CROSS WORDS

Southland Times, Issue 19461, 28 January 1925, Page 4

CROSS WORDS

LATEST BRITISH CRAZE. A friend who returned from the United States recently told me that, if you pay a visit to anybody in that country under the rank of President just now, the first thing he says to you after shaking hands is sure to be something like: “By the way, can you tell me the name of a mythical bird in three letters ending in J?” At first I was reluctant to believe this about the citizens of a hard-headed and hospital nation. But during the last few weeks the disease has Spread to this side of the Atlantic, and in newspaper after newspaper you can now see what looks like a picture of a new kind of draughts board or the signboard of the Chequers Inn, with the squares very numerous and irregularly coloured, and with mysterious numbers written in some of the white spaces. If you are wise, you turn the page hurriedly and try to forget the passing follies of mankind in some engrossing story of blackmail with an Eastern prince as its hero. If you pause at the picture you are sure to get caught by the general infection, and you will find yourself working out a cross-word puzzle with a deceptive and soothing sense of victory that is unworthy of one of the higher animals. It is very difficult not to be curious about a new fashion, but I think I should have had the strength of will to leave cross-word puzzles alone if I had not gone into the country for the week-end and fallen into the debilitating company of nieces. On Sunday morning I had breakfast in bed. At least, I had breakfast brought to my bedside, where I left it to grow cold as a poor substitute for slumber. Half-asleep and half-awake I lay there, too idle even to care what was in the Sunday papers, and lazily listening to the charming November noises of the thrushes and starlings in the garden. Into this happy world I became suddenly aware of the intrusion of a human presence. A small voice, hesitatingly but hopeful, was asking: “Are you asleep?” “Yes,” I answered, not opening my eyes; “I am sound asleep.” “Are you sure?” the voice persisted, timidly.” “Quite sure,” I replied, keeping my eyes shut. “Are you quite, quite sure?” The voice seemed to become a little despairing. I opened my eyes and, looking round, saw a small dark head projecting itself into the room through the quarter-open door. A small round face smiled. “Oh, so you weren’t asleep at all!” said Betty, coming into the room. It is no use arguing with a child of twelve, and, anyhow, the mischief was done, and I was now wide awake. “Well,” said I, “do you want me to get up? What time is it?” “It’s nearly eleven,” said Betty, “and you needn’t get up. But can you tell me the name of a carp-like fish in three letters?” If one were not accustomed to the strange ways of nieces one would regard with considerable apprehension a question so extraordinary sprung upon one so suddenly so early in the morning by a child of twelve. Instead of concluding that the child was imbecile, however, I accepted her question as perfectly reasonable, and assured her that I did not even know what a carp-like fish was like, and that the only fish I could think of in three letters was “cod.” She ran over to the window, and, putting her head out, called to her sister, who was inspecting the bulbs in the garden:

“Ann.” “Yes; what is it?” “Could it be cod?” “Could what be cod?” “The carp-like fish in three letters.’ “Don’t be silly. A cod isn’t a carp-like fish. Besides, it has to begin with I and end with E.” Betty withdrew her head from the window. “Ann says,” she informed me, “that the carp-like fish begins with I and ends with E.” “And it has to be in three letters?” “Yes,” “Then it’s perfectly simple. Get a dictionary and look up the .words ibe, ice, ide, ife, ige, ije, ike, ile, ime, ine, ipe, ire, ise, ite, ive, ixe, and ize. It’s sure to be one of them.” Betty hurried off and brought a huge dictionary. Together we conscientiously turned its pages, and I, at least, did not abandon hope till we came to “ixe” and found that the word was not given. The more I bent my mind to the matter, the more I became convinced of the existence of a carp-like fish called the “ixe,” and it was with a sense of bitter disillusionment that I looked at the place in the dictionary where the word ought to have been, and failed to find it.

By this time, however, I was so hot on the chase that it was impossible to leave the matter where it stood. I sent Betty downstairs for the volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica with CA —on the cover, and poured myself out a cup of cold tea to wash the last traces of drowsiness from my brain. We opened the Encyclopedia at the word “Carp” and learned that the carp is “the typical fish of a large family Cyprinidoe of Ostariaophysi, as they have been called by M. Sagemehl, in which the airbladder is connected with the ear by a chain of small bones (so-called Weberian ossicles)” —that “the mouth is usually more or less protractile and always toothless; the lower pharyngeal bones, which are large and falciform, subparallel to the branchial arches, are provided with teeth, often large and highly specialised, in one, two, or three series (pharyngeal teeth), usually working against a horny plate attached to a vertical process of thhe basioccipital bone produced under the anterior vertebrae, mastication being performed in the gullet.” Thinking that I could not yet be fully awake, I poured myself out a second cup of tea, and handed the Encyclopaedia over to Betty. “You read,” I said to her. Whereupon she took the volume on her knee and read out slowly: The Cyprinidae are divided into four sub-families: Catostominae, mostly from North America, with a few species from China and Eastern Siberia, in which the maxillary bones take a share in the border of the mouth, and the pharyngeal feeth are very numerous and form a single, comb-like series; Cyprindae, the great bulk of the family, more or less conforming to the type of the carp; Cobitinae, or loaches (Europe, Asia, Abyssinia), which are dealt with in a separate article (see Loach); and the Homolopterinae (China and Southeastern Asia), mountain forms allied to the loaches, with a quite rudimentary air-bladder.

