Ariadne’s Crossword Library, July 2025

ACL Grid: 10 mins, Meta: most of a day [4.50 avg; 5 ratings] rate it

G’day from Downunder! It’s time for another selection from Ariadne’s Crossword Library. The July puzzle, constructed by Emma Oxford, is entitled “Go By” with the prompt: The meta answer is a science fiction author.

As I am filling in the grid I notice lots of literary references – which is par for the course with ACL – but the themers appear to be four long entries, explicitly clued as authors:

• 18A {“The Man Who Was Thursday” author} = CHESTERTON [G. K.]
• 27A {“The Inimitable Jeeves” author} = WODEHOUSE [P.G.]
• 48A {“The Call of Cthulhu” author} = LOVECRAFT [H. P.]
• 61A {“Anne of Avonlea” author} = MONTGOMERY [L. M.]

And, of course, the full names of all four authors officially included two leading initials. That cannot be a coincidence, and seems to link in with the puzzle title: these authors “go by” these names.

So I start looking in the grid for these pairs of letters… no luck. What about the clues? Nothing leaps out in the acrosses, but what’s this in 3 down? A clue with the same initials as G. K. Chesterton!

• 3D {Good kick?} = TANG
• 10D {Pretty grubby} = WORN
• 41A {Half price} = ONSALE
• 71A {Loved mightily} = DEAR

I am half expecting a surname that would then require a couple of additional leading initials. However, TWOD is not a likely surname. But TWO D is suggestive, and a quick Google reveals a likely answer: DON DEBRANDT, a Canadian science fiction author who also writes under the pen names Donn Cortez, D. D. Barant, and Dixie Lyle. I have not personally heard of this author, but it’s an apt answer for a puzzle that came out on Canada Day. That’s enough of a click, so I submit…

… But I am WRONG! Emma emails me to say that is not the correct answer.

So if TWO D doesn’t refer to initials, perhaps it refers to dimensions? Is the answer EDWIN A ABBOTT, the author of Flatland? No connection to Canada, and he’s not an author who goes by two initials, either. But at least it’s one I’ve read. So I resubmit…

… Also WRONG! Emma kindly includes a hint with the second rejection email – ah, the benefits of being the official write-up person for ACL! – “Think more inside the grid.” So it’s back to the grid with TWO D in mind.

Well, there are four Ds in the grid. The across entries that contain them are MEDEA, ZAPRUDER, WODEHOUSE, and DEAR; and two of those are meta related already. So that’s not a likely route. The grid itself is two dimensional, but that’s hardly surprising (although, check out my attempt to add another dimension to meta crosswords!) I can’t see anything in the clues either:

• There isn’t a “D… d…” clue.
• 36A {“___ of the D’Ubervilles”} = TESS has a D sort of on its own.
• 43A {Word before A or B (or, of things really go sideways, C)} = PLAN, leads nicely into D.

I think I’m out of ideas, so it might be time to throw in the towel sleep on it…

Later that day, as I am working on solving another meta, it occurs to me that TWO D could refer to TWO DOWN. [I really should have thought of that faster. In my defense, I’m a secondary teacher in the middle of week 11 of an 11-week term and my brain is mush!] So what is TWO DOWN?

• 2D {“Not kind”} = MEAN.

I flail around for a few minutes. Is there an sci-fi author with the name M. E. AN? Or N. O. TKIND? No, there is not. Does Kurt Vonnegut’s surname mean “Not kind” in German? No, Google tells me, it means “From/of good”. Does Terry Goodkind’s surname with its double positive actually result in a negative? No it does not, and he was more of a fantasy author anyway. [Mush brain, remember?]

But then it hits me: what if it’s like the earlier clues in which the first letters of the clue’s two words gave the initials of the author? That can only mean the answer is N. K. JEMISIN, an author of whom I have read quite a lot: I very much enjoyed her Broken Earth trilogy, and the two books in the more recent Great Cities series were also very good.

So I got there in the end, although I will presumably not be in the running for this month’s prize!