You didn’t fall for the blandishments of those other crossword constructors, did you?  Well, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if you did.  Since this website’s inception many years ago (Obama was still president!) thousands of new constructors have appeared on the internet; in fact, every thirty seconds someone puts a new crossword online; and if current trends continue, by the year 2025 fully 50% of all internet words will originate in crossword puzzle clues or answers.  Meanwhile, the number of crossword solvers has fallen precipitously: already constructors outnumber solvers by a ratio of three to one.  So, if you didn’t go, don’t! I need you!

Today’s puzzle is a kind of sequel of my Los Angeles Times puzzle of November 18 (available for the time being in the LAT puzzle archive at www.cruciverb.com)—in case you were wondering how that came out.  If you didn’t happen to see that puzzle, however, don’t worry; this one is sufficient unto itself.

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264-Where-Did-You-Go?.puz

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264 Where Did You Go?

Crossword 263: Teaser Rates

Augustus Leopold Egg, A Teasing Riddle

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I confess that when I applied the title “Teaser Rates” to this puzzle, I wasn’t sure exactly of the phrase’s meaning.  Was it a sibling-behavior phenomenon studied by child psychologists?  Was it a metric for hair salon workers whose compensation is based in part on the size of their tonsorial creations?  It turns out that, like the title of Crossword 144, it’s just another dubious financial practice.  So it sounds more fun than it is—like so many things in life. But not like this puzzle!

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263-Teaser-Rates.puz

263-Teaser-Rates.pdf

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263 Teaser Rates

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A crossword of mine appears Thursday, December 8, in the Los Angeles Times.

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Novel 263: Lady Georgiana Fullerton, Ellen Middleton (1844)

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A bad man manipulates a weak, fearful woman.

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Here is another novel by Fullerton (see Novel 019), again featuring a woman helplessly enmeshed in impossible dilemmas.

“It is . . . finely natural, discriminating in tracing the movements of the human heart, affording admirable contrasts, and being touchingly pathetic. . . .  The . . . author . . . passionately unfolds the wretchedness of a soul in mortal agony through doubt, uncertainty, crushing oppression, and irresistible despair.  It is, indeed, a tale of woe, with little or no relief; and all who do not shun the luxury of tears over the pictures of fiction will hasten to their delineation here by a pencil of the deepest interest and potent effect.  The finale is most affecting; and what precedes and makes it inevitable is yet more forcible.” Literary Gazette, May 11, 1844

Fullerton “has shown a depth of observation surprising in so young a writer; the power of sustaining a strong and simple interest; a taste for homely portraiture; and a wholesome contempt of the trival follies of what are called fashionable subjects.” Examiner, June 1, 1844

A contrasting view:

“This novel is the work of a clever and accomplished writer, possessed of considerable skill in the conduct of a story and the management of dialogue; and as such it cannot be read without some gratification.  Its grand defect is the almost unmitigated monotony of wretchedness pervading the tale of misery.  Its wearisome painfulness is not lessened by the purely constructive woes of its heroine; neither do the artful ingenuity and verisimilitude of the details hide the improbability of the main circumstances or the inconsistency of conduct in the principal persons. . . .  The vein of religious sentiment running through the work is out of place in a fiction not involving matters of creed and opinion. . . . The pathos is of a morbid larmoyante kind—disagreeable without being exciting.” Spectator, May 18, 1844

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 https://archive.org/details/ellenmiddletonta01full

v.2 https://archive.org/details/ellenmiddletonta02full

v.3 https://archive.org/details/ellenmiddletonta03full

Crossword 262: Remedial Reading

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We’ve mentioned before the benefits this website is designed to confer on elderly solvers, whose incipient dementia will be held at bay by the mental gymnastics it requires.  We haven’t, however, dwelt as much on its benefits for very young solvers, whose struggles at reading will be eased by the insight it provides into the inner workings of language and meaning.  In fact, every puzzle is subjected to intense review by two focus groups, one of 80-year-olds, one of 8-year-olds, and carefully shaped in response to their experience.  And that’s why four out of five geriatricians and nine out of ten pediatricians recommend this website.

