Crossword 076: Hydration

May 3, 2019 David Bywaters

Gustave Moreau, Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra

I was planning a large puzzle based on the twelve labors of Hercules. I was going to make the labors turn corners so that they’d seem extra laborious (crossword answers that turn corners are really hot these days). I had fit in "Nemean," "Lernaean," "Ceryneian," "Erymanthian," and "Augean," all very neatly—but "Stymphalian" defeated me. Oh well—here’s this instead.

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076-Hydration.puz

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076 Hydration

Pointing Hand.png — A puzzle of mine will appear tomorrow, Sunday, May 5, in *The Los Angeles Times* (and *The Chicago Tribune*, *The Houston Chronicle*, *The San Francisco Chronicle*, etc.)

Crossword 074: Literal Quarantines

April 19, 2019 David Bywaters

So what if this week’s puzzle is teeming with horrific contagious diseases? They’re all safely contained within phrases so nonsensical they create a sort of semantic vacuum from which nothing can escape.

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074 Literal Quarantines

Crossword 073: Ursine Sprawl

April 12, 2019 David Bywaters

Though I may not be the first puzzle constructor to have employed this pun, I doubt anyone has taken it to such daring lengths.

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073-Ursine-Sprawl.puz

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073 Ursine Sprawl

Crossword 072: Ran Amok

April 5, 2019 David Bywaters

William Etty, Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm

Does 8D leave you with a sense of 40A? Let 35D console you. Everything's great! So far.

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072 Ran Amok

Crossword 071: Reinterpretation

March 29, 2019 David Bywaters

Frederick William Hulme, A Quiet Retreat, Surrey

Do you ever wake up in the morning and wonder why you are maintaining a website that offers weekly crosswords and weekly Victorian novel recommendations? Am I the only person who does that?

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071-Reinterpretation.puz

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071 Reinterpretation

Crossword 070: Need for Speed?

March 22, 2019 David Bywaters

Today's puzzle will be distributed (thanks to "Bob Kerfuffle") at the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, where people try to solve puzzles as fast as they can. I myself don’t like to solve puzzles fast. I like to savor them, to meditate on the nuances of the fill and the cluing, and on the ramifications of the theme. That’s why I design puzzles the nuances and ramifications of which can be easily meditated on. I won’t spoil your fun by explaining just what those might be in this puzzle.

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070-Need-for-Speed?.puz

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070 Need for Speed

Crossword 069: Technological Innovations

March 15, 2019 David Bywaters

From Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851

This puzzle evokes a dystopian future in which machines, built to drudge for us, acquire wills of their own and become our masters. At first glance it may seem like just a good thriller. More serious solvers, however, will find beneath the surface a profound meditation on what it means to be human.

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069-Technological Innovations.puz

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069 Technological Innovations

Crossword 067: Doubling Back

March 1, 2019 David Bywaters

William Fraser Garden, Back Lane, Holywell

I’m back in action, with back-to-back thrills! I've got your back! It’s payback time! So don’t hold back! Just download the puzzle.

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067-Doubling-Back.puz

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067 Doubling Back

Crossword 066: Multi-PL Choice

February 22, 2019 David Bywaters

Joseph Farquharson, An Aberdeenshire Farm Under Snow

My choice of painting was inspired by 39 Down. I looked up the term online and found it originally referred not, as I thought, to a raucous but harmless celebration of some sort, but to a noisy, sometime violent mock-parade held to express collective “disapproval of different types of violation of community norms” (Wikipedia). And this reminded me of everything that arouses the misanthropy against which, dear solver, I am perpetually struggling—it reminded me, that is, of mindless tribalism, hideous clamor, deliberate cruelty in the service of some sanctimonious purpose. I found myself longing for silence and emptiness. The inhabitants of these Aberdeenshire farms, however maliciously inclined, have got to remain quietly in their snowbound buildings for the present.

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066 Multi-PL Choice

Crossword 065: Trial Runs

February 15, 2019 David Bywaters

I have crafted this puzzle specifically for those elite solvers who are able to soar above the petty, earthbound considerations of vulgar linguistic usage that limit the intellects of the common herd. If you belong to this group, I congratulate you, and invite you to congratulate yourself. For self-congratulation is a primary—in fact, for many, the only—purpose of cultural experience. Let us wallow in it together.

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065 Trial Runs

Crossword 064: Direct Addresses

February 8, 2019 David Bywaters

Henry Holiday, First Meeting of Dante and Beatrice

A crossword puzzle, says Aristotle, or Coleridge, or somebody, should create its own alternative world, one in which, though people may not behave as expected, they nonetheless follow an internal logic of their own. I have tried, in my humble way, to obey these strictures, nowhere more than in this present offering.

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064-Direct-Addresses.puz

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064 Direct Addresses

Crossword 062: Leeds

January 25, 2019 David Bywaters

I’m afraid the relation of the title to the puzzle is arguably just a little bit strained here, requiring both a parsing and an unlikely abbreviation. Normally I am all too scrupulous in making titles that simply and exactly delineate the nature of the puzzles to which they are attached. I make an exception today in order to give myself an excuse to haul in another painting by the great Atkinson Grimshaw. Maybe somewhere there’s an alternate art world, into which (if we’re good) we will pass when this earthly life is over—a world in which the fame of Grimshaw is choired by angels, and Picasso is unknown.

