Sixes and Sevens (and Twelves) - August 2012

Hello! We skipped last month's puzzle in the blog. The only semi-tacky clue in July 2012 was

• 30D. Unnamed person appearing in Big River? Big mistake.
  (Big = B) + (Unnamed person = ONE) + (River = R) = BONER

... and BONER as a synonym for "big mistake"? We love it. Both in the sense of "oh, that was a real bone-head move. My head doesn't contain brains, just bones. What a boner of an error." But also in the sense of, "I have an erection before a major presentation; this is a big mistake."

<sidenote> In the summer of 2010 we sat in on some calls for an 8-bit video game collective, with the possibility that we might do some art for them. One member of the collective had just gotten his digital hands on a zero-gravity engine, and we brainstormed ways to use it for a game. 

Sidenote to this sidenote: the way this collective talked about the zero-gravity engine was as if they'd acquired plans to the Death Star.

So the guy who'd actually personally acquired the engine, his big idea was to make a game starring a female astronaut who needs to go pee very badly. The longer she's unable to find a bathroom, the more her spacesuit fills with urine.

We bit our tongue from suggesting that we use menstruation instead of urination, and her spacesuit could fill with blood. Jason suggested instead that the character be male and have an increasingly large and embarrassing erection that he had to hide from the other astronauts. Like Frogger but with boners. 

That's the callback to boner. Ok we're done now. </sidenote>

July 2012 also marked yet another puzzle in our hot streak of Harper's cryptics conquered in one session, lying down, with only half our brain present. 

"We've done it!" we thought. "We've mastered the Harper's cryptic. We're like a pylon under a bridge. We're like Juggarnaut in X-Men. We're the unmovable rock. Just try to shake us, irresistible force! Because we would love it!"

But taunt not, lest Richard E. Maltby Jr. send you your reckoning.

August's puzzle killed us! We were in great danger of not even completing it in due time to mail it in and vie for the coveted Harper's cryptic prize of seeing our name in tiny print in the footer of the puzzle two months hence! We haven't used dictionary wildcard search in some time for the Harper's. You better believe we were using it this month.

Highlights!

• 29A) Old king's sackful partially emptied (4)
  SACKFUL - (the middle) = SAUL
  Sweet, elegant, proper. Love it.
• 7D) Half in pain, I stab Montoya in The Princess Bride (5)
  (half in pain = IN) + I + (stab = GO) = INIGO
  Knew immediately it would be INIGO or MANDY. Took a while to parse "stab" as in "have a stab at" or "have a go at." Our old manager used to tell us to "take a stab at" tasks. He knew that he was inviting us to imagine stabbing him. He was testing us. 

• c) Friar has signs of depression, perhaps (6)
  (Friar = FR) + (has = OWNS) = FROWNS
  Kept trying to force TUCK, or ABBE. Loved the simplicity.

• d) Batman's end: after hip replacement, found in South by the Riddler (6)
  (South = S) + (hip replacement = PHI) +  (Batman's end = N) + (by = X) = SPHINX
  Great Batman clue. Great sphinx clue! Great clue. 
• k) Perhaps an Arab's eastern newspaper is to be sent north (6)
  (eastern = E) + (newspaper = TIMES) (is to be sent north = backwards) = SEMITE
  Arab's are Semites! Loved it. A refreshing, literal, historical take. It's so good when Richard E. Maltby Jr. bucks convention for precision like this.
• b) New, raw, sculpted and 50 percent unfinished, it is, in the main, a unicorn (7)
  (New = N) + RAW + (50 percent = HALF (unfinished) = HAL) = NARWHAL
  What an incredible beast of nature! "In the main" for "the ocean." Mm! Love.

• g) Siemens generates opposition that cannot be overcome (7)
  SIEMENS anagram = NEMESIS
  We forced variations on ENEMIES for a couple rounds. NEMESIS! Loved.

Oh, and then all four of the twelvers were majestic:

• a) The Gift of the Magi is open in feel, you might say (12)
  (open = FRANK) + IN + (feel = SENSE homophone = CENSE) = FRANKINCENSE
  Exquisite!
• b) Confusing matter with Keeler? She has a lot of hang-ups! (12)
  MATTER + KEELER anagram = TELEMARKETER
  Yes! She does get hung up on a lot! Much love to our brothers and sisters in the canvassing arts. We know your struggle, and the enmity you face.

