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Frederick Daniel Hardy, Preparing for Dinner
This puzzle was inspired by 31 Across, which came to me as an airline ticket locator code. Was this the hand of a benevolent Providence reaching down to interfere directly in human affairs?
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Thomas Benjamin Kennington, Reading the Letter
Arthur R. Conder (1876-1901), barely out of college when he wrote this novel, died shortly after its completion of heart failure. Read it, and you will join contemporary reviewers in their regret that he did not live to enjoy a long career.
“The plot is entirely diverting if not altogether probable. . . . The writer regards his characters with a whimsical sympathy and has been able to make them eccentric and lovable at the same time. . . . The quaint architecture of this little book is beyond criticism—compact, peculiar, facetious.” Chicago Tribune, July 18, 1901
“It is full of quiet humor, keen characterization and a certain freshness which is all too rare among the novels of the day.” Baltimore Sun, August 15, 1901
“The plot . . . is good, and the interest is well maintained; but it is in the freshness of the treatment, the briskness of the narrative, the excellent characterisation—a certain individualizing of every-day characters—that the great charm and merit of the book lie.” Bookman, October 1901
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Helen Allingham, Baking Bread
I once made a cd for a friend with 24 distinct recorded versions of the song on which this puzzle is based. He hasn’t spoken to me in years. Do you think there’s a connection?
The original title of this puzzle—which almost no one understood—was “Put on the Skillet! Put on the Lid!” The final, much superior, title was the inspiration of Ralph Bunker, who, along with a man who prefers to be called “Bob Kerfuffle,” has been test-solving my puzzles for months. I’ll take this occasion to express my profound gratitude to both. Would you also like to test-solve my puzzles? Send me an email! The qualifications are minimal: an unerring sense of which Roman numerals correspond to which Arabic numerals would do (I find myself surprisingly shaky on this subject). The compensation, however, is even more minimal: nothing whatsoever!
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045-No-Matter-How-You-Slice-It.puz
045-No-Matter-How-You-Slice-It.pdf
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A puzzle of mine appears today, and another will appear Thursday, October 4, in The Wall Street Journal.
Thomas Francis Dicksee, Distant Thoughts
Beatrice May Butt (1856-1918) published some fifteen works of fiction between 1876 and 1908; in this she offers a quiet plot, some vivid characters, and a subtle sense of personal relationships.
“A pretty story, with a happy blending of the poetical and the prosaic.” Times, November 9, 1883
“Those who like a quiet story, without sensationalism of any kind, but yet, at the same time, an admirable study of the inner life and its affections, will find undoubted pleasure in this work. . . . The author’s style is smooth and pleasant, and occasionally rises into dignity and pathos.” Academy, November 10, 1883
“The heroine’s pure and affectionate though passionate nature is well exhibited.” Athenaeum, December 1, 1883.
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John Atkinson Grimshaw, Shipping on the Clyde
The great John Atkinson Grimshaw and the famous Paul Cézanne were almost exact contemporaries. I would wager that anyone uncorrupted by a course of art history or a habit of gallery visiting would prefer the moodily atmospheric genius of Grimshaw to the blotchy dullness of Cézanne, if presented with samples of each. Yet Cézanne is celebrated, Grimshaw obscure. It’s rigged no doubt—but by whom, and for what purpose?
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Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Comparisons
Eliza Lynn Linton (1822-1898), who wrote some 27 novels beginning in 1846, was well known as a journalist and social critic as well as a novelist: her essays on “the girl of the period”—a vain, loud creature obsessed with fashion and indifferent to domestic virtue—were notorious. Here she arranges some vividly hateful, yet believable, characters in a gripping plot.
“An acute and serious study of certain phases of English society . . . written in a very clear, lively, and interesting style, with a pleasant effervescence of satire and epigram”; it has “enough . . . of graphic portraiture and witty observation to furnish materials for half-a-dozen novels of the everyday kind.” Saturday Review, November 21, 1874
“A very clever and well-constructed story” which “climbs at the last to a very powerful and well-managed situation. . . The characters are distinct, the individuality of each man and woman being put together bit by bit with pains and care.” Times, December 5, 1874
“A rousing heart-stirring novel. . . . Even those readers who do not care for social questions, will enjoy Mrs. Lynton’s excellent character-drawing.” Morning Post, December 18, 1974
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https://archive.org/details/patriciakemballn00lind
Lord Frederic Leighton, The Return of Persephone
Wait! Come back! Not you!—the “L.” Everybody’s welcome here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Weekly Crossword Cavalcade—even you. As so often before, we at “The Cavalcade” have taken something unpleasant, a phrase that may perhaps evoke bitter memories, and made it—fun! (By “we” I mean, of course, “I.”)