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262-Remedial-Reading.puz

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262 Remedial Reading

Crossword 261: An Alphabetical Cavalcade of Crosswordese

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We conclude this website’s fifth year as we have concluded the other four—with a 21 x 21 “Cavalcade of Crosswordese” (see Crosswords 052, 104, 156, 208): a puzzle featuring words overused in crosswords because of their convenience to constructors, combined into hilariously unexpected phrases.  As if this weren’t enough to satisfy the most demanding solver (and of course it is), this year we’ve alphabetized the words in each phrase, and the phrases overall in the puzzle, a service that we alone, of all crossword constructors, have ever, to our knowledge, provided.

Maybe, grateful as you are for yet another year of puzzles and Victorian novel recommendations, you feel a sort of an urge to do something, but you just don’t know what. Well, here’s an idea!  Click the “Donate” button below and give us a trifling sum of money (you may also donate through PayPal or Venmo using our email address.): $12 will get you a bonus 15 x 15 “Victorian” puzzle filled only with words in use before 1901; $13.50, a bonus 21 x 21 puzzle; $15, both of these; and $10,000,000, your name on the website.

Now mind—whether you give us anything or not, we’ll just go right on making crosswords and Victorian novel recommendations till we feel we’ve made enough. It’s entirely a matter between you and your conscience, assuming you’re troubled by such a thing at all.   

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261-Alphabetical-Cavalcade-of-Crosswordese.puz

261-Alphabetical-Cavalcade-of-Crosswordese.pdf

261-Alphabetical-Cavalcade-of-Crosswordese (2 pages).pdf

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261 Alphabetical Cavalcade of Crosswordese

Crossword 260: Double Duties

Edmund Blair Leighton, Duty

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Duty is an important value with us here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender, as it was with the Victorians themselves; so this week’s puzzle, which concludes the website’s fifth year, is a cruciverbal Ode to Duty, just like Wordsworth’s, except that it’s a puzzle made up of crossed words rather than a poem..

Are you feeling a dutiful inclination to help support this website?  Now’s your chance!  As at other years’ ends, along with giving you absolutely free two 21 x 21 puzzles (this week and next week), we are offering bonus puzzles to those who donate.  You may click on the button below, or donate through PayPal or Venmo using the site’s email address.  There are four donation levels.  Donate $12 and receive a 15 x 15 crossword which employs only words current during the Victorian era (and, of course, still current today).  Donate $13.50 and receive a large, themed 21 x 21 crossword.  Donate $15 and receive both. 

And again, for a donation of $10,000,000.00 the site will be renamed in your honor. So if your name is, say, Melon Usk, it will henceforth be known as Melon Usk Presents David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender.  Why do this?  Well, say you’re a little remorseful about spending 44 billion dollars on a social media platform that’s good for little but abusing one’s enemies and congratulating oneself—wouldn’t you feel much better about things if, for a tiny fraction of the price, you purchased in addition the right to present the world’s premier source of crossword puzzles and Victorian novel recommendations?

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260-Double-Duties.puz

260-Double-Duties.pdf

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260 Double Duties

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A crossword of mine appears today in the Wall Street Journal; another appears Friday, November 18, in the Los Angeles Times.

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Crossword 259: Results Are Trickling In

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Next Tuesday is Election Day here in the U.S.A.!  So here’s a puzzle for the occasion, as the polls close, and this candidate leads by that margin while we await those precincts, and the television personalities holler in front of their multi-colored maps, and the pundits speculate and explain, and the portentous election-day music plays, and the garish election-day graphics swirl, until the wise voter unplugs everything and retires to bed with a Victorian novel, content to read the results in tomorrow’s paper.