• c) Kind of do the whole dictionary, entering before long entry in passage bound for reproduction (12)
  (Kind of do = PERM) + (the whole dictionary = A TO Z) (inside (before long = SOON)) = SPERMATAZOON
  The most majestic of them all! Had to look up the singular of spermatazoa. ZOON. Check the specs on that suffix. Don't see that one so oft. Unless perhaps you play the BAZOON. (*cough*)

• d) Distinctly spoken? (12)
  (double synonym) PRONOUNCEDLY 

Oh, but there were some lows to this puzzle as well. 

Lowlights!

• 23D) He's ... he's soft at heart, pirouetting! (5)
  (he's soft at heart = hE'S SOFt) (pirouetting = backwards) = FOSSE
  Ok but "He's ... " is the synonym for Fosse? Is it? Is it really? Like "Sheeeeee's thhhhhhhhe one!" from "One" from A Chorus Line? Maybe a musical-savvy dear reader can explain this to us. Maybe Richard E. Maltby Jr. can explain this to us. He loves musicals. 

• a) Seniors found in woods (6)
  (double synonym) ELDERS
  Haven't we seen another ELDERS clue in recent memory? I'll look it up. 
• d) Only ego can encompass this creative activity (7)
  ONLY EGO (anagram) = NEOLOGY
  "Neology" is a synonym for "creative activity"? Weak. Such a tiny sliver of the spectrum of creativity. Hardly a synonym. Like "Audrey Hepburn" as a synonym for "collection of atoms."

• f) Here's a liqueur—hugs and kisses—and something to carry it in (7)
  (liqueur = B AND B) + (hugs and kisses = OX) = BANDBOX
  Long suspected that hugs and kisses would sub out to OX, and that there'd be a five-letter liqueur ending in B to yield the suffix BOX. But what five letter words even end in B? PLUMB? PLUMBOX? No ... SCRUB? SCRUBOX? No way! KABOB? KABOBOX? Nopers. Turns out it's B&B, and BANDBOX. Bandbox? It looks like a hatbox to us. Ok cool. Bandbox. Learning.

• c) Crafty about the beginning or end of harassment spelled out in brief (7)
  Um. So we put down USELESS as the answer. Not sure if it's correct. Confirmed cross-letters are _SE_ESS. S'gotta be USELESS, right? But what's the synonym? "in brief"? "crafty"? Hate to finish without knowing. Blame it on poor cluing in the puzzle :)

And now we come to the tacky matter of this month's tacky Harpers cryptic clue. One and a half this month.

First, the halfsy: 

• i) Cats has long New York run back before gender-switching (6)
  (long = L) (New York run back = YN) (gender switching = SEX anagram = XES) = LYNXES
  Ok so getting uptight about confounding sex and gender makes a lot of people, even intelligent, modern people, roll their eyes. G'head and roll them, intelligent modern dear readers of TackyHarpersCrypticClues.blogspot.com. We know who you are. You're the kind who would rather become vegetarians than ever be accused of being a feminist. Yeah. You. Sex and gender are different. One is biological, one is cultural. And confounding the two has caused real problems for people we love. 

After the correctness of Semite, it was disappointing to see such a predictable, usual, imprecision here. Meh, but this clue was just annoying and picking at one of our old bones. The real tacky clue for the month:

• b) Bush shows extraordinary zeal getting in with a bunch of drunks (6)
  (extraordinary zeal = ZALE) + (bunch of drunks = AA (surrounding)) = AZALEA
  This one only works if the synonym for "bunch of drunks" is "Alcoholics Anonymous." 

And while we appreciate the symmetry of referencing W Bush's chemical history, found it tacky to dismiss the organization as a "bunch of drunks."

S'like, "well ... they're not drunk anymore!" Or maybe that's exactly what Maltby means: there'll never be transcendence. Sigh. 

Here's what we think of when we think "bunch of drunks":

further insight into why this resonates in a bad way

Our two guys (in the sense of "he's my guy!") are Marc Maron and Mike Doughty, both of whom have recovered from addiction and logged time in the meetings. Are they a "bunch of drunks"? 

