Puzzling
Back in January, 2009, I wrote a piece on GAMES magazine and honed in on my favourite puzzle format, cryptic crosswords.
As explained then, these are crosswords constructed on word plays. Each entry has two clues, one straightforward, another not so straight.
There are anagrams (things for changing times: ITEMS), homophones indicated by phrases like “we hear” and “so to speak” (relative from French seaport, reportedly: NIECE); containers, in which answers are embedded in phrases (unauthorized offering from Louisville gallery); and reversals (Will turned to vegetable: SHALLOT). There are the double definitions (former monk: PRIOR). And watch for abbreviations like FE (iron) and parts of words like YE (a couple of years). It is an intoxicating drink with a twist of lemon. The 10 sample clues below should give you a taste.
Clues:
1. Bird burning on the third element of stove (8 letters)
2. Veteran’s Administration endowment to drifter (7 ketters)
3. Celebrate around beginning of Lent, to some extent (6 letters)
4. More than one weaving machine appears (5 letters)
5. Outfit switched in forum (7 letters)
6. A name is lost to forgetfulness (7 letters)
7. Hear unconfirmed reports from lodgers (7 letters)
8. Retaliates for some craven gesture (7 letters)
9. Actor in complex tragedy (5 letters)
10. Al Capone shows muffler to pilot (8 letters)
Answers:
1. Flamingo (Flaming + O)
2. Vagrant (V.A. + grant)
3. Partly (Party + L)
4. Looms (two meanings)
5. Uniform (anagram: in forum)
6. Amnesia (anagram: a name is)
7. Roomers (rumors)
8. Avenges (crAVEN GEStures)
9. Extra (complEX TRAgedy)
10. Scarface (scarf + ace)
Sweetness and Apropos: A Peach of a Pair
The two novels are completely different. At the same time, they have enough similarities that it would be impossible not to take notice.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley is the story of a perky and prodigious 11-year old who, to save her father, insinuates herself into a murder investigation. Sir Apropos of Nothing by Peter David relates the adventures of a young and very cynical squire who finds himself charged with the rescue of the Princess of Isteria.
Sweetness takes place in a Georgian English countryside. Apropos takes place in The Middle Lands.
Sweetness is a first novel by a Canadian mystery buff. Sir Apropos is the fifty somethingth novel by a New York-based sci fi icon.
Alan Bradley was a founding member of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild and Director of Television Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan for 25 years until his early retirement in 1994. His interest in things mysterious took a sharp left turn when, in 1989, in collaboration with William Sarjeant, he published the classic Ms Holmes of Baker Street. The premise of the book, which engendered a firestorm of controversy upon publication, is that Holmes was, in fact, a woman…one twice pregnant to boot.
David is another matter. His list of credits is a mile long and he is not completely inaccurate when he refers to himself as “a writer of stuff”. Lots of cool stuff, mind you. He got his start in comics, penning stories for The Incredible Hulk at Marvel and Aquaman at DC. He also did work for the Dark Horse Comics miniseries, The Scream, among others. Back at Marvel, he wrote the comic book spin-off of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. A prolific writer, David is best known for his Star Trek and Babylon 5 novels. Sir Apropos of Nothing began a new phase and a new genre for David: fantasy.
So what are the aforementioned similarities between Sweetness and Apropos?
To begin with, both are about young adults. In the case of Flavia, very young, but she had what my mother would call an old head. Apropos simply grew up too quickly, starting with a misbegotten birth and ending with a narrow escape from an unwanted betrothal.
Both strain credulity. But let’s face it, if you are prepared to be swept away by a pre-teen as she unravels a murder mystery that spans decades, you are obviously in for the game. And Apropos is, after all, a fantasy, so you must take the fantastic in stride.