“I think that’s enough, Betty,” I said gently. “It’s quite obvious that there isn’t any carp that can be spelt in three letters. Even the loach is five, and all the others are at least thirteen.” “No, no,” protested Betty; “listen to this,” and she read on:

For descriptions of other Cyprinids than the crap, see Goldfish, Barbel, Gudgeon, Rudd, Roach, Chub, Dace, Minnow, Tench, Bream, Bleak, Bitter-

ling, Mahseer. “Shall I bring up the rest of the Encyclopaedia,” she asked hopefully, “and look them all up?” I felt, however, that I had absorbed as much ichthyology as I could digest before dinner, and, saying that it was time to get up, sent her away with a recommendation to do the easy words in the puzzle first and leave the carp like fish to the end. As I went to the bathroom I could hear her calling out from a lower window: “Ann, frozen confections in five letters?” It is not often that I enjoy shaving, but after the Encyclopaedia, the exercise seemed positively soothing. If ever I sang or whistled in the bathroom I should have sung and whistled that morning, so intense was the feeling of relief from mental torture. Alas! even in the bathroom I was not secure. While the tap was still running—the hot tap, for I am no Spartan—there was a knock at the door. “Yes,” I cried, turning off the tap in order to be able to hear. “Who,” called a well-known voice, ‘ ‘was Abraham’s nephew in three letters?” *1 don’t know!” I shouted back: “I didn’t know Abraham had any nephews.” “Was it Job?” asked the voice. “No,” I called; “I’m sure it wasn’t Job. I don’t think Job was anybody’s nephew. Some people say he never even existed.” “He did,” Betty called in answer; “he’s in the Bible.” “I know,” I

said, “but he wasn’t Abraham’s nephew.” And I turned on the bath water again. , The bath was not yet full when there was another peremptory pounding on the door. “Yes?” “Do you ’think it was Lot?” “I don’t know.” “How can I find out?” “Look it up in the Bible.” “What part of the Bible is it in?” “I don’t know. Somewhere near the beginning. Turn over the pages till you see the word Abraham. Then find out if he had any brothers, and if any of them had a son in three letters.” Retreating footsteps, then silence, and the luxury of warm water flowing down the shoulders. Peace at last. Then another knock. “Yes?” “It was Lot.” “Good. Who told you?” “Mammy.” Are you sure she knows?’ “Well, anyhow, it fits. Do you konw an island in the ALgian Sea in five letters?” I do; several. Which one would you like?” One with O as the last letter but one.” “All the islands in the /Egean Sea have O as the last letter but one.” “Well, hurry up, and come down and help us.” Seldom have I spent such a Sunday. We Ivie in an age of restless intellectualism, of curiosity that does not pause even at the utmost star in space. But if the rising generation is to be brought up on crossword puzzles, it sems to me almost certain that in the next ten years the strain will become almost unbearable. Scarcely had we risen from the table when we were all sitting down to work at the accursed puzzle again, surrounded by Bibles, dictionaries, volumes of the Encyclopaedia, an Atlas, Roget’s Thesaurus of the English Language, and Walker’s Rhyming Dictionary. Those Titanic minds which are accustomed to solve an acrostic every Sunday morning when they ought to be at church speak slightingly of cross-word puzzles as something too easy for an adult brain. I confess, however, that this particular crossword puzzle was quite difficult enough for me, and that, on the discovery of each new word, I was agreeably pleased with myself as if I had solved a syllable in the riddle of the Sphinx. Besides, it raised me greatly in the estimation of my nieces. “Now,” Ann would cry, “a legendary King of Britain in three letters.” “Lud,” I replied promptly. “But was there such a person—really?” “There was. There’s a publichouse called after him m Ludgate Circus.” “Oh, clever!” And she filled in the blanks in the nuzzle with her triumphant pencil Then I had to guess “a woman of Troy” (which was easy), “garments of Hindu women” (which turned out to be “saris” and which took several minutes and a dictionary), and “a Shakespearean character” in three letters who was puzzling me long hours after the children had reluctantly gone to bed and is a mystery to me still. And so is the carp-like fish. I dreamed about it at night. It had only one eye, and it kept opening and shutting its mouth at me in a horrible fashion, blowing out little bubbles, each containing a letter of the alphabet which I was unable to read. . How happy we should be that none of these crazes lasts very long! All the same, what is a carp-like fish in three letters? I give it up. But upon my soul, I wish I knew.“Y.Y.” in the New Statesman.