Continent-Spanning Landmass

Some crossword puzzles need special notice—and a listing in Public Language Abusers International. The one that had us twisting into pretzels was Jolene Andrews’ puzzle (2/5/2015) called “Hail Mary,” its thematic being football, in which 43 Down was “Continent-spanning landmass.”

The thoughts that run in naïve minds (we’re gradually becoming crossword wise—but we’ve only been doing these for about two decades, hence we’re not yet taken for locals yet) is something like the following: The continents are landmasses. So what in the hell can a continent-spanning landmass be? Is there something beneath the continents that some kind of curved bridge of land, a kind of flattened St. Louis arch, actually links? Is there such a thing? Why haven’t we heard of it before?

Well, it turns out that there is something above the continents, and sometimes more than one. They are the names attached to continents. And, indeed, if we look carefully at maps of the world, we only find the names of seven continents but, visually, there are only six (including Antarctica)—or five if we count the two Americas, North and South, as one; and we may as well. They are not separated by any water.  But, instead, we have seven! One modestly sized one is called Europe, which isn’t a continent at all! Therefore the answer to the puzzle, which was EURASIA, is not, technically correct, not in a question which talks about “landmass.”

Every puzzle has at least some clues we mark in blood red—and try to remember for use in the future. But occasionally one really wants them to grant us a fracture.

The Tenth Muse

You’ve probably not yet heard of the Tenth Muse. My bad. I should have announced her long ago. It is my wife, Brigitte, but in the world of the Muses she is called Theodora, her middle name. I say this because it finally dawned on me that her gifts are too exceptional in working crosswords to be explained in the usual way.

The other day, for instance, the clue for 25 across was “Elk.” I couldn’t get anywhere with that left-central block until I asked my Muse if she had anything for 25 across. “Yes,” she said, “WAPITI.” I was astonished. “How did you come up with that?” I asked. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just knew it.”

Then, the other day, when a clue asked for one of the Muses, Brigitte produced the seventh muse in the flash of an eye: Terpsichore. Asked about that one (the only one I ever remember is Clio, the Muse of History) she said: “I’ve always loved knowing that Dance had a Muse.”

Therefore I now propose a Tenth Muse. She is there in the following tabulation. The first nine come from Wikipedia (link). The last is added by, proudly, humbly, by me.

Muse	Domain	Emblem
Calliope	Epic poetry	Writing tablet
Clio	History	Scrolls
Euterpe	Song, elegiac poetry	Aulos (ancient musical instrument like a flute)
Erato	Lyric poetry	Cithara (type of ancient lyre)
Melpomene	Tragedy	Tragic mask
Polyhymnia	Hymns	Veil
Terpsichore	Dance	Lyre
Thalia	Comedy	Comic mask
Urania	Astronomy	Globe and compass
Theodora	Crossword Puzzles	BIC mechanical pencil 0.5mm

Arco Polo?

Occasionally I note here particularly irritating or amusing crossword puzzle clues. Doing a puzzle yesterday, from USA Today, dated March 14, 2014, and composed by Henry Quarters, we saw the following 12 Down: “Bowed, in music.” This one resisted us to the bitter end although the other words in the grid did produce an answer, as shown below:

			M	A	C	A	U
			E	W	E	R	S
E	V	I	D	E	N	C	E
R	E	S	I	S	T	O	R

All we could do was to accept that. And while an “arc” has some linkage to bowing, as in “the arc of a circle,” and the terminal O does suggest something Italian, somehow the clue suggested a past tense whereas the Italian form of the word, per one of our endless dictionaries (even for languages we do not speak) defines arco as “bow,” not as “bowed.” Our regular Webster’s Collegiate does have the word and defines it as follows: “With the bow — usu. used as a direction in music for players of stringed instruments.” Thus the bow referenced is not a verb but a noun. “With the bow—sheet music instruction” would have been a proper clue. The actual clue was very deceptive.

I make note of this because Mr. Quarters, if encouraged, might someday come up with the following clue for a longer, eight-letter answer. That clue would be “Famous Italian Fiddler and Explorer?” That question mark, of course, would be a way of saying that “I’m asking tongue in cheek.” Which is what we do when the damn puzzle just won’t, won’t let its author come to closure—despite the looming deadline…

Crossword Centennial?

Twenty-thirteen has been rich in important anniversaries, 50-year and 100. Or so it seems. It was the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, the 50th of C.S. Lewis’ passing, also the 50th anniversary of the show Doctor Who. Those of us old enough to have been in our twenties fifty years ago can at least vaguely attest to such anniversaries as that. But what about centennials?

