Still Cross, If You Wanted To Know

For One Thing

When you're not working, time zips by at least five times faster than when you're chained to the grindstone.  Thus my day off has lasted 2 hours <muted annoyance face> which was spent mostly in the back yard whilst doing crosswords in the sun, which is a little more grounded than seasons.  Art!

  Say what?  No no no, I was going for - Okay, Art, as you are a coal-chewing simpleton who cannot understand allusion nor symbolism, let me be explicit.  "Seasons In The Sun".  There.

     Of course, this has nothing to do with what I wanted to vent about.

     ANYWAY yesteryon we were yarking on about crosswords, and I have a long item to post here.  First, we have to consider Lord Peter Wimsey and his sleuthing ability.  For those unaware, Lord Pete is a veteran of the First Unpleasantness with a tendency to relapse into what we would call PTSD after an especially trying case.  O - he is also completely fictional, being composed by Dorothy Sayers.  Art!

Lord P with faithful (and brawny) sidekick Bunter

     Yesterday, whilst banging on about crosswords, I recalled that there is a short story where the Lord has to solve a crossword puzzle, and because my volume of "The Complete Lord Peter" was on the shelves mere feet away - Art!

The blank

     Hearken to "The Fascinating Problem Of Uncle Meleager's Will" where a crossword solution is crucial to solving the mystery.  Art!

     That, ladies and germs, is the list of clues.  Conrad has only glanced at them, but they do seem to reflect the world of 1928 (my approximation of when these stories were published) in that one needs a thorough knowledge of Greek, Latin and the mythology of both cultures.

     O well.  Once I'm redundant there should be oodles of time to work it out.

     Conrad should also point out that there is a solution at the end of the short story, which I am not going to either look at or present to you.

"LPW - The Impostor" 

Conrad Is ANGRY!  ANGRY! O SO FEROCIOUSLY ANGRY!

Or, back to normal, thank you for bothering to notice the difference.  We've had a short interval where the Codeword compilers who survived Conrad's repeated purges have come back with bland, unremarkable pabulum.  Until today, Hip Hooray! (I've no idea where this exclamation comes from but will investigate).

"UVEA": This one really threw me, because I'd heard of UREA which simply did not match.  What on earth could it be?  Art     !

     ARE YOU DOG BUNS KIDDING ME?!  An element of the human eyeball? Who would have known that but an optometrist or neurologist.

    Bah!

"KULAK!: ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME!  Your Humble Scribe got this one completely wrong with GULAG in the first place, which is an understandable mistake, because everyone's heard of the Sinister punishment system, where you could serve twenty years for holding up a blank banner or for wearing blue and yellow trainers.  However, "Kulak"?  Art!

     These are Welsh KULAKS and they are KULAKS only by comparison, as it means 'Rich peasant', which, in Sinister terms, means a peasant who is alive and breathing, and whom can thus be exploited to death.

"CORNU": I know what you're thinking, and YES I HAVE RETURNED D.A.R.P.A..'s TELEPATHY HELMET, it's just that you're so Dog Buns transparent.  Your Humble Scribe was completely baffled by this one, going back to check that he'd got the solution correctly - of course I had, I'm a genius.  If so, what the heck is 'CORNU'?  Because it's not there in my Collins Concise.  Art?

     As per teh Interwebz.  It is - or was - a variety of horn used in Roman times.  O how glad I am in knowing that.  Two millenia out of date, how silly of me not to have known it

     THAT WAS SCALDING IRONY IF YOU DIDN'T KNOW BETTER.

<short pause for the blood pressure to drop>

Let Us Bring On A Bit Or Mayhem

Better known as "The Sea Of Sand", where we have a situation O-so-familiar from the annals of "Doctor Who", a garrison under threat.  I'd forgotten how this ended, so your squeaks of terror are echoed by mine.

Seeing the machine advance again, the Doctor dashed back to the Marmon-Herrington armoured car, an ugly vehicle mounting a Bren gun in the turret, alongside –

          ‘I say, is that a Boyes anti-tank rifle?’ he shouted above the din of engine noises.

          A startled crewman poked his head above the turret, looked down at the Doctor and then up at the slowly-approaching black machine.

          The Doctor stood on the running board to shout more effectively.

          ‘That thing –‘ and he waved at the intruder, now only thirty yards away, ‘ – is made of fused glass.  A high-velocity round ought to shatter it.’

          One of the energy-draining arms whipped out, catching a running soldier across the legs and shrivelling him into near-nothingness.

          The crewman ducked down again, the armoured car jerked into reverse and began to accelerate backwards.  More rounds from Captain Jolyon’s Lewis gun bounced off the glassy-hulled machine.  His Sahariana surged forwards and swung hard left, narrowly avoiding being hit by the attacker’s swinging arms.

          They’re not going to bother, after my advice –

          With a terrific bang, the long anti-tank rifle fired, kicking up volumes of dust from the engine covers.  Turning, the Doctor saw the bullet impact high on the black cylinder.  Large-bored and high velocity, the round drilled right into the machine, leaving a small entry hole, then a much larger exit one, scattering chunks of black glass across the road.

          Abruptly, the machine stopped.  It still functioned, as the deadly arms continued to flail the air.  The Doctor felt it had come across a stimuli never encountered before and was taking stock of the situation.

          Behind the armoured car, the Vickers light tank edged forward, away from the truck holding Italian PoW’s.  Of an approximately equal size to that of the sinister alien machine, the tank’s turret swivelled to bring twin machine-guns to bear, just as the other machine began to reverse.

       You may notice a difference here between Conrad's fan-fiction and canon "Doctor Who" because these alien killing machines are most certainly not proof against large-calibre high-velocity bullets..

The Boyes.  It annoys.

"Barriers"
As per the BBC photographic exhibition, and no I have no idea what comes next, so if Art will light the blue touch-paper -

Courtesy Tony Dowell

    Conrad is not sure what the barrier here is, since the original poster was pretty obscure about same.  The sign?  The strand of what appears to be wire across the picture?  English dominance against the Welsh from the fifteenth century onwards, all hail Owen Glyndower?  Take your pick.

Finally - 

Sorry to touch on contemporary matters here, but over on Quora - Conrad's latest guilty pleasure - there was a question about whether it was safe to visit the Sinister Union Russia.  Well, dear questioner, it depends on where you come from.  One of the Krembots who inevitably pop up on these subjects claimed that it was pretty difficult to get arrested in Ruffia, which is contradicted by those who have been arrested for wearing blue-and-yellow trainers, or for holding up a blank banner.

     A few years ago, as per Ruffian films, you could happily waltz around the streets of Moscow carrying a double-barrelled shotgun capable of taking on dinosaurs - as long as the ammunition was safely secured.