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259-Results-Are-Trickling-In.puz

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259 Results Are Trickling In

Crossword 258: Ghostracized

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Why should ghosts be traditionally associated with aversion and fear?  I’d love to encounter one, and thereby disprove to myself the seeming probability of personal annihilation.  So if you know any ghosts, please send them my way; or at least try to gather and pass on to me any tips they might be willing to share as to posthumous survival.

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258-Ghostracized.puz

258-Ghostracized.pdf

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258 Ghostracized

Crossword 257: Unqualified

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We’ve been having more labor trouble here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender.  The new hires are sadly unqualified.  One of them crossed the name of a little-known actor with the name of another little-known actor.  We had to “let him go.”  Another crossed a Star Wars character’s name with a Star Trek character’s name.  We fired her too.  But there’s only so much one scrappy little crossword maker can do.  The same kind of thing is happening everywhere. Standards throughout the industry have grown ever more lax, degrading the entire crossword labor pool.

And meanwhile, what about the millions of desperate solvers who have turned to crosswords as a last resort—to stave off dementia, or addiction, or trauma, or boredom?  We cannot fail them!  We need national standards, a system of certification and licensure, and a well-trained enforcement arm, and we need them now!

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257-Unqualified.puz

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257 Unqualified

Crossword 256: Think Ahead

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Think ahead!  Don’t be caught unawares—plan for every contingency!  What about tomorrow, next year, ten years from now?  In twenty years, you’ll be twenty years older.  In seventy years, you’ll be seventy years older—or, probably, dead!  In two hundred years you and everybody who remembers you will be dead!  In five billion years the earth will be an empty cinder!

Well maybe, instead of thinking ahead, you should just do this crossword.

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256-Think-Ahead.puz

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256 Think Ahead

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A crossword of mine appears Monday, October 17, in Universal Crossword; another appears Thursday, October 20, in the Los Angeles Times.

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Crossword 255: New Replacements

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Does the phrase “new replacements” seem redundant to you?  It doesn’t to us here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender!  A while ago some of our workers were threatening to form a union and bargain with us for a living wage.  We tried to explain that the annual earnings of the average crossword constructor wouldn’t keep a small dog alive through a mild winter—to no avail.  So of course we had to fire them all and hire replacements.  One of this new group did some research and discovered that we’d mentioned the NRA in some crosswords—not favorably, of course, but still.  They quit en masse, claiming they felt unsafe.  So now we’ve hired some new replacements.

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255-New-Replacements.puz

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255 New Replacements

Crossword 254: Seeking Adventure

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Are you seeking adventure, daring solver?  You’ve come to the right place!  You’ll find it in the attached puzzle!—that is, if  you redefine the word “seeking” (dividing it into two parts and interpreting the first part as a homophone), and apply the result to common phrases so as to arrive at new phrases having to do with things like carpet installation and insurance.  And if that doesn’t sound like adventure to you, well, maybe you haven’t come to the right place after all.

Speaking of C-kings, that’s the future Charles II at the knee of Charles I in this week’s painting; and here’s a timely bonus question for you: who is Charles II’s brother’s daughter’s cousin’s cousin’s second-cousin’s son’s grandson’s son’s brother’s niece’s son’s son’s son’s brother’s daughter’s eldest son?

(This week’s crossword, and the post introducing it, have been much improved by generous solver Charles Montpetit. Any genealogical miscalculations are, however, my own.)

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254-Seeking-Adventure.puz

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254 Seeking Adventure

Crossword 253: Heart’s Ease

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Heart’s ease!  It’s a purple flower!  It’s an Elizabethan song!  It’s a Victorian novel! (Novel 003) And now, at last, it’s a crossword puzzle! As Shakespeare puts it:

When griping grief the heart doth toss,
And doleful dumps the mind oppress,
Then puzzles made of words that cross
With speedy help do lend redress.