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A puzzle of mine appears today in The Wall Street Journal.
Walter Crane, The Moat and Bishop’s Palace, Wells Cathedral
Thomas Cobb (1854-1932) wrote some 86 works of fiction beginning in 1887. He specialized in breezy comedies like this one.
“A book of ingenious complications and bright dialogue . . . the story is human and pure comedy.” Academy, February 2, 1901
The author “is saving us the trouble and humiliation of always going to France for good light fiction. There are few English authors who have the art of being light without being empty.” This novel “shows no falling off in interest and vivacity. . . . We read it on the South Eastern Railway, and forgot where we were.” Speaker, February 16, 1901
It has “a clever, novel plot in its way” with “an air of light comedy.” Athenaeum, February 23, 1901
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http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/OXVU1:LSCOP_OX:oxfaleph014873955
Francis Danby, The Deluge
30 Down is based on a very old, very bad joke, one I must have heard, and should have got over, in early childhood.
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A puzzle of mine appeared yesterday in The Los Angeles Times (and The Chicago Tribune, The Houston Chronicle, The San Francisco Chronicle, etc.)
Richard Buckner, Emily, 1st Viscountess Hambleden, and her Daughter
The anonymous author is known to have written two novels, of which this was the first. Some sources (I don’t know the origin of the claim) identify her with Emma Willsher Atkinson, the author of last week’s novel; Troy Bassett finds no basis for this, and the novel seems to me by another hand entirely. Read both and make up your own mind. Whoever she (or he) may be, she (it seems the likelier choice) provides an involving, sophisticated analysis of the consequences of Victorian marital failure.
It is “told . . . with great strength of feeling, is well written, and has a plot that is by no means commonplace.” Examiner, September 16, 1858
It has “the freshness of inexperience.” Though the plot “verges upon melodrama,” the characters are “distinctly drawn, and often wear an appearance of individuality.” Spectator, October 2, 1858
“The subject and structure of the story are well chosen and well planned, the conversations are natural, and the characters neither hackneyed nor untrue.” Literary Gazette, October 23, 1858
“It is not in every novel we can light upon a style so vigorously graceful—upon an intelligence so refined without littleness, so tenderly truthful, which has sensibility rather than poetry; but which is also most subtly and searchingly powerful.” Dublin University Magazine, April. 1859
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Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, Dignity and Impudence
In is out! That's the kind of upside-down, through-the-looking-glass sort of a wonderland world this bold new puzzle creates. And just so you don’t get too comfortable, at least one in . . . is still in! You won’t find that feature in many other puzzles.
The above painting refers to a subtheme, daringly embedded in baffling cross-references.
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Frederick Daniel Hardy, The Clergyman's Visit
Emma Willsher Atkinson (1826-1900) is known to have written only one novel—this one. Despite some sentimentalism and didacticism (especially near the end), she gives us several striking characters and sharply defined social and moral dilemmas.
The author “has performed a very difficult task creditably”; she “has not shrunk from showing that extremes with a little friendly mediation will sometimes meet.’“ Leader and Saturday Analyst, October 15, 1859
"The novel may offend readers of either extreme, being itself of none, yet it is wholesome and kindly in its tone. It is a little touched with excess of feminine sentiment, but at the same time has feminine perceptions of character, and is not without humour” Examiner, November 26, 1859
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Edward Burne-Jones, The Mirror of Venus
I try, as much as possible (given my other aims) to avoid product names in my crosswords, because I want my crosswords to continue to provide enjoyment centuries hence, when all those products will be forgotten. And I especially dislike “fashion labels,” which encourage us to act from combined motives of personal vanity, financial recklessness, and mindless herd conformity. When this puzzle, however, insisted on one designer-label name, I figured I might as well “double down.” Solvers of the future will infer them from the crossings.
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John Ballantyne, John Phillip in His Studio
Edward Dutton Cook (1831-1883), himself a solicitor’s son who studied painting, wrote some eleven novels between 1861 and 1877; this, his first, represents Bohemian London in a lively style.