When her taciturn father becomes a suspect in the slaying of a certain Horace Bonepenny, Flavia sets out to find the real murderer. Naturally, our little Miss Marple manages to outthink and outflank Scotland Yard. The resourceful Flavia begins her sleuthing by going through old newspapers in the village library; she ferrets out the connection with old crimes committed at Greyminster prep school by Bonepenny and the nefarious “third man”. It is the latter who snatches up Flavia and comes this close to doing her in. In the end, our irrepressible little heroine returns the object of everyone’s affection, a rare Black Penny stamp that nearly brought down the Empire around Queen Victoria over a hundred years earlier, to a grateful King George VI. Peace and prosperity are restored to the Buckshaw Estate.
As for Apropos, well, he manages by hook and mostly by crook to survive the fates and his own flawed character. He serves as squire to the enigmatic Sir Umbrage of the Flaming Nether Regions, does in the fallen hero, Tacit One-Eye, outfoxes the dreaded Warlord Shank, escapes the grotesque Harpers Bizarre to say nothing of a herd of outraged unicorns, manouevers around Meander, the mad Vagabond King of the Frozen North, all to return the feisty princess Entipy, banished by Runcible to the Faith Women’s Retreat, to her proper station.
Obviously, both books are fun reads. The yarns are neatly spun. The humor, running from the subtle to the sardonic, is always present.
It is also no surprise that each was to become the first of a series. You could see it coming. The giveaway is the depth of the main character. We love little Flavia, despite her peculiar predilection for poison. We enjoy Apropos, despite his caustic nature and obsessive need for self-preservation. She is a scamp, he a scoundrel. It is fun to see how each, in his or her own way, manages to get from here to there.
Bradley’s Buckshaw Chronicles follow up Sweetness with The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag (released by Random House this past March) and the upcoming Hang, Gypsy! Dance, Gypsy!, slated to appear in 2011.
The Apropos trilogy also includes The Woad to Wuin and Tong Lashing. Darkness of the Light, is the first in a new trilogy of fantasy novels titled The Hidden Earth.
I am not usually drawn to the mystery or fantasy genre. I seldom read novels centered on the adventures of young adults, even ones as precocious as Flavia or Apropos. But my daughter, the librarian, knew I would like these books. In an upcoming post, I will tell you why.
The Blue Met: A Celebration of Reading
“Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.” (Rainer Maria Rilke)
It’s my favourite time of year. Skies are (generally) blue. The snow is a memory and our oversized magnolia tree is blossoming (admittedly early). The 12th iteration of the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival, which this year runs from April 21 to 25, is just over the horizon.
The Blue Metropolis Foundation, based in Montreal, is a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing together the finest writers from around the globe, exposing their work and the issues they confront in a diverse and challenging world. The Blue Met is also active in developing important educational and literacy programs.
Among the international stars you can meet at this year’s festival will be the Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish poet, Paul Muldoon, considered by some “the most significant English language poet born since the second World War”. Also on the stage for readings and discussions will be the distinguished Indian poet Koyamparambath Satchidanandan, the award-winning Israeli novelist Amir Gutfreund, and a couple of the best contemporary fiction writers from Latin America, Salvadoran Horacio Castellanos Moya and Mexican Christina Rivera Garza.
Festival highlights include:
Writers in Peril – The OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor expose the steps being taken by authoritarian regimes to limit access to information in cyberspace.
The Human Face of Genocide – How do writers handle the delicate and gut-wrenching task of capturing and making some sense of the annihilation of whole peoples?
Cartography of Cartooning – Two of Montreal’s most popular cartoonists, Aislin (Terry Mosher) and Serge Chapleau, talk about what they do and how they do it.
Breaking Into the Kidlit Market – Get the skinny on what it takes to succeed in this red-hot publishing segment, from preparing the manuscript to dealing with agents and publishers.
There will be the usual spate of book launches, panel discussions and award ceremonies, as well as workshops for established and emerging writers.
American author Hal Borland once wrote that “April is a promise”. For book lovers, it is one the Blue Met is bound to keep.