And in between Maron and Doughty, our guy was also the late David Foster Wallace as manifest in Infinite Jest, where Alcoholics Anonymous is an important setting and character. Would you say "you're a bunch of drunks!" to the face of any of IJ's Crocodiles? Would you say it to any real human in recovery? Would you?

We have to believe: that you would not.

And, gratifyingly, we now imagine Richard E. Maltby Jr. settling down tonight with his favorite RSS feed reader, and sighing at yet another taking-to-task by TackyHarpersCrypticClues.blogspot.com. A short glass filled tall with scotch, neat. A leather armchair. A living room in a Manhattan loft carefully cluttered with the tchochkes of money and taste. An antique toy piano. A useless glass sculpture that sits on a glass shelf in a glass cabinet. WQXR quietly playing from a Bose stereo. Maltby at his iPad 2, reading this blog, sometimes smiling, sometimes murmuring. 

A car alarm from far below startles the small dog at his feet. Maltby barely hears its klaxon. Pets the dog the way you turn a housekey. He contemplates. "What clue shall I drop next month?" Considers referencing poop and rejects it. No, he takes pride in his full maturation to the genital stage of Freudian development. 

Pets the dog again. 

Sip of whiskey. 

PAN AROUND to the giant empty living room. ZOOM OUT through the window to the lonely treetops of Manhattan's skyscrapers.

Turn up to the lonely moon, and Venus nearby. FADE TO BLACK.

Sign Language - June 2012

We're back, loyal readers of TackyHarpersCrypticClues.blogspot.com! S'gonna be different now; from now on, we're using first person plural pronouns to refer to ourselves.

This month we knocked out the puzzle in an hour while lying in bed in a bad mood. Even given such compromised puzzle-solving state, this cryptic fell apart like a cookie in a washing machine. Like a model airplane in a woodchipper. Like an emotionally unstable person asked the Hard Questions.

Ugh, and this puzzle also frequently employed our least favorite cryptic clue type, the kind where you have to guess the synonym and use it in an anagram or word manipulation. Bleh. If you like this kind, they're all yours.

Our beef is that these clues don't stand on their own. Ya almost always need some crossfill to nail them, and then when you do it's like, "oh." No satisfaction.

Lowlights:

• 12A. Blue inside, seek unlikely cause of tsunami (8)
  (Blue = AQUA) + SEEK (anagram) = SEAQUAKE
  We were so hoping this would be a controversial answer, like that tsunamis are caused by eco-terrorists as Michael Crichton imagines in State of Fear. Did you read that book? We love Michael Cri, but that science fiction book was truly science fictional. Anyway. Did we guess AQUA only because of the cross-Q on EQUAL, yes, obviously that is the only reason we guessed AQUA. Prior to that, forced BLUE SEEK anagram after BLUE SEEK anagram.
• 28A. Place to walk in ermine when temperature's off (4)
  (ermine = STOAT) - (temperature = T) = STOA
  Blah. That's the sound of us falling asleep with disgust. STOAT and STOA?
• 6D. Horse rears up to go over something again (5)
  (Horse = PACER) (anagram) = RECAP
  "Pacer" for horse is a stretch. Bleh.
• 35A. One who cans tomatoes at the outset leaves strainer? (4)
  (tomatoes at the outset = T) + (One who cans = AXER) = TAXER
  Ugh this convention in puzzledry that fired = axed = canned is so hacky and anachronistic. And "TAXER" is one of those words accepted in the Scrabble^TM dictionary, and nowhere else. Like as if every verb can take an ER. Every verb! ARRIVER: One who arrives! Yes, "arriver": a word we know and use. One day we will coldly tell these so-called words: we're not disappointed you're lying to us, we're disappointed you're lying to yourselves."
• 24A. Name a president who came back as a Mideast leader! (4)
  (Name = N) + (president = ABE) (reversed) = EBAN
  Actually jk, jk, we loved this clue, only because it says, "name a president!" and we immediately think, "Abraham Lincoln!" That man was The President. Boom.

The very best cryptic clues are the ones that read as natural English, with no obvious indicators or handholds. They're smooth, and impenetrable to all but the most skilled. Like a ball bearing, or the sphere in the movie Sphere starring Samuel L. Jackson, based on the book of the same name by Michael Crichton.

