Responding to Levy’s lament, a commenter wondered: “Why is it desirable/necessary to have women’s names predominate in crossword puzzles … I ignore the male/female body count.” Levy’s response was a perfect, full-throated call to arms for inclusivity in the crossworld:īecause women are underrepresented in puzzle content and creation. Alas, 66-Across, DEE, was clued as “Billy _ Williams,” not as the letter or the grade. “I went through looking for men’s names with mounting excitement: What if there weren’t any?” she wrote. Jenni Levy, an internist and a writer on the review site Diary of a Crossword Fiend, applauded how Hoelscher’s puzzle “passe the crossword Bechdel test.” But Levy bemoaned a “missed opportunity.” In comments sections on crossword blogs, alongside off-color jokes about hypothetical titles for a Melania Trump memoir, a debate raged. Some of the Times’ 600,000 digital-crossword subscribers finished Hoelscher’s puzzle with their thumbs, extending their solving streaks, and crossword bloggers (yes, they exist) favorably reviewed the puzzle’s theme, non-thematic vocabulary, and clues. Hoelscher posted a photo of the newspaper her husband rose early on his day off to buy, and veteran crossword constructors, as they’re called, offered congratulations in a Facebook group that develops constructors from underrepresented groups. Like lots of nerdy subcultures, the crossword puzzle has a buzzing ecosystem, and it whirred into action. It was Presidents’ Day the theme was memoirs by first ladies. The effort sucked oxygen from its blood, and by the time it reached the first crossbeam the alarums in its brain were urgent.Last month, Sally Hoelscher published her first crossword puzzle in The New York Times.
It staggered toward the door, trailing a smear of slime, beginning to feel the first alarums from its brain, demanding oxygen. Murder most foul, alarums and excursions, theft, buggery, barratry, incomplete perfusion! They had manned them both, and planted their ordinance for that present, and sudden alarum vvithout the gate, and also some troopes of small shot in Ambuscado vpon the hievvay side. The alarum bell now rung out the signal to that part of theclan without the walls, and they immediately poured upon the enemy, who, confounded by this unexpected attack, had scarcely time to defend themselves. Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. If Death to Vermin - or their stooges - had spotted them, a simple alarum would have served.ĭrums, strike alarum, raise them from their sport, And ring aloud the knell of Gaveston!Ĭan you sniff around for alarum glamours, sentinels, booby-traps, that kind of thing?Īnd immediately after her prayer breaks forth, soars upward in a shrill nasal falsetto, like a morning alarum when the hour for waking has come, the mechanical noise of a spring let go and running down. The cannon-fire was not followed by the alarum bells, so they knew Bluto was just sending a few balls arcing through the night to remind the Turks he was there.Īfter several seconds another sound cut through the rain: the strident clangor of the alarum bells in the tower of St. Unfortunately, sleep had conquered her before your departure, and she only woke when the alarum struck, too late to detain you, for you had rushed with the haste of a man who is flying from some terrible danger.
These delightful labours occupied the remainder of the night until the alarum warned us that it was time to part.
I observed with pleasure that the clock in the alcove had an alarum, for I was beginning, in spite of love, to be easily influenced by the power of sleep.
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