Yesterday was supposedly the centennial of the crossword puzzle—universally proclaimed by Google’s search page. On December 20, 1913, one Arthur Wynne composed, and the New York World published, the first such thing. But a hundred years are a long time; as I pursued this subject this morning, things began to seem less clear. Wikipedia, in its article on the subject, dates Wynne’s achievement as December 21, 1913 and cites the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as its source, no less (link). Wiki adds that Wynne’s puzzle “embodied most of the features of that genre as we know it.” But the crossword is evidently older than that—going back to 1837 in the English magazine called St. Nicholas. Which means that the centennial should have been celebrated in 1937, when I had reached the ripe age of 1. Italy was not far behind. In September of 1890 Il Secolo Illustrato della Domenica published one devised by Guiseppe Airoldi. Early on the feature was named “word-cross.” If we see “the cross” as symbolizing pain, certain puzzles—certainly all those in the New York Times on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays belong to the painful variety. The words were inverted into “crossword” later—perhaps to ease our pain.

Whenever the crossword really began, it has brought Brigitte and me, both of us word-crossed sorts of people, plenty of agony, laughter, and joy—not to mention additions to our already fairly decent personal dictionaries… So let us take pencil in hand and celebrate.

Only in Puzzles

In the USA Today crossword puzzle (Saturday last) appears the following clue: “45. Propel a gig.” It is supposed to produce a three-letter formation. That’s an easy one. In goes ROW.  

		R
		O
		W

Trouble was, the upper horizontal word, 4 letters, was clued as “44. Unit of loudness.” And the lower horizontal as “51. Suffix denoting wealth.”  That ROW in 45-Down produced a whole lot of frustrated searching. There seemed to be no real alternative to ROW if the clue is read as referring to a verb. DECIBEL was too long for that unit of sound. Now as for that suffix signifying wealth—we both knew that that was a work-around. The puzzle’s author was left with a meaningless series of letters and thus found those letters in a suffix. Eventually we wrote in SONE for unit of sound —but that, of course, rendered ROW obsolete. And as for that suffix, it came to us that a “millionaire” might work.

	S	O	N	E
		A
A	I	R	E

These two answers worked splendidly with other words that came from above and continued below but left us no choice but to insert an A between the O above and the R below. Trouble is that “oar” is a noun and not a verb. But. The but in this case is that fact-checking is at least as important a task for crossword puzzle as for political editors—if not more so. So to the dictionary we go. Turns out that “to oar” is a transitive verb. I can “sing” without any further reference (intransitive verb). But I can’t simply oar. I’ve got to oar something—say a gig? And there is a further limit imposed. You can only “oar” in crossword puzzles. When it comes to the real world, the following verses don’t fit the bill:

Oar, oar, oar your boat,

Gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

Life is but a dream.

It’s okay grammatically, if not otherwise. So we crossworded that word into the space erased and sighed a sigh of muted satisfaction.

Deadline Pressures...

In Crossword Puzzle setting. Such puzzles aren’t written; they are set. I know this because I know the rather rich Morse series of detective shows, based on the novels of Colin Dexter. What with Morse a crossword puzzle lover, sooner or later we were bound to learn (1) that his first name was Endeavor (witness the latest in the derivative series based on those novels) and (2) something about the craft of puzzle making.

Setters have deadlines too—and what with the mass of puzzles to be made owing to the number of still surviving dailies and the number of days in the year—the pressure must be on. We noticed its presence in working (actually trying to work) the Saturday puzzle of August 3 in USA Today. Irritating puzzles for us are those with sports, pop culture, and celebrity names. In this particular puzzle nine such clues—and eight other name-clues—stopped us dead at last.

What struck us in this puzzle was the nature of first names we encountered as answers, including Sal, Ara, Lil, Les, Sol, Clu, and Tug. Tug? It is supposed be the first name relief pitcher McGraw. Only, of course, McGraw’s name was (he died in 2004) Frank Edwin, not Tug at all. When time pressures are great and the puzzle will not be finished unless odd words that “happen” are very tough to match with a clue, celebrity tags are very handy. The setter of this puzzle had problems. One place he ended up with the word RIV (53 down) for which, evidently he could not find a matching celebrity. So what clue did he provide? “Miss., e.g.” Oh, I get it. The answer sort of flashes instantly into the mind—five days too late. That Old Man Riv, isn’t it. He just keeps flowing along.

Another that pleased us mightily was the clue: “What the looker is next, presumably.” A clue like that, also presumably, would have sent crossword shivers of delight down Endeavor’s spine, but as for Brigitte and me, it produced that stare associated with bovines before a barn door. The answer is LEAPER. Get it? Look before you leap. Live and learn. When I see a future clue like “Ancient Chinese emperor, familiarly,” I’ll know that the answer is KUB. And when I see “What the fetcher is next, presumably,” I’ll know that it will be CARRIER.

And oh, by the way, and in parting. If you’re ever at an art exhibition and you see a sign next to a picture that merely says NFS, you will also know, after working this puzzle, that it means Not for sale.

A Living Laptop?