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253-Heart's Ease.puz

253-Heart's Ease.pdf

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253 Heart’s Ease

Crossword 251: I Recycle

John William Godward, The Mirror

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That’s right!  I recycle!  I separate cans, bottles, and paper.  I break down the boxes and I tear the labels off the cans.  I even tear the little plastic windows off the business envelopes and the pasta boxes.  And, like other people who use yard signs, bumper stickers, banners, tee shirts, and other such means to announce their possession of basic virtues, I thought everybody would be glad to know this about me.  You are glad, aren’t you? Of course. So here’s a crossword for you, in my honor.

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251-I-Recycle.puz

251-I-Recycle.pdf

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251 I Recycle

Crossword 250: Ring of Ire

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Many people enjoy belonging to a group bound by a sense of grievance so that they can rage happily together, usually against some other similarly bound group that can rage in turn back at them.  This is fun in itself; it can also lead to solid personal gain, as one’s route to success is eased by one’s fellow enragees, who form a sort of mutually-supportive grievance collective, or ring of ire.  We here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender belong to no such ring; we’re happy with everybody and everything in this fortunate world, including other people and their rage, to which we here pay a small tribute.

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250 Ring-of-Ire.puz

250 Ring-of-Ire.pdf

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250 Ring of Ire

Crossword 248: Farmyard Echoes

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Short-sighted solvers might be inclined to scoff at 60 Across in this week’s puzzle.  But so did short-sighted critics scoff at Picasso’s cubes, at Rothko’s daubs, at Pollock’s drips—and who had the last laugh?  When crosswords cease to make any sense at all, solvers will look back at 60 Across, and its relative nearness to sense, with a kind of bitter nostalgia, while future cultural historians will hail its ground-breaking, boundary-smashing departure from the dull routine of sense-making that had previously held puzzledom in its thrall.  But go ahead and scoff—if you don’t mind the prospect of posterity’s scoffing at you.

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248-Farmyard-Echoes.puz

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248 Farmyard Echoes

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A crossword of mine will appear August 24 in the Los Angeles Times.

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Crossword 247: Plus Sighs

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This is a sort of sequel to Puzzle 188, but even more likely to produce in the solver not only sighs, but rolls of the eyes, shrugs of the shoulders, and other activities that increase blood flow, oxygen absorption, and synaptic transmission. Studies have claimed to disprove the theory that regular crossword-solving can delay the onset of dementia, but those studies did not employ the crosswords available here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender.

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247-Plus-Sighs.puz

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247 Plus Sighs

Crossword 246: That’s Just Preverted!

George Hayter, The Town Clerk of Brecon and His Family

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Don’t let the title worry you—you can solve this puzzle, as you can all my puzzles, with the whole family gathered admiringly around you—unless, that is, you want to protect your progeny, during their impressionable years, from witnessing serious violations of linguistic norms.

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246-That’s-Just-Preverted!.puz

246-That's-Just-Preverted!.pdf

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246: That’s Just Preverted!

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A crossword of mine appears today in the Wall Street Journal.

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Crossword 245: Change of Pace

John Callcott Horsley, Critics on Costume, Fashions Change

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After five weeks of unrelenting cruciverbal depression, it’s time for a change of pace; and that’s exactly what this week’s puzzle provides. Of course, you’ll nonetheless find in it all the usual qualities of puzzles on this site:  norm-shattering formal innovation, the latest in culture, and a daring willingness to speak truth to power.  (Also some wordplay.)

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245-Change-of-Pace.puz

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245 Change of Pace

Crossword 244: Down in the Mine

John William Godward, The Jewel Casket

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We at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender aren’t satisfied with the gems of wordplay that can be purchased in the public marketplace.  We prefer to dig our own out of the bowels of the earth, braving darkness and damp, noxious vapors and the ever-present threat of semantic collapse—all so that you, the solver, can adorn your mental domicile at our expense, little suspecting the cost.  But we wouldn’t have it any other way.

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244-Down-in-the-Mine.puz

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244 Down in the Mine