None of this month's clues were quite of that highest light, but there were some beloveds:

• 10D. A sweep might show what a Ghanaian spends ... (6)
  A SWEEP (anagram) = PESEWA
  Currency of Ghana. Lovely. Daringly asking the puzzler to have specific knowledge of West Africa, i.e. the world as it exists even beyond such cultural eye-openers as high school French and Spanish. Shout out to Ghanaian friends Victor and Felix, and further shout out to Richard E. Maltby Jr. for including not one but two Ghana clues this month!
  Here's the other one—even more fun:
• 13D. ... in a day around Ghana's surroundings! (6)
  A + (day = FRI) + (around = CA (as in "circa")) = AFRICA
  Ok, so, yuss, this is kinda that clue-type specifically called out earlier, cuz you have to guess/infer that FRI, but whatever! A clue about Ghana! Woohoo!
• 9D. Cheap furniture store loses a president (3)
  (Cheap furniture store = IKEA) - A = IKE
  Another synonym-guesser, but you know we love any dig against IKEA. Particle board and two-cent screws. Worthless. IKEA furniture is like H&M clothing: some of it lasts forever, but most of it is disposable and won't survive the year. And we also love a second president clue. Ike! We like!

• 25D. Price on your head by morning is taken from amount taken in (6)
  AMOUNT - (morning = AM) + BY = BOUNTY
  Yes.

• 34D. Breathing spaces in which all vie roughly to maintain no score (7)
  ALL VIE + (no score = O) (anagram) = ALVEOLI
  Hoorah! Knew the answer as soon as we saw the word "Breathing" and "vie." That is how strong an impression 6th grade biology with Mr. Wurzberg made. Do you know what we did that year? We dissected a cow lung, right there in the classroom. It was incredible. We also made our own root beer from scratch. Otto Wurzberg was the money.
  
  So then we'd kept the word "alveoli" locked into longterm memory all these years, believing that one day there would be payoff. This puzzle was the payoff.

related
In 2004 we spent several hours with Dave "Sparky" Newman's road atlas learning the US state mottos, believing that one day there would be payoff. And then just the other month, one of the rounds at pub trivia was strictly: US state mottos. Kaboom. We nailed that round and doubled the points, and eventually won the night, resulting in a single free shot of whiskey for the entire team. Thus, the payoff for eight years of holding down that rote memory was literally and figuratively distilled: a tiny volume of alcohol.

No regrets, dear readers.

Special magic variety theme this month: the names for various symbols. Hell yes! Loved how many of these we knew, and loved even more the opportunity to learn others:

• 1A. # = OCTOTHORPE
  Why "octo" when it limns nine spaces? Shouldn't it be "nonothorphe"? DO NOT ASK QUESTIONS JUST BASK IN THE GLORY OF THIS WORD
• 20A. ¶ = PILCROW
• 22A. • = INTERPUNCT
• 37A. «» = GUILLEMETS
  Those French quotes. Love! High school French. Opening my eyes.
• 51A. ∞ = LEMNISCATE
  Reminded us of "limaçon from calculus.

"limaçon" means "snail"

• 8D. = QUINCUNX
  What a delightful, filthy-sounding, incredible word!
• 26D. @ = AMPERSAT
  Always knew this symbol by its alternate name, "amphora."
• 36D. ÷ = OBELUS
  So much is lost with "/" to indicate division. How beautiful, the noble obelus!

Well there you have it for lowlights, highlights, and theme. Ah, but where is this month's tacky Harper's cryptic clue, you ask? We have one and a half!

To the half!

• 39D. Female advisor—awkward, I agree (6)
  I AGREE (anagram) = EGERIA

We'd never heard of her either.

Egeria was a mythological Roman nymph and royal consort, and, as Wikipedia assures us, her name is synonymous with "counselor." Presumably Richard E. Maltby Jr. couldn't possibly mean Egeria the French pilgrim and writer of the Dark Ages. side note: how cool to have a legacy as a writer of the Dark Ages?

This clue annoys us. Ha ha female advice is awkward. Ha ha women in positions of authority, how weird. We could write you a full-length legally admissible brief on the awkward, misguided advice conferred unto us by men of a stereotypically male perspective.

