Cereal Offences
Margaret Farrar, the first crossword editor at the New York Times, called it the Sunday Breakfast Test. You’re sitting down with fresh-cut kiwis and Swedish muesli and the first clue you read points to ENEMA or EMPHYSEMA.
Not a good look.
Same applies to areas of smut. Most solvers blanch at the idea of cocktailing Nutri-Grain with CAMEL TOE or GANG BANG. Or basic bodily functions, which probably don’t need listing.
This last category was my own recent bugbear in the Sydney Morning Herald. As part of a Robin Hood theme, I included CHAMBER POT – as this humble vessel invokes the Merrie companion of Little John. (Think about it. Got it? Let’s move on.)
As an entry, CHAMBER POT carries enough euphemistic grace to pass the breakfast test, just. My problem was the clue.
Originally I went for laughs: Where the mob crap, deplorably! (7,3). In other words, a simple anagram belonging to the &Lit category, where the clue’s wordplay doubles as the answer’s definition. Awfully angered – say – leads to ENRAGED, etc.
But the vision of a crapping mob was not the figment my crossword editor wished upon the bran-munching reader, so a last-minute change was demanded. BAT CHOMPER? HOMBRE PACT? THE BRA COMP?
In the end I plumped for a lamer &Lit, again relying on anagram: More PC-bath novelty?! (7,3), which made no sense to a solver from Kyogle. How is a chamber pot politically correct, he asked. Or computerised for that matter? What the hell do you mean? If anything the crockery is rickety. And the solver rightfully took the piss.
If any DA puzzle has caused you to lose your Froot Loops in one technicolor arc, I apologise. Breakfast is a sacred time of day. Toast should be spread with butter and jam, not plague and poop and clunky clues. But next post we’ll have a look at some edgier offerings from UK puzzles, some of which would see Ms Farrar roll in her casket, and no doubt spill her cocoa.