More Like Murderwords Than Crosswords ...

Not So Much A Day For Airstrikes -
 - as one for crosswords.  That mordant drama "Inside No. 9" proved to be a right pot-boiler, with an Oxbridge crossword compiler (pseudonym "The Sphinx"), murder, cannibalism, suicide, incipient incest and - inevitably - cryptic crossword clues.  I mean, a vanilla one wouldn't have been challenging enough, would it?  They did break down the first few crossword answers although they did skim a bit in terms of clues; I don't think they covered partial anagrams nor acronyms.  And towards the end they were rattling out clues - BUT WITHOUT A WORD COUNT!  which, as you can tell, rather annoyed your humble scribe.
     Although, as it was a drama with comic and horror elements, I suppose a critique of their crossword technique is perhaps going a little too far*.  Don't do it again!

The star of the show.  Plus some humans

     Then we have The Flop House - still no commission payments winging my way chaps, an oversight I'm sure you'll correct shortly - who were also parsing crosswords in pursuit of a terrible film entitled "All About Steve", which I suspect was supposed to echo in the mind of the viewer as a reference to a far superior product called "All About Eve"; a forlorn hope as it dates from 1950 so nobody living will know anything about it, and certainly not the demographic the suits were hoping for.
     Anyway, back to cross words about AAS.  Pronounce it "Ass", that makes more sense.
     Okay!  In this thing, Sandra Bullock played a <ahem> 'quirky' crossword compiler.  I've never met a crossword compiler in real life but I VERY much doubt that they would score much above zero on any meter registering kookiness, oddity or eccentricity.  Imagine Conrad as your model wordsmith and proceed from there (a stony visage, a flinty heart and a knowledge of the abstruse & irrelevant)
     Not only that, Sandra Bullock is too old to be able to pull off "quirky", and the poster picture makes her seem the kind of individual people would cross the road to avoid.  Art?

For "Quirky" read "Off her meds"

     Ken Leong here looks appropriately wary.  I don't know why Bradley Cooper's smiling, he's within impaling distance of that lethal weapon Sandra is carrying.
     As The Flopsters themselves analysed, our heroine's lovestruck creation of a crossword that is <ahem> "all about Steve" means that she is instantly and automatically stiffing everyone who might wish to try a solution; how many people know the Steve in question?  Exactly!  2.678.  That's restricting your audience.  Bad form.  Not the done thing.

Pop Quiz!  How do you pronounce "Tetrodotoxin" correctly?  Conrad thinks the emphasis is placed on the second "o" rather than the first "e", making an "Oh" sound.
     Nothing sinister in the offing, your honour, it's - er - just that it's come up in a couple of television programs.  Honest.  Yes, yes, yes, I have been detailing the poisons of antiquity but nothing recently.  I can stop describing toxins whenever I like.

Spiny and poisonous.  How desperate do you have to be?

 - or - could it have been "pathetically hollow"?  Because "Hollowly pathetic" is improper grammar.  This is from yesterday's post, do keep up!

"Bleeding Edge" By Thomas Pynchon
Yes, more of the cultural connotations and correlations as purveyed by everyone's favourite South Canadian man of letters.  Not merely informative but entertaining, perhaps definitely.

     "Zagat": Founded by Tim and Nina Zagat in 1979 as a ratings system for New York restaurants, which expanded into divers other reviews and across 30 cities.  You subscribed to them and got a big fat book about the reviews in reward.

Close enough

     "Longy Zwillman": named by his parents "Abner" rather than anything to do with measurements.  Conrad has never heard of him, although he was a very big wheel in (Jewish) organised crime from the Thirties to the late Fifties.  Big with lots of celebs.

 - even if he does look like a bank manager

     "Robots.txt protocol": Effectively a "KEEP OUT!" request that instructs various web-crawling applications not to scan part of a site.  The naughtier type of bot will, of course, go straight to the bits it's not supposed to, for which Conrad cannot in all good conscience blame them, as it's what I'd do, too.
     "Brenda Starr and Basil St. John": Both comic characters.  Brenda is a glamorous reporter with a bouffant red hairdo (forgive my shallowness, she's probably a multiple Pulitzer Prize winner to boot) and Basil is the mysterious man-with-an-eye-patch in her life.  There was a 1986 film that didn't debut until 1992, being a critical and commercial flop, so those peaches at TFH might one day take an interest ...

How could they not!

Wait, What?
As you should surely know by now, Conrad is an alien invader, wearing a human skin.  There are, however, other alien invaders out there who also blend in seamlessly by hiding in plain sight.  Those things you fondly believe are tower cranes?  Nothing of the sort.  Art?

     This thirty-metre intruder appeared out of nowhere overnight if not sooner, and is proof - PROOF! - of my assertion.



* Only "Perhaps".  I take my crosswords very seriously.