Just this morning, some guy told us that the best way to move our web series forward was to "get an agent. That's what I've heard is always the first step." This is literally the dumbest advice anyone has ever given us w/r/t the series. Possibly w/r/t anything. Ugh, this advice annoyed us even more than this clue annoys us.

We must move along, however! The truly tacky clue this month is:

• 42A. Where women live and are kept by His Majesty (5)
  ARE + H + M = HAREM

This clue only works if you equate "women" with "prostitutes." Great. We do appreciate the tightness in referencing a sultanate in both halves. Rare and excellent cluing, just wish it were put to classy use.

Where are the jokes that target dudes, Richard E. Maltby Jr.? We at TackyHarpersCrypticClues.blogspot.com would be glad to write them for you. Something like:

• Where you find immature males, earth-shaking flatulence (4)

Theme and Variations - May 2012

Loved this puzzle. Loved. Loved it, even though it invoked a serious pet peeve and toggled my Department of Homo Security to Threat Alert: Imminent. Why love? That is beCAUSE the special magic variety of this month's puzzle lies in its theme words: HELENA, BONHAM, and CARTER.

That's right! The Queen Mum of Dark Intensity! Just how much weird beautiful CAN you pack into a 5'3" frame?!?

Oh, but how short a time ago  (January 2010) that I first attempted a Harper's cryptic only to be thwarted by a theme built around Carol Channing. And now, a theme so deeply embedded in the bleeding hip heart of Now and Cool that I can only believe that Richard E. Maltby and cohort have heard the cries of TackyHarpersCrypticClues.blogspot.com and modernized accordingly. You're all welcome.

The three theme words were unclued, but given as somehow related, and each theme word in turn had three unclued "variations." HELENA was varied with other US state capitals (PHOENIX, COLUMBUS, AUSTIN); BONHAM in its component parts (BO = BOX OFFICE; NH = NEW HAMPSHIRE; AM = ANTEMERIDIEM*; and CARTER as three anagrams (CRATER, TRACER, RECART).

* which, I would have sworn to you on my life was antemeridiAN with no allowed variants. Even now, s'like, very hard to accept. Like when you have a story about your childhood that you've told a million times, and then you encounter data that unequivocally refutes crucial details in how you tell the story, like a photo or a video where you're actually wearing the cat t-shirt, not the rainforest t-shirt. Or it wasn't your sister being mean to you, it was actually you being mean to your sister. And then reality warps for a second. And then depending on your susceptibility, a delusional misidentification syndrome may take hold.

Antemeridiem. Accepting it, slowly. To the puzzle! Favorites!

• 24A. Awkward, like a blank graph (3)
  UNCOORDINATED
  The double synonyms can be so glorious.
• 54A. Assumes Congress repealed having queen as leader (7)
  (Congress repealed = XES) + (queen leader = ANNE) = ANNEXES
• 3D. Beautiful place, Texan a dubious inhabitant (6)
  TeXAN A DUbious = XANADU
  OMG you guys so beautiful.

A stately pleasure dome indeed.
• 39D) Dog star having no oxygen in sight (6)
  (sight = SPY) + NO + (oxygen = O) = SNOOPY
  Tried working Sirius for several rounds before the adorable answer came.

Honorable mentions!

• 49D. As an actress, Miss Piggy—in two senses! (3)
  HAM
  More double synonyms. And intense! "You like Miss Piggy? Well she mugs for the camera, and also I think of her as a consumable food." Given the opportunity, this clue could and would eat Miss Piggy. Probably also the Talking Beasts of Narnia. This clue is bound by nothing.
• 43A. Roam aimlessly by way of part of Eastern Europe (7)
  ROAM + (by way of = VIA) = MORAVIA
  Shout out to anyone else who played Quest for Glory 4: Shadows of Darkness set in fictional Eastern European country Mordavia.

Questionable!

• 19A. Some non-surfers had died so tragically (9)
  HAD DIED SO (anagram) = HODADDIES
  Dear Puzzles: no one says "hodaddies." Not surfers, not any people, just puzzles. Please expurgate it from your lexica forthwith.

• 34D. Meat, perhaps—mine gets hard (4)
  (mine = PIT) + (hard = H) = PITH
  Meat = PITH like "get into the meat of it, really dive into the pith." You know. A phrase we know and use all the time.

