CHRISTMAS ISLAND: [ ACROSS LITE][ PDF]
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This Christmas, we're spending it with Liz's folks back in England. York remains a strange place. It seems that in '15, the non-ironic Christmas sweater is a thing this year. Maybe it's like that every year, but man, the fact that I haven't seen a single hipster wearing one with his tongue firmly implanted in his cheek is jarring. But I digress.
British newspapers run bonus pages of puzzles around Christmas. And since I happen to like cryptics (the puzzle of choice here), I give them a quick look. I should say that Jon Delfin (one of the all-time greatest puzzle solvers ever) alerts me about various weekly UK variety cryptics I should check out. And yes, sometimes I even get around to doing them (the Spectator and the Listener, for those paying attention at home). And, yes, sometimes I even get around to solving them, often relying on hints from Jon. But, alas I'm not always up to snuff.
Jon's got a saying that some of these themed British puzzles are "ADR puzzles." An ADR puzzle is a Brtish cryptic crossword whose theme nobody in the US has a shot of understanding. "ADR" of course stands for "Another Damned Rugby." Jon coined the term after solving a puzzle whose theme involved some rugby team that, well, presumably was popular enough to be celebrated in a cryptic. And let me tell you, there are a ton of ADR puzzles out there. I've seen one about the ring roads around London. One ADR puzzle I managed to successfully solve involved York and the Tour de France, but that was just dumb luck as I knew the neighborhood from visiting the in-laws and I knew the Tour was going through their hometown around that time.
My version of the ADR puzzle was always fictional. I used to tell people that I stood no shot with UK puzzles was because I'd always forget tires had a y in them, color with a u, and I'd fail to realize that with an s. Also, I'd say that invariably I'd miss out on the local stuff, be it some small hamlet in the midlands or a pithy joke about some MP.
Well, the latest Guardian contest puzzle at least on paper looked like something I had a shot at. It was a alphabet jigsaw, which meant I knew what the first letters were for every clue answer, and that they were presented in alphabetical order. 52 entries, two for each letter of the alphabet! That's a huge help. However, since this one was themed, there was a gimmick that in each clue pair, one of them didn't have a defintion and was part of some thematic list. Okay fine. I give it the college try and well, didn't get very far. But I shot an email to Jon and told him I was doing it, and well, that was enough for him to print it out.
A couple hours later Jon writes: "Granted, I have no family of any generation requiring my attention. If you change your mind (and the puzzle is, overall, relatively easy), this will help." And lo and behold. Just like the room full of monkeys and typewriters eventually writing "Hamlet," eventually, somebody got around to setting my fictional ADR puzzle. It does exist! Amazing. Surreal. It feels like almost stumbling upon a real-life unicorn.
Share the puzzle. New one on Monday.
Brendan Emmett Quigley creates custom-made puzzles for all occasions: birthdays and bar mitzvahs, anniversaries and retirements. You name it. Need a puzzle for your website or your publication? He can do that, too.
Brendan's custom work clients have included The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, BeerAdvocate, Boston Magazine, De Beers, The Decemberists, ESPN, The Improper Bostonian, Lollapuzzoola, McSweeney's, Phish, Reflexive, The Smithsonian Magazine, St. Martin's Press, Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, and Andrew Weil.
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