Since our retirement, roughly—we ignored them altogether during the many decades of our active lives—we’ve gone through relatively brief periods of engagement with crossword puzzles. It all began one time during a late fall vacation near Michigan’s Sleeping Bear Dunes resort. We rented a house there on Glen Lake and used to solve the easy puzzles that came with the local paper which we worked on the lake shore itself with breakfast—and the later, laid out on the sand of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Yes. Michigan has a West Coast too. This madness soon escalated. My Mother’s eightieth birthday was approaching. I decided to make a crossword puzzle for her—and the extended family—of the size and complexity typical of the New York Times Sunday version. In no time at all I was in deep trouble—but Brigitte then joined the effort and we spent much of that vacation—and also some time after coming home again—creating the puzzle. Thus began our “cooperative” approach to this game. The puzzle was a great success—and taught us what it takes to make these wondrous art-for-art’s-sake artefacts.

We entered another period like that a few days ago, having decided to enjoy early spring evenings doing something other than watching movies. Now, of course, in this relentlessly pragmatic era, the pure enjoyment of solving puzzles must be, absolutely must be, justified by such motivations as keeping Alzheimer’s at bay—although, sure enough, some ultra-stupid techno-guru urges the elderly to play computer games instead. Not so for us. We enjoy crosswords—as we enjoy our own Olympic style MyWord (on  sheets of our own creation—with eleven letter words being entirely acceptable along with the shorter ones). We also still play crosswords cooperatively, working on separate sheets of the same game and helping each other.  No ego games here. The pleasure comes when we’ve done the thing with never more help than using an ordinary dictionary.

As in the past so in the present. We are again rediscovering the cunning ways of crossword puzzle makers. Most puzzles are quite easy—if the clues are straight-forward. To make a puzzle difficult, make the clues as deceptively vague as possible. Last night one clue resisted us to the very end. It was “Old laptop instruments.” Such a clue—once it has been penetrated—teaches deeper lessons, namely that most of us, most of the time, have a rigidly limited framework of associations when seeing a word. Laptop, for us, meant a little computer, and we never got past that—until, at last, with the help of other words the answer itself was simply there, on the paper. The cunning crossword maker, in this case one Randolph Ross, had used the word “LYRES” and clued it with the deceptive “laptop” clue. At once I made notes in my still existing Crossword Notebook. Use the clue “A living laptop?” (that question mark is a dead giveaway, of course). And for the answer put in the four-letter “BABY.”

Avaunt, Alzheimer’s! Avaunt!

Bananagrams

One of Monique and John’s Christmas gifts to us was Bananagrams, a Scrabble-like word game—and in selecting this item they once more proved that often it’s the small gifts (this one around $15) that bring the most lasting pleasures to the recipients. Ever since the 1960s, our whole family has been much devoted to My Word, a word-guessing game played on paper. Over the decades we’ve expanded, indeed much improved the game. We have versions where one can guess eleven-letter words. Brigitte and I also go through crossword puzzle phases—printing out three at a time from various sources and then solving them, usually in the summer, out back in the shade of the umbrellas. We’ve also made crossword puzzles—of which the most famed was one New York Times-style Sunday crossword puzzle prepared for the occasion of my Mother’s eightieth birthday. Bananagrams fits right into this matrix. The game offers a puzzle, a creative challenge—and you can easily play a round over lunch, for instances, without taking too much time.

The game consists of 144 tiles with letters. Fifty-four are vowels, E having the greatest frequency (18). J, K, Q, X, and Z are minorities; they appear only twice. The mission of the game is to use all letters the player receives in a crossword or Scrabble-like formation.

We’ve devised our own version with our own rules for measuring excellence. We divide the tiles in half and then we use our 72 tiles to make a puzzle. The result is judged by the density of the structure—the smallest possible square or rectangle—and by the average length of the words: the higher the average, the better the score. Here is the winner from yesterday’s game, laid by Brigitte.

This layout turns out to fit into an 11 x 11 square, thus 72 tiles occupying an area of 121. Seventy-two, of course, is the virtually unreachable perfection—no blanks at all. Next we calculate the average word-length, done by counting the total words (22), the tiles they use (107), and dividing tiles by words. Here the result is 4.864 (best to use three decimals). Believe me, that’s a pretty high score. This puzzle has one 10, two 9s, one 8, one 7, and three 6-letter words. That’s as far as we’ve come in developing a scoring system.

We permit any formation spelled correctly, including abbreviations that might appear in crossword puzzles. You might take exception to YA in the lower right, but a crossword creator would clue that as: “Fully grown person but not yet middle-aged (abr.)” And yes, I noticed. Troglodyte is misspelled. But that could be fixed. Challenge to the reader: How would you do it? By the way, it can be done while still staying within the 11x11 square, the word-count would remain the same, and the unsightly doubling of AXIS would also be fixed.

Abraham Nathanson created Bananagrams and introduced it in 2006—thus virtually yesterday. Nathanson passed away at age 80 in 2008. He was a graphics designer. Thanks, Abraham. Nice contribution to the peace of the world.