This is also one of those half-tacky Harper's Cryptic clues that covers its smirking mouth, thinking, "I'm such a naughty boy, aren't I!" with voice-over by Stuey from Family Guy. "You're thinking about erections now, aren't you! Ha ha I knew it!" 

I'm all for putting aside the stodginess of puzzledry. But it's not too much to also ask to sit down with pen and puzzle without being baited by sexual entendres.

Bring me your obscurities!

• CITTERNS - 29D. Centrist playing old guitars (8) = CENTRIST (anagram)
• FANFARONADE - 21D. Bragging about an offer and a rum (11) = AN OFFER AND A (anagram)

Even bringeth unto me your huddling "logical constructions" (read: "fake words")!

• DEFLEA - 26D. Clean a dog pound—going in, feed a cuckoo (6) = (pound = L) + FEED A anagram
• UNETHEREAL - 41A. In tune there, a long passage that's earthbound? (10) = IN TUNE THERE anagram
• UNENSNARE - 30A. Nurse Anne potentially provides relief from feeling trapped (9) = NURSE ANNE anagram

Keep penis out of the puzzle. Le sigh, if only this were the last time TackyHarpersCrypticClues.blogspot.com had to ask for a puzzle free of imagined penis. O' were't! Finally, after an otherwise fantastic cryptic (four Xs!) and a thrilling theme, we come to the tacky clue of the month. As is so often the case, its sin is that it runs counter to my Gay Agenda:

• 1D. Worker who's not so gay, by the look of him! (7)
  Double synonym: "worker" = "not so gay by the look of him" = BUTCHER

"Butcher" males don't look gay? Au contraire, dear Maltby! Behold: butch and gay!

Leather daddy

JD Samson of Le Tigre. Lady-killer.

Rock Hudson

Buck Angel

Folsom St Fair in San Francisco

So weird to keep running into this outdated queer paradigm in the Harper's cryptic, in which all gay men are swishes and sissies. Good grief, that is but one tiny prismatic wavelength in the glorious homo spectrum, Maltby!

But many thanks for Helena Bonham C. A delightful surprise in an overall wonderful puzzle.

Taking Steps - November 2011

This month's puzzle: nothing actually tacky. One clue: maybe a little judgey. Some clues: absolutely delightful. Well done this month!

The super special trick extra layer of intensity: an acrostic. I feel about acrostics the way that Indiana Jones feels about snakes: terrible. "Why'd it have to be snakes/an acrostic?"


Except that the major difference is that Indiana Jones defeats the snakes, and I had never ever once before defeated an acrostic ever once before in my life. Not ever. Not once. Not even close. I'd get 20% of the way in, 30% of the way in, then: total block, and with too little complete to glean any inference from the fill. Jesse urged, "but the part where you intuit the quotation and start solving things faster than you can write them is kind of euphoric!"

I did not have the courage then to admit: I had never felt such euphoria.

And thus this puzzle took nearly a solid month to finish, totally messing with my average solve time (between 3 hrs and 3 days). Hit a major roadblock even with half the clues answered. There were just no hand-holds from the fill. Too many long words, very little to infer aside from a lot of "ion" combos.

Got a good boost from the clear refreshing Bay Area air on a visit to San Francisco, and two answers from the brilliant Amelia, and then one magical BART ride home the whole puzzle morphed from a mess of yucky yolk and wet flour into a glorious dough that I baked in the oven of my brain, and which thus yielded the delicious bread of a solved puzzled. And I felt that acrostic euphoria, Jesse. I felt it.



All across answers change by one letter between rows. Two uses of EINSTEIN for anagrams, which I can't decide if I find brilliant or sloppy (read: I find it audacious and sloppy).

Highlights!

• AA. Queens consumers, perhaps, bet on bad rates (9)
  (bet = ANTE) + RATES anagram = ANTEATERS.

"Queens" as in ant queens. Beautiful.

• R. Einstein's confused—time to be gay! (8)
  EINSTEINS anagram = NINETIES

Love it.

