222. ✒️ A letter to Terry: #25-10
On apple sandwiches, advance copies from the publisher and surely the world’s most bonkers crossword.
In which Rebecca wonders whether it’s fair to fashion an unreasonably cryptic clue out of a nineteenth-century nonsense poem.
✒️
This is the latest letter in my regular, informal correspondence with Substacker and fellow Brit Terry Freedman, in which we take it in turns to delve into the things that British people talk about the most. We’re inviting you to read our letters over our shoulders!
Dear Terry,
Many thanks for your latest letter. Although I question your harsh marking of my attempt to answer your question related to Some Like It Hot, I nevertheless admit in writing that indeed my answer was incomplete. I am grateful for your detailed expostulation on the film which filled some gaps in my knowledge about 1950s cinema, but, having been born 25 years after the film’s release, I feel there is a reasonable excuse for my ignorance. 😇
Your crossword clues were thankfully rather less of a challenge than your film quiz. You’d kindly provided a shot of some of the crossword grid from The Times, showing me that the first letter of the solution to 6 Across: Metal container (3) would also be the first letter of 6 Down: School term’s beginning with wet weather (5).
Well, there are plenty of three-letter words meaning container. A tub is a container, but plenty of tubs are made of materials other than metal. Tun? Bin? Again, a bin doesn’t have to be metal. Can?
Ha! Hang on, the clue is a double definition! Essentially the clue is asking for a three-letter word whose meaning is both metal and container. Et voilà: it’s TIN!
I could have saved myself some effort, having worked out 6 Down first, by narrowing down my shortlist of answers to 6 Across to only words starting with a t-. The clue was in plain sight: ‘Term’s beginning’ is t- for term.
What’s more, wet weather is rain. T- plus rain = train, which, in a verb context at least, is a synonym for school.
Last but not least, having neither read Hammett’s book nor seen the film starring Humphrey Bogart I was flummoxed initially by the clue you’d found in the Literary Review: Maltese Falcon detective in suit (5).Google has now told me that Bogart played a detective named Sam Spade in the film, and spade, of course, is a suit of cards. Again, a clue made up of a double definition. ♠️
Blimey, Terry, this is hard work. Why can’t you just solve these clues yourself rather than getting me to do them for you, hmm? 🙄
I was interested to see your picture of the proof copy of Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter. It’s strange to see a book in A4-printed comb-bound format, rather than the style of volume you would find on a library bookshelf. I hadn’t known that advance copies would be any different to the finished product until I found this copy of Seizure by Erica Wagner in a second-hand bookshop a couple of years ago:
Although it looks more like a finished book than the example you had shown in your letter, it comes with intriguing warnings to the reader not to step on any editorial toes.
I was more interested in the novelness of the format than the novel itself at the time I bought it, but having taken it out of my bookcase to describe it to you I have dipped inside and gosh, I’m instantly compelled by the style of Wagner’s writing. This has jumped to the top of my pile of books I’d like to read next.
(And no, I shan’t be quoting it for publication. I’ll do as I’m told.)
Since my last letter, in which I expressed my surprise at the invention by M&S of the strawberries and cream sandwich, I’d been wondering about sweet sandwiches in general and fruit sandwiches in particular. As a child I remember jam sandwiches, and of course we’ve all heard of the PB&J, or peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so beloved across the pond, but the only time I’d come across fresh fruit between slices of bread had been in a fried cheese-and-apple sandwich which I’d seen being made on BBC children’s television programme Blue Peter and had subsequently tried making at home. (Spoiler: it wasn’t popular with those I had expected to eat it.)
I was tickled, then, to find this letter in a recent edition of The Daily Telegraph:
Terry, Jim and I are members of the National Trust, English Heritage and Historic Houses, whose sites not only offer super days out for those interested in historical buildings and beautiful gardens but which also provide welcome alternatives to motorway service stations on long drives for work or leisure. Our memberships give us free entry to their places which all have plenty of parking as well as loos, a café, a shop (often a second-hand bookshop, too) and the welcome opportunity to stretch our legs in a beautiful garden before continuing our journey.
Each of these organisations publishes a magazine at intervals throughout the year, and the crossword in Historic House is always a fascinating challenge.
Every edition’s puzzle has its own theme which, once identified, is very helpful in solving a large number of the clues. One of my favourites was related to James Bond films, names of actors, baddies and locations all featuring somewhere on the grid. And although the classics, I’m afraid, are all Greek to me, I was actually rather impressed by my performance tackling the grid pictured below, based on Homer’s The Iliad:
A recent example, though, was astonishing. Are you ready for this? I’d suggest you brace yourself for this set of multiple clues:
15, 18, 31 Across, 22, 36, 46, 25, 9, 43, 41 Down, 1.
‘Brilliant, high-thrill Lewis nonsense verse about mad mammal we got to be destroyed by midget hero with heavy dagger-stab’, edited into ‘Lewis verse’ in 38 Across. (4, 7, 3, 3, 6, 5, 3, 4, 3, 6, 2, 3, 4, 3, 5, 4, 3, 9, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8)
Oh, and 38 Across, because you need that too:
Crazy way BBC joker produces poem read by Alice. (11)
To my good fortune I had been introduced to Lewis Carroll’s nonsense verse at school, and therefore knew the answer to 38 Across as soon as I’d read ‘Brilliant, high-thrill Lewis nonsense verse’ in that first bonkers set of clues.
Crazy indicates an anagram, and the eleven letters of way BBC joker can of course be rearranged into Jabberwocky.
As for the first set of crazy clues, well, what is asked for here is simply – simply! – the first verse of the poem, right?
Yes….. but it’s cleverer than that! At first glance I’d wondered about the significance of the inverted commas around this chunk of text:
‘Brilliant, high-thrill Lewis nonsense verse about mad mammal we got to be destroyed by midget hero with heavy dagger-stab’
until it dawned on me that these, too, indicate an anagram. Here’s how Carroll himself had phrased this collection of letters in his nonsense poem Jabberwocky, in Through the Looking Glass, his 1871 sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
After I’d put all of those words into the right spaces on the crossword grid I needed to dunk my head into cold water! Actually, that’s not a bad idea anyway at the moment; it’s been ever so hot recently. On Sunday I was even spotted wearing SHORTS for the first time this year. 🤭
Today, thankfully, the third heatwave of the British summer so far has been replaced by an overcast day and 40mph winds to blow all of those sweaty summer cobwebs away – as well, I hope, as all of those nasty bitey creatures which have been finding my skin too delicious for comfort over the last couple of days. 🦟
It seems some ingenious methods for dealing with the heat have been adopted by readers of The Daily Telegraph. I wonder if this approach might be a good way to cool my own head down?
Terry, I might just try it. 🥵
All the very best, as ever,
Rebecca
If you’ve enjoyed reading this letter to Terry, please let me know by clicking the heart. Thank you!
Terry and I take it in turns to write to each other, and I really enjoy our light-hearted correspondence! Check out Terry's fabulous newsletter, and to make sure you don’t miss his reply to this letter, why not subscribe?
Last but not least, do please share and subscribe for free! Thank you!
Those kinds of puzzles just cause my little grey cells to implode. No can do!! But I just loved. your question to Terry: "Why can’t you just solve these clues yourself rather than getting me to do them for you, hmm?"
Oh, I’m so jealous of your ability to use historic homes and gardens as travel rest stops! I’ve only visited Britain twice, and was so sad that I couldn’t see more of them— and you get to use them as rest areas! I guess we in the US do have rest areas in some astonishingly beautiful natural areas, but I’m still jealous of the historic homes.