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062 Leeds

Crossword 61: Inflation

January 18, 2019 David Bywaters

Charles Robert Leslie, Gulliver Presented to the Queen of Brobdignag

Why say in one word what you can just as well say in two, or three, or four, especially if you can thereby come up with 15-letter grid-spanning phrases?

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061 Inflation

Crossword 060: Hair Lines

January 11, 2019 David Bywaters

What Darwinian purpose does hair serve? How are the odds of human survival increased by its plentiful presence on the top of the head? Maybe it provides protection from sun and rain and snow? But if so, why do so many men who are deprived of this protection after their first youth successfully breed other men who will be similarly deprived? And why do they meanwhile retain the facial hair that just gets in their food?

Well—it’s another of life’s unsoluble riddles. Crosswords, by contrast, provide only soluble riddles, so console yourself with this one.

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60-Hair-Lines.puz

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060 Hair Lines

Crossword 059: Aeration

January 4, 2019 David Bywaters

Is it permissible to alter a certain letter in a crossword theme phrase, and yet allow that letter to remain unaltered elsewhere in that very phrase? Will it, as I’ve heard more than once, confuse the solver? Maybe so, if the solver is a primitive computer capable of processing only the simplest “if-then” algorithms and immune to humor. I construct my crosswords, however, for genuine, warm-blooded, passionate human beings! I’m not saying that, if you object to what you think is my inconsistency in the matter of theme-answer-letter alteration, you’re not fully human—but it’s a possibility worth considering.

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059 Aeration

Crossword 058: Accentuate the Positive

December 28, 2018 David Bywaters

Edward Frederick Brewtnall, The Princess and the Frog Prince — Edward Frederick Brewtnall,
The Princess and the Frog Prince

“Oh goodness infinite, goodness immense!,/That all this good of evil shall produce,/And evil turn to good!” you will exclaim, “replete with joy and wonder,” after you finish this puzzle. (See John Milton, Paradise Lost, XII.468-71)

We owe 32 Across to my test-solver, proofreader, and sometime editor “Bob Kerfuffle,” who has also spared me the embarrassment and you the annoyance of many errors of all kinds. He will not permit me to use his real name, preferring to “do good by stealth.” (See Alexander Pope, Epilogue to the Satires of Horace, Dialogue I, l.136)

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058 Accentuate the Positive

Crossword 057: The Worst Crossword Puzzle Ever Made

December 21, 2018 David Bywaters

Tomorrow I will publish a Sunday crossword in The New York Times. The success has gone to my head.

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057-The-Worst-Crossword-Puzzle-Ever-Made.puz

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057 The Worst Crossword Puzzle Ever Made

Crossword 056: Di-Graphic Language

December 14, 2018 David Bywaters

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Une Vocation

That’s this week’s crossword she’s got there. Judging from the position of her pen and the expression on her face, she’s at 52 Across, and trying desperately to remember what exactly a “ratite” is. She’s seen the word before, maybe in another crossword—but what does it mean? It’s nothing to do with rodents, or rodent-followers, but it is some kind of animal, isn’t it? A “gnu” maybe?

If you attended last August’s Lollapuzzoola tournament, you may have picked up a promotional copy of this very puzzle, which was distributed there on my behalf by my test-solver, editor, and promoter, the inexplicably generous “Bob Kerfuffle.” I was not myself in attendance, as I prefer to cultivate an air of reclusive genius—in the hope of being revered as the J.D. Salinger, the Emily Dickinson of crosswords. Do please try to play along with me in this.

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056-Di-Graphic-Language.puz

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056 Di-Graphic Language

Crossword 055: Monkey in the Middle

December 7, 2018 David Bywaters

Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, The Travelled Monkey

I never construct a puzzle without exhaustive research of its origins and implications. For this puzzle I looked up the etymology of the word “monkey” in the OED. Apparently it derives either from “monk,” on the theory that the unknown coiners of the word found some satirical resemblance between the animal and the religious community member, or from “Moneke,” the name of the son of Martin the Ape in the 1498 Middle Low German classic version of “Reynard the Fox.” Next time you find yourself at a dinner party at which conversation falters, mention these two possibilities: lively debate is certain to ensue.

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055-Monkey-in-the-Middle.puz

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055 Monkey in the Middle

Crossword 054: Northern Cities Vowel Shift

November 30, 2018 David Bywaters

Louise Rayner, John Knox's House, Edinburgh

For a learned account of the phenomenon on which this puzzle is based, see the Wikipedia article on “Inland Northern American English.” I was born and raised in Kansas City, where English is spoken in its purest form; and so, when fate relocated me to Chicago for awhile, my ears were often offended by wrong vowels. If you yourself use these wrong vowels, I know I can trust you to train yourself to stop.

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054-Northern-Cities-Vowel-Shift.puz

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054 Northern Cities Vowel Shift

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