• N. Peasant plowed with one foot (7)
  PEASANT anagram = ANAPEST

Sometimes I feel like the only one who cares about prosody and the rhythm of words. Maltby reminds me that I am not alone. Anapest is ba-da-BAH ba-da-BAH: "Let us go then, you and I / When the evening is spread out against the sky." DFW said the anapest is a horse's gallop.

• P. Waiters, as some say, are dogs (8)

Knew this was a homophone, but got stuck on synonyms for "waiters": servers? waitstaff? porters? carriers? No no, this is "waiters" is in "those who tarry" as in TARRIERS homophone = TERRIERS. Favorite clue of the puzzle. Here's Asta: a favorite terrior of puzzles!

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

And then as for that judgey clue: Actor cast in not quite polite plays finally abused things (9). Answer: ACTOR anagram + (not quite polite = NICE - e) + (plays finally = S) = NARCOTICS as synonym for "abused things."

Hrm. Narcotics are painkillers and sleep-inducers. I took Vicodin after they pulled out my wisdom teeth. Vicodin is an opiate. Am I a narcotics abuser?

And of course, the synonyms are not a one-to-one correspondence in cryptics. You can see it in the TERRIERS clue. Are "dogs" synonymous with "terriers"? No. Mr. Stupendous pointed out, wives are also sometimes abused, but were the clue to use WIVES as the synonym for "abused things," that would, indeed, be quite tacky. We'll leave it at judgey, Maltby.

In fact, I solved this clue early on as PROTOCALS = ACTOR anagram + POL from not quite polite + S. I misspelled it (it's "protocols") but it felt so good to assume the puzzle believed rules were made to be broken.

Sixes and Sevens - July 2011

July was a juicy puzzle and much good clean fun, up until this month's humdinger tacky-attack. And no, I'm not talking about 17A's EBOOKS ("Modern Library edition of So Be OK (hyphenated)" = SO BE OK&nsbp;anagram).

Which, side note, that was really pushing it, Richard E. Maltby Jr! This isn't the New York Times crossword. You can't just ETAIL and ERATE your way through the grid. This is why we come to the cryptic. We come for real words, even obscure words (29A NEPHRIC, "Degenerate pincher of a kidney (7)" = PINCHER anagram). But these e- prefixes in a cryptic? Too soon, Maltby! Too soon. And thanks for indicating that it's a hyphenated word. Nobody cares!

This month's extra puzzling twist was that the six- and seven-letter answers were unnumbered. Straightforward. Knocked this out with steady progress at my usual casual three day pace.

Particular favorites included 16A's glorious DOPPELGANGER from "I can see myself here, having gone and grappled with intermarriage (12)" = GONE + GRAPPLED anagram (pulled that one down right away) (anagrams are my strongest suit) and 1D's INFIDEL from "I don't believe it's an infield foul!" = INFIELD anagram.

And then we come to the unpleasant matter of This Month's Tacky Harper's Cryptic Clue. This month it was what turned out to be 34A: "Chastity maintains these holy songs get placed around the start of Easter." Tried building off AVES a couple times before I remembered that there's a special word for what we sang in church. Special thanks to my mom for the assist on: HYMNS. Toss in an E for start of Easter and we're left with HYMENS as a synonym for "chastity maintains." Hrm.



I logged a lot of hours with Our Bodies Ourselves during adolescence. I also had The What's Happening to My Body Book for Girls. I also had and still have a female body. So I'm well-equipped to offer insight on this point. Carol Roye sums it up nicely:

As nurse practitioner it is not so easy to tell whether a girl is a virgin, because hymens are so varied. If there is not much of a hymen I have no way of knowing what happened to it. Was it a boyfriend or a bicycle? Or, perhaps, this girl did not have much tissue there to begin with.

Wikipedia says it better:

Virginity testing [inspection of the hymen] is a very controversial practice, both because of its implications for tested girls and because it is not accurate.[1] It is degrading and considered a violation of human rights by Amnesty International[2] and is illegal in many countries.

This clue resonates with bad "bloody sheet" notions of female purity and women as property. Stoning is still a legal sentence for women convicted of adultery in countries that enforce Islamic Sharia law. "Honor killing" is still a very real repercussion for women who, oh, say, get married without an intact hymen.

My rejoinder, matching tacky for tacky: "Jewish bodily impurity before head was cut off by thin film (8)"