Cook “depicts the various phases of Bohemian life with perfect truthfulness...and considerable humour; and, at the same time, with a consistent delicacy of touch” that will protect “the most susceptible reader.” Spectator, July 20, 1861
“It is not often that a novel so witty, wise, and healthful in spirit offers itself for perusal.... There is not much plot in the book, but great play of character. . . . The book is spirited and the style easy.” Athenaeum, August 3, 1861
“The incidents and explanations cluster cleverly at the climax, and the best teaching abounds, whilst there is not the least shadow of lecturing or preaching.” Illustrated Times, October 21, 1865
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v.1 https://archive.org/details/paulfostersdaugh01cook
Evelyn De Morgan, Hope in the Prison of Despair
Feeling anxious? Why spend a fortune on talking cures or psychotropic drugs, when you have access on this website, free of charge, to cruciverbal-behavioral therapy (CBT)? Work this puzzle, and you’ll find yourself growing reconciled at last to life’s enduring misery and your own congenital inadequacies!
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039-Shedding-Anxieties--Literally.puz
039-Shedding-Anxieties--Literally.pdf
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Philip Calderon, Juliet
Margaret Hunt, née Raines (1831-1912), who sometimes wrote as Averil Beaumont, sometimes as Mrs. Alfred Hunt (her husband was a well-known painter) produced about a dozen novels beginning in 1872, the last completed by her daughter Violet, also a novelist, and the consort of Ford Madox Ford, the best known novelist of the three. This novel, the gripping plot of which begins in domestic comedy and ends in sensationalistic mystery, represents its varied and amusing characters in a brisk style.
Despite themes long familiar from “tri-voluminous fiction, the author . . . has managed to produce a fresh, attractive, and decidedly entertaining story.” Athenaeum, December 31, 1892
“Mrs. Alfred Hunt is a writer whose narratives go along smoothly enough, and whose persons have the breath of life.” Saturday Review, January 21, 1893
The heroine’s troubles “are related with a vivacity which goes far to relieve their dismalness. . . . The story is a very good one, with plenty of excitement in the matter of plot, and at least one admirably drawn character.” Spectator, March 25, 1893
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Albert Joseph Moore, A Garden
When I wrote the clues for this puzzle, the temptation to cross-reference was particularly difficult to resist. 10 Down, 33 Down, and 19 Across all refer to an activity that may be performed on 4 Down, 6 Down, 12 Down, 14 Across, 60 Across, and in fact anything 47 Down. But for your sake, gentle solver, resist I did.
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John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Miss Dorothy Vickers
Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855-1896) was better known for his stories and plays than his two novels. This, the first, is a brief comedy of situation, delightful except for its odd ending.
“A slight yet charming study of life in the French quarter of New York." Eclectic Magazine, July, 1886
The plot is “gracefully and artistically handled”;“the story is rich in sensitive passages, both humor and pathos being well portrayed.” Advance, October 7, 1886
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https://archive.org/details/midgemidge00bunnrich
James Charles, On a Sussex Farm
This puzzle is based on my experience of farm life, which is drawn almost entirely from children's books with animal sounds.
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Sir David Wilkie, Pitlessie Fair
Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), a prominent political economist and social critic, wrote only a few works of fiction, of which this is the longest and most ambitious. It has great faults, a painful lover’s misunderstanding plot among them, but equally great virtues, especially its terrifyingly life-like evocation of group injustice.
“The reader must bear with some prosiness and some triviality in the outset of the tale” but “he is secure of finding . . . something better than mere amusement—namely, that pleasure which opens, elevates, and humanizes the mind. In short, equally for its tendency and its truth, this tale is a valuable present to the middle classes.” “Nothing can be more true in its village tone, than the picture of society at Deerbrook.” Athenaeum, April 1, 1839
“The story of Deerbrook is simple and most natural, both in its conception and its working out; the characters are as forcible, and at the same time as original, as any thing so strictly true can be; and the scenes are those of the every-day life of the middle classes of society.” New Monthly Magazine, May, 1839
“A story of domestic life; a story of the affections, the passions, and the incidents of a country village” which “is wrought out with a quiet vigor and a masterly fidelity to Nature and to Man. We see in it not our neighbors merely, but ourselves. Every page is radiant with the portrayal of the suicidal insanity as well as loathsomeness of malice, of envy, of tale-bearing, of anger, and of ill-will.” New-Yorker, July 1, 1839
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v.1 https://archive.org/details/deerbrooknovel01mart
v.2 https://archive.org/details/deerbrooknovel02mart
v.3 https://archive.org/details/deerbrooknovel03mart