This Business of Quotations
“Buy old masters. They fetch a better price than old mistresses.” (Lord Beaverbrook)
It’s hard for most literary types to get excited about business unless, of course, it is the business of publishing. But timeless observations do, on occasion, come from our captains of industry. The daily grind tends to hone their wit, adding punch to perspective. Which are, after all, the building blocks of good quotations.
I made numerous presentations in my former marketing role and I invariably began each with a quotation. Of course, they were usually from Yogi Berra…but that’s another story.
The lead-in quotation was from Lord Beaverbrook, nee Max Aitken, (1879-1964) who made his fortune in Canada but gained his fame in England as owner of the Daily Express. Historians have called him the first Baron of Fleet Street, his newspapers making him, at the time, one of the most powerful men in Britain. While he could be a generous benefactor, he was also a hard-nosed deal maker, so it was no surprise when he declared, “If you can walk over a man once, you can walk over him as often as you like”.
His old masters line makes a perfect bookend with Andrew Mellon’s more famous “Gentlemen prefer bonds”. At the end of the day, though, Aitken enters The Literarian’s pantheon of quotables for this astute observation: “British electors will not vote for a man who does not wear a hat.”
Being at the centre of the information vortex and having a lofty view of human activity and a not so lofty view of human character, publishers have often put to paper thoughts that were insightful, if somewhat harsh at times.
From Allen Neuharth, founder of USA Today: “Nothing kills hope faster than cynicism.”
From Benjamin Bradlee of The Washington Post: “News is the first rough draft of history.”
From B.C. Forbes, founder of Forbes magazine and grandfather of Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes Jr., these two gems: “Action without thinking is like shooting without aiming” and “In the race for success, speed is less important than stamina”.
It should be no surprise that the same cleverness that spawned some of the most successful marketing campaigns would also engender some of the more brilliant insights into the human condition.
David Ogilvie, legendary founder of Ogilvie and Mather who raised the bar with his wordy Rolls Royce ads, reminded us that “The consumer is not a moron. She’s your wife.” His was a half-hearted defence when he wrote in his opus, Confessions of an Advertising Man, that “advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things”. Ogilvie opined that “if each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants”.
More biting was Bruce Barton’s “Conceit is God’s gift to little men”.
Barton (1886-1967) was the most famous advertising man of his day, thanks to his best-selling book The Man Nobody Knows. Published in 1925, the book compared Jesus to a successful businessman.
In 1919 Barton joined with fellow workers from the United War Work campaign (that raised money for soldiers overseas) to form the advertising agency Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborne that would become the second largest agency network in the world as BBDO Worldwide. For General Mills, Barton created the character of Betty Crocker, one of the most enduring symbols in American advertising.
Barton’s authored countless magazine articles and newspaper columns focusing on the themes of optimism and success. It was he who penned the famous “when you are through changing, you are through”.
Also from Barton: “It takes a real storm in the average person’s life to make him realize how much worrying he has done over the squalls.”
John Wanamaker (1838-1922), who established Wanamaker’s department stores and a merchandising and advertising genius in his own right, will forever be remembered and quoted for this quip: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half”.
It goes without saying that the business gurus would have much to say and some of what they said would have staying power. There is no better example than Stephen Covey’s maxim: “Your attitude determines your altitude”. Covey, of course, is the self-help master that brought you The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Which nicely segues into the judgment from Peter F. Drucker, the Father of Modern Management that “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all”.
To close this post, it is probably appropriate to list those quotes that focus squarely on the advantages and evils of capitalism. These are my favourites:
“Under capitalism, man exploits man; under socialism, the reverse is true.”
(Polish proverb according to Leo Rosten)
“Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell.” (Frank Borman, Chairman, Eastern Airlines)
“The quarrel between capitalism and communism is whether to sit upstairs or downstairs in a bus going the wrong way.” (Reverend John Stewart)
Far be it for me to argue.
