The author has given us the clues. Can we fashion them into a puzzle?
We have Patrick Hamilton to thank for the term “gaslighting”. In his 1938 play Gas Light, Jack Manningham tampers with the lights and employs various other tricks to convince his wife, Bella, that she is imagining things and, by implication, losing her mind. By the 1960s, “gaslight” had become a useful verb.
A useful verb, from a depiction of an unlovely relationship. The relationships in our current reading, Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse, are, if anything, worse. Hamilton gives painstaking detail on the inner lives of his characters. Since those characters are either irredeemably sadistic or hopelessly foolish, the reader needs to be in the right mood.
All the characters in this book are imaginary. So also are Mr Stimpson’s Crossword Puzzles, the clues to which the reader is advised not to be beguiled into attempting to solve.
Across
1. Cartographer’s business.
8. Lowland reels perhaps.
9. Diverges.
10. Flies at sea.
11. False.
14. Boredom.
15. Many of these make one.
18. Jenny––––me when we met
(Leigh Hunt).
19. Mean Lady (Anag.).
21. Of course.
23. Northern ‘lights’.
24. Both ways.
25. Illuminated.
Down
1. Shy girls do this.
2. Extremely small.
3. Rigid.
4. Not permitted.
5. Latin for scales.
6. Plant leaps (Anag.).
13. Unrealised.
14. 19 across would like this.
16. Fruitful.
17. Perhaps.
18. Beginning.
20. Rough justice.
22. More than edible to unbelievers.
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