Conrad Is CROSS!

Just Not How You Expected

If you are a regular here then it will come as no great surprise to know that Conrad is pretty much a crossword fiend; you could probably have made an informed guess from the way he mucks about with words and language.  What can I say?  Guilty as charged.  Art!

Conrad, looking guilty.

     Up until today Your Humble Scribe had never bothered to wonder who invented the crossword, assuming (a dangerous folly) that they had come into being during the Enlightenment, oooh say 1746.  1747 at the latest.

     But No!  A quick check on teh Interwebz revealed that their modern iteration is much more recent: from 1913 believe it or no.  Arthur Wynne is the chap responsible for them, him being a Brit who emigrated from This Sceptred Isle to South Canada THE FOOL Art!

     Arthur - we will not abbreviate his name as we already have an Art on the staff - worked for the "New York Herald", and in December 1913 brought a new kind of word-puzzle to the 'Fun' section.  Art!

     You can see the Across and Down clues and Arthur later went on to add in the black squares that divide up crosswords in a symmetrical pattern.  To begin with the title was "Word-Cross" until a printer messed it up and we got "Cross-Word" which is exactly how Conrad gets when stumped by a particular clue.  I mean, would you have solved this one: " Favour involving nothing in dilapidated streets (8).  Mull on it for a while.

     There is a bit of a backlog in crossword terms at the moment, which, if Art will stop mooning over his Mara Corday calendar ...

Unsolved crosswords - the horror!  The horroe!

     Nor is that all, Wonder Wifey got me a second-hand set of calendar crosswords, of which only a couple had been done in the 12 years since 2010.  Conjecture: a Christmas gift to a person utterly rubbish at crosswords.  Art!

     Don't sneer, they may not be Cryptic yet they're not pushovers, either.

     Now, my next question is - which swine invented the Codeword?

Just A Short One

Yesterday, in a moment of absent-mindedness, Your Humble Scribe opened his Brewer's at random, and came across an entry for "The Man Of Bronze".  This was a nickname for Talus, who had been made and animated by Hephaestus, and he was made of zirconium.

     No, only joking, bronze. He was made of bronze.  It was his job to defend Crete, which he did by hurling dirty great rocks at potential amphibious landings.  His preferred method of dealing with those who landed was to render himself red hot and then hug them, creating an early version of the donner.  Art!

Viewers of a certain age will remember this with pant-wetting terror

Brrrrrrr!

     The creaking, groaning sound effects as the bronze colossus comes to life make it even worse.  From "Jason And The Argonauts" of course, where they called him 'Talos', which is poetically acceptable*.

     Okay okay okay, perhaps not that short.

Dog In The Manger, Hmmm?

This old saw is supposed to reflect on sheer selfishness, because the dog lying in a manger full of hay cannot eat it -

In case you were wondering
(I was)

     hmmmm you'd be surprised and disgusted at what dogs can eat, matey - and it prevents the hungry livestock from getting to it.  Art!

     This is our version in The Mansion.  No, Edna cannot consume the throw rug, but it makes a comfortable bed, just as a collection of nice soft hay would.  

     Okay, we'll have this one as The Short One.

    Right!  That's us half-way through, a good enough metric that I can now go do the weekly shop in our expensively-refurbished car.  They must make clutches out of solid zirconium.

"The Sea Of Sand"

Conrad idly wonders how much zirconium there is in a ton of sand

    ANYWAY as we left them yesteryon, the British garrison at the depot of Mersah Martuba were about to encounter three mysterious black machines resembling a giant oil-drum on tracks.

He didn’t recognise the architecture, or the design, but plainly these devices were not human, and not contemporary, either.  The tracks were more akin to slightly deflated balloons than caterpillar design, and the whole artefact displayed behaviour unpleasantly similar to a stalking predator.  Those waving arms seemed hostile, a combination of sensor and claw.

          ‘You men!  Get out there and stop that – that thing!’ shouted Dobie at a huddle of soldiers in a shallow trench.

          Two of the depot soldiers, pointing rifles at the intruder, left the trench and stood squarely in the middle of the roadway.

          ‘Get back –‘ called the Doctor, before Dobie rounded on him with a clipboard in one hand and a pistol in the other.

          Both soldiers aimed as the vehicle slowed in front of them, but before they could fire two of the flailing arms whipped forward and struck them, slicing into flesh and clothing.  Instantly the men went rigid, not even managing to scream.  A brief display of bright blue light played around the aerial atop the cylinder; whilst it did so the men’s bodies visibly shrank and shrivelled within their uniforms, collapsing into boneless heaps on the roadway.  Still the attacker’s arms remained fimly attached to the bodies, until all that remained of the men were two loose heaps of crumbling clothing, covering matted, stringy, dried husks.

          ‘Good God!’ exclaimed Dobie, his eyes bulging in horrified disbelief.  Further behind, Captain Jolyon sprinted back to the column of stationary vehicles, waving his arms to alert the lounging soldiers and officers.

     Oo-errr.  This does not bode well.

Back To The BBC

As you should surely recall, the might Beeb regularly helps out Conrad by printing photographs on a particular theme, which I reproduce here with a pithy comment or two, brightening up all our lives.  To that end, allow me to put up the first in a series dealing with 'Barriers'.  Art!

Courtesy Feldore McHugh

     Yeah, Conrad has had this experience when walking Edna down the back alley, when an aggressive big dog stuck it's nose under the wooden gate and barked voluminously.  Edna, not one to back down from a canine challenge, darted forth barking equally as loudly, causing Conrad to curse and drag her off.  Thankfully it was a big dog and a very narrow gap, so we got to see no more than a snout and a few fangs.

"Stranger Things: Season Two"

Conrad is really enjoying this because he only saw it when first shown, which was (erk!) five years ago, and I'd forgotten nearly all of it.  Sean Astin is good as the hapless bumbling Bob, who has 'Nice' written all through him, and is surprisingly perceptive.  And Paul Reiser, playing Sam Owens, head of research at Hawkins Electricity, is so morally ambiguous you constantly question if he's a good guy or a bad guy.  He's keeping very dark secrets from the town and townspeople that puts them all at risk, certainly; yet he's also willing to risk the town's safety to avoid killing Will.  And his furious response at another colleague's cold-hearted attitude towards the infected Byers boy is also telling.

I am Sam

Finally - 

Stick with this one, you'll love it.  What is the Persian for 'Golden'?  Why 'Zargun' of course - obviously!  And variously via Arabic and Italian, and then Greek, it became "Zirkon" and Hay Pesto! that became "Zircon" which is where you usually find -

 - ZIRCONIUM!

   Art?

I wrote an encomium
About zirconium

*  I won't be able to sleep tonight now.  I hope you appreciate the sacrifices Conrad makes.